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Created: March 31, 2003
Latest Update: April 1, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

God's on Both Sides

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, March 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

In this time of war many of us turn to God. Even some atheists, or professed atheists, seek the assurance of God in crisis. My husband, who professes to be a secular Jew who does not believe in God, announced the other evening that he had just had some kind of epiphany in which he promised God that he would give up alcohol if God would give him the power to bring peace on earth. Then he looked at me, shook his head, and said, "But I don't believe in God. Anyway, He didn't give me the power." Yeah. The power he asked for was the power to make the world stand still, after the manner of the alien hero in the movie of the same name. I figured it was a good bet, though, so I offered to give up ice cream if God would give Arnold the power. He didn't do it for me either.

The peculiarity of this war is that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all address the same monotheistic God. The temptation to pray for out men and women in combat is the same, whether we are Iraqi or American. The temptation to fear for them and seek answers to the violence is the same whether we believe in God or not. So both sides are praying to the same God to protect both sides. And some of us are just praying, kind of like hedging our bets.

I've always found the phrase "believe in God" a little hard to understand, anyway. My husband says he doesn't believe, and yet he's willing to make a deal with this God he doesn't believe in for peace. He says Kaddish (the mourning prayer) for his parents, even though I have to say it, because he doesn't know the Hebrew. He celebrates the High Holy days by lighting candles and saying Kidush, which he also doesn't know in Hebrew. I "believe in God," but have grown old with such an eclectic religious background that I shutter at the thought that anyone feels that he/she "knows" what God wants, whether and how God exists. That is such audacity. We still don't know what black holes in space are. And they're lots more tangible than God.

I remember the absurdity of it all in the late 1950s when I was teaching at Newcomb College. Some arrogant and ill-bred new English instructor told all the freshman in my French class that they were "stupid" if they believed in God. We were reading Sartre's Les Jeux Sont Faits. Sartre's existentialism touched on many of the issues of belief in God, and so these young students came to me to assure them that they were not stupid. We spent the rest of that semester speaking about accountability for ourselves and proof of what we cannot know.

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African Traditional Religion Webpage:

• POPES SPEAK ON AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AND CULTURAL VALUES

• AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN CHURCH DOCUMENTS by Paul Bekye

• PASTORAL ATTENTION TO AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION

• ISLAM'S RESPONSE TO AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN NIGERIA

• Islam and African Traditional Religion

• TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN AFRICA: THE VODUN PHENOMENON IN BENIN By Barthélemy ZINZINDOHOUE

The Religion In Africa and Cuba: How Different Are They Really? Yoruba and Orisha - key names.

La Santeria

What is La Santeria

The Story of Traditional Religions BBC.

Sacred Texts of Africa Good coverage.

African Traditional Religions Includes some reference to Vodun, Voodoo, Ju Ju.

Africa: Religious Studies