Opinion: This religious season reminds us of faith's liberating promise Listen to article
Members of the Washington National Cathedral Altar Guild members arrange flowers in preparation for virtual Easter worship services in April 2021. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Opinion by E.J. Dionne Jr. Columnist April 17 at 3:00 pm GMT+03:00
The proximity of Passover, Easter and Ramadan on this year's calendar is a reminder that religion can set loose profoundly liberating human impulses. That all three are celebrated in our country speaks to the fruitful interaction between a tradition of immigration and a commitment to religious freedom. Many who regard theism as a backward-looking social force might usefully consider how each of these holidays contains the seeds of rebellion. Thinking about religion's progressive side is especially important in light of the single most striking development in the American religious landscape over the past two decades: the rise of the "nones," those who decline to associate with any organized religion. A large share of Americans are moving away from faith altogether, because they associate it almost entirely with the political right or
far right. This season's holidays, perhaps Passover most of all, suggest the problem with stereotyping faith in this way. As philosopher Michael Walzer argues, the Exodus story transformed deliverance from oppression into "a central theme in western thought." Its message is that the "door of hope" always remains open. The Exodus, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared, is "something of the story of every people struggling for freedom ...the first story of man's explicit quest for freedom." Easter honors a savior whose ministry was rooted in the social ferment of a moment when the spiritual was necessarily political. "To the poor he proclaimed
the good news of salvation," the Catholicliturgy tells us, "to prisoners, freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy." The biblical scholar Marcus Borg has argued that the title the Gospel writer Luke uses for Jesus, "Son of God," was a challenge to the rule of Caesar Augustus, who took that designation for himself.