Intra-Faith Divisions and the Dangers of Othering

By:  Heather Abraham aka Religion Nerd                                                                                  

Several weeks ago, my husband and I attended a dinner party at a friend’s home.   As always, she was the perfect hostess, bringing together an interesting mix of people and serving a fabulous meal.  After dinner, we gathered in the den for coffee and of course coffee talk.  The conversation was lively and covered many topics throughout the evening.  One specific conversation caught my attention and I wandered away from my group to listen more intently as two Muslim women were discussing the differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims.  Not surprisingly, the two Sunni Muslim women soon determined that Shiites weren’t “really” Muslim and that they were in reality practicing another religion entirely.  Terms like us/them and we/they were peppered throughout the exchange.   

This conversation reminded me of an encounter I had with a neighborhood acquaintance soon after she and her husband returned from 

If only humans could be so open and serene!

vacationing in Italy.  While showing pictures of her vacation, she mentioned that they had stayed in the home of a Christian missionary while visiting Florence.  Curious, I asked if the missionary used Italy as a home base and inquired where she performed her missions.  I was quickly informed that the missionary worked exclusively in Italy.   Since the vast majority of Italians are Christians I found this curious and inquired as to whom she was ministering.   Well, you would have thought I had opened Pandora’s Box! Obviously agitated, the neighbor informed me that most “Italians are Catholics and Catholics don’t teach the truth about Jesus, they aren’t really Christians at all—they worship the Pope and saints.”  She then admonished me for not “knowing” this as I study religion.  Hmm, I don’t know how I missed that important bit of information.  

Although I often write about the importance of interfaith dialogue, these two examples give us an opportunity to explore the phenomena of intra-faith divisions and discuss the dangers inherent in the process of othering.  

In the above examples, it is apparent that each party questioned the validity of a group within their own religious tradition and found them lacking in authenticity.  By extension of this conclusion, the adherents of the branch in question were relegated to the position of the other.  What does it mean to categorize a person or group as the other?  In The Origins of Satan, Elaine Pagels writes of this common yet problematic worldview. 

The social and cultural practice of defining certain people as “others” in relation to one’s own group maybe, of course, as old as humanity itself.  The anthropologist Robert Redfield has argued that the worldview of many peoples consists essentially of two pairs of binary opposition:  human/non-human and we/they.  These two are often correlated, as Jonathan Z. Smith observes, so that “we” equals “human” and “they” equals “nonhuman.”   

Thus when we otherize a group of people, we are in actuality assigning them an identity that is, to one degree or another, inferior to that of our own.  One only has to reflect on the horrors of WWII, Rwanda, or Darfur, to understand the consequences of perceiving the other as less than human.  

This attitude may seem harmless when it is promoted by attractive women at a dinner party or a retired neighborhood grandmother but when embraced and promoted by a religious organization or when it becomes political policy; intra-faith discord, enhanced by the process of othering, can become a powerful and destructive weapon.  Christian, Muslim, and Judaic history are littered with prolonged bloody wars which evolved out of intra-faith conflict and sadly the 21^st century appears to be walking the same bloody path—deeply embedded in this never ending tragedy.  

Binary opposition is also alive and thriving in America’s political system.   One need only to look at the debacle on Capitol Hill to witness the consequences of this limited way of thinking.  Members of Congress, so deeply invested in defeating the other, have lost sight of their primary purpose of constructive governing.  Each side rigid with disdain for what is perceived as the other’s dangerously misinformed ideals and values.  No conflict resolution or compromise in sight, only the same repetitive childish infighting.  Seeing everything in terms of black/white, right/wrong, good/evil, or us/them is not only unproductive and destructive but is also tragically uninspiring. 

This brings me to the questions of the day:  Is it possible to admit theological or political differences without becoming adversarial?  And, why are we so invested in rejecting the validity of any tradition beyond our own?

“Christian Militias” and the Unpredictable Nature of Religious Diversity

 By: Kenny Smith,  See biography at Guest Blogger menu

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is said to have taught that, “you cannot step into the same river twice,” because a river (like everything in the physical world) is continually changing and hence never the same. The implication of this insight for the study of religion can be profound: religions are also constantly changing, developing, becoming something new, and, to some degree, one can never step twice into the same church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, or religious tradition.

It is especially difficult for Westerners to think in these terms about religion.  Religions tend to have a great deal invested in the view that they represent unchanging truths, and so pointing to evidence of historical change may well be interpreted as an assault. Protestant ideas about a coming Rapture in which faithful Christians are plucked up and out of a hostile secular society, for example, are relatively new, arising in the late 19^th century.  Though many Rapturists read this theology back into the Bible and conclude that such teachings can be traced to the days of Jesus of Nazareth.  Also, as a culture, for the past three centuries or so we have tended to imagine the religious landscape in terms of distinct, walled-off religious institutions, such as “Christianity,” “Islam,” Buddhism,” “Judaism,” and so forth.  Taken together, these factors lead us to expect unchanging and uniform religious traditions where none in fact exist.   

Take, for example, what we call “Christianity.” There are currently some 2.5 billion Christians worldwide. About 1.1 billion are Catholic, 800-900 million are Eastern Orthodox, and 500-600 million are Protestant.  There are enormous theological differences separating these three branches (to say nothing of the many differences in language, culture, ethnicity, economics, politics, and history). For many Catholics and Protestants, it is Jesus’ death that makes salvation possible.  In this view, he is thought to have “paid the price” for all human sin, thus wiping away even the “original sins” of Adam and Eve.  In many Eastern Orthodox Christianities, however, notions of “original sin,” which first emerged in the 4^th century in Western Europe, never caught on.  Eastern Orthodox traditions tend to place much greater emphasis upon the birth of Jesus, in which God is thought to have taken physical form, and thus seriously “upgraded” human nature in important ways.

Catholics and Protestants, of course, differ profoundly as well.  In traditional Catholic teachings, the ideal (if not the only) path to God is through the religious institution that God Himself created and ordained, the Catholic (or “universal”) church, whereas for most Protestants one can go directly to God for forgiveness, atonement, understanding the Bible, knowing  how best to live, rather than relying upon an institution.  This may seem superficial, but it’s actually a very important difference about where religious authority (to determine what the Bible says, how to relate to God, how to live, how society should be structured, etc.) resides.  There is of course a great deal of diversity within each of these three branches.  Protestantism, for instance, is comprised of virtually thousands of denominations, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Pentecostals, being some of the largest and most well-known.  The concept Protestant” (like “river”) may lead us to expect a unity of belief and practice, but there are in fact enormously important differences here as well, differences so profound that one kind of Protestant might have serious doubts about whether other kinds are really Christian at all!  In many Pentecostal churches, for instance, one cannot be certain that one is “saved” (going to heaven after this life) unless one displays the “charismata,” (“gifts of the Holy Spirit”) such as publicly speaking in tongues (usually in a church setting). The very loud, frenetic, highly emotional, and seemingly out of control behaviors associated with this religious experience, however, would for many other Protestants be regarded as a sign of mental illness, or even demonic influence, certainly not the salvific power of the divine.

Within Baptist denominations, one debate that has been going on for centuries involves fundamental notions about God’s power and human free will.  Some (often called Predestinationists) argue that, because God is in full control of everything that happens, he must have already determined, from the very beginnings of time, who will be saved and who will be damned.  Others, however, argue that because God is infinitely good, he would surely leave human beings free to decide for themselves, rather than determining in advance everyone’s fate.  My purpose here is not to resolve such disputes, but only to point out why one kind of Protestant might fail to recognize other kinds as not properly Christian.       

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