INTRODUCTION
The most intense love that humanity has ever known has come from religion, and the most diabolical hatred that humanity has known has also come from religion. . . . No other human motive has deluged the world with blood so much as religion; at the same time, nothing has brought into existence so many hospitals and asylums for the poor; no other human influence has taken such care, not only of humanity, but also of the lowest of animals, as religion has done. Nothing makes us so cruel as religion, and nothing makes us so tender as religion. This has been so in the past, and will also, in all probability, be so in the future.1
No one asked the Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda to prove these assertions during his 1896 lecture in New York, and some are surely exaggerations. His pronouncement rang true because it articulated the consternation felt by so many about the role of religion in human history. People value their faith for its capacity to inspire goodness, fashion meaning, connect communities, and open gateways to the sacred. At the same time, they have long recognized and struggled with the ways in which religion is wielded as a weapon to oppress people, to deepen division and justify violence.
The recent flurry of publications about the destructive power of religion should not suggest it is a recent discovery; historical events simply pushed it more to the center of our attention at the beginning of this twenty-first century. Most of these discussions, however, focus on holy war, fundamentalism, and other limited aspects of religious experience. When I begin my course on “Dangerous Religious Ideas,” I first ask my class what they would put on the syllabus. Primarily faithful Christians studying for a master of divinity degree, the students hesitate briefly. They frequently start with someone else’s ideas; reflecting the current climate of anti-Muslim bias that infects even progressive and pluralist spaces, jihad is almost always mentioned first. Then we get to extremists of all flavors. As students start to think more critically about their own traditions, however, they quickly realize that just about any religious idea could make the list: God, scripture, Messiah, sin. The board quickly fills with all the essentials of faith, each at some time having played an integral role in devastating harm.
ALL RELIGIOUS IDEAS ARE DANGEROUS
All religious ideas are dangerous, including those embraced by moderates and progressives. Take God, for instance. Faith in a divine being has at times inspired murderous intolerance for those who do not share it. This is undoubtedly an extreme example, but even today atheists find it difficult to get elected to public office in the United States. Indeed, over 40 percent of Americans assert that one must believe in God in order to be an ethical person.2 Theists in opposing camps on reproductive justice, gun safety, tax policy, and a host of other divisive issues frequently presume that God is on their side, while heaping moral condemnation on their adversaries. God becomes an idol carved in our own image, a “yes-man” who endorses our politics and prejudices.
Scripture has been used to uphold slavery and condemn LGBTQ+ individuals, to inflict harsh punishment and legislate discrimination. Presumptions of its divine source and perfect quality have led to heresy trials, burning of books, resistance to scientific learning, and aggressive suppression of countervailing ideas. Even those who try to read scripture critically sometimes find themselves internalizing negative impressions about religious others or defending rotten ideas. My students, for example, are surprised when they realize how much of the New Testament’s anti-Pharisaic polemic they have absorbed and how it has shaped their understanding of Judaism. Even though they know better, they catch themselves denigrating “the law” as contrary to the spirit and suggesting that ancient Judaism was too parochial—prompting Paul to invent universalism (like Al Gore invented the internet).
Some people claim that destructive and hateful expressions are not real religion: the great religions of the world are, in essence, religions of peace, love, and goodness. Such essentialism identifies manifestations of religion that stray from these values as deviant or heretical. Ironically, this attitude is not all that different from that of fundamentalists who believe their interpretation of religious tradition to be the only authentic one. It also fails to recognize that even this idealized vision carries dangerous power. “Peace” can be (and has been) the value that perpetuates injustice, “love” the emotional catalyst for oppressive interference, and “goodness” a culturally constructed perspective imposed on others. We may believe that certain embodiments of religion are not what God wants or that they are not worthy expressions of our tradition. We can definitely argue that oppressive teachings claiming to rely on literal interpretation of scripture are still filtered by human hands, but we cannot declare that such things are not religious. Given the textual and historical record, it is fair to conclude that religion can be expressed violently and nonviolently, with grace or cruelty, as Swami Vivekananda said. After all, religion consists of humanly constructed responses to what a community understands as divine revelation or sacred path. The range of responses reflects the full spectrum of human personality, culture, and imagination.
We also hear the excuse that “dangerous” religion is merely the prop of those who wish to gain political or economic advantage, to defend or advance their power. Violent struggle, enduring discrimination, and brutal judgment may be justified in sacred texts and tradition, but according to this line of reasoning they derive primarily from the political, social, and psychological needs of the central group. People distort religion, taking advantage of its ability to motivate and mobilize. These claims have merit, but religion is not an innocent bystander. It is an integral part of human nature and a powerful influence in society, playing important roles in the unfolding of history. Even as a force used by others in harmful ways, the power of religion requires critical attention. This is not to claim that religion is more prone to violence than secular ideologies, a myth that William Cavanaugh rightly challenged for the ways it ignores or justifies the violence of the nation-state.3 This book is simply trying to grapple with religion’s role.
I am not persuaded by scholars, like those in the new atheist camp, whose overreaching accusations identify religion as the cause of all destructive human behavior. Pointing to sacred text and history, they associate all forms of religion with obscurantism, superstition, violence, and oppression.4 Nor do I embrace the conclusions of social scientists who, in trying to understand the religious impulse, explain it away entirely. Marx reduced it to the temporarily necessary illusion resulting from an oppressive class structure, and Freud to a “universal obsessional neurosis” that humanity should outgrow.5 Religious belief is surely affected by class and power structures, and it meets certain psychological needs, but such catalysts can tell only part of the story. These dismissive analyses share the assumptions that religion is somehow detachable from human experience and that the world would be better off if we simply eliminated it completely. Even if one embraced the goal, religion is deeply inscribed within human experience, making its erasure highly unlikely.
SELF-CRITICAL FAITH
By insisting that dangerous religious ideas are not limited to extremists, I attempt to reckon with the harm committed in God’s name and to refine religion in a crucible of critical inquiry. There have been many efforts to shed the dangerous dross while preserving the transformative power of religious concepts; this book explores, celebrates, and expands upon them. Yet in some elemental way, the productive and destructive materials of religious thought are bound together. To take the analogy one step further, the purest states of metals and ideas are not found in nature; they are always blended with other substances that are integral parts of how they come to be. What makes religion a powerful force for good is to a large extent the same as what makes it potentially dangerous.
Keith Ward offers a comparison with liberal democracy. Most people in the West see democracy as a virtuous system for communal governance. But at the same time, some of democracy’s core values can easily inflict suffering: majority rule has oppressed minorities, empowered electorates have opted for racist leaders and policies, democratic governments have waged unnecessary wars to “protect their freedoms,” and wickedness has more than once won out in the marketplace of ideas.6 Ward’s primary inference is that all powers can be corrupted, including religion. Mine is different; I believe the flaws are built in. All religious ideas are dangerous, and self-critical faith is essential. It is my contention that most religions of the world have known it all along. This book is not simply a reading of scripture and tradition that tries to call out the threats and resist them. It is a reading of scripture and tradition that sees the seeds for this work planted deep in the soil of religious thought, designed for us to cultivate.
Aware of religion’s tremendous power both to harm and to heal, with no way to permanently separate these potentialities, the traditions transmit their sacred stories alongside tools for penetrating self-examination and ongoing self-improvement. This does not mean that all adherents embrace self-critical faith or that religious institutions readily undertake reform. Nor does it suggest that all changes are for the better. But a careful tilling of the soil with these seeds serves as the natural defense against religion’s most perilous inclinations and yields a bountiful crop of understandings that might not otherwise grow.
The purposes of this study are diverse: It challenges assumptions about which religious ideas are considered dangerous by extending the analysis beyond “extremisms.” It demonstrates how the constructive capacity of religion is bound up with its power to divide, discriminate, and destroy—qualities all deeply embedded in the human psyche and society. Illuminating the shared struggle of the Abrahamic faiths to address this tension, the book excavates their rich interpretative traditions. Long before the advent of historical-critical analysis, the fluidity of interpretation could help to check religion’s absolutist tendencies by showing how scriptural texts are always mediated humanly. Central religious doctrines and practices were contested, not unanimous. Most importantly, the book makes the case that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all constructed mechanisms for self-critique and correction that are integral to their teachings.
This inheritance of self-critical faith challenges religious leaders to be more thoughtful in teaching and preaching within their communities, and more cognizant of the potential damage religious concepts—even those that lie at the heart of faith—can do. It challenges skeptics to see the tools of self-critical faith as vital resources for contemporary discourse, both secular and religious. It asks adherents, wherever they identify on the progressive–traditional spectrum, to recognize the dangers of spiritual complacency. A mature engagement with religion, one capable of nurturing its full potential for bringing blessing into the world, must face forthrightly the shadow side and claim it as its own. It cannot be that “the dark side of religion is all in the mind, heart, and company of ‘the other,’ those people who have the wrong God, the wrong books, the wrong nation in which to live”7—or the wrong interpretation.
This project also speaks to interreligious engagement. While interfaith work often focuses on shared values and inspirational teachings, we require tools for building relationships across differences and for addressing problematic material as well. A group of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars working together on a Just Peace paradigm, for instance, struggled to articulate the need for the project. After all, their religions were traditions of peace! Then they agreed to bring each other their “worst text”—one that revealed the violence embedded in each of their scriptural traditions—and suddenly a path opened before them:
It made us each less defensive and more open. Muslims and Jews did not have to say, “You Christians have used the New Testament to justify killing many of us”—the Christians had already said that. Christians did not have to accuse the others of justifying persecutions or attacks based on their holiest texts—Muslims and Jews had already said that. . . . We each developed a hermeneutic—a method of interpreting scriptures—that showed respect for those problem passages but did not use them to cause harm.8
The shared struggle of self-critical faith is the essential glue of a diverse society. Social power intervenes here; it is easier for privileged religious voices to admit the ugly stuff. But no tradition can remain vital—and they certainly can not thrive together—without continuing to cultivate these capacities.
Self-critical faith does not require that we discard tradition as hopelessly misogynistic, homophobic, authoritarian, and parochial (even though it can be all those things). Instead, it recovers the diversity of voices that inculcate, substantiate, and perpetuate problematic elements—as well as those that stand in counterpoint. It reveals how religions remain developing, dynamic organisms so that we may wield our truths more gently. It insists on continuous reflection and repair in religious thought. It also illuminates fresh teachings for our time, providing the social critique that has always been a vital part of religion’s role in human history.
Dangerous religious ideas do not remain contained within theological writings and houses of worship; they continually travel into the public square. Focusing primarily on the United States, this book addresses their ongoing impact on society and culture, interrogating the role of religion in the public sphere and seeking to shape the voice of public theology—how we talk about and embody religious values in our collective public life.
METHODOLOGY AND STRUCTURE
Beginning with scriptural sources and collecting diverse voices in the history of interpretation, I explore ramifications of core religious themes that can be considered dangerous in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I also excavate resources within the history of these religions that have served or can serve to address these hazards. Counter to the tendency to select only those texts that portray religion in the best light, or only those that prove it to be a destructive force, I wrestle with the tension between them to highlight religion’s substantial self-critical capacities.
The traditions of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar constitute the “family” of religious thought and practice with which I am most familiar. For brevity, I reluctantly refer to them by the patronym Abrahamic, although this minimizes the significance of the matriarchs and also runs the risk of effacing differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.9 I use the term religion to discuss a quality common to these three traditions, even if it does not apply universally. This shorthand should not suggest that the broad variety of spiritual expression has been forgotten.
Scriptural sources and their interpretations serve as the foundation of this study for several reasons. They are seen by “Peoples of the Book” as the basis for much of religious life, providing an extensive and explicit record of how particular aspects of faith and practice were to be understood, embraced, and embodied. A review of scriptural exegesis also reveals broader possibilities of meaning that have been obscured through the sifting of history and processes of normalization. No teaching has always meant what we now think it means. The interpretive arguments demonstrate how Abrahamic traditions have long recognized our limited capacity to fashion institutions that fully embody God’s vision for humanity. Similarly, the mechanisms for self-critique and correction I identify are not modern inventions of reform traditions, but integral to religion itself. Lastly, as Georgia Warnke wrote, the history of interpretation shapes our present: “The way in which we have understood the past and the way in which our ancestors have projected the future determines our own range of possibilities.”10 Admittedly, lived religion has never been identical to the written record, which tends to privilege the experience or perception of intellectual elites (primarily literate men who studied and taught these texts). Nevertheless, the sources represent crucial aspects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
This approach is natural to me as a student of exegesis, but some caveats are in order. First, the traditions cannot be reduced to their scriptural dimensions. Although I begin my discussion of Judaism with Tanakh, for example, this must not obscure the fact that Judaism as we know it today is much more a rabbinic project. Secondly, discussion of the diverse scriptures is not an invitation to qualitatively compare them, since they were composed centuries apart from each other under very different circumstances. Instead, this overly ambitious glimpse into multiple traditions is designed to examine how they collectively wrestle with the implications of their teachings—teachings that trace back to scriptural foundations. Lastly, my review of exegetical history within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is necessarily sporadic and impressionistic. My overarching interest is the range of voices, read together, in the way that religious traditions historically understood them, as concurrent aspects of a complex heritage.
The first task of this book is to unpack the meaning of dangerous religious ideas (chapter 1). What makes a religious idea dangerous—and is that always a bad thing? What makes it a religious idea, and how do concepts that may not be religious in origin acquire additional weight when affirmed by religious teachings? How do religious ideas come to shape the course of human history? For these inquiries, I incorporate scholarship on religion and culture gleaned from the disciplines of sociology, psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. These lenses collectively reveal how religion is woven through every facet of human development and experience, contributing to its amazing staying power and making it impossible for the dangers to be permanently excised.
Parts II and III each begin with a core religious idea and the dangers it entails. We need to understand why these ideas are attractive, often both in spite of and because of their power to harm. Subsequent discussion examines readings of the tradition—historical and contemporary—that manifest or resist the hazards, amplifying the voices of those who demonstrated a capacity for self-critique. Each section concludes by reflecting on how the problems and possibilities manifest in our world today.
In part II, the theme is scripture, frequently granted supreme authority, presumed to define the good and to override other ethical perspectives—even though its meaning is determined by human beings (chapter 2). Yet the tools for interpretation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, explored in chapters 3 through 5, have historically functioned as a check on the ultimacy of scripture. They emphasize the multivocal nature of sacred texts and interpretation, recognizing how change and conflict establish pluralist canons of religious history. They also reveal a surprising humility, making room for doubt, accommodation of human limitations, and the sometimes slippery nature of truth. Nonetheless, scripture continues to be wielded as a weapon. Chapter 6 discusses the ways that contemporary readers try to navigate this challenging terrain, including a focused reflection on scripture and politics in the United States that reveals the ongoing potential for benefit and harm.
In part III, chapter 7 introduces a matrix of interrelated ideas—chosenness, election, supersession, and salvation—where conquest and the evaluation of difference emerge as two of the most prominent dangers. Chapters 8 to 10 explore diverse Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpretations, from scriptural references to early modern expressions. For much of history, competing religious claims played out in art, literature, and governance but the traditions again show themselves to be aware of the dangers rooted within. They transmit teachings that warn against abuse and emphasize beneficial dimensions of the concept. We see some of the same driving forces—the will to meaning and pleasure, the cultivation of community, and the preservation of cultural values—embedded in both fruitful and harmful expressions. Yet the former try to distill aspects of chosenness that can fuel human spirituality without exploding into darkness. Unfortunately, election always carries with it the burden of associated dangerous expressions, and even careful articulations often convey faint echoes of bias. Chapter 11 presents modern examples, including discussion of nationalism as a secular version of the idea. In this time of tremendous social diversity and global connectivity, the moral ambiguity of election looms large.
As religious ideas continue to thread through our social fabric, the final chapters of the book address religion in the public square. Chapter 12 debates the proper place of religious discourse in our collective conversation and public policy. Protected but not privileged speech, religious convictions should never be allowed to stifle debate or operate as a trump card. At the same time, religion’s capacity to challenge norms can have social value. The chapter takes up the theme of reward and punishment as a test case. Justice in the United States is largely focused on punitive measures. A quick review of religious sources, however, reveals much broader conceptions of justice—mixing restorative, retributive, distributive, and procedural elements that can transform our thinking.
Religion has too much to contribute to be ignored, and it is too thickly woven through human existence to disappear. But its ongoing role in public life in the United States makes cultivating the deep roots of self-critical faith more urgent. Ultimately, we have to learn how to do this work together, subjecting other people’s religious ideas to rigorous scrutiny as well, without prejudice. Religious ideas cannot receive a pass without impairing the nation’s democratic culture. Given the transformative encounter with science, technology, and global culture, religious thought requires collective critical engagement in order to speak intelligently in the postmodern age. There are many ways to do this badly, but critique is distinct from criticism, with a more holistic approach and healing objective.11
The themes of the book were selected because they are found in all three traditions, though distinct in their articulation, and because they typify the existential bundle of danger and possibility. Is scripture a sacred call to advance justice and mercy amidst God’s creation, or a selectively read authorization to marginalize people with whom we disagree? Is chosenness an aspirational covenant to become worthy of God’s blessing and an extension of it in this world? Is it a foundational narrative with communal and transcendent purpose, or a claim of superiority and exclusivity? Is salvation a divine promise that we can be “right with God” despite our failings, that God acts in history to alleviate suffering, that existence culminates in fulfillment of the divine vision for creation—or a catalyst to divide the world into the saved and the damned, to impose faith in an attempt to “rescue souls,” and to privilege a single path? Does the concept of reward and punishment serve to enact some measure of justice in the world and to discern meaning in suffering—or to encourage retribution and blame victims for their plight? In short, yes. Scripture, chosenness, salvation, and reward and punishment have meant all these things at some point in the history of interpretation—and their assigned meanings have had consequences.
WHO AM I?
My own context and orientation surely influence this book, so I offer a few relevant details. I am a committed progressive Jew. As a religious person, I am pained by the devastation wrought in God’s name and hopeful that the religious project can do better. I have a personal stake in this work. As a political and religious progressive, I must acknowledge that my own perception of the traditions—what the texts mean and how I read them, what I define as dangerous that needs undoing—is not universal. Each of the traditions has a rich diversity, one that frequently makes intrareligious engagement more challenging than the interreligious sort. At the same time, I believe that the critical difference for engaging this work is not whether one identifies as progressive or traditional, but whether or not one recognizes the long history and obligatory nature of self-critical faith.
My Jewish background and training in Jewish studies certainly mean that I am most familiar with that tradition; the risks of writing about other religions that are neither my own nor my primary field of expertise are considerable. While I study Christianity and Islam as well, the place of any bit of information I absorb takes on meaning amidst a much larger landscape of understanding that I have not thoroughly traversed. Claiming to identify what another person’s tradition teaches or should teach takes a lot of nerve; it also requires appreciative knowledge, collegial support, and clear conviction that the challenge is a shared one. We learn about our own traditions in studying each other’s.
Judaism also shapes my religious imagination. Abraham’s dispute with God about Sodom and Gomorrah, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, challenges the God of justice to do justly—and Abraham bargains with the Almighty until God agrees to spare the cities entirely if ten righteous individuals can be found (Gen. 18). It is one of countless narratives in Jewish tradition that radically affirm the moral stature of human beings. We acknowledge that we are not always right, but we must explore the ethical implications of all our actions and defend our conclusions. Jewish texts show Job confronting the tidy theologies of his friends, the sages radically reinterpreting Torah, and Abraham defending his vision of justice even over against God. So I believe that a teaching is not good simply because it is religious; it too must be submitted to our flawed but essential capacity for moral judgment and move with us in our moral development. Rooted in sacred text and tradition, religious teachings may provide a useful counterweight to the limitations of our own cultural perspective or the fleeting appeal of passing trends, but they must accord with the best of human ethics.
In ways large and small, rabbinic anthropology and philosophy are foundational to my outlook. For example, rabbinic texts imagine two competing inclinations inside each of us, the inclination toward evil (yetzer hara) and a good inclination (yetzer tov). The remarkable aspect of this mythology is that both are indispensable. In one Talmudic passage, the rabbis imagine “capturing” the yetzer hara. The yetzer warns that if it is killed, the world will come to an end. Prudently, the rabbis lock it up rather than destroy it. After three days they discover, to their dismay, that no hen has laid an egg since the yetzer hara’s incarceration. It is a complex narrative with many possibilities for interpretation, but I delight in the insight that even our pleasure-seeking and self-serving instincts (represented here by the sexual and reproductive actions leading a hen to lay an egg) are necessary parts of existence. Ultimately, it is up to us to direct them all toward service of the Most High.12 As it relates to this project, the tale reaffirms my intuition that our role in redemption is not dependent on vanquishing some ontological evil but rather on learning how to engage all aspects of our humanity in making wise choices, cognizant of their impact on the world. More broadly, I am committed to the profound dialectical engagement in rabbinic thought, drawn to understand ideas by exploring them in tension with competing concepts, values, and priorities. Long study of rabbinic texts surely influences the fundamental shape and method of this project.
I am also a religious pluralist. I believe that religions are diverse languages by which we come to experience the transcendent aspects of our universe, to explore our essential purpose, and to express the teachings that can help us embody it. Our brains are wired to learn religion as they are wired to absorb language. They are all translations of something ineffable, and one is not inherently superior to another. In fact, the polyphonic chorus is part of the beauty of human experience. My pluralist commitment includes an equal embrace of secular humanism and other lifestances that do not fit the classic understanding of religion but nonetheless have language to articulate transcendence, purpose, and an ethical path for living. With grace and patience, we learn to appreciate another’s language and talk together about matters great and small. Ideally, the conversation helps us to hear and speak our own tradition with greater clarity and appreciation. The goal is not to persuade others that our religion is superior but to live our own lives in faithfulness with its highest teachings.
Lastly, I am a creature of the Western, secularized academy. When I engage the study of scriptures, I understand them all as human documents. Although I sometimes employ conventional language that suggests a certain event or quote rendered in the text is historically accurate (e.g., Jesus said, God instructed), it is presented “as if,” recognizing the profound ways in which the authors strive to capture and convey their experience of the divine. At the same time, I refuse to hold historical criticism as the litmus test for responsible exegesis, since the religious traditions developed their own rigorously critical tools. Premodern interpretation has much to teach about how to read scripture.
While I can find support within religious teachings for liberal democracy, intellectual freedom, human rights, and gender equality, my commitments likely derive just as much from secular Western culture. By secular, I do not mean a space devoid of religious voices and influence. Secularism, despite those who decry it as the enemy of religion, is the context in which religious ideas productively engage with other ways of thinking and knowing, and no institution has a monopoly on meaning.13 The pursuit of meaning is a great strength of both religion and the academy, and I run in both lanes.
Within the field of religious studies, I am trained in the history of exegesis. Whatever one believes about the truth claims of religious traditions or the sources of their sacred texts, they have had and continue to have a tremendous impact on our world. Consequently, it matters a great deal what the ideas contained within are understood to mean. Both my religious tradition and this academic focus inspire me to embrace exegetical dynamism, ambiguity, and even contradiction. The study of scripture is a lifelong course in moral development, not for its tidy answers, but for the core questions of existence it brings to the fore.
NOTES
Translations—Translations of Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) are my own. New Testament passages rely on the New Revised Standard Version unless indicated otherwise. Passages from Qur’an generally utilize the translation by Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley, The Noble Qur’an, but occasionally adopt the wording of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Quran. In these cases, I have noted SQ in the text.
Transliterations—Transliterations are rendered for ease of reading, using common spellings without diacritical marks.
Language—Gendered language for God is preserved if part of a quote from traditional material and otherwise avoided when possible. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that patriarchal imagery and constructs remain embedded in the discussion.