Religious freedom
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We have always been on the side of political freedom even for our political enemies. Likewise while being anti-religion we have never supported restrictions on any freedom to worship.
A draft law is before the Danish parliament which will require all sermons to be translated and submitted to the state. It is ostensibly to identify radical Islamist imams in the mosques.
Always at the forefront of the index against censorship and free speech, Denmark’s proposed legislation on religious sermons has come under criticism by even the C of E. A range of European churches have also voiced their concerns, including the Evangelical Lutheran church in Denmark, the Lutheran World Federation, the Roman Catholic Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, and the Conference of European Churches. But potentially also no more Latin liturgies, no more chanting at Buddhist temples…
We only recently avoided here the prohibition of incense. I love incense and am aware that it was action by the Catholic clergy that overthrew the proposed inclusion of incense under a ban on burning substances that give a feeling of well-being as “mind-changing”!!!
We who have memorials of loved ones and prefer natural de-odorizing over synthetic could now be having our doors smashed in for burning incense! Can’t one be godless without roundhead denial of lovely things? I also love the Latin Mass and the Greek Liturgy without being a Christian! Indeed, the ones who keep on about Jesus (the Bible-thumpers) hate ritual, incense, and all those lovely age-old things that I love.Religious practitioners have a long experience of having to go underground. Maybe we’ll see a return to priest’s holes and pursuivants.
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Until you’ve sampled the most deliciously fragrant incense of the Greek churches, you haven’t lived. And I won’t let socialism take that pleasure away, nor the pleasure of medieval music, Greek and Roman chant, oil lamps, medieval art and architecture. Because if socialism wished to deny me it, it wouldn’t be socialism, but Maoism. The same goes for the temples, incense and music of Old Japan, Tibet, etc.
Let dress too return to the varied and the colourful.
You’re lucky, comrade, as the nearest church to Head Ofice is one of those. Next time are up for a meeting you can go there while the rest of us go on to the Manor Arms pub a few hundred yards down the same street. Smoking is not allowed there, so it will be better for our health:
And there’s a transvestite bar just round the corrner.
A draft law is before the Danish parliament which will require all sermons to be translated and submitted to the state. It is ostensibly to identify radical Islamist imams in the mosques
—-Curiously, the C of E (and others religious leaders) would prefer the stance taken by China? I don’t hear the C of E (or other religious denominations)speaking out against China in locking up 1.5 million Uighurs in prison camps?
Data leak reveals how China ‘brainwashes’ Uighurs in prison camps https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-50511063
The Uighurs have female imams too.
(See Michael Wood’s China series).A voluntary detention centre is an oxymoron!
Anyway, do we believe socialist revolution will depend on everyone becoming Marxist materialists? If so, everyone will have to study and read loads of books. Or, there’s the only possible alternative: that the mass demand for revolution will include all sorts of people, all sorts of philosophical views and the religious too – their common unifying factor being the will to make a better society.
If we are placing our hope on a mass understanding of historical materialism, then it is we who had best get praying!
Why, ALB? We have always said if people want to practise religion in socialism, they can. The need for idealist belief will gradually fade, but I dare say people will still want to mark the lives of their dead and the seasons of the year with colour and fragrance. I’ll still want my Yuletide tree, regardless of roundhead distaste. If, like the evangelicals, you want to go without, then please yourself.
Engels in his book, The Conditions of the Working class in England written in 1845.
Religion played a big part in the wretched existence of the working class. Working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week. With one day off, gods day, Sunday. When they would wear their best clothes for church. When in church they were promised from the pulpit a better afterlife.
William Morris loved medieval art, dress and churches. His socialism has a place for them, and so does mine.
Of course, to get socialism, a majority won’t have to have read the Theses on Feuerbach or Anti-Dühring. They just need to be secular in practice and not subscribe to the sentiment in the favourite christian hymn “I am weak but thou art strong” or prostrate themselves while chanting “god is greater” in Arabic. Instead they will be thinking and maybe singing “We are strong and thou art irrelevant (if thou existest)”
I think you are underestimating the extent to which capitalism is and will continue to secularise people. Of course there is likely to be a minority practising historical organised religions, some of whose members might even want socialism.
Pity you missed this talk and discussion on Discord on 18 December:
“Celebrations and Socialism
Speaker: Andy Thomas.
Why do humans celebrate things? Is it a natural impulse or manufactured by class societies? How are celebrations linked to social/economic systems (tribal, feudal, capitalist)? How do religious ceremonies support class-divided social relations? What might we choose to celebrate in a socialist society, for example, if we are involved in decisions about food and the natural environment will we celebrate ‘ancient’ change of seasons?”I am sure it will be available on our website under Audio-Visual in due course.
ps.If you send me a photo of your christmas tree I’ll send you one of mine.
And it is capitalism, ALB, that imposes a grim and bleak uniformity.
We can esteem the beautiful in our past whilst loathing the horror. We can love church music, art, and architecture, and esteem the workers and artists involved, and at the same time reject the dogmas and the subordination of the past.
Since when have we been Bolsheviks?
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