The new Enlightenment of politics and religion

The United States and Christianity are, respectively, a nation and a religion founded on a single beautiful concept. The United States was founded on reason; it was to sweep away the hierarchies and tensions of the Old World through its system of government. Christianity was founded on love; it was intended to sweep away the legalism of the past with a new ideology of unconditional love. Unfortunately, in the present, these two very powerful forces have replaced their founding principles with opposite ideologies. The United States and Christianity have joined hands to embark on policies which persecute gays, take away the rights of women and allow millions of Africans to die.

It is a sad state of affairs for the United States, which was founded in the flower of the Enlightenment, by people who had hoped to annihilate religious zealotry because of all the atrocities committed in its name. Instead, the nation's politics now have a decidedly 17th-century feel. Instead of witches and rebellious Protestants, we are now persecuting gays and women who dare demand control over their own body. Instead of massacring Native Americans to encourage others to convert to Christianity, the zealots of today would rather see Africans die horrible, painful deaths from AIDS than expose them to the evils of safe sex.

It is also a sad state of affairs for Christianity, which was founded by a man who despised the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the religious authorities at the time. He clearly hoped that one day the Pharisees would see that it was not right to insult or make quick judgments on anyone's actions and character. Instead, the Pharisees of today say that certain women are murderers for the reproductive choices they make and that certain people are unfit to raise children or even to love, simply because of who they are.

We are all, in one way or another, part of the United States, and many of us are Christians. We should, therefore, think long and hard about the path on which we are embarking. We ought to have sworn amid the wreckage of Sept. 11 not only to catch the horrible fiends who committed such an unspeakable act, but also to never put religious dogma above human beings. We ought to have sworn to treat each other with the dignity that the Islamic fundamentalists never afforded to us. We ought to have sworn to remember, as President Kennedy said, "that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal."

If we allow some sects within Christianity to turn America and humanity against itself, then those people who died in the Twin Towers and Jesus himself will have died in vain. Conservative Christians ought to ask themselves why Jesus associated with prostitutes and tax collectors, and not the moral majority of his day? Perhaps it is because he believed in a more perfect world where people were valued for who they were rather than degraded for what they did. Perhaps he wanted us all to accept that we are imperfect beings, unsure of what is right and what is wrong. Perhaps he wanted us to see that though we are all different, we are all children of God.

This solemn acceptance of our equality with each other must make its way into our politics. Rights should not be abridged and lives should not be destroyed because of what it says in a book, be it Mein Kampf or the Old Testament. Books are, at best, only snapshots of the human mind and its development. If books contained all that humanity needed to know, what use would our minds be? Why would we be given such power to think, reason and love beyond what it tells us in books? Instead of lazily trusting what is already written we should use the reason of our minds and the love of our hearts to change the world into a better place, where we actually understand and respect each other.

I read in one of James Carroll's Boston Globe columns a quote by the liberal, reform-minded Pope John XXIII to Nikita Khrushchev's communist, atheist son-in-law that struck me: "The Bible tells us that God created the world and the light on the first day. But, you know, the Bible's days are really epochs, and these epochs last a very long time. We look one another in the eye, and we see a light. Today is the first day of creation, the day of light. Everything takes time. The light is in my eyes, and the light is in your eyes. If God wills, he will show us a way." That quote and the man who said it seem so far off. We can only hope that somehow we are shown a way.