Christian Deathwatch

by Gary Cottle

I come from a fundamentalist background, but I was never truly taken in by literalism. I was always much more concerned with my relationship with my relatives and how they would react to me being gay and my refusal to accept their ideology than I was with the fear that they might be right. Of course I considered what they had to say, especially when I was young, but fundamentalist Christianity never really resonated with me. And since I didn’t have a solid belief system when I went away to college, I was full of philosophical questions. So I studied religion and philosophy.

I took a religion class my freshman year, and I had to read an essay for that class that changed my perspective on religion forever. It was titled Deathwatch, and it was written by a liberal theologian who claimed that many modern-thinking Christians believed that Christianity was slowly dying. He was writing as a person of faith, so this was a matter of concern for him, and he assumed it would be a matter of concern for his readers. But he claimed there was nothing to be afraid of. He pointed out that since the beginning of human history, religions have come and gone. It’s a normal process of human development. If a particular religion does not serve the needs of the society in which it exists, it will fade away, and most likely a new mythology and tradition will spring up in its place.

Ever since then I have viewed religion as a kind of cultural inflection. It might be a vehicle for spiritual expression that can be passed down from one generation to the next, but the mythology should be viewed as symbolic. I came to believe that if there is any truth in religion, then the truth is actually greater than the religion, and those who concretize the mythology actually kill it because they rob it of it’s only value, which is symbolic. Taking mythology literally is like trying to read Shakespeare’s plays literally. Doing that would ruin the experience, right? Who cares if there was actually a boy and a girl named Romeo and Juliet? That’s hardly the point.

If a religion does not help people live their lives, then they’re going to lose interest in it. If you can’t relate the stories and the rituals to your life, then they become meaningless. But for whatever reason, there are those who insist on taking everything in the Christian Bible as literal fact. They like to think of themselves as the guardians of the faith, but by attacking any attempt to rethink the old myths, they will, in the long run, make their faith more and more irrelevant.

The pace of change in the modern world has accelerated, and we have to try to keep up. For some this may be hard, but their grumbling won’t hold back time even for a minute. History will march on with or without them. It is to our advantage that we stop advocating rigid gender roles. It is to our advantage that we stop insisting that certain races are superior to others. It’s not simply that this is right thing to do, but these changes in attitude serve our modern society. These changes help us survive. If you think women should stay home and cook, clean and pump out babies while her man is out in the field working, then you should have been born in the seventeenth century. But you’re living in the modern world. Here we have an overpopulation problem, and it would be disastrous if every woman spent her life raising six, seven, eight babies. And most work outside the home no longer requires a great deal of upper body strength. We need brainpower, and we can’t afford to dismiss someone because of how they dress, or what they have between their legs or who they like to have sex with. Our economy is global, so we need people who are willing to do business with those on the other side of the world and not get their panties in a bunch if they have to deal with someone with a different skin tone or a different religion. These are the realities of our modern life, and our rituals and belief systems need to reflect who we are now and help guide us through our modern world. If our religion tells us to turn out backs on the modern world, then what good is it? It’s not like we can go back in time.

Give Me That Old Time Religion
by anonymous

(Chorus) Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
That’s good enough for me

Shall I worship Zarathustra
just the way we use ta?
Be a Zarathustra Booster
What a thing to be!

(Chorus)

Or maybe Aphrodite
She’s beautiful but flighty
and doesn’t wear a nighty,
now there’s a sight to see.

(Chorus)

Or perhaps I’ll choose Apollo
a decent god to follow
I’d grovel and I’d wallow
Brought low on bended knee.

(Chorus)

"We'll go worship with the Druids,
And we'll drink fermented fluids,
And waltz naked through the woo-ids,
And that's good enough for me!"

(Chorus)

Elohim or Yahweh?
Allah or the highway?
I think I’ll just go my way.
That’s good enough for me.

(Chorus)