PROLOGUE A Holy Rascal Manifesto
Religiosity is the human capacity for making meaning out of the raw facts of human existence. Brand-name religions have abandoned the making in order to worship the made. While religion at its best calls us to a community of the curious and a unity beyond dogma and tribalism, religion at its worst calls us to worship the very things that divide us and to pit people against one another in the name of one fantasy or other.
Using humor, play, and fearless joy, holy rascals free people from idolatry and open them to the creative art of meaning making at the heart of human religiosity. In so doing we free brand-name religions from the madness that robs them of creativity and meaning as well.
We welcome all religious teachings that promote dignity, justice, compassion, humility, respect, awe, and love for all beings. We reject all religious teachings that promote fear, hatred, and the exploitation or demonization of the other. And we shun all Gods who sanction violence in this world or the next.
The God© who can be branded is not the Eternal God. The same is true of the God© who can be copyrighted.
RR
We call upon peoples of every religion to cleanse their texts and teachings of violence, injustice, and hatred; to boldly speak out when their religion is hijacked by evil; and to continually move their religion beyond the zero-sum world view of us against them and toward the nonzero world view of all of us together.