House of Faith or Enchanted Forest?. Charles W. Hedrick, Jr.
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for God in matters of religion. People of Jewish faith consist of four segments: *Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, and Reconstructionist, and while these four bodies form four distinct approaches to Judaism, they are clearly part of one religion. Thus chaplains from any of these three Jewish bodies were designated simply “Jewish” by the armed services.
Under the Protestant rubric, however, were crammed an assortment of religious groups quite diverse in ideology, praxis, and faith, having little specific connection to one another, except that their origins were inspired by the same Judeo-Christian tradition, brought to America by the churches coming out of the *Protestant Reformation. For example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), founded in 1830 as an indigenous American religion, is regarded as a branch of Protestantism for the purpose of endorsing chaplains for the military. Even Native Americans, for the purpose of chaplain’s coverage, were grouped under the Protestant rubric. Roman Catholic and Jewish chaplains are responsible for religious ministry to the people of their faiths and Protestant chaplains, regardless of their own denomination, theoretically serve everyone else. I must quickly add, however, that chaplains, regardless of their own faith, are responsible to ensure that the religious needs of all faiths in their military units are met.
All three of these bodies (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish) are historically related, and all three, in part, use the same set of holy texts, the Hebrew Bible—Jews call this collection of texts the Jewish Scriptures, or Torah, while Roman Catholics and Protestants dub them the “Old Testament.” Hence, Roman Catholics and Protestant groups are Judeo in the sense that they, in part (and the larger part at that!), use the Jewish Scriptures. Jews and Protestants have the same books in Torah/Old Testament, while Roman Catholics use several other texts referred to as *deutero-canonical, meaning they were added to the *canon at a later time, but nevertheless are just as authoritative as the *proto-canonical books used by Jews and Christians. Roman Catholics and Protestants in America also use the same collection of New Testament texts.
Only in recent memory have religious groups, completely unrelated to the historical circumstances that brought floods of European immigrants to the New World, become competing religious forces in America. Within the last twelve years, for example, the U.S. military has integrated Islamic and *Buddhist chaplains into the military services along with the traditional categories of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant.
Because these three religious bodies share religious texts and have a historical connection, they share a similar complex of religious ideas and practices; these ideas still form the backbone of American religion—especially in its popular form. Only in 2007, has someone of non Judeo-Christian faith been elected to national office: Rep. Keith Ellison, a *Muslim (Democrat from Minnesota), was sworn into the U. S. House of Representatives using the *Qur’an the sacred writings of Islam! Nevertheless, the religious face of America at this point still remains predominately Judeo-Christian.2
This book addresses the complex of traditional Jewish and Christian ideas and ethical values shared by Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic groups, since the founding of this country. Because of the dominant influence of the Judeo-Christian faith in American culture, many of these same basic ideas are shared by the general public, although they may have only a peripheral association with church or synagogue; these views are also shared, at least in part, by those who have abandoned involvement in the traditional worship of synagogue and church.3
Here is one example of grassroots popular belief. In 1986, the South-ern Baptist Convention appointed a Peace Committee to bring about harmony between the warring factions of the Southern Baptist Convention. They wrote:
We, as a Peace Committee, have found that most Southern Baptists [believe that the Bible has] ‘truth without any mixture of error for its matter,’ . . . meaning . . . that:
(1) They believe in direct creation of mankind and therefore they believe that Adam and Eve were real persons.
(2) They believe that the named authors did indeed write the biblical books attributed to them by those books.
(3) They believe the miracles described in Scripture did indeed occur as supernatural events in history.
(4) They believe that the historical narratives given by biblical authors are indeed accurate and reliable as given by those authors.4
These specific religious views, with some modification here and there, are generally shared by a majority of people in America having religious roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition.5
Although the probes of the essays were gentle and some slightly tongue-in-cheek, the issues they raise for traditional faith are anything but harmless. For reflective souls, heirs of the *Renaissance and *Enlightenment, trying to make modern sense of ancient religions in the twenty-first century, the essays raise disturbing questions that the church and synagogue have never resolved and, likely, never will.
The Enchanted Forest: An Allegory
In general people don’t take the time to reflect on the religious ideas picked up from parents, taught to them in church and synagogue by religious professionals, learned in school from religious teachers, or picked up from American culture (calendared holy days, TV, newspaper, etc.). These ideas, basically Judeo-Christian in origin, are simply accepted as religious cultural bedrock by the general public. Seldom is the worldview they represent viewed as a whole. Usually such ideas are encountered piecemeal in confessions, creeds, or as isolated ideas from the Bible. So, of course, God created the world—it’s in the Bible! Of course God answers prayer! Of course we are all sinners, because Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of *Eden! What follows is an attempt to show how these ideas appear when they are presented in a package. Popular religion in these United States appears very much like an enchanted forest:
Once upon a time a Utopian garden existed in an enchanted wood. Except for a deceitful talking serpent the couple living there dwelled in perfect harmony with both plant and animal life and had all their needs provided. Rules existed in the garden: no eating the fruit of a certain tree; it would destroy the couple’s innocence. The couple broke the rule, were forced out of the garden into an enchanted forest where life was hard. But that was long ago; today no one recalls the exact location of the garden.
In those olden days, delightful creatures, *unicorns (Psalm 22:21) and humanoid cherubs having four faces (Ezekiel 1:5–6) roamed the enchanted forest, along with monsters, like dragons and the frightful monster of the deep, Leviathan (Psalm 74:13–14). Although dinosaurs never existed in the forest, horrid demons lurked there: satyrs (Leviticus 17:7), the night demon Lilith (Isaiah 34:14), and the “noonday devil” (Psalm 91:6). In modern times, predatory demons still prowl the forest, seeking to do evil to the inhabitants or causing them to behave wickedly. But angelic creatures in the enchanted forest protect them from demonic evil and other disasters. Some dangers in the forest threatening to human life, however, seem worse than the demons—disastrous floods, tornados, hurricanes, diseases, and the like. Yet, the inhabitants say, everything in the forest always works out for the best in spite of these terrible events.
The economy of the forest is minutely managed by an all-powerful benevolent designer, who fashioned the forest to precise specifications and routinely runs it like clockwork according to a master plan. Although the designer is never seen anywhere, he nevertheless is accessible at all times to everyone who speaks to him. He takes requests, and sometimes is thought to cure diseases. Most people are greatly comforted by speaking to him, although he never answers directly.
The designer manages the inhabitants of the forest through guardians who interpret the rules for all inhabitants. The first rule in the forest is required attendance at weekly group meetings, during which the guardians explain how life in the forest is to be lived; rule two requires exact compliance with all the minutiae of rule one. If these two rules are followed, the irregularities sometimes disrupting the harmony of the forest will not occur. The designer uses disasters to get the inhabitants’ attention when they forget rules one and two.
All worthwhile knowledge is found in a Book written long ago by the designer himself. The guardians are the chief interpreters of the Book, since