Liberal thought today urges cooperation between religions and cultures in the interest of the common good. This "nice idea" quickly encounters roadblocks to its implementation when there is an attempt to get religious leaders to demonstrate solidarity across sectarian lines. Those of us who have attended numerous interfaith and ecumenical conferences have often come away feeling that everyone is dancing around the issues but avoiding substantive engagement if it requires modifying their own positions. At the root of this problem is a prevalent tendency among clergy and laity alike to equate religion with God. If the two are considered synonyms it becomes almost obligatory to hold fast to onešs religious views as a proof of faith and orthodoxy. No one wants to be found unacceptable by God.

Considering the high incidence in America of ordinary citizens feeling disappointed and disillusioned by institutional religion, yet professing a belief in God, it is important to make a distinction between God and religion. Distinctions can also be made between spiritual and religious leadership, and between belief and practice. Religious leaders (which inherently includes all clergy) are generally highly invested in promoting the institutional agenda of whatever sect they represent. Their professional success and advancement is highly dependent upon their willingness and ability to do so. Those who insist on a more transcendent approach that refuses to claim a sectarian monopoly on truth are frequently not considered "team players" by their respective hierarchies and constituents. Hence "spiritual leadership" and "religious leadership" are somewhat prone to heading in opposite directions. The one is conccerned with the upliftment of the individual, the other with the solidarity of the institution. Much of "interfaith dialogue" is reduced thereby to sincere people agreeing to play it safe by joining forces on social action issues like "helping the poor," upon which all can agree.

Unfortunately, such conscience-saving social projects, though not unworthy or useless, do nothing to alter the theological rigidities or the emotional attachment that the religious feel to asserting the superiority of their chosen faith over others'. In short, it allows faith to remain competitive rather than comparative or complimentary.

To be sure, especially in communities where few people have had personal contact with the members of faiths or cultures other than their own, there is some positive value to having shared meals, an occasional joint worship service or pulpit exchange, and community social projects. But all of this can be accomplished without ever plumbing the spiritual depths of a faith tradition, understanding the origins of its sacred texts or implementing the inner practices enshrined in them-. not to mention coming to an appreciation of the strength or validity of the riches of another tradition and the perspective it may offer to enhance one's own. In a word, such religious efforts remain superficial and largely ineffective.

When religion is pressed into the service of politics, an added problem comes into play. People who are ardently committed to a specific religion and its respective world view frequently use that world view as a test of righteousness. But they also frequently mistake their attachment to "being in right relationship with God," implicit in the theological use of the word "righteousness" with their emotional need to "be right." Integral to that attachment is a widespread assumption that there is a single "right" position or point of view that necessarily makes all others "wrong." Such assumptions are not only flawed in their logic but deadly in their repercussions.

Logic fails miserably when the insistence upon belief in One God, who is assumed to be universal and omnipresent, is then used to condemn the beliefs of those whose descriptions, worship style or theology differ. It seems not to occur to the officially religious that if there is a single omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God of all, that God or Supreme Being is, by definition, equally present in all religions and traditions. That's what the prefix omni means! The fact that blood continues to be shed in denial of this seemingly obvious observation is tragic proof of the widespread failure of religion to fulfill its promise of well-being. It is the direct result of the egotistical needs of its leaders and practictioners, despite the paradoxical fact that the founders of every religion insist upon ego-trancscendence as essential to any real spiritual attainment.

Mistaking God for religion inevitably leads to a self-protective and self-serving tendency among the members of that religion. All institutions are inherently self-serving in order to survive. Religious institutions are hardly exempt. It is a small step from that natural propensity to the blasphemy of limiting God to an agenda, and the immorality and hypocrisy that that tendency produces.

The need for agreement is, to some extent, endemic to the human condition and our perception of what constitutes security. A certain amount of agreement is even necessary for any group of people to function cooperatively. But the craven self-defensiveness that fears and demonizes those who challenge or differ from us, and masks the dishonesty of that in the guise of truth, is the danger of human ego left unchecked. On that level there is little distinction between the corruption in corporate, political, and religious leadership today. Fear and greed seem to dominate.

Words are revealing, but their original meanings are often overlooked or even forgotten by subsequent usage. "Religion" is such a word. From the Latin re-ligare, meaning "to tie again or reconnect," the implicit meaning of religion is to reconnect with God, neighbor and self. This reconnection is to restore an original union which has been severed by the choices we make, but to which we are inherently capable of returning. Theoretically, religion is both the state of that union and the means by which it is attained. Institutional religion, paradoxically, contains all the elements necessary for that reconnection, and yet its practice seldom seems to elicit such a unitive experience. Surely the fault is not with the wisdom of the original saints or sages whose teachings and experience inspired the religions in the first place. It is in our mistaking the form for the content.

There is an antidote to this malady- though the treatment requires a personal effort against which our increasingly widespread expectation of rapid results mitigates. The age of push-button responses and instant text messaging has created unrealistic expectations that lifešs more important issues can be resolved with electronic speed- particularly in the societies dominated by American internet culture. We are prone to become so absorbed in the endless displays of information on tv monitors and laptops that we hardly have time to actually experience anything directly. Yet every religion in the world points to the centrality and the life-transforming power of onešs own inner experience. To restore the balance of the "inner ecosystem," right-brain practices like chant, prayer, meditation, silence, are encouraged to counter the left-brain dominance of our data gathering and linear thinking. But who takes or makes time for these practices, let alone has become adept enough to experience their effectiveness directly?

Very few clergy- especially in congregational settings- make the time to do so. Most feel stretched by the time managment challenges of balancing administration, pastoral care, educational, liturgical and family issues and responsibilities. If the religious leaders don't find time to deepen their own spiritual practice, it is unlikely they will inspire other to do so, even if they have the skills to teach them how. Transcendence is the essence of the unitive experience- whether between lovers, friends or God. That experience, by nature, is one of letting go of attachments and limitations- in effect losing onešs limited sense of self in the larger experience of connectedness. If clergy and laity, believers and nonbelievers continue to focus on our outer differences instead of on our instinctive yearning for the unitive experience to which our various concepts of the Divine point us, we condemn ourselves to the fragmentation and conflict besetting the world today.

That was not a choice encouraged by Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Ramakrishna or any of the saints and sages to whom we have repeatedly turned for inspiration and guidance. Isn't it time we started seeking the union implicit in the term religion instead of the uniformity dreamed of by the insecure who find their only fulfillment in controlling others?

Robert H. Stucky is the Executive Director of Faith In Diversity Institute.

Copyright Š 2003 by Faith In Diversity Institute