New Religions: A Small Sect Makes it to the Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted an appeal from a religion that you probably never heard of until it hit the news yesterday. Summum is rooted in gnostic Christianity (or, at least modern understandings of gnosticism) and ancient Egyptian religion (or, at least contemporary understandings of ancient Egyptian religion). It was founded in 1975 and has its headquarters in (of all places) Utah. You can get more information at the official Summum web site.

The case before the Supreme Court is based on the fact that the small town in Utah has a large, stone monument in the city park of the Ten Commandments. The believers in Summum petitioned the city council to add another monument with their seven principles of good behavior. The city council refused, thereby establishing the religions of the Ten Commandments (Judaism and Christianity) over the little sect of Summum. The small religion has raised enough funds to hire attorneys and appeal their case all the way to the top court in America.

There are serious constitutional issues about religious liberty in this case even if you have a hard time taking Summum seriously. But, I want to focus on something else: The way new religions are being invented and why so many people are moving away from the large, historic faiths.

U.S. society today is dominated by three social realities: (1) a free market, (2) individualism and (3) access to information (unconfirmed and well-proven, but with no easy way to tell the two apart). In this context everyone has the freedom to make their own decision (unfettered by real logic and facts, among other things) about what to believe. Because faith is clearly a fundamental part of what it means to be human, this does not mean that religion simply shrivels and fades away (as sociologists of religion generally believed when I first studied the discipline in the 1960s). It means that people who find existing religions unsatisfying are free to create their own custom-built spiritualities. If they have any capacity for being influential or their creation appeals to others, then any of these custom spiritualities can become a religion. Consequently we live in a time when more new religions are being created than any time in about 2,000 years.

[The Supreme Court has no option, in my opinion, but to tell the city council of that little town in Utah that they cannot allow one religion or set of religions to have a public monument in the city park while denying the same to other religions, no matter the relative numbers of adherents. Of course, they could take down all religious monuments from the public land and let each religion purchase its own land for its displays. Or, they could provide a space where all religions that come forward with a memorial that meets minimum standards of size, etc., are allowed to place such displays. There are those who do not like any religion who will argue that the second solution discriminates against those who believe in nothing. But, if we were to apply the same logic to freedom of speech, then there could be no public speech because it discriminates against those who oppose all speech. Either way, such logic ends up doing away with the right that the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect.]

For those of us who are believers, there are a couple of lessons here that are even more important:

One, we must respect all expressions of religion and spirituality. Each represents at least one person trying to relate to the divine, reaching out to God, in their own way. If we look down on their attempts, we certainly will not be able to provide any assistance in guiding them along the way closer to, or at least in the direction of, "the God that is there."

Two, We must take seriously the religious/spiritual expressions of others, no matter how ridiculous they seem to us. These are real people who are really trying to relate to divinity, to make sense out of the larger realities in the universe. Unless we take them seriously, listen to them, we cannot enter into dialog with them. If we cannot dialog, then we cannot follow the commands of Christ to share His good news.

The time is gone when we can go through the long-established routines and well-known arguments on various doctrines, using the logic that is familiar to us. That seals off the truth from discovery by most Americans; it makes the faith non-accessible.

It is also true, I think, that the large numbers of Americans who are not active in religion (about six in ten) are, most of them, in a kind of neutral place between leaving behind the established religions and embracing or creating a new faith. The Nov. 14 issue of The Week has a small piece about Sally Quinn, the well-known journalist, and her journey with religion, which is quite instructive. I quote key passages in the summary below.

Quinn was "forced to go to Sunday school" as a child, but at age 13 declared herself an atheist. "When her first son ... was born with a hole in his heart, Quinn found herself praying fervently for his life. 'Nothing happened. I didn't feel anything. No sense of comfort, no feeling of being embraced. I didn't try praying again.' For the next decade" she ignored spirituality all together while struggling with the severe medical problems of her son. "But in 1992, at a California spa, she became fascinated by a huge labyrinth that was traced on the ground. She was told to walk it focusing on something important to her. 'I entered the labyrinth and walked very deliberately toward the center, holding an image of a normal healthy [son].' Surrounded by soaring oaks, bathed in the sun's warmth, Quinn had a revelation. 'The tears came streaming down my face as I saw my gorgeous little boy, smiling, his arms outstretched, reassuring me that he was going to be just fine.' [Her son] has since grown to manhood and Quinn herself now sees divinity in the everyday world. 'My image of God may not be the personal God so many pray to. But, yes, I do believe in the everyday preciousness of life. That is what I call God.'" (Page 12)

Quinn's experience is an honest personal experience with faith, no matter how unorthodox or heterodox her theology may be. If we cannot accept it has such, then there is no hope for dialog and we are denying, in practice, our own, orthodox Christian faith.

Comments

[perpetualstudent]

I find it disheartening that more voices in Church leadership aren't discussing the challenges our church faces in a pluralistic society. I remember hearing one Union administrator describing his interaction with a Hindu family. The arrogance and unwillingness to listen to what that family had to say was shocking to me. From his point of view, they were following a false religion with no positive qualities. It makes me wonder what percentage of our church leadership actually talk to people outside of the church and of those, how many are actually listening.

[Monte]

My two decades of experience as part of a denominational hierarchy leads me to believe that there is a big communication gap between most denominational leaders and the realities faced by local pastors and especially the laity. Unfortunately, ecclesiastical bureaucracy creates a kind of "bubble" in which an alternative reality springs to life.