Let the Journey Begin

There are so many things to which we have not been paying attention in recent years that it is impossible to articulate them all. In the most basic sense, however, I trace much of our current woe back to 1966 when the question, “Is God Dead?” raised eyebrows but generated little serious discussion. Even though Friedrich Nietzsche had addressed the issue in 1882, it appears to have required something like the assassination of John F. Kennedy to popularize it. Although American Christian Fundamentalism has its roots in the 1925 Scopes Trial, the viral evangelical form emerged as a reaction to Thomas Altizer and William Hamilton’s threatening proposition that God, for all intents and purposes, is dead to the human experience. The validity of their thesis has been supremely and ironically borne out in the presidency of George W. Bush, the governor responsible for more executions than any other in U.S. history, the president whose legacy will be criminal dishonesty and deceit, the born-again Christian who receives his walking orders from God. Instead of an enlightened dialogue entertaining the pros and cons of such a theological hypothesis, a remarkably large number of Americans retreated to conservative literalism which proclaims the viability of God in spite of the systematic dismantling of virtually every aspect of faith in order to fill the void with ideology rather than theology. I consider these things as Rosh Hashanah is observed by my Jewish brothers and sisters, knowing that we are now on the journey to the high holy day of Yom Kippur. Rather than knee-jerk reactions to the “terror-du-jour” that this administration is infamous for, I would encourage all Americans, regardless of how they brand themselves, to make a sacred pilgrimage to the day of atonement when healing will come from the confession, “I have taken your name in vain.”