Institutional Religion

“A great deal of institutional religion seems designed to prevent the faithful from having a spiritual experience.” This quote by Carl Jung is how Karen Armstrong begins an article in the March/April AARP, entitled “Compassion’s Fruit”. Armstrong is author of Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out Of Darkness; Holy War; Islam; A History of God; and Buddha, as well as the producer of three television series.

Armstrong discusses how religious leaders concentrate on marginal issues: can women or gay people be ordained as priests or rabbis? Is contraception permissible?

“Instead of bringing people together, these distracting preoccupations actually encourage policies of exclusion since they tend to draw attention to the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’.”

Armstrong believes these policies of exclusion are the main cause of fundamentalism, which erupted in every major world religion during the 20[supth[/sup] century.

“Every fundamentalist movement, whether in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, is convinced that the modern secular establishment wants to destroy it. Fundamentalism is not inherently violent; most fundamentalists simply want to live what they regard as a good religious life in a world that seems increasingly hostile to faith.”

In the U.S., Armstrong believes members of the Christian Right think their faith is in jeopardy and they need to protect it by attacking their liberal opponents. “When people feel that their backs are to the wall, they often lash out aggressively. Hence the hatred that continues to cause so much turmoil around the world.”

Armstrong observes that religiously inspired hatred is a major defeat for religion. At the core, all the great world faiths--Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam--agree on the importance of compassion.

The early prophets and sages found that empathy and compassion worked. Greed and selfishness were the cause of personal misery. “When we gave them up, we were happier.” Religious leaders believe that the practice of the golden rule enables us to experience a deeper and more permanent ecstasy, where the “self” is left behind.

“The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once remarked that when we put ourselves at the opposite pole of ego, we are in the place where God is.”

Armstrong observes that training in compassion is often needed because it does not come naturally. She discusses how the ancient Greeks frequently watched great tragedies written by Sophocles and Euripides, among others. “It was a course in empathy...these powerful dramas gave people a liberating purification of the emotions that helped transform the horror and disgust inspired by these human tragedies into compassion.”

Armstrong suggests we find similarly imaginative ways to educate people in today’s more complex world.