Would the world be better off without so much religion?

"Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too..."
-- JOHN LENNON, 1971

I was 21 when I first heard John Lennon's most famous song.

Whether it was my own naivete or simply an inability at that age to differentiate between a belief in God and a belief in religion, I didn't much care for the song.

No countries?

No heaven or hell?

It all seemed sort of silly to me, but the song and its meaning have been growing on me for the last 44 years.

In 1971, religion still sort of made sense. Radical Islam hadn't reared its ugly head outside some parts of the Middle East, the most radical Jews weren't running things in Israel and televangelists like Jim and Tammy, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were mostly still operating on the local level.


The religion that mattered most in middle-class America was mainstream Protestantism -- Methodists and Presbyterians. Baptists were big, but only in the part of the country known as the Bible Belt.




But things started changing in the world, and an awful lot of religions didn't handle change particularly well. When women decided they didn't want to remain at home in traditional roles, Muslims weren't the only ones who complained.

Right-wing Christians tried to keep women out of the workplace, and don't even ask how they reacted to the Sexual Revolution and equal rights for gays and lesbians.

More and more, religion seemed to be about keeping people in line and telling them all the things they couldn't or shouldn't be doing. Conservative Christians started putting all sorts of emphasis on the Old Testament, picking and choosing from the various prohibitions in Leviticus.

In fact, it was 35-40 years ago that a lot of people in different religions started acting out. Iran, which had been one of the most secular and modern Islamic countries, went back in time in 1978 when the Shah abdicated and the Ayatollah Khomeini took over.

Beginning with the 1980 election, conservative Christians in this country got involved through Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. As gays and lesbians began standing up for their own rights, fringe Christian groups started attacking them.



Of course, even when people get what they want, it isn't always what they imagined. Giving one religion greater access to the marketplace means giving them all access. Posting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse also opens things up to Scientologists, Wiccans, Satanists and a few guys in Santa Barbara who worship a giant rutabaga.

Maybe it's time we took another look at the First Amendment.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."

Maybe it's time that we just ignore religion, at least from a legal standpoint. Maybe we ought to tell people that they're free to get together and worship, but we're no longer going to give tax deductions for deductions and we're not going to consider church-owned property tax exempt either.

Don't get me wrong. What I'm suggesting has nothing to do with Atheism or even with God. My own three axioms for a successful life are loving God, loving your neighbor as yourself and letting go of past regrets.

I don't believe in a long list of "thou shalt nots," and I don't agree with people who say we ought to be "God fearing." That's a very primitive way of looking at religion.

It's keeping people in line, not helping them grow and be happy.

I don't think you can go too far wrong listening to what the Dalai Lama has to say.

It shouldn't be about religion.

It should definitely be about kindness and compassion.

That's probably a pretty good summary of that John Lennon was trying to imagine.