Fall/Winter 2005 Belief

Posts: Readers Write about Belief

A Creed

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen."

My lips move and I murmur the well-worn creed to myself; I hum to harmonize with the voices of my neighbors. We've all come to bind ourselves to one another in belief. As a Catholic more attuned to liturgy than dogma, I used to bristle each time I heard the Nicene Creed. Sometimes, I went to the bathroom, sometimes I busied myself with the announcement about the upcoming manicotti dinner, sometimes I just sat and waited while my fellow parishioners surrendered their individual wills to that of the holy catholic and apostolic church.

But somehow I have softened to it. There is something in starting each profession with "we believe." It is not a question of what I--in the dark of night--ultimately believe. It is not about altering the contents of my heart or asking if I can bring myself to believe personally in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. The creed is not an orthodoxy to which we must individually genuflect, but rather, a table around which we can all gather. The creed is a retelling of our cultural history, of the story that binds us together.

It is not like the pledge of allegiance, with its militaristic focus on the flag, that makes me feel as though I must swear personal loyalty to a disembodied institution or be outcast if I deviate from the dictates of nationalistic orthodoxy. Rather, the Nicene Creed is an expression of trust in my neighbor. If there is a promise in this expression of collective belief, it is the promise to behold one another in the light of our Christian archetypes: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Now, as the Nicene Creed is spoken, I steal glimpses of the hand of the elderly Italian woman next to me and I steady myself with her certainty. I listen for her voice--its crackling rise and fall--and I hum along. I hear a wisp of the language she left behind a half-century ago; I hear her incantations mix with the gravelly professions of the gay couple behind us. As I join them, we promise each other to see the majesty of the Father, the suffering of the Christ, and the luminousness of the Holy Spirit.

I wonder if such a creed can exist in civil society, if we can elevate our civic archetypes and hold them in our collective gaze. I wonder if we can let go of our own private and singular beliefs for long enough to profess a vision of our public identity. I wonder if we can behold our mutual aspirations and harmonize our voices with those of our neighbors out of solidarity and the hope that our shared public experience might somehow be more luminous than our private and idiosyncratic loyalties. I wonder if there is a table around which we can gather--as citizens rather than congregants--to declare our trust in one another and our faith in the stories we share.

--Wendy Radmacher-Willis, Portland

The Marketplace of Beliefs

What accounts for the disconcerting unwillingness to practice critical thinking skills with regard to one's beliefs? For one thing, beliefs are often accompanied by transcendent claims--generally involving the ratification of the beliefs by a deity or those claiming to represent and speak for that deity, complete with promises involving a system of rewards for true believers in the afterlife. In essence, it would seem that support for the act of believing is much more efficacious than advocacy on behalf of skepticism, doubt, or critical thinking.

Not all beliefs are created equal. From their inception, they must nevertheless stand the test of time as to whether they continue to hold value even with changing conditions, perceptions, or disconfirming new facts and explanations. Beliefs exist in a marketplace of sorts. Some of them thrive over time, but many fail to maintain a grip on the human need to use them to understand, after a fashion, the universe we share. The passage of time alone, however, is not enough to confirm or deny the efficacy of a belief. Some beliefs persist even in the face of strenuous objections or outright hostility.

Anyone is free to join, for instance, the Flat Earth Society. This would seem to be, on the face of it, a harmless eccentricity. It becomes more ominous and potentially life-threatening if someone who believes this subsequently attempts to fly an airbus filled with innocent passengers. The reality principle involving the demonstrable curvature of the earth would eventually manifest itself, the strength of the pilot's flat earth belief notwithstanding.

Adolf Hitler's armaments minister, Albert Speer, late in his life made the claim, "It never occurred to us to doubt the order of things." Precious few Germans managed to doubt the order of things under Hitler. Samuel and Pearl Oliner, in their important investigation of The Altruistic Personality, found that rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust typically shared certain background experiences. Chief among these for our purposes here was the fact that rescuers, as children, had been encouraged by parents to decide for themselves the ethics of a situation; they were not merely told in an authoritarian manner what to believe. These people thus developed a certain facility in exercising their critical thinking apparatus. There was no short circuit in their moral development.

Even though Speer was in a community of believers comprised of tens of millions of Germans and Austrians, one would be surprised to find President Bush calling for equal time for the competing claims offered by the Nazis. As with phlogiston (and evolution), the issue has been settled.

--Michael R. Steele, Forest Grove

A Wedding Celebration

Two days before I was married, my Bronx-bred "Conservadox" Jewish family met, for the first time, my fiance's first-generation Latino Catholic family at a Hare Krishna Ashram in Southeast Portland. Looking back, I realize that what we all experienced that day was something rhetorician Mary Louise Pratt calls a contact zone: "a social space where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today."

During the time at the Krishna house, all of our responses to one another were shaped by our various beliefs, which were shaped by our religions to be sure, but also by our regional affiliations, families, and backgrounds. And also, of course, by power. Rafael's parents are first-generation immigrants, visibly marked minorities who had spent much energy trying to fit into their predominantly white neighborhood. They were always polite though often uncomfortable. My parents were second-generation Hungarian and Russian immigrants. But the Jewish community is not, by and large, "disempowered" today in the United States, while the Latino community is. And of course, disempowerment is not an issue that the Krishna devotees were concerned about. One might say that they are living peaceful and happy lives. One might also say that they have no real access to material agency as they have chosen to not accommodate ideologies related to individualism, success, and independence.

This night taught me something about belief. In this contact zone, we were able to connect across belief, background, and power differentials. I don't know if this is always possible. But what I do know is that I experienced a contact zone of difference and discomfort from which emerged shared values, hopes, and experiences.

Now that the political situation in this country is based on such a rigid set of binary positions and my disagreement with the majority party is severe, I tend to, sadly, dehumanize and even demonize, those who have different beliefs. I begin to see beliefs as binaries: either good or bad. And it follows that the people who hold those beliefs are also good or bad.

However, at the Ashram, a group of people with vastly different beliefs were able to maintain those beliefs and yet still tap into one another's common humanity in what the brilliant teacher Paulo Freire called "a process of becoming more fully human." We didn't "overcome belief.". We did, however, find ways to connect deeply. We had staunch belief systems determined by background, religion, and other social locations. But there also existed spaces, pockets, where we shared our intentions and deconstructed our imaginings of each other. At a time when our assumptions about belief, right and wrong, and religion, threaten to tear apart what has been termed "the national fabric," it was nice to be reminded of our connectedness.

--Cara Ungar, Portland

Ownership of Truth

Any discussion of belief should include that most basic, innate, and all-influencing one--the assumption that what we know and believe as individuals is true. All other acquired personal beliefs fall in line after that. All opinions, conclusions, and reactions will be colored by viewing the world through the lens of this assumption. Open discourse with others and evaluation of our own views is not possible when we believe our views are rooted in truth, and anyone else's, if different, are not. This ownership of truth has made our contemporary society intolerant and confrontational because, obviously, "I'm right and they're wrong."

This brings to mind the way a computer's memory can be partitioned off into separate operating systems, each with its own way of dealing with information: How can one reconcile the belief in Creationism with the physical evidence of evolution? Usually one idea will be vehemently declared as the truth, and the other as suspect. Whose religious beliefs are true? Why our own, of course.

Civilizations, and individuals, make great strides when the vaults of personalized beliefs are opened and a self-assessment takes place. The Renaissance and the Reformation occur. The result is an increase in dialogue, mutual respect, creativity, and the expansion of knowledge and discovery. Are we headed into another Dark Age of intolerance and walled-up beliefs, or will we question the foundations and purveyors of our beliefs and ask, "Is it just possible ... ?"

--Charles Ford, Portland

Bush and Faith

It is commonly accepted in the press that George W. Bush is a man of strong faith. Many commentators have attributed Bush's policy failures to an excess of faith, to an inordinate belief in the righteousness of his policies. "He truly believes he is on a mission from God," Ron Suskind writes in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. "Absolute faith like that overwhelms the need for analysis."

However, what concrete evidence is there of the sincerity of Bush's professed religious convictions? Just as Bush calls himself a rancher yet never rides horses or tends cattle, he clams to be a devout Christian yet rarely attends church, except for a photo-op or ceremonial occasion. Yet, we have endlessly been told the legend of his conversion to fundamentalist Christianity by Bill Graham in 1987, which is said to have helped him quit drinking. However, a cynic might note that this "conversion" coincided with the recognition by him and his father that they would need to court the radical religious right if George H. W. was going to gain the Republican nomination in 1988. (George W.'s principal job in that campaign was as liaison to the Christian Right.) One might also note that George W.'s first public avowals of religious faith happened to coincide with the takeover of the Texas Republican Party by religious fundamentalists just as he was gearing up to run for governor. The alliance of the Bush family, formerly New England Episcopalians, with the evangelical movement has proved extremely advantageous to them.

Some writers have noted an affinity between the Bush administration and the ideas of the political philosopher Leo Strauss; numerous members of the administration, as well as allies of the administration outside of the government, are adherents and even former students of Strauss. Strauss advocated a strict hierarchical political structure (derived from Plato) in which a group of "Philosophers" would rule from behind the scenes, manipulating the ostensible ruler (a "Gentleman" of patrician background and apparent moral conviction, but with modest intellectual equipment), who in turn would manipulate the ignorant masses (the "Vulgar"). Strauss, like Plato, advocated the "noble lie" for this purpose, and his favorite noble lie was religion. While dismissing religion as an irrational fiction, he believed it to be the single most powerful tool for keeping the masses in line.

In Strauss's scheme, the Gentleman dunce would not be in on the trick. But in the case of George W. Bush, it seems more than likely that he is in on it--that he is no more a committed and serious Christian than he is a committed and serious rancher, and that both these poses are political and public relations tools by which the media have allowed themselves to be deceived.

--Win McCormack, Portland

Hope of Heaven

Wednesday evening, a smear of ashes on the forehead, an exhortation to a holy Lent. I leave the church feeling somber, cleansed. In the bulletin, later, I read Father Bill's list of suggestions: fasting, prayer, self-denial, spiritual direction, adherence to a rule of life.

My spiritual practice, if that's what it is, is to sit still in the morning and read nourishing words, and from time to time during my day to make myself stop, breathe, pay attention, live in the moment, and give thanks. I don't know if this is enough self-denial to amount to a Lenten discipline. I do know it quiets that shrill urgent inner voice that yammers, "Me, me, me," all the time. My practice is self-denial in a sense, if that yammering voice is equal to my self. I hope that isn't true, though. I hope that little self isn't all there is.

The Buddhists use "self" to mean something bigger: the "me" that is part of a larger "us" connected below the terrain of consciousness, like the underground hyphae of a fungus whose fruiting bodies above the surface only seem to be separate creatures. That "self" knows instinctively that hurt or healing done to any part of the collective body hurts or heals all of it.

When I was a child, everybody gave up something for Lent. For me it was nearly always chocolate. Sometimes I could leave it alone for the whole forty days, and sometimes I couldn't. I had a special hardship, because my birthday always fell in Lent. That meant I couldn't have chocolate cake, or, if I was particularly rigorous that year, any sweets at all.

When I succeeded at "giving up" for Lent I felt a perverse pride, and when I failed I felt shame. Neither success nor failure, I see now, helped me understand my self as anything larger than the sum of my individual habits, cravings, and weaknesses.

In my life since then, I have many times used food (and alcohol) to make myself feel very, very good and very, very bad. I've used these things for reward and punishment, for self-imposed martyrdom, bribery, medication, and all manner of egocentric prescriptions that had nothing to do with spiritual discipline.

For that reason, I did not give up anything for Lent this year, unless it was the notion that by giving up I could secure for myself one iota of grace. Instead, I've decided that I will pay attention when I am eating. I will receive each mouthful as a precious gift, which of course it is. My faith at this moment is this being present to the amazing grace of nourishment that does me more good than denying myself the enjoyment of it.

--Gail Wells, Monmouth

Exchanging Beliefs

In the twenty-first century it seems that what we universally do least well is manage conflict in belief. Part of the problem is imprecision in how we understand and use the word itself. "To believe" in its intransitive use is to have faith, to subscribe to something in a spiritual or pre-rational way. "To believe" with a transitive object is "to accept as true or real." All too often the two definitions become conflated. A student who has been taught creationism, for example, will refuse to learn about evolutionary theory. He already knows what to "believe"; he takes his believing in (faith) as the true and real. Therefore, nothing else need be examined. A student who tries to avoid anything immoral on religious grounds may refuse to read a play by John Webster in which there is prurient sexuality, murder, and mayhem, not necessarily endorsed, and expressed in beautiful poetry. The belief system will not allow these events entry, and therefore they cannot be tested or independently judged. As John Milton wrote, "a cloistered virtue" is no virtue at all. A male comfortable in privilege may dismiss decades of feminist scholarship because he "believes" that if anybody just "gets over it" and "quits blaming society" and "works hard enough," all alleged discrimination will disappear. He "believes" this as true and real; no new thought is necessary.

All of us can state some things we believe (by faith) and others that we believe to be true. When conflict arises, we first need to be able to separate the two for ourselves. We are not apt to be able to change someone's belief (faith), but we can jointly use analysis to negotiate what we will agree upon to be true. It is important to note that all beliefs and all truths are to some degree social constructions. "Beliefs" are often what our culture holds dear and what we have been taught. Even though we accept these beliefs as fully formed and self-evident, we fail to recognize that they entail choice. We choose to believe. As Renaissance essayist Montaigne observes, "Some ... make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe."

As a postmodern humanist, I hold these two perhaps mutually exclusive principles to be true: managing conflict requires the ability to think critically and analytically along with the ability for imaginative projection. I wonder if President Bush has tried to feel himself into an Islamic believer. Perhaps this leap of imagination, as on crime detective shows where the sleuth tries to think like the criminal, would help him understand those he considers to be satanic enemies pure and simple. Similarly, how much harmful action might be averted if a male employee would imagine himself into the world of his woman boss. Because of her difference, he "believes" all sorts of nefarious assumptions to be true and judges her on that account, even if she receives stellar performance evaluations. Belief leads to conjecture, which becomes action.

In global affairs as in personal relationships, I think a drastic game that fuses empathy with analysis might go far toward saving the day. Before raising fists or guns, we should be required to meet face to face and argue out our conflict, each as the other person. Through this process, each would have to assume the belief system of the other as well as gain insight through analysis. We could critically evaluate our own belief-to-action pattern more clearly, and through this perspective common ground might appear. Belief should be personal--everybody should believe in something indeed--but it ought also to be personally and socially enriching. Too often belief is used as an agonistic tool in a metaphorical peeing contest. Beliefs need not vie; they will simply be.

--Sandra K. Ellston, La Grande