In an age where Westboro Baptist stages its “God Hates the World” and “God Hates Fags” demonstrations, where terrorists crash airplanes into buildings (or blow them up), where Pastor Terry Jones threatens to burn the Qu’ran, where people sometimes destroy property and human life in their anti-abortion stance, where Christians who have converted from Islam are systematically tortured or executed in some countries, where former President G W Bush used biblical rhetoric to underlie engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Hindus in India attack Christian minority groups, where Christians and Muslims in Nigeria often turn to violence against one another — in such a world, many people have a hard time seeing what good “religion” and, frequently, Christianity in particular, has to offer.
Historically, it is easy to see the good that religion has done (thus giving the lie to Hitchens’ subtitle, “How Religion Poisons Everything”). We need look no further than the hospitals of the city of Toronto, one, St. Michael’s, founded by Roman Catholics and another, Mount Sinai, by Jews. Historically, religious people have been on the front lines of providing healthcare. Livingstone brought both the Bible and medicine to Africa. The first hospitals of the Byzantine and mediaeval worlds were church organisations.
Historically, the arts show us to what heights religion can take man, even if today’s “Christian Art”, be it music, novels, or trashy Jesus paintings, makes me shudder. We have the glories of Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, of Bach’s St. John Passion, of Handel’s Messiah, of Haydn’s Creation (my post on that last one here).
I have posted previously about Christian fiction — there is great narrative art from the pens of Christians, from the Anglo-Saxons to Dante to Spenser, Milton, and Bunyan to Chesterton, Waugh, Lewis, Tolkien, Buechner. The Christian faith has produced some consummate storytellers.
Any cathedral with its stained glass intact can tell you that in no way is religion an entirely bad force. Behold the Sistine Chapel! Gape at the illuminated Winchester Bible! Stand in awe before Michelangelo’s Pieta! (Sorry I used Buonarroti twice.) Any history of art that covers the Middle Ages and Renaissance will give a good hearty drink of what good religion can produce.
If you watch the video Palestrina’s link takes you to, you will see some of the architecture of the Church. Christianity has produced some amazing architecture over the centuries. So have Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. When a person is striving for the highest good, when striving for something greater than one’s own petty self, beauty can be achieved.
But what good does religion do today? A lot of people think that it has outlived its usefulness, that it has become nothing more than a source of strife and division, that our society has evolved beyond needing religion.
Well, in purely “practical” terms (ie. beyond what I see as the spiritual benefits), religion has built at least one hospital in Angola and a nursing school with it and another nursing school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These are recent foundations. Religion has brought many a person off the street, out of addiction, and into the workforce through organisations like the Salvation Army, Shelter House, Bethany Christian Trust.
In Toronto, I spent a good number of Saturdays at Toronto Alliance Church, the “Upper Room”. This church is in the upper level of a storefront on Queen St. near Bathurst. If you know Toronto, you have visions of that area with the intersecting streetcar lines, the street-health clinic, the street people, the community housing, the nifty shops, the closed down shops, the Starbucks on one corner, a mission to street people on another, Pizza Pizza the third, and a bar (now closed) on the fourth.
Every Saturday night at Toronto Alliance is “Community Night.” There is a meal — soup & sandwich or something more filling, always warm — a clothing room full of donations people have brought, a nurse who can look after people’s feet (this is a real problem for a lot of people who live on the street), and a food bank.
Part-way through the night, the eclectic group of people who has gathered for food and friendship has a church service gathered around the tables. There are always some of those old “revival” hymns, like “Just As I Am,” and frequently a lot of the people present know and love these hymns. Then there is a message from someone on the church’s ministry staff; when I went, usually Bill or Doug. The message was simple and always focussed on Jesus and the hope he brings and the change he can make.
These church services are sometimes raucous affairs. I’ve never seen banter during an Anglican sermon, but there would be banter here. People would often still mill about, but not many. Some people looked uninterested, but others took a keen interest in the hymns, prayers, and sermon.
Bill, the pastor of Toronto Alliance, knows a lot of the people who come out to Community Night. He’ll chat with them, see how they’re doing, show real concern for them and their welfare. We often think that helping out that vague, amorphous group “the unfortunate” is a matter simply of food, shelter, clothing. It is also very much a matter of love, as I witnessed in Cyprus, of love for the lonely, friendship for the friendless, and light for the lost.
Saturday nights at Toronto Alliance Church provide for the whole person. That alone tells me that religion is of much good in this world, in spite of Westboro Baptist and Islamist terrorism.
Classically Christian 