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Who Does Religion Serve?
By bk | September 8, 2007 22:14
I was walking down Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis this afternoon - this is the busy part of the city on a weekend, with all the shopping - and passed by a number of small groups of conservatively dressed young men and women on the corners handing out CDs. After doing a double take, I concluded they must be Mennonites based on their dress, which isn’t entirely uncommon in rural Minnesota and Wisconsin. Another block down was a choir of maybe 10 men and 10 women, singing hymns a cappella, and then another small group handing out CDs.
What was really strange and, actually, disturbing and tragic about this whole scene was that as I walked through the 2 - 3 blocks occupied by these devout religious types there were about half dozen homeless people sitting and begging or walking along, clearly in need. A crippled woman sat only 10 feet from the choir holding a sign asking for money, food, or any assistance at all. I nearly turned around to ask what they had done for the people - how much those CDs cost - if they had even noticed them. If they brought a bunch of lunches and gave them away, great - but somehow I doubt it.
This is one of my big issues with organized religion, the veneer of caring and service for the community, but most of the money is spend proselytizing, or even
worse, building ‘mega churches’ which primarily serve their members and less so those very much in need. In my 20 years as an active Christian I can count on one hand how often I as a part of the church and the church youth group spent time serving the community by volunteering. I cannot even count or remember all the times we spent ‘witnessing.’ Many, if not most, of the events of either type did more to serve to selfish desires for fun experiences than provide any real service to those in need. It seems that in so many cases, even when it appears there is good being done in the name of religion, there is often a selfish motivation behind it. In one Penn & Teller: Bullshit episode they discussed Mother Theresa’s use of funds, keeping people sick and suffering because she felt she needed the be with the suffering for her spiritual growth.
Let’s be real - religions are about serving their followers, if they weren’t the followers would leave. Everything else is secondary. Marx was right, ‘Religion is the opium of the people’ - religion is a drug, and churches are the dealers.
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You know, an interesting conclusion about “who religion serves” is based on the theory of the meme, a cultural replicator that is subjected to natural selection. It’s the mind-virus model of religion that Dawkins talks about. It’s pretty nifty to think about–a successful replicator will insist that the host (faithful) convert the shit out of everyone they meet. It will insist that you convert your children so they are hosts. They even turn people into genetic dead-ends (like the priesthood) so that people can spend more time and energy propagating the faith among the people they insist breed (congregations). And it’s all unconscious and not for the people at all. It is for a replicator manipulating its environment. I think that this is potentially a powerful model for exploring such weirdness. I mean, you can even think of elaborate Catholic rituals (such as I was raised on) as phenotypes! Neat stuff. It’s the last chapter of The Selfish Gene, I think.
HJ
Posted by: Bing McGhandi on September 12th, 2007 at 15:59