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Jill Stephenson and Andrew Hook
It is hard to disagree with Walter Humes’ statement (14 February) concerning a flaw in religions: ‘The history of all religions suggests that beneath their appealing public discourse of faith, hope and charity there is a dark underside which is more concerned with dogmatism, control and self-interest’. He says ‘all religions’ but he quotes 1st Corinthians 13:13 (ie ‘faith, hope and charity’), so he seems to have Christianity in mind. (Sunni, Shia and others can temporarily relax.)
Justification for his criticism, however, is evident if we think of the Spanish inquisition, the Salem witch trials and sectarianism – Christian failures. Also, political control and religion got mixed up in rulers’ minds and it casts a historic shadow. It lingers in resentment, often with a sense of bitter rejection, when the established religions are being debated. So pens taken up in reasonable criticism may also conceal a ‘dark underside’.
Of course, one does not deny Professor Humes’ rightness about the relatively-low public profile of the Kirk compared to the Catholic Church. He is also correct in saying that there are Catholics who resist some of what their church presses on them and society as a whole and he is perfectly entitled to point that out. While it seems to be only Christianity he is having a go at, many Christians will have to agree.
What is less clear is why, in order to make such a point about dark undersides and religious murkiness, he feels a need to instance the current departure of Gilcomston South Church of Scotland near the beginning of his article, since it is being held up as demonstrating an exemplary way to handle a heartfelt disagreement.
Professor Humes himself cites Gilcomston South’s minister, Dominic Smart, one of the most thoughtful, sensitive, transparently-honest and honourable ministers I have met, when he reportedly writes, concerning the final decision to leave the Kirk: ‘Our decision was the culmination of careful study, sincere discussion and prayer over the past four years. We have weighed up many different options and we believe the decision we have reached has most integrity’. Anyone looking for ‘a dark underside which is more concerned with dogmatism, control and self-interest’ is going to have a hard job finding it here. To suggest it would be a mere calumny.
This fine minister and many, if not all of his members, will leave a building they have loved and sacrificed for, giving up all they have worked for in material terms over decades of faithful service. I am sure they are heartbroken about it, but they can see no other way to be faithful to God’s word, which seems to them to forbid homosexuality. Even those who disagree must respect their decision and feel their pain.
Neither does their erstwhile presbytery feel any rancour. Professor Humes writes: ‘A spokesman for the Aberdeen Presbytery expressed regret at the outcome but said that the Church of Scotland was "thankful for the way both the minister and congregation of Gilcomston South have conducted themselves in this difficult time".’
In other words, apart from the sincere, unfortunate inability of many people in Gilcomston South to live with Church of Scotland and Aberdeen Presbytery decisions, there is not much evidence here that ‘beneath their appealing public discourse of faith, hope and charity there is a dark underside…’. It is more than just unfortunate that poor Gilcomston South and Aberdeen Presbytery get dragged into the middle of Walter Humes’ generalised blast at the foibles of religion. One is not clear how they ended up there.
The real problem of our age is a refusal to admit that we no longer live in a traditionalist or modernist society, but a post-modern one, which requires a great deal of imagination to deal with conflicting interest groups.
In the old, established, traditionalist society, religious rules automatically had the upper hand. Then, after the second world war, there arose a dream of modernism that secular humanism could crush opposition in the name of ‘freedom’. Over the last 60 years, this has become a new kind of ‘dark underside which is more concerned with dogmatism, control and self-interest’. Yet Walter Humes does not even seem to see it in his desire to pin the ‘dark underside’ only onto religion. It is coercion that is our common enemy, not religion.
Today, we live in a post-modern society, one in which people who live in proximity under the same umbrella of statehood, have diametrically opposed ideas of how they want to live. It seems to miss the point just to substitute a new, state-sponsored, humanist dictatorship for an old, traditionalist, religious one.
Any ideology that religious people have a ‘dark underside’ (but non-religious, by implication, do not) is right out of ‘Animal Farm’. We need to grow up and admit that no social group is more equal than others. For if one group gets the power to crush its neighbours, the neighbours’ rights will be trampled on. The solution is as blindingly obvious as it is utterly unavoidable. We do not need less freedom to solve this. We need more.
Bruce Gardner is a writer and commentator
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