David Miscavige, the leader of Scientology

Is it ever okay to criticize a faith? One can think of extreme situations that we can all agree on. The Aum Shinrikyo New Religious Movement (like most religion scholars, I bristle at the use of the term “cult,” since it disparages religions just for being small and new, when older, more established faiths can be just as demanding, particular, or dangerous) released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 13 commuters, and probably assassinated a lawyer who was working on a case against them. Perhaps most famously Jim Jones led virtually his entire People’s Temple movement to suicide. There are religions that are, fundamentally, bad. 

But even then there are nuances and complexities. For example, the Aum Shinrikyo has since rebranded and distanced themselves from the attacks (and their founder has been executed). If I knew a member of Aleph (the new name of the group) who had renounced violence, would I still consider her religion evil? I don’t know if I have a fully fleshed out schema that incorporates every possibility, but in thinking through this and similar issues (for example, Scientology) I’ve come up with some guiding principles that seem to work in most cases. 

First, as faiths are often crucial sources of meaning for people, I’m going to tread more carefully here than I would about a preferred brand of toothpaste. This involves erring on the side of generosity when distinguishing bad things that come out of the faith from the faith itself. 

This does not mean ignoring the logical connections between scripture, traditions, authorities, and practices, and bad outcomes. For example, I remember listening to an interview where Bernard Lewis pushed back against the idea that Islamist jihadists were patently misinterpreting their holy texts. He agreed with the sentiment that they were not representative of Islam as a community, but argued there were real, established exegetical threads connecting their actions to their holy texts; their readings and interpretations were not 2+2=5, logically crazy. 

But in this case the issue is not that Islam is pathologically violent, but that that particular strand of jihadist interpretation supported by this or that authority is pathologically violent. (As a faith that has been accused by a best-selling book of being fundamentally violent this should strike a cord with us). I’m fine attacking the faith of ISIS as long as I can surgically separate it out from the faith of Muslims in general. 

I’m even fine critiquing an entire faith during a certain time and place, but still being cautious about making it about the essence of the faith as a whole. The Columbus Day wars we get every year usually include movie clips from Apocalypto about Mesoamerican human sacrifices; I think I’m safe saying that any religious cosmology that relies on the blood of human sacrifices is bad. One of the most powerful anti-religion essays is M.L. Mencken’s “Memorial Service” 

There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter to-day? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year–and it is no more than five hundred years ago–50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage [STC: give him some grace, he’s writing this ~100 years ago] in the depths of the Mexican forest…Tezcatilpoca was almost as powerful: He consumed 25,000 virgins a year. Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a couronne des perles. But who knows where it is?  

At this point whatever sense of purpose these Gods gave their followers does not outweigh the cost in human blood. However, I’m not going to impute that badness to modern-day shamans in the highlands of Guatemala whose syncretic spiritual practices borrow from the religious beliefs of those same cultures. 

On the flip-side, I’m also hesitant to automatically assume that any bad manifestation of any faith is not “true” Islam, Mormonism, Catholicism, or what have you. Religion at its worse as well as at its best draws from the faith and often from the same sources.  

Second, focus on outcomes and not beliefs. Virtually all faiths have weird and sometimes problematic little passages that they have collectively chosen to ignore. Religionists tend to roll their eyes when we hear some argument along the lines of “you must do X because your holy book says Y.” There’s a long interpretive history underneath the surface that is taken for granted when relying on naive surface readings of the text, and you can point out that a particular passage is problematic without assuming it somehow bores into the essential core of the faith.

Perhaps more controversially this is a heuristic I employ for, for example, Scientology. I don’t care for the current organization because of the abuses that have happened under it and its leaders’ watches, but in principle I could see me not having any issues with a later, post-David Miscavige Scientology in the same way I have no problem with highland Mayan shamans.    

My disdain here has nothing to do with their beliefs, and I bristle at the “appeal to weirdness” with Scientology when people bring up, say, Xenu or DC-8 airliners. Again, as a faith that is often attacked using the “appeal to weirdness” we should think twice about imposing the same on others. As is often noted, weirdness is relative. In 1990s Utah gold plates are the most normal thing in the world, in 17th century Italy so are churches built around the body parts of dead saints, and much of modern secular ideology would be weird by any pre-19th century standard. Weirdness itself is not any kind of argument against validity. 

One last point I’ll make on this is that even if the interpretation of beliefs are themselves problematic, we should be generous about not letting that tar the entire belief system. It’s not bad or inaccurate to simply point out that the Nation of Islam is clearly antisemitic and should change on that point, but we should give them the benefit of the doubt about that not being their defining feature and being able to isolate that out. 

In my opinion, one of the most atrocious religious beliefs ever invented by mankind–greater than any racist, crazy, or hateful doctrine, is the relatively mainstream belief that God physically tortures people for eternity for believing the wrong things, not having been baptized, or this or that thing. If I can break bread and respect parts of the religious faith of people who think that God is going to hold me over an open flame for eternity, then I can deal with a lot of other beliefs.