Spirituality can be a harmonizing, liberating, life-giving force for understanding, compassion, and wisdom, or it can be a tool for manipulation, control, oppression and greed. When “religion” is used to increase cruelty, hate and exploitation, it is in fact profoundly anti-religious and should be exposed as such. The use of religion to justify or promote harmful behavior and heinous crimes against other human beings is, I think, a profound misunderstanding of the nature of faith. The faithful, to be faithful, must disagree with these hijackings and offer alternatives for those who seek deeper insight and stronger, more authentic faith.

A man told his grandson: “A terrible fight is going on inside me — a fight between two wolves. One is evil, and represents hate, anger, arrogance, intolerance, and superiority . The other is good, and represents joy, peace, love, tolerance, understanding, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, and compassion. This same fight is going on inside you, inside every other person too.”

The grandson then asked: “Which wolf will win?” The old man replied simply: “The one you feed.”

Bush’s implemented many of the provisions of his “faith-based initiative” via Executive Order. Why should churches be distributing funds that belong to all of us? They have their own private programs already. Religious groups that actually serve the poor (without discrimination or strings attached) create nonprofits that can qualify for federal funds (hospitals, day care, soup kitchens, etc). Nothing stops citizens from giving more money to religious efforts to deal with societal problems. Some of them do important and needed charity work, especially as policies of the right continue to work to cut funding to more and more social services (the safety net for all American citizens).

Much if not all of the money has gone to his base, so to me it’s just another form of voter manipulation – a laudering scheme that actually reduces federal assistance to poor people. It’s another way to gradually demolish federal programs. It’s been the same strategy with education, healthcare, even social security.

If Bush rewarded the “religious” right for their support using these funds, why don’t we look at that the same way we look at the other corruption scandals? To describe such a scheme of robbery and misdirection as a “faith-based initiative” is pure propaganda.

One could understand the following as “faith-based initiatives” too:

• The Crusades
• Islamic Jihads
• Dehumanizing and christianizing “heathens”
• Human Sacrifice
• Subjugation of women
• Spousal abuse
• The Inquisitions
• The Protestant Inquisition
• The Witch Trials
• Blood Libel Charges
• Conquisitors
• Slavery
• The Thirty Years’ War
• Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
• “Manifest Destiny”
• Religious Hate Crimes (crimes motivated by religious prejudice) against Indigenous Peoples, Gays, Pagans, etc.
• “Ethnic cleansing”
• Abstainence-only sex education/inflated retail drug prices in a world with HIV/AIDS
• All manner of “God is on our side” murders, wars and genocidal movements
• The 9/11 Attacks
• Church Burnings and Abortion Clinic Bombings
• christian reconstructionism, dominion theology, christian supremacy, christian nationalism

It’s about power. Words about faith are just the tool to manipulate us. It’s not a new technique, just a very unethical one. Which wolf do we collectively feed today?

Note: This post is my contribution to the Progressive Faith Blog Con Carnival held this week at Think Buddha.