..somehow there was a feeling of restrained animosity which no other religion engendered, probably because other religions existed only in the coloured pages of The National Geographic, in countries far removed and absolutely foreign. Many did not even speak English or wear proper trousers. To be frank, Christchurch in the 1950s and 1960s was not exactly overrun with obscure religious sects, the chants of Hari Krishna were still far over the horizon - but then neither was it Northern Ireland.
This New Zealand version of religious sectarianism was based more on class than real overt religious hatred; Catholics were classed as vaguely primitive and superstitious Irish immigrants, poor people who knew no better. Non-conforming religion had conquered the antipodean paradise of New Zealand and its natives. It was smugly triumphant and celebrated its rectitude with Baring-Gould's ‘Onward Christian soldiers’ who marched from Greenland’s icy mountain all the way to Cathedral Square, Christchurch.
Yet when we look at recorded history and the present day, we see a trail of bloodshed caused by competing beliefs. The curious muttering bipedal apes that we are have caused our fellows to be burnt, hung, drawn and quartered and generally robustly slaughtered for what seems the most trivial of deviations from accepted belief. Demagogues seem to be able to instil sufficient animosity in their followers to wreak havoc and mayhem at the drop of a hat. Authoritarians present religious difference and dissent as an affront to a divine sense of order to be immediately expunged from decent society at the drop of gallows’ door.
Yet behind the apparent struggle of belief really lies the need to either maintain power or gain freedom from a supposed tyranny. Even if we look at the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s we see not just sectarianism, a battle between faiths, but religious animosity being harnessed as a tool to demonise an enemy, perhaps once a neighbour, who wanted territorial or ethnic recognition. Croats and Slovenes were traditionally Catholic, Serbs and Macedonians Eastern Orthodox, and Bosnians and most Albanians Muslim. Religious affiliation served as a marker of group identity, even though after decades of communist control religious observance was low. Nationalism, tribalism was expressed as sectarianism. Mind you, having taught many of the inhabitants of the Balkans, they can keep a grievance going with a determination that has little equal, handing it down from father to son as a sacred flame of unexamined hatred.
I wonder if monotheism, the belief in just one God, is a problem. In Roman and Greek times gods wandered between cultures, nations, countries and centuries as was convenient. As the Romans, who saw no distinction between religion and state, extended their dominance throughout the Mediterranean world, their policy of cultural assimilation was to absorb the deities and cults of other peoples rather than try to eradicate them, since they believed that preserving tradition promoted social stability. If the Chaldeans had a deity with an enviable property such as the ability to keep one out of the legions, it was adopted in every port on the coast. If there was a Levantine divinity that caused gold to rain from the heavens on every third Sunday, soon little idols would be seen from Spain to Egypt. But as soon as there was just one god you can’t have any others, and as soon as it becomes the religion of the state then it becomes a matter of governmental policy that there be no competitor, for otherwise the state itself is under attack. It is not an accident that the hierarchy of the Roman church still reflects the political structure of the Roman and then Holy Roman Empire and the Anglican Church mirrors the government of England. Actually it has been part of it – but that’s another story
But given our nature what starts out as a simple text must become embroidered with glosses and explanations, reasons for the codifications of behaviour, fabricated footnotes to say what was really meant. And as what was supposedly said was usually written many years after the event so the opportunity to say what was really meant to have been said are many. An industry has be born and orthodoxies invented that must be protected.
Add to this the complication that any organisational structure that controls the gateways to salvation and paradise can become a revenue raising opportunity proportionate to its power over people’s lives and you have marvellous opportunities for making the truth reflect political necessities.
We see generally other religions as monolithic and only more recently with the various American misadventures across the Far and Middle East have we become aware the Islam might have a few issues with internal divisions such as the conflict between Shia and Sunni - the two branches of Islam who share most of the basic tenets and principles of the religion. Numerically there are probably six times as many Sunni globally that there are Shia. Differences initially stemmed from political strife and not any spiritual disagreements and appeared after the passing away of Prophet Muhammad, but naturally over times philosophies and structures have widened and hardened the gap. It may be apt to compare the division as akin to the differences between Catholics and Protestants who have also cheerfully killed each other in the name of the same god on the same battlefield.
But the unexamined principles of belief seem to be hard-wired into the human psyche. Many people need to believe in something, anything, in an uncritical manner. To live curiously in a very, very large universe seems too suspenseful, too difficult for many; as one of my philosophy lecturers stated many years ago ‘….most people cannot face the brute fact of reality’.
The universe, even the little we understand and know of it, is far too large and marvellous to think that a piddling little hominoid species might its centre and raison d’etre , and that all the answers to the great mysteries we answered in times long gone.