Spirituality, religion, and the fundamentalist heresy
By: William House
Tags: Life Lessons, Spirituality, Philosophy, Awareness, Fundamentalism

Spirituality, religion, and the fundamentalist heresy

It is only with great hubris someone would promise to tell me what was going on in God’s mind

Opening of the fifth seal (The vision of Saint John the Divine) (Modified) — El Greco — Public Domain

I passed a church last Friday and the upcoming sermon, posted in black and white on a display board below the church name, was “Know the mind of God.” This title struck me as quite the undertaking, considering we are speaking of a God who transcends space and time and is the master architect of our universe. It is only with great hubris someone would promise to tell me what was going on in God’s mind. So, I scaled back my aspirations around solving the mystery of how God’s thought process works and started considering the dichotomy between spirituality and religion.

Growing up in a Southern Baptist church left me with distortions concerning religion and spirituality. I was well into my teens before I realized the two were not the same. Before this realization, spirituality took on the context of “very religious.” Spiritual people were somehow more religious than the rest of us. I also spent significant time coming to grips with my observations about people who are spiritual but not religious.

I was equally surprised when I learned Christianity had a long history of very unchristian actions. The Spanish Inquisition was a nasty affair where torturing and killing others to “save” them made some sort of twisted sense. Yes, I realize this episode in history was all about power and politics, but then, religion during the inquisition was also all about power and politics, not spirituality. Still, burning people alive seems mainly about getting rid of those who disagree, not enlightenment.

Studying various religions raises a legitimate question about whether spirituality and religion even connect in a meaningful way. Perhaps Yuval Noah Harari is correct in his book Homo Deus when he describes religion as a deal and spirituality as a journey. Religion provides an individual with a pre-defined framework describing the world and its relationship to a non-material deity or even multiple deities. This framework sets boundaries for the human-god relationship and prescribes how individuals behave within those boundaries. Stick with the rules, and remain connected with God, disobey them, and become disconnected.

Spirituality

However, spirituality is more about an individual’s search for meaning, with a goal that is perhaps similar to Abraham Maslow’s goal of self-actualization. This concept has origins in humanistic psychological theory, and self-actualization represents the highest level of psychological development connected with the human experience.

A spiritual search doesn’t necessarily recognize the boundaries imposed by organized religions. A self-motivated and self-directed search for meaning and understanding is possibly antithetical to established religion since it invalidates the “deal.” The spiritual seeker is essentially saying, “I see the deal, but I can’t accept it as fully valid or a complete understanding of the world around me.” This rejection of basic theology by individuals on a spiritual journey threatens the existential foundations of those who prefer to accept the “deal” and ask no more questions.

Spirituality is behind an individual’s search for meaning in a quasi-mystical universe. In contrast, religion focuses on defining an individual’s place within an established social group that coalesces around a shared set of religious principles. A significant difference between the two is boundaries. Religious journeys start within a defined set of limitations. Straying outside of those constraints is heresy. However, heresy is not a concept applicable to spiritual quests. Religion and spirituality are not exactly oil and water, and they sometimes mix, but religion usually places limits on spirituality’s search for meaning.

Religion and state

But it is religion, not spirituality, that forms a binding thread throughout the history of civilization. Hence, as far back as written history goes, governance and religion are often indistinguishable. Ancient civilizations, like the early Egyptians, made no distinction between government and religion. The Pharaoh took on the role of a God incarnate, so governance and God marched hand-in-hand when the Pharaohs ruled. During the reign of Pope Innocent III, governance in Europe was constructed as a single feudal hierarchy with the Pope at the apex. The Pope was considered God’s emissary on earth, so governance and God were again the same.

The history of many religions divides into three stages:

Inception, where an individual receives a divine mandate or revelation , which they pass on to a small group of followers.

Cult growth ensues, where the original revelation is shared by a growing community of believers.

Institutionalization occurs when the community of believers is large enough that a bureaucracy forms to oversee the management and codification of their core beliefs.

The first two phases of this process are generally not tied to the governance of sovereign states. But instead, history shows that groups of believers in these early two stages are often treated as threats to the established order. However, once a religion becomes institutionalized, there is a concentration of power within the ranks of the church bureaucracy. Then religion and state share a common bond in their organizational structure.

Institutional religion and state control

All religions are born into societies with established political structures designed to create social order. When a cult of followers becomes large enough, they adopt existing social governance principles for their newly formed religious community. Oral and written accounts are canonized, and the original message of enlightenment is forced to fit into an existing social/political system. This process enables continuity of the community and prevents a descent into theological chaos, but it also paves the way for that religion to integrate with other government and social structures.

Canonization of the Bible is an interesting bit of history that speaks to the church and state union. It was not until the sixth century — 500+ years after Christ — that the New Testament, as we know it, was accepted by the entire western Church. Numerous ecumenical councils worked to canonize the final holy text. Many books, initially considered to be the “Word of God,” were excluded during this long and arduous process.

Part of this particular journey was the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. It was called and presided over by Emperor Constantine I, a pagan, to address the Arian Heresy. The resulting Nicene Creed, which formalized the concept of the Trinity as a cornerstone of Christian theology, was the result. But Constantine acted out of concern for control of his empire, not religious fervor. Conformity of belief is vital in maintaining order, and at the time of the Council of Nicaea, alternative interpretations of Christian theology interfered with the existing power structure. A more unified church supporting effective governance was the goal of Constantine. So, political necessity drove the development of one of modern Christianity’s theological foundations.

Religion and power

The tremendous power religious institutions weld over the masses provides a lucrative mechanism for enforcing social control and concentrating wealth. The Catholic church of feudal Europe provides a clear example of intertwined religious and state structures. Wealth and power concentrated at the top of the social hierarchy, and religion became an indispensable tool for maintaining order and social conformity.

This pattern plays out in much of the Middle East today, with Saudi Arabia being a prime example. There, the alliance between the Royal Family and the Wahhabi Islamic structure is crucial for maintaining power. Also, the ongoing program in Russia to establish the Russian Orthodox Church as a state religion is an interesting example of a former entirely secular government embracing a state religion as part of its power consolidation. The history of our world civilizations is also the history of religion’s role in maintaining social order and accumulating power and wealth.

Even today, in the USA, we see Evangelical Christianity has become more of a political movement than a religion. Some Evangelical Christian groups call for a theocratic basis for legislation, often expressed as a bible-based approach. This effort is an apparent attempt to enforce social conformity to certain Christian religious principles. With the ability to legislate comes great power and also great danger in a country that prides itself on religious freedom.

Fundamentalism

Standing in contrast to spirituality is fundamentalism, which reduces the human-god relationship to a set of printed instructions. The world is a chaotic place at best, and fundamentalism attempts to bring spiritual and social order to the world through logical connections developed from a single written text. Fundamentalists may tell you that logic has nothing to do with it, but they are mistaken in this respect. They simply apply logic based on the notion that the words they read in their holy scriptures represent God’s mind. The words of their holy book become the axioms their system of logic builds upon.

Fundamentalists are literalists and believe written words in their sacred text are the exact words of God. Logic tells them since the scriptures are God’s word, they must directly express his intent and direction.

Once this literalist or fundamentalist view of the world takes hold, it builds a narrow and fragile framework for the believers to live within. Narrow because all aspects of life must be viewed through the lens of a single book, limiting one’s ability to incorporate a broader range of thoughts during a spiritual journey. Fragile because it is no more than a “house of cards.” The belief that written scriptures define all of our reality implies that every bit of what is written must be true. If one small piece of the scriptures is false, then it throws the rest into doubt. Thus, for many fundamentalists, there is no tolerance for even slightly different views. This belief system is fragile because it builds upon a system of logic that cannot allow one piece to fail, lest the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. This type of thinking is why creationists easily ignore the vast amount of scientific evidence pointing to a world older than five to six thousand years. For them, believing otherwise contradicts the bible and challenges its entire message.

The fundamentalist heresy

Fundamentalism leads to cycles of perceptual narrowing, where a limited world view leads to a decrease in tolerance for other beliefs, which serves to further reinforce the narrowing of the believer’s views. This perceptual narrowing is not limited to fundamentalism—it is pervasive in different degrees throughout most established religions. So much so it blinds Christians, Muslims, and Jews to the fact that they all worship the same God, the God of Abraham. The conflict between these religions is mostly over how He should be worshiped, not His existence.

The concept of perceptual narrowing also relates to the use of institutionalized religions as tools of the state. Limiting or curtailing world views is a control mechanism over individuals in terms of both physical actions and spiritual inquiry. Its primary focus is on maintaining social control and keeping the minds of individual believers in check, so followers don’t wander into apostasy. This objective, of course, requires a framework that defines and codifies the boundaries of “appropriate” thinking.

The perceptual narrowing process is akin to a feedback loop. Once the initial goal is achieved, there is a tendency to revisit the process and narrow the range of sanctioned beliefs even further. Multiple iterations of the process lead to the fundamentalist heresy — the worship of God is replaced by worship of a book, challenging the famous admonishment “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” After all, only worshiping a single, physical manifestation of God is very close to idol worship.