Fixing Broken Societies: Religion and Purification

Christianity teaches that when an individual’s life seems wrong, when he or she is overwhelmed with “sin,” salvation can fix that wrongness. Salvation provides a solution that puts the individual right with God.

But salvation does not work when the wrongness is society-wide. At times of social upheaval and stress, when the world in which people live no longer operates the way it should, when a government no longer does its job, then society as a whole needs saving. How does Christianity, or any other religion, accomplish that?

Religions frequently strive to fix a broken society through purification. If the society is under stress from war, famine, unrest or other disruption, then religions often attempt to purify it. If in salvation an individual turns his or her heart solely toward God, then, in purification, the people of a city, country or nation turn their collective heart toward the divine and follow his/her/its instructions.

If everyone takes part, purification results in communal unity. Everyone is oriented in a common direction, is led by the same leaders and follows them toward a solution to the social trauma. This works well in a society with a single religion.

When God made a covenant with the ancient Israelites, for example, He required them to follow His laws for organizing Israelite society and worship. He took a carrot-and-stick approach. When the Hebrews obeyed God, according to Deuteronomy 28, He blessed them with agricultural abundance and protected them from their enemies. When they disobeyed, He cursed them with famine, war and foreign oppression.

But, frequently, groups of people do not join in purification’s social reorientation because they belong to a different religion. This causes a second stage of purification to take place -- namely, the purge of people who do not participate.

This purge can take a variety of forms, but its goal is always the same: to make invisible the people who do not belong to the dominant religion and who do not participate in the community’s religious reorientation. Violence is often used to kill people or to frighten them into leaving the country, or at least going underground.

The Arab Spring succeeded in eliminating several dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, but it has been less successful in setting up new governments. Egypt seems to be in a continual state of upheaval because its people overthrew two leaders in succession, a dictator and a democrat, and are now under military rule.

So, it should not surprise us that the Sunni Muslim majority is attacking the religious minorities in the country in an attempt to purify its society. Just last week, members of the Muslim Brotherhood killed three people at a Christian wedding in a drive-by shooting. Since last’s summer’s overthrow of President Muhamed Morsi, a Muslim, Egypt’s Coptic Christians have come under persistent persecution with the burning of churches and the killing of leaders and other individuals.

In Syria’s civil war, persecution and massacres of both Christians and members of the Islamic Alawite sect take place regularly. Indeed, one reason for President’s Assad’s persistence is that he is an Alawite and fears his small religious group will be destroyed should the majority Sunni population win.

And don't forget Sunni persecution of Shiites in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and other countries.

Christianity, likewise, has been involved in social purification at times of upheaval. In its early centuries, pagans routinely blamed Christians for famines and other social stresses. After Christianity became the Roman Empire’s dominant religion, Christians returned the favor, ultimately eliminating all pagan religions. The Church also persecuted members of different Christian heresies.

During the Crusades, Christian men, on their way to the Middle East, frequently attacked Jewish communities in Europe. Why, they thought, should we travel to the Middle East to eliminate “infidels” when they are right here at home? Such pogroms continued through the centuries and finally led to the secular Nazi campaign of social purification during World War II, called the Holocaust.

Is there a way to avoid such social purification? To date, only the United States and countries organized on similar lines have escaped it. Their common characteristics include: an open civil society that welcomes members of all religions; free speech and a free press; and a secular government hospitable to all religions (including non-religion), but favors none. It is not just the export of democracy that is important, but the formation of a society that is open to differences in religious belief and their expression.

Flesher is director of UW's Religious Studies Program. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the web at www.uwyo.edu/RelStds.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Video-Game Religion

You may have missed it in the run-up to the election, but one of the most anticipated video games of the fall was released. No, not “Halo 4” for the Xbox, but “Assassin’s Creed 3,” which actually is the fifth game in the series.

In these games, the main character spends a lot of his time climbing up buildings, running across roofs and leaping the gaps between them. And what buildings they are! Set in medieval Jerusalem and Damascus as well as Renaissance Venice, Rome and Constantinople, the games are based on detailed 3-D photos of the historic buildings in these cities. It is quite an experience to scale the wall of the Blue Mosque’s minaret, to leap across the parapets of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and to crawl spider-like up the Pantheon’s ceiling in Rome -- even if only in a video game.

“Assassins Creed 3” represents a significant change from previous games. The action takes place during America’s Revolutionary War, and the main character’s initial goal is to protect George Washington from assassination attempts. Along the way, he takes part in the Boston Tea Party, works with Paul Revere and appears in numerous events of the Revolution. This is historical fiction reshaped quite smartly as an interactive video game.

The new story line takes the action out of the urban settings of the previous games and places it in the countryside (think “Red Dead Redemption”). Most of the climbing takes place in trees, on cliffs and on boulder piles left by glaciers. When buildings are involved , they rarely rise higher than two or three stories.

But the biggest change actually happens with the role of religion in the story. It has essentially disappeared. Only the Native Americans are shown doing or saying anything even vaguely religious, and that is quickly passed over. The towns contain churches, but they are largely ignored -- although the Old North Church of Paul Revere fame gets attention.

By contrast, the plots and the settings of the previous games were steeped in religion.

The first “Assassin’s Creed” takes place during the Crusades, with Christian and Muslim armies in great battles. The main plot features two shadowy groups, the Assassins and the Templars, both of which have secret mystical and religious leanings that allow them to position members on both sides of the war. Many of the key buildings are religious shrines, mosques and churches, standing alongside castles and other fortifications.

The next two games, AC2 and AC Brotherhood, take place in Renaissance Italy, with the plot featuring conflict within Christianity. The struggle between the Templars and Assassins ultimately rises to involve the papacy and “Brotherhood’s” move to Rome, enabling the play to encompass the many churches and other religious buildings of Rome, as well as ancient structures such as the Forum and the Coliseum.

The fourth “Assassins’ Creed” game, known as “Revelations,” occurs in Constantinople (i.e., Istanbul) a few years after its fall to Muslim armies. The fights between the Templars and Assassins happen against the background of dynastic struggles within the ruling Ottoman family. But religion remains an important component of the game’s physical setting, with action taking place in the Hagia Sophia church (by then converted to a mosque), Istanbul’s famous Blue Mosque, as well as many lesser known mosques.

The continual presence of religion in the first four “Assassins’ Creed” games makes its absence in “Assassins’ Creed 3” quite striking. Eighteenth-century America was filled with a variety of Christian groups, from Congregationalists and Presbyterians to Quakers and Anglicans and even a few Jews and Catholics -- to say nothing of the Deism of many colonial leaders. Although the Revolution was political, it had deep theological underpinnings.

While I applaud this game’s role-playing opportunity, which gives its players ring-side seats at the American Revolution, I am disappointed that its recreation of historical realism is missing a key component of the society.

Why would the game’s creators make such a radical change, given their approach to previous games? I can only guess, but I suggest two reasons.

On the one hand, the different Christian groups came to America for religious freedom; that freedom revealed the differences and vitriolic disagreements among them. To present a realistic picture, the game would need to show difference, rather than the unity with which the country faced the British.

On the other hand, current debates over the role of religion in today’s American culture would have latched onto any display of religion at the time of the nation’s founding and used it to their own advantage. These present-day cultural fights over the role of religion inspired the game’s creators to avoid controversy altogether and edit out the religious circumstances of the time.

(Note: Thanks to Conor McCracken-Flesher for his gaming expertise.)