By Carter Bundy
There is an awful lot of awful truth to Bill Maher’s movie “Religulous.” Some social conservatives take vicious Old Testament teachings and try to pass them off as part of a religion named after Jesus Christ. Some Jews hypocritically find phony ways around their own rules. There is violence and intolerance in too much of Islam.
Maher even picks on the far-outness of the backstories of Mormonism and Scientology, but mostly to make viewers question the literalist, anti-scientific stories adopted by fundamentalist believers of all religions.
Maher doesn’t just mock, though. He has read his New Testament, and uses it effectively to ask Christians basic questions about the gulf between Jesus’ teachings and the teachings of some fundamentalist, literalist sects.
You can’t find many people of good will of any religion (or lack thereof) who don’t admire Jesus’ teachings of love, tolerance, forgiveness, humility and non-judgment, and Maher never makes fun of Jesus’ message itself.
One of Maher’s most generous moments toward religion comes after he grills a rural truck-stop trailer church’s adherents about faith, magic, rationality and social issues. They kindly and sincerely pray for God to answer Maher’s questions, admitting they can’t.
Maher in turn sincerely thanks them for being Christ-like, and not just Christian. That’s one major thesis of the movie: that the teachings of Christ and the teachings of organized religion are frequently not the same.
Scoreboard
Two of Maher’s examples of abuses of Jesus stand out.
First, in tens of thousands of words uttered, Jesus doesn’t bash gays. Doesn’t even mention them. There are four gospels; Jesus lived 33 years, and not one mention? By contrast, concepts like care for the poor, the weak and the least among us are mentioned literally thousands of times.
Lots of people who follow politics are also sports fans, and I’m no exception. In sports, it’s a blowout when one team outscores another by five scores (say, four touchdowns and a field goal) to none, like Virginia did last weekend to Maryland. In the eyes of some fundamentalists, though, being out-mentioned 3,000 to none somehow doesn’t matter. Huh?
Even if you don’t like gays for some reason (and it’s just too much fun to speculate as to why that might be), what do you get by rooting against their having basic human rights like being able to visit each other in the hospital? Most of all, how does that comport with Jesus’ teachings of tolerance and non-judgment, and His utter lack of concern about gays?
Even more bizarrely, some voters use gays as a reason to vote against their economic or security interests. While there’s no doubt that liberals and progressive Christians would do more to help gays achieve basic human rights, there are still going to be just as many gays out there whether McCain or Obama is our leader. Gay numbers haven’t gone down under conservative “Christian” George Bush.
The only political question is whether gays will be treated with basic human dignity and treated as we all wish to be treated — a cornerstone of Jesus’ teachings if there ever was one.
A second consistent misuse of Jesus’ name is the widespread preaching that wealth is a sign of being favored by Jesus. Maher interviews several evangelical preachers with $2,000 suits. They claim that since gold was brought to Jesus’ crib, the correct interpretation of the New Testament is that Jesus was rich (seriously) and expects his church leaders to be as well. Really?
Maher simply shows footage of a Biblical film recitation of the eye-of-the-needle passage. ‘Nuff said. Jesus isn’t about making people obscenely rich, and pretty obviously He doesn’t favor fleecing the poor to gain that wealth.
Left behind
Unfortunately, Maher left behind all the good religion is capable of. Jesus’ teachings have been and continue to be used to fight slavery and sex trafficking; support civil rights; push back against the death penalty and corporal punishment; advocate for poverty-alleviation programs; help save God’s green Earth, blue skies and seas; care for other creatures; and argue against needless war and torture.
I want to give two recent, real-world American examples of why Maher, for all he gets right, misses the mark in completely dismissing religion.
Blood:Water
A friend of mine from
The
Pastor Reed is incredibly persuasive when making the case to his flock that supporting groups like Blood:Water Mission is at the heart of Jesus’ calling.
While plenty of agnostics and atheists work in non-profit areas and help the poor, the
Amish connection
In October 2006, the small Amish community of Nickel Mines,
Incredibly, that very day the parents of the children who were killed and other community members made statements of forgiveness and sorrow for the murderer’s own pain and horrible life. Can anyone imagine that kind of reaction absent a close adherence to the real teachings of Jesus?
Most touching were Barbie and Marian Fisher, the little girls who told the gunman to kill them to spare the others. Marian died. Does anyone think the sisters would have done the same thing absent a strong dose of true selfless teaching?
Bill Maher will be, forgive the pun, crucified for his movie. Actually, that’s not very funny — the Muslim anti-cartoon psychos may really come after him. At its heart, Religulous is a thoughtful analysis of the abuses of organized religion around the world by literalist charlatans and insecure fundamentalists.
It’s a shame Maher didn’t also follow his more generous instincts to show the good that can be done by being faithful to Jesus’ words by the likes of BloodWaterMission and the Fisher girls.
Still, Religulous is a movie that ought to be seen, if only to help separate the wheat from the chaff. And it has the bonus feature of being damn funny in parts and plenty entertaining throughout.
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in