By Heatscore

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we should control our thoughts.
-Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Anarchists, Marxists, alternative-economists, social engineers and other progressive philosophers have long pontificated on the possible forms that post-revolutionary societies might assume. From worker-managed, technology-driven futuristic utopias to close-knit tribalistic communities living in a harmonic balance with the earth, these visions have competed in capturing the imagination of those concerned with the nuts and bolts of human emancipation. Although these proposed future societies differ on many matters of substance, most comprehensive social programs generally contain the dissolution of organized religion, owing to the authoritarian social stratification it has historically fostered and developed.

But though the abolition of religion is generally agreed upon as a hallmark of any post-revolutionary society, there is little honest discussion of how this may occur; the campaign against religion is generally talked about as a footnote in the larger struggle against the modern capitalist system. In the opinion of this author, this dangerously short-sighted omission represents the largest and most obvious flaw in any current revolutionary program.

While we have grown used to viewing capitalism as the primary source of domination and exploitation on this planet, we forget that it is, in fact, religion that has historically played this role. A society whose dominant paradigm is based on greed and competition over limited resources necessarily contains the seeds of its own destruction. Make no mistake… the neoliberal capitalist model, upon which our consumerist lifestyles and grossly bloated living standards depend - this way of life is most certainly doomed. The economic and social bonds which bind us together are beginning to fray and will eventually snap, culminating in a breakdown of government services, international trade, energy grids, transportation networks, and the industrial agriculture currently required to sustain the world’s population. As this happens, societies will be forced to reorganize themselves along smaller, more sustainable cooperative regional communities or risk tearing themselves apart in a cannibalistic scramble over dwindling resources.

It is amidst this catastrophic backdrop that religion will likely rise to reclaim its role as the primary enemy of human freedom, and the most reliable bulwark of class exploitation. This scenario will necessarily play out differently in different parts of the world, as particular geographical and cultural factors will help shape local responses to the global collapse. While the potential for violent religious populism lurks in any nation with entrenched religious institutions faced with a breakdown of public services (Somalia, Iraq and the Gaza Strip offer recent examples), nowhere in the developed world will the threat be more pronounced than in the United States.

The inevitable social unrest, famine and strife that will accompany the implosion of American capitalist society will be interpreted by many as a sign of “end times,” thereby fueling a massive revival of religious ignorance on a scale not witnessed since the European Dark Ages. Dissenters will be scapegoated as heretics, and scientists and engineers blamed for building a decadent society that provoked the wrath of an angry God. The highly centralized and technologically-dependent global hegemon of today will collapse under its own weight, splintering into a resurrected feudalism managed by religious autocrats and maintained through a systemic campaign of fear mongering, superstition and exclusionary violence.

This is a vision of the future we are spiraling towards, if the very real threats posed by organized religion are not dealt with in time. And time is not on our side.

Unfortunately, while there has been excellent analysis provided on the existential threat to “democracy” posed by the American Christian Right by authors such as Michael Weinstein, Chris Hedges and Naomi Wolf, there is very little written about how to counteract the movement’s dangerous rise. Suggestions put forth by secular progressives, when they do appear, tend to emphasize strengthening “democratic values” - such as the separation of church and state and respect for religious plurality - and the importance of making effective use of national court systems.

But these supposed defenses rely on the continued functioning of liberal democracy (which will not survive the coming crash), and do not address the root of the problem we face.

Religion’s fundamental power lies in the unquestioning faith of its adherents, which is strengthened by mutually reinforcing historical, cultural, psychological and social factors. Any serious confrontation of religion must take these factors into account, and be prepared to meet them head on in the battlefield of ideas. That is where traditional atheism fails; it ignores the auxiliary functions that religion serves at its own peril. What is needed is a more comprehensive approach. This is where meme warfare comes in.

The term meme was first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, to describe “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” Author Richard Brodie expanded on this definition in his 1996 book, Virus of the Mind, identifying a meme as “a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds.”
Essentially, memes are ideas that propagate themselves in a manner similar to genes - that is, through the process of natural selection. Those ideas which are able to adapt to their environments tend to thrive, while those which do not tend to die off. In order to propagate effectively, a meme must be able to either build upon, or successfully challenge the existing memes which constitute a society’s collective psychological makeup. The more successful a meme, the more embedded it becomes into our collective belief structure, and the less it is challenged. The idea that murder is wrong, for instance, is an example of a successful meme, as evidenced by its fairly universal acceptance among the world’s population. Religions are collections of successful memes, codified within self-perpetuating institutions (such as the family, and the Church).
What is needed is a new meme, meticulously designed with the sole purpose of forever ending religion. It should recognize and replicate those characteristics which have allowed religion to thrive, yet avoid those negative characteristics which make religion a tool for social domination; it must provide its proponents with an (ever expanding) understanding of our role in the universe, a set of shared cultural traditions, a sense of community and a set of moral teachings to pass down to further generations. What is needed is, in effect, an anti-religion: a non-deistic, unifying philosophy that mirrors the values we hope to see projected in any future utopian society. We desperately need to collectively transcend the harmful illusions that have historically kept us subjugated to a ruling class. Until the human race emancipates itself - finally, and forever - from the mental shackles of religion, the utopian visions of our dreams will never become a reality.

By Darius Mirshahi

How come as soon as protesters do some minor property destruction, everyone is appalled, but when corporations rape and pillage the planet they say nothing? How come it is more violent to break a window than to kidnap someone from their community and hold them in a jail cell? Those who value corporate property over human and animal life are sick sociopaths in need of psychological help.

Our voices are all finite, let us use them to denounce the real perpetrators of violence: the state and its corporate masters. The state murders people around the world, imprisons people, funds arms corporations, arms gangs of police to impose its will through force, and protects private property at the expense of everyone and every¬thing on this planet.

Where is the outrage about the violence of climate change that oil and coal companies are responsible for? Where is the outrage over the ongoing genocide and colonization that Canada and “The Bay” are responsible for? Where is the outrage over the brutal domestication and murders of animals for our food, clothing, and products? Where is the outrage about the daily police violence in our communities?

This past weekend thousands of social justice activists, Indigenous people, environmentalists, and anarchists converged on Vancouver to disrupt the beginning of the 2010 Winter Olympics. They did this because the 2010 Olympics have led to further colonization of indigenous lands, environmental destruction, massive public debt, increased homelessness, increased militarization and nationalism, and have given corporations more power.

As part of this convergence hundreds of anarchists organized a “Heart Attack” march on the opening day of the games. Although this demonstration was much smaller than several Anti-Olympics protests, it has received the broadest coverage. Footage from this protest was front page news and was picked up by media outlets worldwide. The images of black bloc anarchists blocking roads and smashing the windows of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Olympic department store have led to serious debates about who these anarchists are, why they acted the way they did, and the effectiveness of their actions in this particular struggle.

Some conspiracy theorists argue that these were not anarchists, but police provocateurs. They are dead wrong. The people who dressed in black and hid their identities in order to protect themselves are passionate in their desire for a better world and willing to take risks in order to fight instead of beg for it. They organize by affinity and avoid being infiltrated by police in every way possible, because their very freedom is on the line when they don their masks. Calling them cowards for hiding their identities is akin to calling someone a coward for not committing suicide. People need to hide their identities nowadays at protests due to video surveillance by police who build profiles and use incriminating footage to violently kidnap people from their communities and hold them hostage in prison cells. The people who masked up to make their voices heard are community organizers, artists, volunteers, caregivers, and others who are loved by their communities for the work they do. They do not simply go around trying to destroy the things that make life on this planet unlivable, they also create beautiful alternatives, and work harder than anyone else I have ever met for a better world.

Anarchists acted in the way they did because it was necessary and effective. Those who argue that it was ineffective, including corporate media, have some nerve. Unlike the larger and more peaceful protests, the “Heart Attack” march caused a splash that reached the masses and forced them to recognize that there is resistance to these games. People all over the world who might not have known about the issues otherwise will look into the causes of this riot. The corporate media denounced this way of getting attention but paid it way more attention than any of the other protests. How hypocritical of them. If holding a sign was all it took to generate attention for a cause and create substantial change people might not feel the necessity to use force. People are sick of asking nicely for their lands to not be stolen, for their homes to not be evicted, and for their environments to not be polluted and destroyed. If we could simply ask politely and be heard we wouldn’t need to put our lives on the line at all. The day after 400 anarchists blocked streets and attacked major corporations, there was a march of 5,000 people, more than ten times the previous days numbers, demonstrating in solidarity with all the murdered and missing women of the downtown eastside of Vancouver. But since this march was peaceful and not disruptive it was largely ignored.

What bothers me more than the argument that the “Heart Attack” protest was not “effective” is the argument that it was violent. Until the state disarms itself don’t even talk to me about non-violence. The only violence that occurred at the Olympics was the clear-cutting of sacred mountaintops, the theft of indigenous lands, the evictions of poor people, the deportation of undocumented people, the imprisonment and harassment of activists, and an expansion of the capital¬ist system of social control and domination.

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Religion is a set of beliefs and practices that are determined by one’s view of reality and the supernatural. Politics is the process by which groups make decisions. Because one’s view of reality has a powerful effect on decision-making, the two realms are tightly intertwined in a number of ways.

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
-Mohandas Gandhi

Theocracy describes a state in which religious and government leaders either are identical or form a strongly interlocked and virtually inseparable group. A number of states in the ancient world could be so described, and examples in more recent times include the Vatican, Tibet under the Dalai Lama, and Iran and other Islamic Republics.

Nihilism was a term that was first popularized by the novelist Ivan Turgenev in 1862 (though it had been used in Russia and abroad for several decades before that time) to characterize the rebellious and highly unconventional youths who had appeared in Russia by the late 1850s. Though the nihilists were often described as people who no longer believed in anything, in actuality they believed in their own ideas with passionate and indeed fanatical intensity. Heavily influenced by theories originating from Western Europe, including German philosophy and French socialist thought, the nihilists sought to radically redesign society by destroying existing conventions of social morality – which they regarded as abstract concepts lacking any inherent basis in reality. After many failed attempts, they managed to assassinate Tsar Alexander II, after which they were largely hunted down and wiped out.

Where has God gone? I shall tell you. We have killed him —you and I. We are all his murderers… God is dead. That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. There has never been a greater deed.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Christian anarchism is any of several traditions which combine anarchism with Christianity. Christian anarchists believe that freedom is justified spiritually through the teachings of Jesus. This has caused them to be critical of government and Church authority. Some believe all individuals can directly communicate with God, which negates the need for a system of clergy. Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You is a key text in modern Christian anarchism.

Some Christian anarchists hold a higher critical view of the Bible and therefore do not feel obliged to follow the complete text as law. They base their beliefs on what they think are the simple principles and historic messages of Jesus, such as the Sermon on the Mount, rather than obediently following every passage in the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Directly, anarchists have borrowed from Quakerism the method of facilitation and meetings known as consensus decision making. This technique, which forms a fundamental part of Quaker worship, is used in most anarchist meetings.

Liberation theology emphasizes the Christian mission to bring justice to the poor and oppressed, particularly through political activism. Its theologians consider sin the root source of poverty, the sin in question being exploitative capitalism and class war by the rich against the poor. At its inception, liberation theology was predominantly found in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. It is sometimes regarded as a form of Christian social¬ism, and it has enjoyed widespread influence in Latin America and among the Jesuits, although its influence diminished within Catholicism after liberation theologians using Marxist concepts were harshly admonished by Pope John Paul II (leading to the curtailing of its growth).

Furthermore, with its emphasis on the preferential treatment of the poor, the practice (or praxis) was as important as the belief, if not more so. Base com¬munities were small gatherings, usually outside of churches, in which the Bible could be discussed, and mass could be said. They were especially active in rural parts of Latin America where parish priests were not always available, as they placed a high value on lay participation. As of May 2007, it was estimated that 80,000 base communities were operating in Brazil alone.

Joseph Ratzinger, on the other hand, has suggested that the movement is in origin a creation of western intellectuals: “an attempt to test, in a concrete scenario, ideologies that have been invented in the laboratory by European theologians” and in a certain sense itself a form of “cultural imperialism”. Ratzinger saw this as a reaction to the demise or near-demise of the “Marxist myth” in the west. He did, however, qualify this as referring especially to the origins of the movement and did not deny that it had popular support.

By Darius Mirshahi

I loathe extravagant places of worship and the leaders who run them. Mega-churches, temples, and mosques are built with the most expensive materials while thousands of people die of hunger, exposure, and curable diseases. Greedy capitalists posing as ‘men of God’ prey on the desperate and sell them false hope, taking from the poor to enrich themselves.

To make matters worse, most places of worship reinforce unhealthy social relations such as hierarchy, sexism, queerphobia, submission to authority, and generally create followers who feel ‘unworthy’ and helpless. They are also to blame for a large amount of the culture of fear we live in.

It occurs to me that Jesus (the guy in the Bible that supposedly lived 2000 years ago) would probably share my disdain for organized religion, as well as my disdain for capitalism, individualism, racism, exploitation, and all the other things our society is built on. It is my humble opinion that if Jesus was around today he’d most likely be engaged in class war.

Jesus was always talking about how the rich were evil and that it was the poor and oppressed people who would inherit the kingdom of ‘God’. He made many enemies in high places because of his class analysis, and ended up becoming one of the most famous political prisoners ever before he was publicly executed.

Just as he ran into the temple and flipped the tables of the money lenders back in the day, Jesus would be running around smashing ATM’s today. Jesus would kick the televangelists out of their mega-churches and set up squats and social housing for the homeless. Jesus would be helping co-ordinate a ‘Food Not Bombs’ by magically turning nothing into something that hundreds could feast on. Remember that whole fish and bread trick?

Jesus wouldn’t vote for conservatives, much to their dismay. Jesus wouldn’t vote for liberals either. Jesus wouldn’t vote at all. Jesus never asked a politician for anything, if he saw a prob¬lem he took action himself. Jesus didn’t lobby politicians for more health care; he went out and healed the sick himself. Today he’d probably open some free clinics in poor neighbourhoods and break the pharmaceutical corporations’ patent laws to provide cheap/free medicine to everyone who needed it.

Jesus, if he ever did exist, was a pretty awesome person. He was such a threat to the state, organized religion, and capitalism that the rich and powerful organized a smear campaign to justify his arrest and execution.

Today, everything he stood for has been co-opted. Now his followers are among the most lost in the world, allowing a rich, powerful, and hierarchical institution known as the church dictate their beliefs instead of directly following the example Jesus set.

With hundreds of millions of Christians around the world you’d think we would have already won this class war. You’d think we would have already eradicated capitalism and the state and instituted an egalitarian society based on mutual aid, gift giving, and freedom. It’s time for Christians to leave the church and act a little like the man they admire so much. Jesus was an enemy of the state and capitalism. What about you?

By Alice Teply

Religion is a force that is still prominent in society today, and dictates the way people live their lives. It is important to have an open mind and see things from different points of view, yet this can be difficult for many. One may respect a person’s right to believe in what they do, yet still feel contempt towards what those beliefs entail. Acceptance and tolerance are important, but it is still difficult to not have strong feelings towards particular belief systems.

Growing up in a small rural area, I was exposed to the culture of the Amish and Mennonites. People in these belief systems adhere strictly to the Bible, and the Church has a strong reign over their lives. I also know people who attend fairly conservative Churches, ones in which women are not allowed to cut their hair and are expected to wear skirts or dresses. While these people’s religious freedom is important, I often wonder if they ever question what the rules of their Church truly mean. If a woman cuts her hair or wears pants, do they believe she’s not worthy enough to be a woman? If a head-covering isn’t worn, is she considered unholy? One of the most common Christian beliefs is that any person who has not accepted Christ as his or her personal Savior will suffer eternity in hell. This would mean that a devout religious leader who commits an atrocious act like child molestation can ask for forgiveness and still get a one way ticket to heaven. These are the beliefs that govern millions of people’s lives, and are accepted without question. People who are raised with these beliefs may not feel oppressed, and may indeed be happy. However many are likely afraid to question, because it would mean unraveling the only world they know, and questioning the very foundation their worldview has been built on. Religious systems need to use these rules in order to control their followers, otherwise how else would they prosper?

Having spent a large portion of my childhood attending a Pentecostal Church, I understand the powerful hold religion can have on a person, and how difficult it is to let that go. Much of what went on at these churches was like a scene from the film Jesus Camp. Looking back on it now, I can see how much we were brainwashed. Even as a child I questioned what we were taught, but still went along with everything for fear of being sinful. When people are instilled with dogma their entire lives, it is difficult to let this go and form a mind of their own. So while people’s narrow-mindedness is infuriating, a small part of me understands what it is like to cling to beliefs that define your entire existence.

After leaving a religious organization, it is a challenge to find your own truth and meaning in life. It is difficult for me to give up everything I was taught, one being the concept of God. Yet my view of God is different than the fascist leader the Church paints him out to be. I believe the teachings of Jesus were positive ones, but that the Church has polluted them and twisted their meaning. The values of love and compassion are buried beneath power. I have chosen to take what I want from religion and leave the rest, because it can only be tainted under religion’s influence. I’m now left with many questions that will never be answered. Despite this, I wouldn’t trade it for the ignorance that befalls many who are unable to think for themselves. Some say ignorance is bliss, but mainly it leaves people in darkness. It’s better to accept the reality of not having all the answers. This, I believe, is true enlightenment.

By Andrew Jones

In early Judean teachings, the worship of false idols was considered a sin. According to them, there was only one true God to worship. This notion is still alive today in Christianity, but does it mean the same thing? Learning Christianity as a child, one is taught to worship this statue as opposed to that statue. This literal interpretation of scripture is itself worship of a false ideal. Because the ancient prophets - Jesus being the most influential in the west - were so far ahead of their culture’s understanding, the successive generations could not quite grasp the full meaning of their message. This misinterpretation led to dogmatism and caused the religious doctrine to eventually promote a subordinate mentality in the masses; the church assumed that human fate was in their hands and the original intent of Christianity was manipulated by political agendas. This control inevitably led to oppression, which in turn caused religion to be used as a form of escapism: the hierarchical society was not founded on human equality, and those who were at the bottom of the social scale lived rough, oppressed lives. Religious adherents began to neglect the self and hope for a better day, and this hope was rooted in a manmade image of God.

The very idea of Christian hope became self defeating. During harsh times, oppressed peoples have endured their situations hoping that if they did, after death they would be rewarded. This promise of hope is only true in the future, and therefore it is negation of living in the present. Forcing the future causes pressure on outcomes and attachment to ideas and images, which ultimately creates a cycle of unhappiness. Our power as humans is diminished if we give it all to an ideal or an image.

Today television has taken the place of religion as the pacifier of the masses. It indoctrinates, socializes, distracts, and causes people to aspire to an abstract concept instead of being happy with who they are. From Disney to reality shows, our perspectives are based on escaping from an undesired reality.

So why do so many people continue to escape from their oppressive realities instead of striving to change their current situations? Awareness of how our every action is influenced by the economic structures governing society makes it difficult and illogical to do nothing and remain pacified. Knowledge and education makes it hard to ignore; when you know better you do better. Pacifiers are for babies who can‘t handle the changes that are about to take place, and we must create a society that no longer needs them. We have to turn on, learn and push ourselves to evolve and change; we cannot blame or rely on some conceptual “God” in the sky to do it for us. Because humans created the image of God, we are the divine - right now. If everybody realized their ability to create their own lives, there would be no need for escapism.

By Gaelen Olinksi

Why has Christianity seen such a steady decrease in participation by Canadians over the past ten years? Major Christian denominations such as Catholicism and Protestantism are finding fewer and fewer young recruits. According to Census Canada, the percentage of Canadians who identify as Christian has dropped by approximately 1% per year over the past decade. At this rate, by about 2023, non-Christians will outnumber Christians in Canada. This isn’t to say that all religions are on the decline. In this country, Pagan religions such as Wicca and Native Spirituality have shown the greatest percentage growth of any religions in the past ten years. There is a growing skepticism of the leaders and the motives of major religions in Canada and other Western democracies. One can only hear so many stories of child-molesting priests or rich televangelists before seriously questioning the messages these religions have to offer. Is it any wonder why it is so difficult for the younger generation to hear “the divine calling?”

It goes beyond the stories of corruption within the church. The distrust we feel can be largely attributed to contemporary means of exchanging information. The information we are most exposed to usually comes from one of two places, television or the Internet. Television is a shaky source of information at best
and hardly a reliable one when you take into consideration the interests of those who control it. The Internet may be a better source, since it allows greater public access, therefore creating more diversified perspectives - but how many times have you seen a pop-up advertisement announcing that you have won a contest for thousands of dollars, or that if you order dick pills you will grow 4 inches overnight? Our parents may fall for this, but we know better.

Without trust there can be no faith. It is the key ingredient. Without faith the pope is no longer an agent of God, no longer someone to rely on as an intermediary between the faithful and the transcendent messages of the Lord; without faith the pope is just a farty old man.

So why then are some religions flourishing in the face of these skeptical times? If you examine the religious groups in Canada that have shown the most growth recently, you will notice these are religions which place a strong emphasis on inclusion - what I mean is an elimination of the mentality that either you’re with us or you’re against us - and secondly, a relation¬ship with the natural world. Trusting in Nature is much easier than trusting a man in the Vatican who is far removed from us and our daily existence.

There is also a large group of people who do not participate in any organized religion, but rather find a way to tribute their “God”, whether it’s through a cutting and pasting of various religious doctrines or the higher calling that comes through art or communion with nature.

When God called we weren’t home, maybe next time he’ll know where to find us.

By Uri Gordon - AnarchyAlive.com

The ancient Hebrews never believed in one god. There is nothing controversial about this claim. From the biblical narrative itself we learn how, in both kingdoms of Israel and Judah, one ruler after another “did evil in the eyes of Yahweh” by worshiping other gods and encouraging their ongoing worship among the people. Only a handful of “good” kings were dedicated to Yahweh alone and suppressed other cults. It is thus evident that during the First Temple period (c.1000-586 BCE), the population which had allegedly taken up the monotheistic covenant at Mount Sinai was in fact polytheistic, worshiping the selfsame family of goddesses and gods prevalent among the Western Semitic peoples of the age. Yahweh was nothing but the local name for this pantheon’s sky/father god, also known as El, and inseparable from his female partner and equal, the earth/mother goddess Ashera. A simple calculation from the Book of Kings will reveal that the typical wooden pole dedicated to the mother goddess stood in Solomon’s Temple for a full two thirds of its existence. Archaeologists have dug up literally thousands of Ashera figurines in Palestine/Israel, as well as inscriptions carrying blessings “from Yahweh and his Ashera”. No less popular were their son and daughter – the rain god Hadad, often referred to as the Ba’al (meaning “lord”), and the goddess of love and war Ashtoret, identical to the Mesopotamian Ishtar.

How then did this pagan nature religion transform into abstract monotheism, the basis for Judaism, Christianity and Islam? The answer lies not in theology, but in politics. The change took place in two stages, the first of which came with the sweeping campaign of religious and political centralization enacted in Jerusalem by King Josiah in 621 BCE. The chief instigators were the high priest Hilkiah, the royal secretary Shaphan, and the prophetess Huldah, a prominent noblewoman. During renovations in the temple, they “discovered” a forgotten manuscript, the Book of the Covenant, later incorporated into the book of Deuteronomy. Its centerpiece was the Shema – the passage beginning “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh the One” (Deut. 6:4) – along with harsh prohibitions on idolatry and exogamy, a stress on one exclusive temple, and threats of total annihilation of the people if they worship other gods. Presented to the king, these writings formed the perfect pretext for a wholesale centralization of theocratic power in the hands of the House of David and the Jerusalem priestly caste. Josiah acted swiftly:

He went up to the temple of Yahweh with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem…He read in their hearing all the words of the Book…Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. The king ordered…to remove from the temple of Yahweh all the articles made for Ba’al and Asherah and all the starry hosts…He took the Asherah pole from the temple of Yahweh to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prosti¬tutes, which were in the temple of Yahweh and where women did weaving for Asherah…Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones…slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them.
(2 Kings 23)

Josiah’s coup created and enforced a patriarchal state religion, to whose intellectual elite modern scholarship attributes the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings – a retroactive historiography which would drastically reshape Judean identity and collective memory.

Yet the exclusive and centralized cult of Yahweh was still essentially a pagan affair – “monolatry” rather than monotheism. It was only following the destruction of Solomon’s Temple (586 BCE) and the forced migration to Babylon that the second stage took place. Over the next few generations, the elders of the exiled Judean community, having entirely internalized the Yahwist line, interpreted their traumatic uprooting as divine retribution for idolatry. This, along with the abrupt halt of sacrificial ritual, drove the Judeans towards an increasingly im¬material and ethical notion of the divine. Another likely influence was the encounter with the Zoroastrian religion of the Persians, who conquered Babylon and allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (444 BC). Their emperor Cyrus no doubt appreciated the utility of a universal faith, now enshrined in texts and ad¬ministered by a literate elite, in maintaining social order and obedience to his Judean vassals – as would Alexander the Great just over a century later. Left largely autonomous in their internal affairs, the Jews would go on to produce volumes upon volumes of exegesis and jurisprudence, taking the expedient lies of men for the sacred word of God.

Yet the ancient religion is not entirely lost. Its echoes are to be found in the songs and rituals of Jewitches and Hebrew pagans, a small movement of creative deviants who dodge the false choice between a ridiculously unfathomable God and a life barren of spirit. An older, gentler faith still lies dormant beneath the concrete blocks and bloodied soil of this orphaned land, await¬ing perhaps the day when the children of Ashera lay down their swords forever and seek reconnection to their deepest roots.

Recommended reading:
M. Smith, The Early History of God (Eerdmans, 2002)
R. Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Wayne State, 1990)
L. Grabbe, Good Kings and Bad Kings (Clark, 2005)