The Bishop's Voice
Heaven's Gate and the Death of Religion

by John S. Spong, Bishop of Newark

Their faces were covered in purple shrouds. Their feet displayed new black Nikes. Identification was neatly placed at each side. They had voluntarily gone to what they referred to as a "higher level." It was one more bizarre incident that revealed something very strange about the human spirit.

In 1927 Sigmund Freud published a vigorous critique of organized religion in general and Christianity in particular in a book entitled, The Future of an Illusion. There he suggested that the origins of religion had nothing to do with revelation or truth; it was born, he said, in the trauma of the emergence of a higher consciousness. Religion developed when beings emerged out of the evolutionary process who understood life's fragility, in the midst of a vast and morally neutral universe. This universe was, he argued, not organized for the benefit of human life or tribe. The ultimate end of every living thing, Freud believed, was death and decay. The inhabitants of the universe had been able to tolerate this reality for billions of years because no creature had been able to contemplate its own mortality or its own lack of ultimate value or meaning. But when Homo Sapiens arrived on the stage, they saw themselves as victims, knew they would die and even anticipated impending disasters. They also recognized that they were not capable of doing anything about their fate. Trauma was the result, and so Freud argued, religion was developed to deal with this trauma by fostering the illusion that life was controllable.

Religion and human self-consciousness thus began their pilgrimage in human history together. The first tenet of religion was that the powers of the universe were personal and that they could thus be placated, bargained with or appeased. Natural disasters were defined as the angry expressions of a supernatural Being who ruled the universe, and were designed by this deity to warn, reward or punish, based upon human deservings. It was thus deemed to be essential that human beings acknowledge and reverence this powerful deity so that the Divine one would control these forces for the benefit of the worshipping subjects. Since proper worship could not be accomplished unless the will of this god was known and understood, those who claimed to know the will of this god and to be able to speak for this god emerged as powerful people in primitive societies.

The professional priesthood shrouded itself in claims of magic. Its task was to organize the life of the people so that the blessing of God could be assured and the divine wrath averted. It informed the faithful how the deity must be worshipped. An analysis of primitive worship practices reveals that its rituals were not unlike those used to pay homage to the chief of the clan or the king. Like the chief, the deity was thought to revel in the flattery of "his" devotees, to be angry at human failings and to stand ready to punish unless these shortcomings were properly confessed, penances assigned and restitution worked out. Groveling before God was assumed to be the proper posture of the penitent. In this manner, Freud declared, the human creature sought to control the anxieties of life by courting the favor of the divine power who would thus protect and defend this fragile, human creature.

If religion was born in the trauma of knowing our human vulnerability, then hysteria, which is a typical human response to trauma, would surely be found in the practices of religion. If discerning the will of the deity was a prerequisite for avoiding the wrath of God, then one's security would be well-served by the assertion that absolute certainty accompanied the pronouncements of those who claimed to speak for God. Without this religious security, hysteria would be commonplace. So infallibility claims for religious leaders were born and inerrant claims came into being for those sacred writings judged to be the place where the will of God was spelled out. These served to keep hysteria at bay. Believers suspended their rationality and embraced these security claims. But the repressed hysteria was revealed in the rage, or banishment, meted out by religious traditions when a challenge to the accuracy of its claims was heard. This mentality was behind those dark chapters of religious history when heretics were burned at the stake, excommunication enforced religious conformity, and such critics of the religious status quo as Copernicus, Galileo and Charles Darwin were threatened or harassed.

This Freudian analysis suggested that security, not truth, was the primary goal of every religious system. Security, not truth, is well- served by controlling thought, disciplining deviation and purging critics. These tactics represent an attempt on the part of frightened people to calm their fears when confronted by a vast, impersonal and ultimately, a killing universe. They encourage religious zealots to surrender their freedom for the security of being told what to think. We live in a world where most religious systems are honored, where piety is extolled and where the criticism of anyone's religious tradition is looked upon as inappropriate; yet we still see these destructive aspects of religion at work around the world. In Ireland Catholics and Protestants have killed each other for centuries. In the Middle East, Moslem and Jew are regularly at each other's throats. In India and Pakistan, the hostility between Moslems and Hindus forced the division of the whole sub- continent. Throughout the western world a killing anti-Semitism still emanates from the heart of Christianity. This world seems to tolerate religious violence as if it is almost proper.

From time to time that violence takes a bizarre turn which cannot be ignored. A Jonestown, Guyana, episode will occur in which hundreds of people drink poison to satisfy both their cultic needs and the illusions of grandeur that have gripped their leader. Now we are confronted with a community called Heaven's Gate that combines unchallenged religious convictions with modern technology and a story line out of Star Trek. Its members were castrated to remove sexual desire, and they died contemplating being taken to a "higher level" by a spaceship traveling in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet. It was one more startling revelation of the primitive hysteria that lurks in the heart of every religious system.

The public was shocked as this story broke. Commentators analyzed the data from every angle. Magazines flashed the eerie portrait of the cult leader on their covers. Television played their farewell speeches over and over. Reporters scurried to discover the background of these people, to interview families, friends and associates. The religious establishment was quick to condemn this activity as a distortion of "true religion." Few there were who would suggest that this behavior was but a slight exaggeration of those elements that are present at all times in every religious system.

When will we recognize that religion is always in the mind control business? Religion purges its critical thinkers by removing them from official positions, indexing their writings or silencing them officially until they recant. If that does not work, eternal and God- sponsored punishment is made quite vivid. Organized religion is cultic at its core, but seeks to keep this fact well concealed. It is revealed only when its authority is questioned, or when some group takes the neurotic aspects of religion to their natural conclusion. That is the final meaning of the Heaven's Gate community in San Diego.

Sigmund Freud was right in so many ways. He has described accurately, I believe, the origin of religion. Far more than most are willing to imagine, religion has been a destructive and divisive force in human history. It still tolerates such neurotic claims as papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy. Almost every religious tradition still asserts that it alone constitutes the sole channel to salvation.

Can Christianity escape the corrupting roots of its religious origin? If it cannot, then the world might well be better off without it. Yet, I am encouraged that there is no word that can translate "religion" in the Gospel tradition. Jesus did not say, "I have come that you might be religious," but rather "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly." I am pleased to hear Christian theologians begin to say that the creeds do not capture truth, they only point to truth. I am thrilled to hear Christian voices declare the Church to be a place to go not to receive answers, but in which questions can be raised. Increasingly, the Christian life is seen as a journey toward a mystery rather than as a theological database in which the mysterious can be fully explained. The task of Christianity is not to provide security; it is to give us the courage to embrace life's insecurity without surrendering our humanity.

Insecurity is a mark of being human. No drug, including the drug of religion, should be allowed to take it away. God is not a name for the forces of the universe that stand ready to snuff out our frail humanity. God is the name of the Ground of all Being that is manifested when we discover the ability to live fully, the capacity to love wastefully and the courage to be in the face of the ultimate threat of non-being.

We are moving into a post-religious world. I see humanity emerging out of its primitive origins, a humanity that does not need a heavenly parent figure in the sky to feel secure, a humanity that claims its grandeur by refusing to surrender the radically insecure quality of existence to any would-be authority. This humanity, I believe, can worship the God known biblically as "I Am" not by groveling, but by living. Religion, I suspect, will finally die, a victim of its own immaturity. But Christianity, if it can separate itself from the tentacles of religion, has a chance to be the song of the universe, sung by those who have come of age. It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German martyr in World War II, who said, "To be a Christian does not mean to be a religious man (or woman). It simply means to be a man (or woman)." Once, Bonhoeffer observed, Christianity had to separate itself from Judaism. Now it is called upon to separate itself from religion. The group known as Heaven's Gate makes us understand why.

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