By Rudy
Barnes, Jr.
The
words faith and religion are often used interchangeably, but there is a real
difference in the distinction. Religion
requires faith, but faith does not require religion. Faith is what we believe to be sacred, and has
been described as “…being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do
not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Religion is an
institutional and pre-packaged form of faith, complete with a holy handbook,
doctrines that define orthodoxy (right belief), and immutable standards of
legitimacy that define what is right and wrong.
Most
believers begin their journey of faith with a traditional religion and at some
point question their religious doctrines and dogmas based on advances in
knowledge, reason and experience. This
transition from religion to faith can be illustrated by the four elements of
the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture,
tradition, experience and reason. Orthodox religious beliefs are defined by
doctrines and dogmas based on scripture and tradition. Experience and reason can cause believers to
question religious doctrines and dogmas and challenge the boundaries of
orthodox beliefs. That is typical in
libertarian democracies where believers have the freedoms of religion and
speech, but rare in Islamic cultures where those freedoms are restricted.
A
believer’s journey of faith from orthodoxy to heterodoxy is only natural and
should not be discouraged, but most religious leaders condemn those who
question their orthodox doctrines and dogmas.
The result is that many nones
(those who claim no religious preference) have left religion, but few have
abandoned their faith. The transition
from religion to faith is a positive development in a globalized world of
increasing religious pluralism since it lessens the likelihood of religious
conflict. Christians and Muslims who
once sent missionaries to convert the heathens and infidels of other religions now
struggle to live with each other as neighbors.
Christianity
and Islam are exclusivist religions that encourage polarization and hostility,
since each claims to be the one true faith.
Since the Reformation, the Christian religion has mutated from the
original Catholic and Protestant division into a panoply of competing faiths or
denominations, a trend aided and abetted by critical biblical scholarship and
the freedoms of religion and speech.
This process has diffused the contentious nature of exclusivist religion
in libertarian democracies of the West but not in the Islamic East, where sectarian
religious conflict predominates and apostasy and blasphemy laws prohibit the
freedoms of religion and speech.
Islamism
is fundamentalist Islam, and Salafism and Wahhabism are two prevalent strains
of Sunni Islamism. ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko
Haram and al-Shabaab have promoted particularly radical and oppressive forms of
Islamism to justify their terrorism, and they will continue to attract
disaffected Muslims to their violent cause until Muslims define Islam in a way
that denies radical Islamism its legitimacy.
That will require Islam to reject apostasy and blasphemy laws and embrace
the libertarian principles of democracy, human rights and the secular rule of
law.
The
fragmentation of Protestant Christianity into numerous denominations that
continue to be exclusivist in matters of salvation but libertarian in their
politics illustrates that the freedoms of religion and speech can mitigate the
hostility between exclusivist religions and minimize virulent religious
conflicts like those now plaguing the Middle East and Africa.
Until
Islam has embraced the freedoms of religion and speech, it must find the common
ground needed to minimize sectarian conflict; and Islamic scholars have already
identified that common ground. In 2007
they offered the greatest commandment
to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself as a common word of faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike; but there
is a question whether loving one’s neighbor—especially one’s unbelieving neighbor—is an accepted norm
within Islam. The enforcement of apostasy
and blasphemy laws and sectarian conflict in Islamic nations since the Arab
Spring of 2011 has indicated there is no tolerance—much less love—of one’s
unbelieving neighbors within Islam.
The
rigid and exclusivist religious doctrines of Christianity and Islam encourage
religious conflict and discourage the growth of individual faith. Making a distinction between faith and religion
is of my own doing, not that of Webster, who defines the terms as synonymous—as
is my use of experience and reason as a means of transcending the limits of
religion with faith. My purpose is to
illustrate how exclusivist religious doctrines based on scripture and tradition
discourage the growth of faith based on experience and reason. Advances in knowledge coupled with experience
and reason will always challenge the boundaries of orthodox religion, and when
enough believers move beyond those boundaries religious conflict is minimized.
The
world needs more faith and less religion.
The freedoms of religion and speech have enabled believers in
libertarian democracies of the West to transcend the rigid constraints of
orthodox religion, and believers in Islamic cultures can experience the same
religious and political liberation once they eliminate apostasy and blasphemy
laws and embrace the principles of democracy, human rights and the secular rule
of law. Those libertarian principles can
bring diversity to Islam just as they did to Judaism and Christianity, and that
would minimize sectarian religious conflict and debunk the legitimacy of
radical Islamism.
Notes
and References to Resources:
Previous blogs on related topics are: Religion and Reason, December 8, 2014; Faith and Freedom, December 15, 2014; Religion and New Beginnings: Salvation and
Reconciliation into the Family of God, January 4, 2015; The Greatest Commandment, January 11,
2015; Love over Law: A Principle at the
Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Jesus
Meets Muhammad: Is There a Common Word of Faith for Jews, Christians and
Muslims Today? January 25, 2015; Promoting
Religion through Evangelism: Bringing Light or Darkness? February 8, 2015; Jesus: A Prophet, God’s only Son, or the
Logos? April 19, 2015; An
Introduction to God is Not One, by Stephen Prothero, April 26, 2015;
A
Fundamental Problem with Religion, May 3, 2015; Religion, Human Rights and National Security, May 10, 2015; The Future of Religion: In Decline and Growing,
June 7, 2015; Christians Meet Muslims
Today, June 14, 2015; Fear and
Fundamentalism, July 26, 2015; Freedom
and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; and Politics
and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015.
The four components of the
Wesleyan Quadrilateral—scripture, tradition, experience and reason—are described
in Our Theological Task in The
Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 2012 (The United
Methodist Publishing House, Nashville Tennessee) at pages 78-91. See https://www.cokesbury.com/forms/DynamicContent.aspx?id=87&pageid=920. It should be noted that reason includes critical biblical scholarship that relates to
interpretations of scripture that are part of tradition, illustrating how the four components are interrelated.
On how nones have left religion without abandoning their faith and
spirituality, see the interview of Kaya Oakes, author of The Nones are
Alright, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kaya-oakes-the-nones-are-alright_560d8787e4b0af3706dff3b1.
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