As Heaven is Wide / Of One Skin

Utrecht Iconoclasm, 2003, Arktos

I haven't written about theology in some time. When I started this blog theological argument was something I was quite driven by. In fact, argument of any kind appealed to me when I was eighteen. I was interested in revolution but not so much the meaning of the revolution. My series of political essays over the past two years has attempted to explain how my ideas have matured and evolved, but the same is also true of my thoughts on theology. This is not coincidental as religion has historically been substantially entwined with politics - consider that the House of Lords is divided between secular and spiritual peers. My opposition to the emergence of elites from intermediary positions is as true of politicians as it is of the clergy. Just as I've come to develop an idea of political self-representation I find a parallel in the concept of the universal priesthood.

It's hard to determine whether my sympathies toward the reformation are a case of upbringing or a natural proclivity toward anti-clericalism in line with my emergent political views. By the same token, it's difficult to determine whether hostility to the Vatican is a result of being raised in a locale still plagued by sectarianism or a conscious opposition to a centralised body of social control. That said, I broke with the Church of Scotland by the time I turned eleven. For the past few years I've been gravitating towards the hard liberal factions of the Quakers, not in the sense of membership but an appreciation of the relative absence of hierarchies. Just as the only way to defeat totalitarianism is to prevent the seizure of political power in the first place, so too is extremism prevented by denying religious power structures from abusively wielding the communion. Amusingly, my eldest uncle who is, near as I can tell, agnostic has expressed the very same sympathies toward the Quakers. Their phrasing of the holy spirit as the 'inner light' could also be expressed in secular language as our notion of morality. If deities are the personification of the semi-chaotic natural world, then we can de-personify the Sky Father of modern monotheism as an overarching morality. If we can separate morality and ethics from mythology (the narrative container for those ideas) then we can bypass arguments about which allegories are the only truthful allegories and instead make some progress towards understanding ourselves. It's unsurprising that the Dalai Lama has said as much as Buddhism already lacks some of the core concepts of common religion such as the existence of one or more gods. For several years I've contended that morality is not the exclusive domain of religion.

I still remain an atheist, however. There are particular aspects of broad Christianity I still do not agree with, primarily what I term a slave mentality - subjugation of 'children' to the 'father', inherited sin, being metaphorically shepherded, serving in heaven. I'm one of those people more interested in ruling in Hell. Aside from those strong feelings, the aforementioned sympathies betray a dilution of former iconoclasm. When it comes to the private exercise of religion I am no longer interested in a Dawkinsian battle. The God Delusion remains an unread present on my bookshelf after six years. In my weariness to wage war I've taken to proclaiming a more passive-aggressive rendition of the classic line from the Declaration of Independence: 'I really don't care what you do, so long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others to do what they want to do.' Take gay marriage as a contemporary hot topic. Some people seem to have a massive problem with the very notion of homosexuals let alone the legal recognition of a marriage involving two homosexuals afforded the same rights and privileges, or approximations thereof, of heterosexual couples. In the interests of balance, there are also those out there on the opposite side of the spectrum who don't understand the meaning of tolerance - I specifically point to the criticisms of an episode of Family Guy regarding the negative reaction of a heterosexual character on discovering he has had sex with a male-to-female transsexual. If I were to say as a heterosexual male I find the idea of two men engaged in sexual activity to be disgusting I would not be infringing on the rights of the gay community to the pursuit of happiness. Rather, the alternative would be to force me to express a counterfactual opinion which does infringe my right to my own opinion. The difference is, I don't care what two consenting persons do in their own privacy and I really don't care if they get married either. Unlike the extremes, I have my opinion but I don't demand or expect the universal imposition of my opinion. It's awfully easy to claim to be the land of tolerance when you're used to getting your way.

Nonetheless, I still have some fundamental objections none more so than the indoctrination of children. If everyone is free to come to truth, salvation, or whatever then let them decide of their own free will on reaching the age of maturity. At least the mind is plastic and mental conditioning is something that can be overcome if one so desires. It's somewhat harder to regrow part of yourself after it's been cut off. As far as I can recall I was aware of circumcision on or before the broadcast of a famous episode of Horizon concerning the life of David Reimer in 2000. Although, being male, that case was particularly horrifying, it wasn't until mid 2001 I was mistakenly copied into a women's group e-mail to my mother concerning a campaign against female genital mutilation in Afghanistan (no less) that I began to detect a blatant disconnect. At this point I would expect certain feminists to accuse me of belittling women's rights by daring to equivocate female and male circumcision. I am a certifiable egalitarian and so I have a genuine issue when any complaint about the circumstances of men in society is branded as anti-feminism. When we talk of masculinism and feminism we are discussing gender equality and not, as I came to realise of the Spice Girls, the right to behave just as badly as the chauvinists on the other side. The existence of a masculinist movement is clearly a result of a feminist deviation from the goal of equality into claims of superiority. Consider the acceptability of statements about women being more temperamentally suited to running a business compared with statements about the better spatial awareness of men vis-à-vis parallel parking.

Anyway, it occurred to me that there was a certain hypocrisy in combating one form of assault on physical integrity and defending the other on the basis of gender. As has recently been demonstrated in Germany, any discussion of male circumcision ultimately raises the spectre of antisemitism - nay, blatant shameful exploitation of the Holocaust:

I do not think that a country like Germany with their history should come and teach us what is good and what is not good and how we hurt our children after they killed millions of our children as well.
- Jacob Gonczerowski, BBC World Service Assignment, Saturday 13th October 2012

A law forbidding this for non-medical emergencies is not an affront to religious freedom as postponing the ritual from infancy to the age of maturity does not herald the destruction of said groups' ethno-religious identity. Ultimately it is the right of the child to expect physical integrity and there is nothing preventing a young male from consenting to the procedure at a date when they are in fact able to express their wish to join such a covenant. The continuation of the practice on minors is really the continued normalisation of abuse under the pretence of religious and cultural identity. It may or may not be harmful, the point is the people who should be leading the defence of the practice are those who have willingly undergone it and not religious adherents who have themselves been conditioned into accepting it without consent. The fact that Germany looks to seek a reversal of the Köln precedent looks nothing short of surrender to howls of Nazism. It's awfully easy to scream intolerance when you're used to being unchallenged.

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