The Crowd, the Critic, and the Muse by M. Gungor

Author:M. Gungor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2012-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

I do want everyone to feel comfortable. That’s why I’d like to talk to you about Jesus.

—Jim Gaffigan, comic

“Religion” isn’t one of the most popular words right now. There are too many bad associations with it—corrupt priests, charlatans on late night Christian television, closed-minded bigotry, holy wars, and so on. Even within religious circles, people try to avoid the word. In an attempt to circumvent it, some might describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Others tout how they don’t have a religion, just a “relationship with God.”

There is a common pejorative and perhaps oversimplified assumption that all religion is nothing but dead rote rooted in superstition or mindless belief in some sort of unquestionable authority. But like art, religion is not something easily definable. The lines that divide words like religion, spirituality, faith, or philosophy can get blurry because these disciplines are often trying to answer the same questions. Why are we here? Does life have any meaning? Is there such a thing as good or evil? And whether or not we consider ourselves religious, we all have fundamental beliefs about the nature of the universe—some sort of framework of approaching the world around us.

Religious belief is kind of like sexual orientation—everyone has it. Even not having a preference is a preference in itself.

The statement “There is no God” is every bit as much of a religious statement as ‘There is a God.” All of us have religious beliefs and non-beliefs. Even with the increasing suspicions and doubts about organized religion in our culture, most people still claim to adhere to a certain religious system.

According to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 78.4% of Americans identify themselves as “Christian.”

All of the “other” faiths, such as Judaism, Buddhism and Islam, make up only about 4.7 percent of the U.S. population.

Only 1.6% identify themselves as Atheists. 2.4% label themselves as Agnostic. 12.1% believe “nothing in particular.”

Most of us profess some sort of faith, but even the 12.1% who profess to believe “nothing in particular” are adhering to a belief system of sorts. They share a belief with millions of other people that no system or religious doctrine that they have come across is worth believing. It is a belief in skepticism.

Belief is inevitable, and what we believe about the world has profound effects on how we create in that world.

Of all the roots discussed in the book thus far, this one is particularly important to me personally. My religious beliefs have always had an overt and direct influence on my music. In the conservative environment in which I was raised, the lines for acceptable art had been clearly laid out. I was led to believe that if I wanted my art to be pleasing to God, it needed to fit into a set of narrow and utilitarian boxes.

Good art was that which preached a perceived Christian message or had practical use in a worship service. Art had no value in itself. There was no room in my belief system for experimenting or pushing creative boundaries.

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