The Christians adopted the Jews' God but additionally assigned him a triple nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three quarters of a millennium later the Muslims gave their Allah a more exclusive exclusive: There is no other God!
Watch out: Johnny admits that there might be some sort of "divine" "principle" in existence, then the Creationist claps his hand over Johnny's mouth and declares that Johnny has accepted some Byzantine creed hook-line-and-sinker.
But it's worse: the ambiguities between "religion" and "atheism," already making a near infinite number of fudges, comes in two radically different party systems: authoritarian and "protestant." That too is complicated: and I'm trying to make less fudge, not more. And I see other treacheries ready to sink any boat trying to navigate the shoals of fudge. Since 1970
has hailed the great Roman Catholic priest, Monseigneur Ivan Illich, as the great "Protestant" among Christians, yet I have no awareness of having clarified anything (except once to a fellow Mutualist Anarchist, opening his eyes with an Illich metaphor) amid the seas of fudge. (My son instantly got my clarification as wrong as it's possible to get anything: but that was a predetermined snarl if ever there was one.)My Magic section of Knatz.com's Society section argues that man's basic hope for his relationship with his environment is magical, not rational. We don't want to wait for spring; we want to make spring magically appear. Farmers don't want to wait for rain, they want ... etc. Religion is how we delude ourselves that we are magicians in command of magic. Thousands of years ago the average Joe realized that he, Joe, couldn't make it rain, but he hasn't yet learned that neither can the shaman, neither can the priest, neither can the minister, neither can the congressman, neither can the President: neither can God: and you don't need magic: just wait for the rain, and accept your death if it doesn't come (or have fewer children, need less water) ...
In the Jews' religion, a magical entity created a magical existence and that magical God loves the sad-sack Jews. Everything belongs to God, and God intends to give everything, in time, to the Jews, taking it from whichever Egyptians, Phoenicians ... Canaanites ... he has to.
In the Christians' religion a similar God hates the Jews but loves the Christians in their place: and once the Christians have stolen everything from the Indians, and the niggers, and the Mexicans ... well then ... But God has no need to give anything to the whites; they just take it themselves.
Still: there's a radically different attitude toward authority between the left wing and the right wing of authoritarian credulity. The Catholic Christian is taught, by a bunch of priests, by a bunch of nuns, that every sinning-little-boy-with-a-dirty-mind (and every sinning-little-girl-with-a-dirty-mind too) can only be saved by the direct intervention of the great magical Holy Catholic Church.
In other words: once upon a time, the magical human living in a magical universe in which he wanted spring, or rain, was magician adequate to get the spring, or the rain. But with the Fall, our magic is no good: we need the true professional magic of the true professional priest: and his priesthood: we need a true magical Church!
The Church kept no records (that we have access to) of how many priests came along between the First Century AD and the Fourteenth Century AD and said, You don't need us professionals, do your own magic. We know of none. That does not mean that there were none. We do know though that in the Fourteenth Century AD John Wicliff tried to translate the Church's Latin Bible into the common English of England. That was a stepped-on-hornets'-nest that we do have records of. The Church squashed Wicliff. But a bit latter the Church failed to squash Martin Luther. Luther got a few German princes on his side, the princes none too happy about how much power the sacred magicians had, and so Luther escaped the Pope's hit men, the Bible did get translated: into German, and into English: and "Christianity" divided: again.
First you had your Christian east and your Christian west: Byzantium and Rome. The east split between Greek and Cyrillic. The west split between Roman and non-Roman. And the non-Roman split between Anglican and Protestant.
Anyway, simplifying, unavoidably, "Protestant," for me, here in this writing, pk online, means "no-middle-man": or at least fewer middle men. With the Church, you had a middle man: you didn't pray to God (for spring, for rain ... for a pony), you prayed to Frere John, and Frere John prayed for you to the Divine Father: or, you prayed to Sister Berthe: and Sister Berthe prayed to the Holy Mother, and the Holy Mother prayed to the Divine Father.
Ivan Illich was a Roman Catholic priest, but he wanted politics to be secular. He wanted each of us to be able to find what we wanted without having to go through a priest: and that includes especially Not Having To Go Through a Secular Priest: no sacred middle men; no secular middle men either: no doctor, no lawyer, no teacher, no bureaucrat! (That does not mean that Illich would forbid you to go to a doctor or a lawyer: no, he's against coercion either way. But principally he's against the magicians creating artificial needs for magicians.)
I was "born" a Protestant, Illich became a Catholic priest. This Protestant is still not used to the idea that I became associated with a Catholic. (Illich may not have been at all comfortable with being associated with someone conspicuously non-Catholic.) I warn any newcomers against believing that I speak for Illich in all things. Don't confuse my history of religion with his. I don't doubt that he would agree with me on many a particular. Unfortunately he and I never got much of a chance to discuss anything.
My secular metaphors come basically from him, as does this particular metaphor of Protestantism.
I am in 100% agreement with Illich on "deschooling": in being against compulsory rituals whether the ritual is claimed to be sacred or secular. I have extended some of Illich's arguments in the thirty-nine years since 1970, and believe that he would in large agree with my expansions. I have no expectation that we would agree on God, or on Christianity. Don't blame him for my theology, or for my philosophy.
Of great importance though: I recognized him as "divinely" inspired. I feel sure that he recognized me as similarly inspired.
On meeting him at his CIDOC in Cuernavaca, I put my arms around him, but felt I wasn't lifting and whirling a human body but rather a bolt of pure almost-levitating energy. I don't know what he felt. We never really did get to talk. But I hope he too felt something not exactly average.
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