Nelson-Pallmeyer: Is Religion Killing Us?

Is Religion Killing Us?

“People usually kill for non-religious reasons but find support in religion way too easy. Why is that?” asked Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer at the Association of Pittsburgh Priests (APP) November Speaker event.

Nelson-Pallmeyer was the most challenging APP speakers I can remember. As an Associate Professor of Peace and Justice at St. Thomas University, he is anything but orthodox in his views.

He challenges us to consider what was going on in both the Old and New Testament, to realize how many of the writers of those times, like writers of our own time, were caught up in cultural wars and self-justifications of violence. “Militarism is a belief system,” he says, “and still governs us today”.

In his own life, he grew up in what sounds like a Lake Woebegone town of northern Minnesota where all was well in the world. “College saved me,” he said, when he got the chance to study with some great American theologians and to hear Martin Luther King. After college he travelled. He saw slavery in Ethiopia and incredible poverty in India. “After that, “I couldn’t make sense of God,” he said, and he had to re-evaluate his life and everything he thought was right, starting with the Bible.

Nelson-Pallmeyer describes three story lines of violence in the Old Testament.

He starts with the Exodus and the vengeful god. While this is usually dismissed as a “liberation of the poor” story, there is undeniable genocide against the Canaanites. The message was “you prove your god is right is through winning violence”.

So what does this mean “in a nuclear age” he paused to let that sink in.

The second story line was associated with the Babylonian exile and the punishing god. In this story god punishes those who have lost the way.

The third story, that of salvation, came during the time of the Maccabees, a century before Jesus. It was the apocalyptic story. Military martyrdom will be rewarded with salvation. “Christians ignore the first story, sanitize the second and do Lectionary gymnastics with the third”, he said.

“Unfortunately, he says, “Those old story lines also saturate the New Testament. Gospel writers, some 60 years after Jesus death, had to explain the death of Jesus and the triumph of Rome. By trusting the violence narratives, he said, “we foreclose seeing authentic hope”.

Bringing us up to date, he bluntly stated “the United States understands itself as the new chosen people. Our being the most militarized people of the world cannot be explained except by our supposed belief that we are carrying out the will of God. We do this despite the fact that there is no evidence that violence makes us safer. War is a lie,” he says, “that drives an arms race we can’t afford and is getting worse.”

The Good News is that these are not the only story lines from the Bible. “There are multiple ”Jesus” stories in the New Testament and “we have to choose”. Jesus dismisses “militarization as fantasy. He asks us to love enemies and he blesses peacemakers. He sees salvation as healing.”

But Nelson-Pallmeyer has less faith in scripture than he does in the “mindfulness” of Meister Eckerd -- everyday is a miracle… have the courage to face today’s problems… and don’t walk mindless among miracles -- and in the invitation of God.

“God is not powerful in the traditional sense,” he says, “but he invites us to live authentic lives. If we want to do so, we must learn from our own experience,” he concluded.