Most of us were raised to be tolerant of people’s beliefs.  But is there no limit to tolerance?  In one of the books I reviewed on this site, American Fascists, Chris Hedges asks the question, ‘In a tolerant society do we tolerate intolerance?’  Most religious institutions are intolerant to a greater or lesser degree.  Perhaps we should be more clear.  I may be able to tolerate your intolerance if you keep it to yourself.  If it does not infringe on the lives of others then okay be as bigoted as you want to be.  Actually there is no way to stop someone from thinking intolerant thoughts anyway.  But we can, and should, stop the political menace of organized religion.  Believe in the Easter Bunny, believe in Santa Claus or believe in god but don’t translate that into the oppression of other people. 

Some people, I am sure are thinking that I am going overboard.  After all the church does a lot of good doesn’t it.  I don’t know.  Does it?  Ask the gay and lesbian community here whether they believe the church does them a lot of good.  Ask our aboriginal communities what they think of the church after the experience of residential schools.  Or ask the thousands of men and women who lost their innocence in a choir loft to a man of the cloth who told them it was what god wanted.  Maybe we should take off the blinders and lose the guilt trip and look at organized religion in the clear light of the facts. 

What has sent me off here is the recent announcement by the Pope, der Führer of the Roman Catholic Church, who has just enlightened the world that condoms do nothing to help the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  Christian Churches, particularly the mainstream Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, have been making great inroads into Africa.  Africa also happens to be where HIV/AIDS is most prevalent for a number of reasons.  These churches reinforce and promote social attitudes that contribute to this prevalence.  Lack of proper medical treatment, including the drugs necessary to keep patients alive, and lack of anything more than symbolic assistance from the wealthy industrialized world is doing enough damage on a continent struggling to overcome the legacies of colonialism and cold war.  We don’t need a bunch of holy rollers encouraging the disempowerment of women in the name of a Jewish revolutionary that DIED 2000 years ago.  As for the silly story of him coming back to life you can read a better version of it in Egyptian mythology, written another 2000 years before he supposedly showed up.  The resurrection story was common among early civilizations.  So pick your favourite but don’t use it to commit mass murder. 

The suffering caused by these institutions is in no way allayed by any positive contribution they make.  They give virtually nothing to society.  Any small assistance those in need receive is accompanied at the very least by a healthy dose of degradation.  Actually that is what the christian church is all about.  Everything human is evil and must be overcome.  We, each of us, individually are worthless.  Only by suppressing our humanity can we hope for salvation.  Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses.  It is kind of like life insurance, you have to die to win.  The more you suffer and endure during your lifetime, the more your reward in heaven is the pitch line.  You know that bit about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven.  But since there is no god there is no heaven and so I don’t think it is noble to suffer here while others enrich themselves.  Actually as I look at the suffering endured by so many people in this world, if there was a god I would personally kill the son of a bitch. 

“God being everything, the real world and man are nothing.  God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death.  God being master, man is the slave.  Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his own effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation.  ….. Slaves of God, men must also be slaves of Church and State, in so far as the State is consecrated by the Church.  ……

The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.” 

Michael Bakunin from God and the State

It is time to throw off the shackles and break the political power of religion once and for all.  If we do not, millions will continue to suffer while the religious elite continue to sanctimoniously enrich themselves.  Church leaders should be imprisoned alongside the other drug dealers.  The menacing fairy tale these pushers peddle has claimed more lives than heroine, crack cocaine and all other narcotics combined.

This term, cockroaches, seems to have become a rallying cry.  It is heard from far right shock jocks here in North America about liberal opponents.  And now among young activists in South Africa.  Such terms serve to dehumanize those who oppose us in some way.  Once we no longer see them as human beings it becomes easier to take the next step to violence and death.  Even if these young activists intend no such physical harm to their opponents, it is a slippery slope that is better blocked now, before it is too late.  Perhaps it is past time that someone fought back for the dignity of all human beings before it it too late.

Daily we hear accounts coming to us from Congo, Georgia, Darfur, Palestine and the list goes on.  Scarcely a region of the world is without its own special nightmare.  At Nuremberg and Tokyo the perpetrators of the crimes of World War Two were brought to account for their decisions and actions.  It was easy then.  They had been vanquished and we held their collective fate in our hands.  Then it was about seeking justice through the use of a court.  Today it is more complex.  There are no white knights in shining armour claiming victory for god and the right.  Actually there never were. 

Many of today’s conflicts more closely resemble the wars of medieval Europe than the 2 world wars.  Feudal warlords with private armies roaming freely creating mayhem wherever they go.  Instant states built on ethnic homogeneity leave out the possibility of peace.  The solutions become more complex along with the conflicts.  The line is blurred between criminal and victim.  Hell, it is obfuscated.  In the former Yugoslavia the Serbs were villianized for good reason but our simplistic approach of assuming that the other ethnic groups were mere victims has created more suffering as our ‘friends,’ particularly the Kosovar Albanians, have used the umbrella of our protection for ethnic cleansing and worse of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo.  In Rwanda the criminals were clearly marked ethnically; Hutu evil, Tutsi good; Hutu criminal, Tutsi victim.  But has that solved anything.  How many of us here in the West understand the history of the situation in the Great Lakes region of Africa.  Hell how many of us really understand Africa at all or have even tried.  So called ‘African’ Americans like Oprah Winfrey meddle in the continent.  What they forget is that first and foremost they are Americans, not Africans.  Transplanting American values and demeaning African civilizations as primitive and backward is not helping Africans.  But this is grist for another article. 

One method of dealing with these conflicts, pioneered by South Africa in the years following the dismantling of the apartheid system, is the truth and reconciliation commission.  Unlike a court, no sanction is applied to perpetrators other than the social stygma of standing before the world an admitted murderer, rapist, child abuser.  For truth you receive reconciliation.  It is a noble thought reminiscent in some ways of the confessional.  Except in this case it is not god that is giving absolution but the society in hopes of putting the past behind them and moving forward.  In the short term it seems to have worked well in South Africa.  But it is less than two decades since the apartheid system came down.  More time is needed before we celebrate the success of this approach.  And are there limits?  Are there some things that are so atrocious, so repugnant that even confession should not absolve the perpetrator from legal sanction?  Take the case of Milton Blahyi in Liberia who admitted before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission dealing with that troubled country’s civil war that he had engaged in human sacrifice.  Children would be sacrificed, their heart removed and then cut up and consumed.  Yes eaten.  He also owned to the deaths of approximately 20,000 people by soldiers under his command.  Should he just walk away?  If ever there was an atrocity this is it. 

How do we deal with cases like this and the many similar ones?  The goal of the truth and reconciliation process is to create a new beginning for a lasting peace.  If that goal is achieved, allowing men like Blahyi to walk free will be worth it.  We can rationalize that those who perished so brutally are martyrs to freedom and peace.  If the process fails we may only have created more fuel for hatred by confirming what had only been believed.  We must wait and see is the only answer for now but it feels so inadequate.