Fighting for the Right to be a Religious Progressive

Something very disturbing happened yesterday.   It should have been a big news item.  Yet since it didn’t have anything to do with Donald Trump, it was ignored on these shores.  The print version of the New York Times didn’t mention it once.  Nor did the Washington Post.  I only know about it because it was the topic of my rabbi’s sermon last evening at synagogue.  The rabbi had announced prior to the service that we would be celebrating International Women’s Day by saluting the Women of the Wall, a group that for the past three decades has struggled for the right of women to pray aloud at the Western Wall in Jerusalem holding Torah scrolls and adorned in traditional prayer attire.   True to form, hundreds of these women showed up at the Wall yesterday expecting to do their thing, when they were met by mobs of literally thousands of Ultra-Orthodox teenagers and young adults who had come from all over the country to stop the outrage.  Violence ensued, a couple people were injured, and the police watched with disturbing passivity. Ultimately, after the Women of the Wall left the scene in order to protect themselves, the police blamed them for the confrontation.  It was the praying women’s use of loudspeakers, rather than the ultra-Orthodox’s use of violence, that was deemed especially offensive by the authorities. 

Like so many things that happen in the world these days, yesterday’s skirmish in Judaism’s holiest site was shocking but not surprising.  Any Israeli observer has long ago realized that Orthodox Judaism has been given a virtual monopoly over religious life, and the ultra-Orthodox in particular enjoy special privileges.   To be sure, most Israelis aren’t especially religious.  A 2015 Gallop Poll found that nearly two-thirds of Israelis claimed either to be “not religious” or “convinced atheists.”  But to the extent Israeli Jews do partake in religion, what they’re imbibing comes almost exclusively from Orthodox rabbis.   Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal Judaism are moribund in the Holy Land.  So it only stood to reason that when it came time for the Women of the Wall to stake their claim to gender equality, they were met by a far greater number of Ultra-Orthodox zealots.  Yeshiva rabbis could simply tell their teenage students to get on the bus, go to the Kotel (the Wall), and make sure that feminists aren’t able to violate the faith’s traditional prohibitions.  These include women wearing prayer shawls, praying loudly enough to be heard by men, reading collectively from a Torah scroll and praying together with men without a physical barrier to separate them.  Apparently, it isn’t enough for the Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel to keep their own synagogues pure.  They feel the need to ensure that nobody else practices Judaism unless they, too, follow the “rules.”

Why do fundamentalist Jews have such power in Israel?  One reason is because secular leaders need support from multiple political parties to form a leading coalition in Parliament, so they make a deal with the ultra-Orthodox parties: “you join our political coalition and we’ll give you control over religious life.”   But there is another, even more important reason: we live in a world where, increasingly, people are dividing into two attitudes when it comes to religion:  (a) fundamentalist and (b) thoroughly apathetic.  Since the apathetic people could care less what happens inside a church or a holy site, when it comes to religion these days, the energy is increasingly on the side of the fundamentalists.

Don’t believe me?  Just look at another recent, underreported story.  I’m referring to the decision on February 26^th of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church to pass the so-called “Traditional Plan,” which reaffirmed the prohibition of gay marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy and asserted that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”  Methodism is America’s second largest Protestant denomination, with over seven million Americans, most of whom I suspect opposed the Traditional Plan.  But the fateful vote of February 26^th involved representatives from all over the world.  And while the American delegations may have been pretty evenly split, that wouldn’t appear to be the case for the delegations from places like Africa and the Philippines.  Moreover, the victory of the Traditional Plan was made possible by the fact that the membership of the United Methodist Church in America has been shrinking substantially over time.  So even if I’m right that most American Methodists voted with the minority, the overall size of the delegation was too small to defeat the more fundamentalist elements of the church in a worldwide vote of the movement. 

It’s not hard to figure out what is going on.  Fundamentalism offers a simple, comforting answer to all our deepest questions. Trust in the Great Supernatural Law-Maker in the Sky and the handbook of right and wrong that He graciously has bestowed upon us.   Follow that handbook and you will enjoy eternal bliss.  Otherwise, you will undergo a painful second-guessing process throughout your life on earth and perhaps an even worse experience in the hereafter.  As for Non-Religious Secularism, it offers an alternative that is nearly as comforting.  Play hard.  Work hard.  Do both. Or simply relax.  But whatever you choose to do, you can do so guilt-free and armed with the knowledge that the entire domain of religion is just a bunch of ca-ca.  So enjoy your absolute freedom! 

Superficially, those paths are polar opposites.  But truly, they’re quite similar.  Both rest on an appeal to simplicity and a life without cognitive dissonance.  Both profess to be the path to maximizing one’s own happiness and minimizing one’s own pain.  And finally, both offer a path with literally billions of fellow-travelers along the way. 

By contrast, the path of liberal religion -- the one preferred by those Women of the Wall or the LGBTQ rights advocates in the Methodist Church – offers none of those blessings.   Liberal religious leaders can’t pretend that their path is the easy one here on earth.  Nor can they pretend to be offering eternal bliss in the afterlife.  For that matter, many of them refuse to preach about a God who is created in the image of the human ideal.   What they can offer is a life of struggle, of meaning, and of service -- a life modelled by such figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel, neither of whom spent his days in the lap of luxury or lived to see his 70^th birthday.

I have no crystal ball.  I can’t tell you whether recent trends will change and liberal religion will catch a second wind in the popularity department.  What I can tell you, however, is that there will always remain a number of us who are devoted to it -- whether in the trappings of Judaism, Christianity or any other faith.  It is not for me to proselytize my devotion to liberal religion and “convert” others to that frame of mind.  But it is for me to assert the right of people to live a progressively religious life if they so choose.  So here’s to those Women of the Wall who keep on fighting for gender equality in Judaism.  And here’s to those gay Methodists who keep on fighting to get married and join the clergy, notwithstanding the existence of some pretty homophobic verses in Scripture.   May you realize that you will never be alone.  For liberal religious people may not currently number in the billions, but we still number in the millions.  And I for one have no intention to get off of this path, no matter how lonely or frustrating it can be at times.