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God Laughs & Plays
Churchless Sermons in Response to the
Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right
by David James Duncan
Triad Books, 2006. Xxvii plus 230 pages.
Reading about religion and society can be tedious, infuriating, and comical. Some writers, convinced that “it’s my way or the highway,” elicit a full range of reactions. There is nothing more annoying than certainty in a world in which one might drop dead from causes internal or external at any moment. There is nothing more maddening than dogmatism based on questionable readings of ancient texts written in now nearly-dead languages. There is nothing more tragically comical than listening to churchmen twist themselves into pretzels to justify immoral “moral stances” or to “discover” the Christian message in some vapid pop song, like Karl Rahner claiming “anonymous Christianity” for good people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes I just get damn tired of reading about religion.
But not when David James Duncan is doing the writing.
Duncan, one of America’s best writers, has written God Laughs & Plays, a book that is likely the most important book on religion this year, perhaps this decade. Responding to what he calls “the preachments of the fundamentalist right,” Duncan, with passion, compassion, and a powerful intellect that is characterized by grace and humor, takes on the dehumanizing fundamentalisms that plague our world, threaten it with wholesale destruction, and give insult to the very notion of God.
Duncan has a pedigree that gives him ample credibility. “I was born a chosen person,” he begins, into a family of Seventh-day Adventists, “an Apocalypse-preaching, Saturday-worshiping fundamentalist sect.” He walked away from the church at the earliest opportunity, as a teenager, but Duncan had an abiding sense of the spirit.
Intense spiritual feelings were frequent visitors during my boyhood, but they did not come from churchgoing or from bargaining with God through prayer. The connection I felt to the Creator came, unmediated, from Creation itself.
Along with developing a strong sense of “the Presence of God,” Duncan has engaged in “three decades of intimacy with the world’s greatest Wisdom texts.” While he is not associated with any particular religion, Duncan is hardly a secularist. His knowledge of world scriptures and the personages and sages of various traditions easily exceeds that of the average self-identified denominationalist as well as some of their most famous and infamous leaders.
Having been raised in a fundamentalist household, Duncan does not yield to the temptation of negativity and venom toward fundamentalism that many on the sociopolitical left are unable to resist. He has written with great love and affection of his grandmother and mother, the “strong women” who raised him in Adventism and in some way gave him gifts of character that allowed him to grow into the man, artist, and critic he has become. Duncan thus speaks with authority when he says:
Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews are armed, so they each believe, with the One True Book. But they are four different books, and the four faiths are also each armed with nuclear weapons. No form of fundamentalism from the Ayatollahs’ to John Paul II’s can defuse this fatal impasse, because every fundamentalism believes it owns the One Book, One God, and sole faith. At the same time, no secular philosophy addresses the fact that we’re born alone and die alone, and naturally seek the solace of divine truth amid our mortal suffering. Though the faith traditions offer this solace, I would argue that they are able to do so only quietly, and only humbly—and the recent fusion of fundamentalism and politics is destroying this quiet humility. This is why I feel that the great religious traditions stand in need not of a secular turning away, but of a compassion rebellion against the “certainties” of cocksure zealots claiming to own each tradition. The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that “the sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muhammadan, and the Jew.” I have seen this unity with my eyes, heard it with my ears, felt it with all my being. Let those who haven’t grumble, if they so choose. The world’s major faiths are not identical, but they are alike enough in ultimate aim that those striving to love, emulate, and honor Jesus, Muhammad, Rama, Shakyamuni, and Abraham have, in many times and places, proven themselves able to live side by side in peace.
The project of God Laughs & Plays (the title is from a quote by Meister Eckhart) is to explore the unity that Duncan claims to have seen, heard, and felt. And explore it he does, in the exuberant and eclectic fashion that readers of Duncan’s novels, stories, and essays have come to expect of him. Duncan ranges far and wide, utilizing personal experience from childhood to the present; fly-fishing and environmental activism; his readings of world scriptures; and the teachings of the many masters he has discovered in his lifelong mystical journey with God, humans, and nature. Essays such as “What Fundamentalists Need for Their Salvation,” “When Compassion Becomes Dissent,” and the stunning “Assailed” should be required reading for anyone interested in the state of religion today—and that should include every citizen who intends to form an opinion or cast a vote in an election anytime soon. All of the pieces are filled with eye-opening gems of insight that make God Laughs & Plays a most informative and entertaining read.
But reading and enjoying are not enough. Those of us who do not wish to see the world overtaken by the fundamentalism of any religious tradition will do well to hear Duncan’s words as a call to action, action that begins with taking a stand in favor God’s creation and the multiplicity of God’s self-expression in the universe. Duncan himself makes liars out of those religionists who believe that spirituality without commitment to a particular religion (“spiritual but not religious”) is a
low-grade substitute for the adherence demonstrated by true believers, and that only the latter are capable of participating in the in-breaking of the kingdom of God. God Laughs & Plays will make you think and laugh, it will upset you, it will make you say “A-ha!” dozens of times, and it will restore your faith in the idea of faith in a world in which too many of the “faithful” are rabid participants in the tearing down of the world and hearts and minds that God has given. This book can help turn the tide.
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