Religion and Laws to Protect It

My Foundation has a game concernings Iranian history in the 20th century–starting with the rise of Mossadegh and going thru the revolution which deposed the Shah in 1979. The project and reflecting on modern Iranian history and the form of the Iranian government got me thinking…enough to write a blog.

A large part of the Iranian turmoil of the past half-century comes from a fear held by Iranian religious leaders that the government leadership wants to remove religion as an important influence in the lives of the people. When the Revolution took place, the new government put in place organizations and legislation to guarantee religion’s influence within Iran. In the US, we saw the new government as a theocracy–but it isn’t, not completely. Iran has a judiciary and a legislature along with an executive branch…sounds a bit like the U.S. in that regard.

The thing is, over the past 40+ years, in their zeal to make sure Shi’a Islam remains dominant in Iran, religion has become LESS important for most people in Iran. Their faith in the institution of religion has decreased. My opinion? It’s because religion is no longer separate from government. There will always be cynicism towards government and government will always involve backroom politicking…but now because the lines are blurred, the cynicism carries over into the faith of everyday Iranians.

** Now, look at the United States. For the past decade at least–and you could argue for a 25-30 year window–there are voices that argue Christianity is under attack in the United States. They then influence legislators to put Christmas ornaments on government property or pass legislation at the state/federal level to promote “Christian values” over other value systems. Beyond the usual argument regarding abortion, you now have legislation related to gender-identification and bathrooms as well as legal fights over whether businesses have to serve customers whose values don’t agree with the owners’ religious values. In all cases–the argument goes that government MUST do something.

–notice the weird similarity between the US and Iran?

** So I started thinking on a different subject. Competition. In a capitalist nation, we spend a great deal of time regulating competition–because we believe that monopolies are bad and stifle innovation and that when there is competition, the cream will eventually rise to the top. Competition spurs innovation, guarantees that good ideas survive while those that are outmoded fade away–none of that is instantaneous…look at how long it has taken for internet commerce to develop or the change from combustion engines to electric motors in cars.

Doesn’t this hold true for the ideas of religions and our value systems as well? If the government must intervene to protect them, they are weak and can’t stand on their own. Why would you want to hold to values that cannot survive without the government’s involvement?

In the case of Jesus’ teachings, they did quite well on their own without Roman support. The trouble came when government and the Catholic Church effectively became one and the same–at which point, you have the Reformation, an explosion of interpretations that have taken Jesus’ teachings to every continent over the past five centuries. The Catholic Church tried to shoehorn everything into their weltanschauung, convenient for maintaining the Church’s temporal power.

So why insist on government protection?

You want to show what Christian values actually are–you go out and live them. You actually LEARN them–and LEARN the values of other faiths/value systems (whether atheism, Islam, or Zoroastrian) so that you can debate and discuss–because the dirty secret of it all in terms of monotheism? Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all share at least one holy text (the Old Testament). Islam accepts the New Testament as a holy book, they just believe the Koran supersedes it. Ask a Mormon and they’d point to their own holy Book of Mormon as an addition, too. But how can you defend what you value if you don’t understand anything else? How can you critique something you don’t understand?

Of course–there is a bigger problem. Those individuals who feel Christianity is under attack won’t do any of this. It’s HARD to go out and learn about other faiths or even your own. American Christians treat the values of the Old/New Testaments as a buffet to pick and choose from. That’s easy. …just like attacking and insulting others is easy.

You want to strengthen your faith, recover the drop in those who profess belief (down 40% in the past twenty years according to The Economist)–stop being lazy. Learn and work at your beliefs. The solution isn’t government intervention.