A Burning Bible - Part II
I was an Altar Boy. I can recite from memory the Acts of Contrition, Faith, Hope, and Love, all of which I dutifully learned as a child. I still know by heart the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. I was in a monastery for a short period of time. I went to Catholic schools for sixteen years. I worked at a Catholic newspaper for four years. I started a chapter of a gay Catholic organization and became the group’s National Director of Social Action. I taught religious education to school children after work. I won the Catholic Press Association’s award for Best Magazine Article of the Year. During my 17-day hunger strike and civil rights battle with the archdiocese, I was compared by one national Catholic columnist to saints of the Church. And, I advised the National Council of Churches and the United States Conference of Bishops on issues facing young adults. No one questioned my Catholic credentials. Thus, I was the perfect person to ask to ascend the stage and quiet the crowd that day when the Bible was burned in effigy.
Yet that same book in our home today is much less cherished than the dictionary, which makes sense because, from our perspective now, the Bible is a primary source of barbaric behaviors toward homosexuals, while the dictionary helps us on a daily basis to answer important questions. Beyond gay-bashing, the so-called “good book,” to us, is one of the two chief sources of justification of the world’s most evil actions. (The other is the Koran.) Rather than being a bridge to salvation, the book, as it is used, in our opinion, is more a major roadblock to the peace that Jesus promised us if only we would live our lives as he lived his.
The stories of the Old Testament, I feel, even if accurately recorded, trap people in cultural contexts that have nothing to do with their daily lives. Though written generally with the best of intentions, the Bible is an enormous cause of abuse - spiritually, emotionally, and physically – to gay people, women, people of color, Jews, and Muslims, among others. It and the Koran are the most inappropriately cited sources ever written. In the tortured lives of many people, the Bible is certainly not sacred, and therefore burning it is not sacrilegious. Doing so publicly might be really stupid, particularly during a national gay civil rights struggle when you’re trying to convince heterosexuals that you share many of their values. But, it’s not, in my view today, sacrilegious.
If other books can be burned, so too can the Bible. I would prefer not to cause emotional chaos in someone else’s life by doing so, just as I wouldn’t throw darts at a picture of the homophobic “saint” Pope John Paul II in front of devout Polish nuns, burn the American flag in front of my Reagan-loving father, or mock Mohammed in front of a fundamentalist Muslim. But the Bible is not beyond criticism and burning it, in my opinion, is far less abusive of it than misusing it to justify one’s biases.
Do I wish I hadn’t chastised the professor for burning the Bible? What I wish was that I hadn’t been so personally horrified by his actions. My emotional reaction was irrational, bordering on hysterical, like the young fundamentalist children in Jesus Camp. Why do we cling with so much fear to such “things” for meaning?
If the future of the world depends on any or all of us believing that Moses brought down the mountain tablets personally inscribed by God, or that Jesus rose from the dead, or that Mary assumed into Heaven in her earthly body, or that Joseph Smith met an angel in America who gave him golden tablets, or that Mohammed ascended into Heaven in a chariot pulled by winged horses, I think that we’re in big, big trouble. And if we can’t challenge religious mythology openly, and laugh about it if we find it funny, then, Zeus bless us, we’re in far worse spiritual and emotional shape than we might imagine.
Nothing should be taboo to discuss, if necessary outside the range of children. Ray and I cringe when we hear the word “nigger” but we recoil even further when we read “the n word.” We hate the word “faggot,” but please don’t start referring to it as “the f word.” Such behavior gives a simple word or event more power than we can possibly manage.
Is nothing sacred then? I do feel that some things ought to be protected at all costs. But they’re not made of paper, cloth, bread, or stone. They’re ideas, like perhaps the ones that each of us has the responsibility to work toward creating a world where every person is adequately clothed, sheltered, fed, and educated, that children have a right to their innocence, and that no one should be victimized because they are different. Why isn’t it considered sacrilegious that we expend so little time, money, and thought on these worthy endeavors? How can we spend billions of dollars every year to fight or to defend gay marriage, rather than investing that enormous amount of money in feeding and clothing the world’s desperately needy? These are burning questions for Ray and for me.
