In The Week
Sarah Carey Why learning about religion helps fight against indoctrination
IT’S a first holy communion year for us. In preparation, I’ve rooted out the ‘Children’s Bible’ I was given around this age. It’s a heavy hardback with colourful and vivid illustrations. I know some people work themselves up about religious indoctrination, but the ‘Bible’ is in the air we breathe and the ground on which we walk. To know nothing of Eden and Exodus is ignorance.
For example, there’s an online translator many people use called Babelfish. The name comes from the science fiction book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams. In the book, the babel fish is placed in someone’s ear so they can understand any language, which is useful when you meet aliens.
Of course, Adams lifted this from the Tower of Babel in Genesis. Humans started to build a tower to reach heaven; a display of arrogance that outraged God. So he cursed them by making them all speak differently and the work collapsed in confusion. Perhaps the first recorded case of a mega-project failure. Babel is probably Babylonia, but because of the biblical association, it became synonymous with a confusion of loud noises – a babble.
People who use Babelfish should know this. That’s why we should read the Bible.
On a more fundamental level, the two key messages of Jesus – that all people are created equal and the powerful have an obligation to the weak – are the foundation of the Declaration of Human Rights. Although the values have been decoupled from the faith, it’s vital to know how they came into existence.
And so, my son and I have begun our journey. We were straight into Eve being punished with labour pains, and Cain murdering Abel. The Flood is bad enough, but the realistic pictures showed women and small children drowning in terror.
By the time we got to Sodom and Gomorrah, and his observation that God was in violation of his promise not to kill any more people after the Flood, he finally asked: “Mammy, are these all made up?”
I gave him the answer the master in our hedge school gave us when I was a child. “Yes.” The stories were invented by old men in the desert who knew nothing of science or nature and were struggling to explain the world. Where did the Earth come from? Why is childbirth so dangerous for women? Why do we speak different languages?
This frank acknowledgement that the Old Testament is to be understood figuratively is why evolution can be taught cheerfully alongside Genesis. There is no clash between science and scripture because Catholics are not required to believe in creationism.
This is in stark contrast to the Evangelical tradition of Protestant America, which understands the ‘Bible’ literally.
To us it seems bonkers that Christians insist that God created the world in seven days. When other Christians like Jehovah’s Witnesses ban blood transfusions, Catholics are completely astonished that anyone would believe in the actual words of Leviticus. The gap between Catholics and Evangelicals is most acute when it comes not to the beginning of the world, but the end.
In the Evangelical tradition, there is a fervent belief in the Rapture. Millions of educated people, including US Vice-President Mike Pence, believe that the world will end in conformity with the Book of Revelations.
There will be a tribulation for seven years when Christ will lift his people into the air (the actual air) before inaugurating 1,000 years of peace. When this will happen is closely linked to the future of Israel and the Jewish people, who must fully reclaim the Holy Land before the Gentiles can be saved.
The End Times are preceded by the arrival of the anti-Christ who, at first, appears to make peace amongst all the nations. For this reason, Evangelicals hate the United Nations. They think it’s led by the anti-Christ. That’s why Trump slags off the UN. It plays well with millions of voters who think it’s the work of the actual Devil.
Of course, since America was founded by the Puritan sect in Massachusetts, who were the extreme wing of the extreme wing of English puritans, and gold-diggers, you could say a propensity for delusion is embedded in America’s DNA.
Unfortunately we can’t feel too superior about the Rapture madness because the doctrine was largely invented by and propagated by an Irishman – John Nelson Darby. Educated at Trinity, he was an Anglican priest in Delgany, Co Wicklow. He abandoned that to found the Plymouth Brethren, who were remarkably successful at spreading their beliefs throughout 19th-century rural America.
He was a great fellow for prophesysing and predicted that Ireland and Scotland would win independence from England, who in turn would be subsumed by a European federation of countries. In fairness, the jury is still out on that one.
Of course, we all have limits to our beliefs and others will rightfully argue that resurrection and transubstantiation are equally nutty. Obviously the Roman Catholic Church’s past abominable approach to sex and sexuality is a thing of shame and terrible sadness.
But when it comes to the scripture, we can take comfort from our sensible approach.
Irish politicians have their failings and come in for harsh and unfair criticism.
Voters often punish the just and reward the bad. But no one votes for a politician in this country because they think he’s fighting the anti-Christ.
A religious education that creates this outcome can’t be all bad.