Can Faith Be Coerced?

Google Image

For years I’ve been interested in Iran. Maybe it’s because I see it not just as the country whose citizens held 52 Americans hostages for 444 days four decades ago and with which the U.S. has a bitter relationship, but as a nation descended from a great Persian culture.

Anyway, I recently read in The Economist that “ordinary Iranians are losing interest in the mosque.

“Iran is the modern world’s first and only constitutional theocracy,” the story says. “It is also one of the least religious countries in the Middle East. …By forcing religion on people it poisoned worship for many. They are sick of being preached at and have stopped listening.

“The country is Islamic in much the same way that Italy is Catholic,” one Iranian economist is quoted as saying.

Isn’t this the pattern when it comes to “official” and entrenched religions? Look at the state of faith in any country that has an official religion or where religion has dominated society. We can start with Anglicanism in Great Britain, Lutheranism in the Scandinavian countries and other parts of Europe; and Catholicism in countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Then there’s Ireland, the land of my ancestors, where until recently the Church dominated society and to some extent, politics. Ninety percent of the Irish attended Mass at least weekly in the 1960s. By 2010, that had dropped to 52 percent. (A slight reversal has been reported in the last 3 years. Could it be that widespread secularization has lowered the church’s profile and more Irish, who have a long history of interest in spirituality and now feel less compelled, want to attend?)

No doubt about it, coercion and religion don’t mix. God invites. He/she doesn’t force himself/herself on us. We are free to reject him/her.

(It could be argued that the case for minor children’s church attendance is different. Some parents insist their minor children attend church even when the children object, just as they insist that their children brush their teeth and get their vaccinations despite children’s objections. At some point – and it’s not easy to know when - the children must be permitted to make up their own minds.)

Google Image

So why does the “invitation” to faith feel like coercion to many people? For many, the activities of religious groups may appear more like compulsion than independence, and joining a religion more like conformism than following one’s own path.

Could it be that Christians, especially, have been a little heavy handed in our approach? Churches, starting with my own, have sought advantage in connecting a culture with Christianity. So, in many people’s minds, to be Irish or Czech or Spanish was to be Catholic; to be British was to be Anglican; and to be Swedish was to be Lutheran. Isn’t mere conformism another form of coercion?

In my opinion, the same danger exists in the close connection many want to make between being American and Christian. Christian values aren’t the same as “patriotic” values, although there may be some commonalities. Contrary to the view of many "patriotic" Christians, Christianity is anti-racism, anti-war and anti-capital punishment, according to the Pope, U.S. bishops and mainstream Protestants.

The other evidence of heavy-handedness is how religion interacts with society. Why do religiously unaffiliated people always describe opinions motivated by faith as attempts at “imposing” their faith on society? Religious people have a right to express their faith in political opinions and in the voting booth, but many in society resent it. Could it be that Christians have often been less than respectful of non-believers, who see the clear risks in mixing religion and politics?

When I worked as a priest in Bolivia, I considered as part of my mission the reversal of the damage done by Spanish conquistadores of a few centuries ago when thousands, maybe millions, of Latin American natives were coerced into baptism. Even presuming that the Spanish were well intentioned, it was obvious among the native people with whom I worked that most were poorly informed about their faith. Many mixed it with the polytheistic practices of their ancestors.

Today we have the awful specter of ISIS, or ISIL, using brutality to convert people in Iraq and Syria. If they expect the result to be committed and devout adherents of Islam, good luck to them.

No, God invites; he/she doesn’t coerce. But his/her invitation includes an RSVP. Like many who ignore RSVPs on invitations to weddings and other events, many of us take our sweet time in getting back to God. We have too much else going on.

According to what we know from Scripture and tradition, God reaches out to us in love, much like a human lover reaches out to his/her beloved. How can we delay our response?