Mawgablog

The Virgin: symbol of calm or conflict?

There’s this phalanx of the indignant who have a bee in their bonnet about God and religion these days. I can’t help but find the dogmatically anti-religious pretty much as suspicious as the unquestioningly faithful.

The argument of the anti-religious centres on conflict; religion brings conflict, they say. Religion is for the gullible and God is a cad. Religion is the opiate of the masses, as Marx said.

For what it’s worth, I can’t seem to buy all that. Religion surely has a part to play in conflict, but it’s an also-ran, along with ethnicity, political allegiance, territory and history. In the modern era, there are few disputes that are solely based on religion. Northern Ireland is not just a sectarian dispute, for instance. It’s about whether the region is to remain part of the United Kingdom or become part of a united Ireland. It’s also about class and history; in the past, Catholics have felt like second class citizens at the hands of Protestants, which has its roots with the way the place was settled centuries ago. To say it’s just a case of Catholics hating Protestants and vice versa is a simplification. There’s a long, historical background to the Northern Ireland conflict. You’ll also need to understand somewhat Oliver Cromwell’s role in Irish history.

This Virgin Mary statue would have driven Oliver Cromwell mad!

Now, Cromwell was certainly driven by religion; I’m not letting religion off the hook completely, I must add. How much he was driven by military expedience I can only speculate. After all, following his victory in the English Civil War, the last thing he needed was a French ally to the west. But I’ll have to leave that argument for another time. Feel free to correct me on that if you can.

I’m not going to go too far into the conflict in the Middle East, but I’m sure it could be argued that Israel-Palestine is as much an issue of race and class as it is one of religion, akin to conflicts between settler and Native Americans, or settler and native Australians, or settlers and native Zimbabweans. Arguments either way about Arab-Israeli conflict are available. But there’s certainly an issue of land. It’s not merely a question of religion.

In fact, I’d say that in the majority of major conflagrations and genocidal campaigns in the 20^th century, very few of them were the direct result of interfaith war. Stalin’s murderous reign, the Holocaust and Pol Pot’s killing fields were ideology-driven. Rwanda was history and ethnicity. Kosovo was only nominally a religious conflict, with ethnicity and historical grudge more significant.

Many people derive solace from religion. That's no bad thing

Why is this important to me? Well, it’s because I think there are a lot of people who actually get an awful lot out of religion. I think pillorying religion is unfair and one sided. I think it brings a lot of comfort to many, many people. It helps people to make sense of the strange and twisted events that often overwhelm them. It helps heal. Praying is meditative and helps a lot of people through their daily lives. It provides structure.

Religious organisations also help fight social ills, for example, with assistance for the poor and homeless. The Salvation Army is one such example. While many justified, with religion, their belief in American slavery, many groups, notably the Quakers, stood in opposition to human bondage. In that country, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was firmly interlinked with black churches.

Furthermore, Islam gave us algebra and plenty more technology and medical developments.

And, without religion, I would never have received my education. I owe much of it to the Methodist church. Nor would the vanload of young children I used to see delivered to my primary school in Jamaica by American missionaries who would jokingly make sure that each and every one had a pencil to write with as they clambered out; these were kids whose parents had nothing, not even a pencil to give their kids. Religion was of some help to them. Did these missionaries expect something in return? Perhaps. Does it matter? Probably not: it depends on what the missionaries wanted, and whether the subjects would have been better off without their ‘gifts’. Assuming the missionaries weren’t abusive, chances are that the deal wasn’t particularly sinister, practically speaking.

Should you raise your children in your religion or give them the chance to choose when they’re older? I think that’s a dumb question. Is it force to ‘force’ your kids to take your surname, or speak your language or likely become citizens of the country in which they live? Just as they can change their names by deed poll or emigrate, there’s no ‘forcing’ your kids into religion. They’ll keep it up, lapse or reject it when they get older, I guarantee.

Perhaps it balances out, the good and bad of religion; I have no equations. I’m certain, though, that religion’s demonisation by the new secularists and atheist militants is an overreaction.

There’s a wonderful woman, a Kenyan environmental activist named Wangari Maathai, who believes that ultimately, religion, ethnicity and politics are superficial layers of conflict. She argues that ultimately, the roots of conflict lie in the battle for resources: access to them and control of them. I think she’s got it right. Worryingly, if she is right, as world resources dwindle, we’re likely to see a whole lot more serious conflict the world over. Darfur is just the start of something not wonderful at all.

She says it best here:

Anyway. That is all for now.