The Grand Illusion

In the lab this week, I was carefully following an unfamiliar protocol. At one point I was instructed to incubate something “under constant agitation”. “Ah, no problem!”, I thought, “I’ve been constantly agitated all week.” Not sure that’s what they meant…..

Constant agitation isn’t something I experience very often, but events this week really got under my skin. Let me explain: I’m a member of a community organization planning an event for The Holidays, with some collaborators. Our collaborators are responsible for all the publicity and, although the event sounded secular (in a politically-correct kind of way), when the first flyers were delivered to us this week they contained a dirty word: God. Without knowing it, my organization is taking part in something which celebrates God’s work! It made sense to me, since the collaborators are Christians. They even attempted to broaden their scope by referred to a celebration of “Christmas AND HANNUKAH”, I suspect out of respect for our predominantly Jewish membership. Little did they know the firestorm they ignited.

One of our board members hit the roof. She was “deeply offended” by this and wanted to know “who she should talk to” about it. Another board member agreed with her, and wanted us, despite our Jewish membership, to affirm our identity as a secular organisation. The leader of our organisation could see a train wreck coming and advised us to “let it be”. But there was no letting-it-be for these two ladies.

And, of course, could I stay silent for very long?!  That’s not my style. Part of it was just my naïve confusion. Weren’t these ladies Jewish?? Jews like God, right? Apparently this was not the point (I was informed). There’s this thing called separation of church and state, and anyway, Judaism isn’t a religion. God has nothing to do with it. Therefore, all religion is BAD and we can have nothing to do with it!

(Much of this discussion went on by email, which, by the way, it just about the worst place to have it. It’s too easy to write things you would never say to someone’s face. Of course, you could say the same thing about blogging!)

But once the email frenzy died down, and my agitation was replaced by reflection, I tried to re-locate The Big Picture. In our board meetings we generally run most things through a common filter: How will this benefit the organization? So, do we benefit by our association with these faith-based organizations? I think the answer is definitely yes, in large part because they are vastly more of them around, and they are enthusiastic about collaborations. Conversely, what’s the benefit of avoiding these opportunities to remain strictly “secular”? I can’t think of one.

The grand illusion in all of this is that, by releasing us from oppressive religious constraints and judgements, secularism is somehow freeing and unifying. But is it really? The debate has certainly not freed or unified the board of my organization; it’s been as divisive an issue as I can ever remember dealing with. And in the larger context of the organization, avoiding all religious associations would cut at least half of our activities and require such stifling control of the remaining ones, I can’t see much freedom there either. And as for unification, the message it conveys is that all religions are at best insignificant and at worst dangerous and to be avoided. Is that a unifying message? I think you’ll offend absolutely everyone of any faith.

 During the heated debate, one of the supporters of a secular stance was informing me of our right to “Freedom FROM religion”. What an oxymoron!

 I’ll keep the real freedom I’ve got, thank you very much.  

Philomena

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