Armstrong's first paragraph defines the problem with exquisite clarity:
Psychologist Carl Jung once said that a great deal of institutional religion seems designed to prevent the faithful from havng a spiritual experience. Instead of teaching people how to live in peace, religious leaders often concentrate on marginal issues: Can women or gay people be ordained as priests or rabbis? Is contraception permissible? Is evolution compatible with the first chapter of Genesis? Instead of bringing people together, these distracting preoccupations actually encourage policies of exclusion, since they tend to draw attention to the differences between "us" and them."
What is the result of this exclusion? Hatred. Polarization. Terrorism.
I say that this tendency toward exclusion is greatly magnified by what I have called "the secular American religion of competition." The highest value activity in our society is competition. And the highest value result is winning. If you are a winner, you are rich, a member of the elite, a celebrity. If you are not a winner, you are an insignificant loser and you are excluded.
Too many in the fundamentalist religious community feel excluded. According to Armstrong, they feel the world is hostile to them. So they hate non-religious people and they attack. To which Armstrong says:
"Yet such religiously inspired hatred represents a major defeat for religion. That's because, at their core, all the great world faiths - including Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - agree on the supreme importance of compassion. The early sages and prophets all taught their followers to cultivate a habit of empathy for all living beings."
This message comes from someone who has been a nun and is now a religious scholar. I am far removed from being a religious scholar or even religious. But I see the beauty of what Armstrong is saying. Let's replace exclusion and hatred with compassion and empathy. People with compassion and empathy have the cooperative spirit.
To reduce polarization that is tearing our society apart and to reduce terrorism that is tearing the world apart, let's develop the cooperative spirit that encompasses compassion and empathy.
