Monotheism and the Culture of Absolutes

I have been reading James Joyce’s Ulysses with a small group of retired men in the small western town of Crestone, Colorado. Crestone used to be a mining town in the 19th Century. Today, it is the locus of spiritual retreats representing most of the world’s religions. Some of the men have connections with one or more spiritual organizations while others do not. The discussions have turned out to be one of the highlights of each week for all of us.
Because the novel follows loosely the story of ancient Ulysses (or Odysseus, if you use the Greek rather than Latin name) the notion that man, in ancient Greece, interacted with many gods and often found himself in conflict with them or having to please more than one made life more complex and confusing at times. Seldom did ancient man find himself serving or reacting to one god alone. He had to adapt to the demands of various gods as he encountered them. Man had to be flexible and inventive in order to survive his hostile world. His religion reflected that “reality.”
Today a large percentage of the world has concentrated the powers of the gods into a single entity, a single god. Although there are a variety of those single gods, for the most part the monotheisms (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, for example) believe in a sole god. They believe their god is the only god, and that any others are either imposters or nonexistent. They may tolerate the existence of someone else’s god, but they do not believe in it.
What happens when you put all your spiritual “eggs in one basket “is you make yourself vulnerable to the concept of the Absolute. One way becomes the only way. Things become black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Power gets concentrated into an absolute power. Once this concept of the absolute takes root, it is able to spread to all other spheres of thinking. An absolute religious god can give rise to an absolute economic or social one. The mind set can be transferable. This notion is the thesis of a great little classic by Eric Hoffer called The True Believer.
The founding fathers of America saw this problem of concentrated religious power. They saw that America was composed of all sorts of religious sects, many of them allegedly escaping persecuting regimes in Europe, but in reality they themselves were often so “pure” in their beliefs and practices that they had little tolerance for any other beliefs. Even Roger Williams’ colony of Providence Plantations which opened its doors to Jews as well as various Protestant sects would not admit Papists (Catholics). (Ironically, it turns out Catholicism is the major religion represented in Rhode Island today.)
Most of the founding fathers were, to one degree or another, Deists, a term which is foreign to most 21st Century Americans. Deists were not Christians. Deists believed that a supreme being created the universe but that by using reason and the observation of nature man could ascertain truth without the need of faith or organized religion. While the Deists were technically monotheists, they did not organize and codify around that concept to the extent that a hardened religious doctrine evolved from it, as has happened with orthodox aspects of monotheistic religions. In other words, it was a way of thinking about the world rather than a doctrine. Those founders who either claimed to be Deists or were influenced by Deism were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, possibly Alexander Hamilton as well as less famous figures like Cornelius Harnett, Gouvenor Morris, and Hugh Williamson.
In short, fundamentalist Protestant thinking did not play a major role in the construction of the U.S. Constitution. It was reason that dominated the discussion. The whole balance of powers and checks and balances that were woven into that document was intended to ensure that no concentration of power could take place in any branch of government. Absolute power of any kind was something to be avoided or held in check.
Today in America there are no dominant religious gods except perhaps in the Bible Belts of the South. As an example of how the South is different, the Texas state school board just recently decided to subtract Thomas Jefferson from the list of influential figures that inspired revolutions in the 18th and 19th Centuries because he introduced the phrase “separation of church and state.”
During the 19th and 20th Centuries the Protestant god dominated the country and was used to inspire such fervors as Manifest Destiny in the 1840s and 1850s and Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1950s Joseph McCarthy latched on to an issue which initially and fervently appealed to his fellow Roman Catholics: the communist witch hunt. That issue brought the 20 percent of Americans who were Roman Catholic into the mainstream of religiously inspired causes embraced by a large segment of the Protestant mainstream and paved the way for the country’s acceptance of its first Roman Catholic President, John F. Kennedy in 1960.
However, although there are no nationally dominant gods, that does not prevent groups of Americans from promoting their gods as absolutes whenever possible. Whether it is the god of fundamentalist Christianity, the god of free enterprise, the god of government regulation, the god of anti-abortion, or the god of medical marijuana, America is full of folks who try to push their gods to dominance. Therefore, the founding fathers knew what they were about. Let us hope that this cauldron of vigorous monotheisms can still be transformed into a melting pot of ideas and a living, responsive but responsible set of laws rather than reducing itself to a one stock soup of narrow belief.

LeBron James: Friend or Foe?

What did LeBron James do when he became a Cavalier? He appointed his best friends from high school his managers. What did he do this weekend? He attended a friend’s wedding: Carmelo Anthony’s. What motivated him to join the Miami Heat? Two friends with whom he played on the Olympic team were either there or going there, and he saw a chance to be with his friends and, of course, a chance to win an NBA championship.
Friendship has always dominated LeBron’s ethos. From the time he was a young boy living a hard life with a single parent, friendship was paramount. Moving around so much in childhood, he learned to make friends quickly and to use basketball skills as a means to do so. Loyalty has always been his strong suit, but loyalty to real friends, not fans or cities or franchises, has been his history. It holds true today. Yes, LeBron is looking to use his skills in the pursuit of an NBA ring, but he would rather do it with true friends than by himself, which was both the history and prospect in Cleveland. Should he be faulted for that? I think not.
His handlers, who happen to be his friends, were not apparently cognizant of the backlash the ESPN “The Decision” program would create. It was all done in very poor taste and clearly choreographed by either a cynical cretin or a bumbling buffoon. It left the whole production doomed to not the benefit but the liability of doubt. Sometimes friends can be more hurtful than foes.
Still, LeBron’s greatest asset, his role as friend, will remain his strongest value. For someone who, as a child, spent a lot of time wandering, he has a great need for a sense of belonging. And home-boys play an important role in establishing his home. Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers, was just that: an owner. No self-respecting black man in America wants to see himself as owned, and that is the message Gilbert conveys in his rants. The theme is essentially “I invested in you, and you turned into my junk bond.” That is not exactly the kind of bond LeBron cherishes.
I wish LeBron good fortune in Miami, not because I live there and root for the Heat. (I am a Nuggets fan and root for Carmelo Anthony, Birdman, and Billups.) I wish him well because I can imagine how much friendship means to LeBron, given his rootless beginning. The roots he plants in friendship today are far more important than the roots of his fans or the rants of his owners. We all need roots. Isn’t it great that he gets to choose them and plant them himself.

Turning Down the Heat

This is turning into a long hot summer for America. The East Coast just went through a record-breaking heat wave; La Nina is forecast for the Pacific which usually fries the Midwest; collars are hot all over the Gulf Coast, thanks to the man-made oil-gushing disaster; Main Street is still hot about Wall Street; Republicans are hoping the country will remain hot about bailouts through November; and the Democrats are hot about the blame they are getting for unemployment stagnation, even though the paternity of the Great Recession is easily attributable to the previous administration. Cleveland is hot that Lebron James did not turn down the Heat and remain in Cleveland; and hurricane season is heating up.
Summer is a time of betrayal and intrigue, usually limited to beach novels. Not this summer. Starting with Lebron’s betrayal of Cleveland (but not his dreams and friendships), tossing in the spy exchange just orchestrated by the Russians and the United States, adding the development of the “Spy Pigeon” Drone our military now has available, plus the report that Google Street View has been spying “inadvertently” on American citizens, (no wonder China has agreed to restore its license), Fox should be working on a new reality program called: “Can You Trust a Fifth Grader?”
“Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The McCarthy witch hunt for communists had a lot to do with encouraging our country’s leaders to adopt the phrase. Clearly, we could not trust our neighbors to be fully American and not communist, so we came up with an ironclad theocratic phrase to confront the Iron Curtain. Today, given the economic uncertainty of the times, we have become suspicious of anyone and everyone, especially government. We expect government to solve our national problems, and yet we want it to be less intrusive in our lives. We want it to be effective, but when it is not, we want it smaller. Our trust in ourselves as a nation is so low, we want to get rid of or blame the latest wave of immigrants who always, over time, add to rather than subtract from the growth and goodness of our nation.
The spies we just rounded up accomplished nothing while they were here, except that they integrated themselves so successfully they had their neighbors and co-workers completely fooled, but not the FBI or CIA. Those are government institutions, by the way. Want to shrink those agencies now?
Just maybe it is time to renew our trust in our government, and our trust in ourselves to be generous, positive, hopeful, and adaptable. Maybe it is time to put all the anger, mistrust, and misunderstanding aside and renew our pledge of allegiance to the idea of America, not as it is but as it should be: inclusive, magnanimous, and moving in a positive direction. Yes, government should be more efficient and less costly, but I would rather have it strong enough to ferret out spies in our midst as well as put corporations and banks in their place when they start serving only their own short-term interests instead of the greater good. Rather than limit the institutions we can with our vote, we better think twice about what power they can wield on our behalf in the face of spies, BP, and Goldman Sachs. Making government less powerful will only play into the hands of those who would control it if they could and let loose a limitless concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few, rather than spread among the people.
The heat is on, and it is time to cool our heads and warm our hearts, rather than letting the reverse rule the day.