A THOUGHTFUL CONVERSATION ABOUT RELIGION
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, October 15-21, 2006
In my experience discussions about religion are usually argumentative. By contrast, a recent conversation at the Boggs Center was thoughtful and transformative.
The conversation began with remarks by Vincent Harding. Vincent, who worked closely with MLK during the 1960s, is Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at the Iliff School of Theology and co-founder with his late wife, Rosemarie, of the Veterans of Hope Project. He talked about Victoria Gray Adams, a civil rights activist whose funeral he recently attended. Victoria became a leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 because she took Jesus seriously. He also described his recent visit to a church in a violent, drug-ridden North Philadelphia neighborhood where a woman preacher is trying to make a difference.
He was followed by Valdina Pinto, a priestess in Camdomblé, an Afro-Indigenous religion which was brought to Brazil from Africa during slavery. Speaking in Portugese (Rachel Harding translated), Valdina explained how Camdomblé gives Brazilians of African descent ways of interacting with the sacred and the elements of Nature. It also reconnects their current struggles to struggles in their past.
Since the 1970s, she said, this indigenous religion has been under assault from Pentecostal groups who are preaching a gospel of Prosperity, building megachurches and demonizing indigenous religions as superstitions. They are creating a situation dividing people from one another and from our natural environment. “For us our richness is in our connectedness to one another and to the Earth, Air and Water.” By contrast they represent the commodification of our Air and Water.
Especially for the sake of our children, she said, we need to create a movement of connectedness rather than consumerism, of Being rather than of Having.
As she was concluding, a young man got up, declared that “those who own the Wealth make the rules” in defense of the Gospel of Prosperity, and quietly left the meeting. After regretting his departure, Vincent pointed out how the civil rights movement was created by people who didn’t believe that those with money and power have the wisdom to make the rules.
People then shared stories. A mother described how her children spent more time playing out of doors after their TV was stolen. Even after their grandmother replaced the TV, they looked at it less. An artist said that he has been paying more attention to what he sees, hears and feels, and asking himself what things are really worth our time.
An elder said that we could learn a lot from the Amish community’s response to last week’s killing of their children. Because of their religion, they have refused to allow their children to live the ideology of consumerism. Instead of feeling vengeful at the truck driver shooter, who killed himself after killing the children, they shared the food they cooked for their own grieving families with his survivors.
Vincent then wondered where we would be today if our leaders, instead of going to war in retaliation for 9/11, had called on us to pray for the families of the men who carried out the skyjacking.
The elder also talked about the importance of intergenerational relationships. Elephants in Africa are becoming more dangerous because we are killing the older ones needed to help young bulls learn about how to live peacefully.
The conversation reminded me of MLK’s thoughts about the alienation of young people in one of his last sermons.
“The source of this alienation,” he said, “ is that our society has made material growth and technological advance an end in itself, robbing people of participation, so that human beings become smaller while their works become bigger.”
The way to overcome this alienation is by changing our priorities. Instead of pursuing economic productivity, we need to expand our uniquely human powers, especially our capacity for Agape which is the Love that is ready to go to any length to restore community.
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