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Is This Your Dogma?
A young child in an Episcopalian confirmation class, I read Genesis, the assigned reading, like the good girl
I was (then) and noticed two versions of creation. Already exposed to different versions of Hercules, Arachnia,
and The Wizard of Oz, I read Genesis as myth.
Presented instead as something true, we were expected to take both versions of the story
literally, differences be damned. Had the priest invited me to ponder the meaning of the
stories and the decision to include both, he might have helped me understand the implications
and even more faithful in a God of my own understanding but, and I want to say this without
assigning blame, he made faith in the Bible look silly and unwise to me even at eleven by
offering such a dogmatic, or rigidly literal, approach to that sacred text.
All things of a religious or spiritual nature can be referred to as "dogma."
Unless you're a Catholic you might not know "The Immaculate Conception" refers to the virgin birth of the mother
of the Virgin Mary. Many think "The Immaculate Conception" refers to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Either way,
any virgin birth provides an excellent example of dogma.
In high school, I wrote a term paper on Jesus Christ in my World Religions class. During my research,
I discovered the word in the Bible used for "virgin" also meant "young woman." At the time, I knew some
young women who were not virgins. I could not assume, synonym.
Later I found that sacred texts of all religions present parables, stories that can be seen from
different points of view. Many cultures and many other religions, including several Christian
denominations, teach that parables invite self-discovery. Viewed in this way, sacred texts come
alive as pertinent today and those who prefer such metaphorical or symbolic interpretations
consider dogmatic interpretations to be a "conservative" or "fundamentalist."
My childhood religious teacher insisted I incorporate two distinct stories of how a creator brought
reality into being. He might as well have told me the Earth was flat.
I teach English at a community college and have to teach students how to write effectively
in an academic environment. Some teachers insist students not include references to personal
faith in any academic paper. Because faith is improvable - dogmatic - faith cannot logically
exist as a claim or be used in support of a claim; therefore, academia considers statements
of faith irrational.
Here are some examples of statements my students might make:
* God created nature so we need to protect and preserve it.
* God doesn't want us to be unhappy.
* We need to thank God for . . . fill in the blank.
Each statement is dogmatic, illogical, and unsupportable. The margin comment I've settled on reads:
Avoid making statements of faith as if they were statements of fact.
However, I admire and respect faith, and even more importantly, our constitution guarantees freedom of religion.
I encourage students to present faith as motive behind their reasoning, but never as their reasoning. Examples:
* Because I am Muslim (Christian, Jewish, etc), I believe Allah (God, Elohim) created nature; therefore, I
must do what I can to protect and preserve nature.
* As a Wiccan (Sunni, Hindu), I believe that Goddess (Allah, Shiva) does not want us to be unhappy;
therefore, it is my responsibility to do what I can to create happiness - not in a way that is selfish
but in a way that brings more happiness to others.
* Since I am a _________(fill in the blank), I must thank the God of my understanding for . . . ..
In this way, students learn how to effectively express their faith in a reasonable, respectable manner,
and the necessary academic distinction between supportable claims and unsupportable claims remains clear.
As an academic, I accept that claims of faith are unsupportable, but I also accept that most, if not all,
cultures admire and respect faith. Politically, America insists on separation of church and state, which
I see as respect for faith but many would like to see a particular religion take the lead. Article One
of the Bill of Rights makes it clear that while no law may prohibit a religion, no law may encourage a
religion either, so we are guaranteed the freedom to believe and the freedom not to believe. While we may
not respect each particular faith or each individual believer of each particular faith, Americans have in
the past given their lives to protect someone's right to believe in the faith of his or her choice.
Therefore it can be said honestly, as a culture, even though we value reasoning, we also value faith.
According to George Lakoff, a professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of
California at Berkeley, in The Political Mind, "You must have emotion in order to reason." Recent
research reveals the human reasoning process depends on our ability to experience emotion.
Our hearts yearn for faith. In The Little Prince, the French philosopher Antoine de Saint Exupéry writes,
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
If we accept that faith is a choice we can proceed in our attempt to discover what we have chosen
to believe and then determine what we will continue to choose to believe. In this way we invite
the intellect to assist us as we remove briars and bumble along on our paths. Perhaps the steps
we take will be more likely, then, to leave footprints.
June Beck, a published poet, teaches English on the Central Coast of California.
She is currently polishing her first novel, The Possibility of Justine, a story of a girl facing
her senior year in 1968 in the Central Valley. Blog
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~Anaïs Nin
Email: June Beck
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