I’m not a religious person. Or I am, depending on how you look at it. Actually, morality is important to me, but I don’t feel very much patience for most religious institutions anymore. They don’t seem to concern themselves very much with things that matter. When people look back on this time, what will they think were the great moral questions of the age? I suspect that it won’t be the ones that religious authorities tend to focus on – you know, the ones having to do with sex. Of course people are fascinated by sex, which is understandable, and the focus on “sexual morality” that preoccupies the Roman Catholic authorities as well as the “religious right” likely reflects a certain prurient interest. But sexuality is just one element of human existence in which people choose to (or not to) treat themselves, other people, and creation as more than mere things to be exploited. There are so many ways in which people can be degraded and oppressed that don’t have to do with sex, but opposing them too forcefully can offend powerful interests. For instance, I heard yesterday of a mining project in Alberta that so contaminates the water table that one can set the water on fire for 30 seconds at a time. Consider the implications of this, if this is true. People are being poisoned so that companies can profit. Isn’t that highly immoral when you think about it? Yet this would just be an extreme example of what happens all the time.

Many churches say the right things about peace, social justice and the environment, but at the level of a murmur. Not for them the rantings of the Hebrew prophets who decried the injustices of their times. But piously wishing for peace and justice doesn’t accomplish much.