Author: Nameless Heathen

What’s the deal with religous conservatives and other people’s bodies? There’s an incredibly long history of being busybodies. Even married couples attempting to practice birth control faced outrageous laws starting in 1873 when the Comstock Act made shipping birth control illegal. Twenty Six states had laws aginst birth control until 1972. Sodomy laws were rampant until very recently. Texas still has (and actively enforces) laws against sex toys. Most religous conservatives are happy to overrule a womans control of her body from the moment the ovum is fertilized. When the conservatives say there’s no right to privacy in the constitution, or that judges shouldn’t legislate from the bench, what they are really saying is that they want back complete control of other people’s bodies. If that isn’t repressive big government, what could be?

I’m not sure why this affected me so, but my last big religous reaction followed from my discovery of the Bach Cantatas (check out this incredible Bach boxed set ) . These cantatas are beautiful. I was overwhelmed, awe struck, almost teary eyed. So I started to search around the net to read about them. And in just a few moments this translation of a libretto caught my eye.

BWV 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein
Ah God, from heaven look on us
And grant us yet thy mercy!
How few are found thy saints to be,
Forsaken are we wretches;
Thy word is not upheld as true,
And faith is also now quite dead
Among all mankind’s children.

They teach a vain and false deceit
Which is to God and all his truth opposed;
And what the willful mind conceiveth,
—O sorrow which the church so sorely vexeth—
That must usurp the Bible’s place.
The one now chooseth this, the other that,
And reason’s foolishness is their full scope.
They are just like the tombs of dead men,
Which, though they may be outward fair,
Mere stench and mould contain within them
And all uncleanness show when opened

God, blot out all teachings
Which thy word pervert now!
Check, indeed, all heresy
And all the rabble spirits;
For they speak out free of dread
Gainst him who seeks to rule us!

I realize that Bach didn’t write those words. His Librettist didn’t really either. He was just riffing on Martin Luther’s writings. But regardless, it shows me that we’ve made almost no progress since 1724 (except Lutherans being a little less angry). It’s just as safe now as then to claim those outside of any religion are naturally evil. Somehow we’ve allowed morality to be conflated with religion and kept it that way for centuries. I wonder if that conflation is the product of monotheism? If we had a panoply of gods would we cut a little slack for the non-believers? I’ve heard fundamentalists talk about there being no morality except what is written in the bible. So even thoughtful, kind, peaceful unbelieving people are by definition immoral and cruel and intolerant jerks are not.

I’ve spent some time looking, and I can’t figure out when this happened. I’d guess the Middle Ages. Surely there was a concept of good and evil before the Bible, before the old testament. I imagine that evil behavior was clearly recognized, at least by the people on who it was perpetrated. Like beauty, we all believe we can recognize evil.

I’m pretty sure that those with the opportunity to observe Nero, Caligula and Caracalla had some way to categorize their behavior whether they’d heard of Jesus or not.