Not the one

On PBS's Bill Moyers Journal last night, we watched an update for adults of "It's A Small World" - a prize-winning documentary by a Peter Bisanz about how all religions say the same nice humanist things called "Beyond Our Differences." Many are the famous talking heads, from Desmond Tutu to Karen Armstrong to Deepak Chopra, and ending inevitably with the Dalai Lama. All the usual topics are covered, Gandhi and MLK, South Africa and Israel/Palestine, with women's rights in Afghanistan thrown in for somewhat fanciful good measure. To a vaguely uplifting world music soundtrack, stock scenes of colorful religious folk at their prayers cycle by in a profusion and at a pace worthy of an ad for a really big, really diversified multinational corporation. Occasionally words appear on the screen: one-liners from world religions (too many from Islam, protesting too much) assuring us that every religion recommends peace, love, care for the poor and - the grand predictable finale - the golden rule. I gather the original name for the documentary was "ONE," and that it was developed with the assistance of the World Economic Forum. (This photo is from its Facebook page.)

I was appalled. Is there anything new in this? Is there anything unmisleadingly true? It would be a great inspirational film for the UN and for human rights groups around the world, but what's religion got to do with it? Interfaith groups have heard and seen all of this a thousand times. Perhaps Peter Bisanz grew up in a fundamentalist household and didn't know that many religious folks are just, well, folks - many of them generous and some of them heroes of goodness. But are they good because of religion, or because they're folks? I was ready to pull a Christopher Hitchens, and say that the basically humanistic values being culled here were independent of religion and might even be better freed from religion.

My mother asked: what harm can such a film do? Well, this infomercial might provide cover for less humanistically-inclined forms of religion - but I'll leave that argument to Hitchens. Is it because I'm jaded by my study of religion that I suspect the golden rule interpretation of religion of being a potential fundamentalism of its own (Enlightenment advocate Armstrong: "Inherent in religion 'at its best' is a commitment to doing good in the world") that won't just give a sense of martyred righteousness to "religion 'at its worst'," but misses the point (the points) of the religious traditions in question? Global kindness, compassion, tolerance and charity are lovely things (also for multinationals and their friends), but might we be confusing means with ends here?

I'm no opponent of tolerance and love, of course. I've often thought that what's of value in religions is obscured by the merely human desire to be right and superior: I don't need to be able to imagine hell (for you), to be able to imagine heaven (for me). So I'm cheered by the Pew study results, represented in today's Times by Charles Blow (left: click on it to see it larger), according to which most Americans think most of their fellow Americans are going to heaven, regardless of their religion. Condemning others to damnation has never seemed to me as important to religion as my secular students suppose, but it is a persistent and baleful feature of it - and it won't just go away if you pretend it isn't there. If democratic pluralism, José Casanova's "global denominationalism" or even a World Economic Forum-blessed ecumenism can weaken this tendency, I'll say amen. But you'll need to provide a more balanced account of religion before I buy it - a cost/benefit analysis! And cost/benefit not just in worldly terms...?