The Peanuts char­ac­ter Linus once said: “There are three things I have learned nev­er to dis­cuss with people…religion, pol­i­tics, and the Great Pump­kin.” Pump­kins aside, the rare con­ver­gence of Passover, East­er and Ramadan prompts me to ignore his wis­dom and pon­der why faith is so often used as an excuse for venal behaviour.

The world’s three great monothe­is­tic reli­gions in order of found­ing — Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam — trace their roots to Abra­ham and his covenant with the one God they all hold supreme. Sure­ly that should give them com­mon cause and shared val­ues. Instead, they can’t even agree how to best share Jerusalem, which encom­pass­es sites sacred to all three.
For Jews, Passover marks when God inter­vened to deliv­er them from 400 years of bondage in Egypt. It’s con­sid­ered a time to cel­e­brate Jew­ish free­dom and the fact that they did, final­ly, get the Promised Land.
Chris­tians cel­e­brate East­er as the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus, which for believ­ers, grants the “gift of eter­nal life,” mean­ing that those of faith will be wel­comed into the “King­dom of Heav­en” when they die.
Observ­ing the stric­tures of fast­ing over Ramadan is one of the Five Pil­lars of Islam, the foun­da­tion of how Mus­lims live their lives (the oth­ers are faith, prayer, char­i­ty and pil­grim­age to the holy city of Mec­ca). The holy month marks when an angel sent by Allah revealed the Quran to the Prophet Mohammed in 610 CE.

                            BELIEF AS A CLOAK

None of those reli­gious events has ever been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven, but that’s not a rea­son to dis­miss or den­i­grate the faith­ful who hold them to be true.
It is how­ev­er, fair to ques­tion why the greater the pas­sion that faith and God are on your side, the less­er the ratio­nal conviction.
Or, as Mark Twain put it: “I am quite sure now that often, very often, in mat­ters con­cern­ing reli­gion and pol­i­tics a man’s rea­son­ing pow­ers are not above the monkey’s.”
The zealots of the Israeli set­tler move­ment main­tain that the “Promised Land” was delin­eat­ed to deny Pales­tini­ans any right to be in the neigh­bour­hood. That’s despite them being able to trace their pres­ence in what is known to Israelis as “Judea and Samaria” as far back as the Jew­ish peo­ple can.
And where in the New Tes­ta­ment does it say non-Chris­tians are to be per­se­cut­ed, den­i­grat­ed, or sub­ju­gat­ed? Yet it was “Chris­t­ian” insti­tu­tions that ran the “res­i­den­tial schools” where Cana­di­an First Nations chil­dren were abused right up to the end of the 20th century.
Rad­i­cal Islamists decry any­one who doesn’t fol­low their faith as “infi­dels” and con­done sui­cide bomb­ing of civil­ians and behead­ing “unbe­liev­ers” as jus­ti­fied by the Quran.
Reli­gion has arguably been the basis of more wars than any­thing else in his­to­ry. The lat­est exam­ple is Vladimir Putin using his self-pro­claimed role of a defend­er of Chris­tians as one of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for his bru­tal inva­sion of Ukraine.
Invok­ing faith as a cloak has become a ubiq­ui­tous way to avoid almost any issue that cries out for prop­er polit­i­cal attention.
In the wake of every school or mass shoot­ing in the U.S., the Twit­ter and Press conference/police state­ments invari­ably include…“Our thoughts and prayers are with…”
That, appar­ent­ly, either negates, sub­sti­tutes or makes up for not doing any­thing about gun control.
As James Madi­son, one of the “Found­ing Fathers” of the Unit­ed States summed it up: “Reli­gion and Gov­ern­ment will both exist in greater puri­ty, the less they are mixed together.”
Instead, “fun­da­men­tal­ists” and “evan­gel­i­cal” Chris­tians insist their inter­pre­ta­tion on issues such as abor­tion, gay rights and even which books are accept­able read­ing should be enshrined in law.

            WHAT RELIGION OUGHT TO PRODUCE

I met their antithe­sis in a lep­er colony near Mtoko, an area that in 1979 was one of the most dan­ger­ous bat­tle­grounds in the bush war to turn Rhode­sia into Zim­bab­we. The lep­ers’ only res­i­dent care­giv­er was John Brad­burne, a third order Fran­cis­can, described by a priest friend as “a strange vagabond of God”. For rea­sons only he knew, Brad­burne went to vis­it the lep­er colony known as Mutemwa (which means “You are cut off”) in 1969, and stayed.

In response to a remark I made that it was hard to believe in a God who includ­ed lep­rosy as part of his grand plan, Brad­burne said he would show me proof of the soul, and there­fore of God.
In a low wat­tle and grass hut, a blind man with no nose, ears, eye­brows, lips or teeth, and the added bur­den of malar­ia, lay curled up on a thin mat. Brad­burne knelt beside him, held what remained of the man’s right hand, and spoke soft­ly in Shona. And a face that had noth­ing with which to show any emo­tion, least of all hap­pi­ness, lit up.
“What’s he doing?”, Brad­burne asked me.
“I’d have to say smil­ing,” I said.
“Yes. But what with?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed.
 Brad­burne smiled and said: “With his soul.”
I lost any taste for reli­gion, or belief in God, many years ago, but I can find no oth­er expla­na­tion than Bradburne’s for what I saw. Some months lat­er, Brad­burne was abduct­ed and mur­dered by guer­ril­las. He is now on the offi­cial Catholic Church path to canonization.
I don’t believe in saints, but I do believe that in an oth­er­wise God-for­sak­en hut in the mid­dle of a nasty lit­tle war, I came as a close as I ever will to being in the pres­ence of some­one who fit the definition.
The world would be a far bet­ter place if reli­gions pro­duced more John Brad­burnes and few­er of today’s hyp­ocrites who pro­fess divine guid­ance and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their actions. Any­thing else makes about as much sense to me as Linus wait­ing for the Great Pump­kin to appear at Halloween.
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