Church Liquefaction

In the Shorter Oxford the word means either the action or process of liquefying , the state of being liquefied -- or can mean “a melting of the soul by religious ardour”. I didn’t know that. We didn’t have a lot of liquefaction in my parishes.

One of the NZ Herald’s better writers is Tapu Misa. An articulate, intelligent and generous-minded Samoan woman and mother, Tapu recently became a committed Christian. She does mention this from time to time, but always in a quiet and humble spirit. This differs from another of the Herald’s writers, Garth George, who seems unable to mention his Christian allegiance without one way or another implying lofty moral and spiritual ground. Tapu’s latest article is about religious nutters and her first paragraph reads: I knew I'd struggle with the injunction to love my enemies when I first became a Christian. I just didn't expect so many of them would turn out to be other Christians.

Religious nutters are rising to the surface everywhere, drawn by what seems to them to be the apocalyptic nature of world events, and yesterday I saw someone else refer to this phenomenon as Church Liquefaction, which of course it is. Traumatic events make it ooze through the surface where it lies noxious and entirely unhelpful. These people tend to read books from the American religious right, full of signs and wonders, neurotic and unhinged.

We have our share of ignorant haters here in NZ as well, writes Tapu Misa. In the wake of the Christchurch earthquake an equally deranged group declared that the disaster was God's punishment for hosting "the Lesbian and Poof Week" in Queenstown, among other unpardonable sins. “The Christchurch earthquake was a warning," these people said. "God has decided to clean out NZ of its wickedness, perversion, prostitution, bullying, gangs, drugs, violence, paedophilia and of its witchcraft and black magic."

Well this is when we need to speak up. It is when these sad people start implying, or openly stating, that earthquakes, tsunami, nuclear accidents, with the death and injury, dislocation and terror of many thousands, are the work of a vengeful god enraged at our sin… that it is necessary to say their god doesn’t exist. These people are telling us more about themselves than anything else, their insecurity, their need for order and reassurance and authority. Their need to see others punished. God didn’t do the earthquake. God doesn’t sit on high hurling thunderbolts at us.

But on the broader plane, I still find myself amazed and in despair at the silly naïve assumptions about God held by so many decent people in our churches. Where was God in the earthquake? Everywhere. God neither made nor stopped the tsunami. Life is hazardous, and sometimes it is fearsomely, desperately so. If anyone has the expectation that religious faith somehow confers immunity from pain and suffering, they are out of luck. It doesn’t, never did, and that is not its purpose.