For over six decades, I have wandered through the theater of human existence—watching, listening, absorbing the radiance of our compassion and the abyss of our cruelty. In that sacred pilgrimage, I have witnessed faith rise as a sanctuary for the broken, a balm for grief, and a communal fire around which lost spirits gather. But too often, that same fire has been used to scorch the innocent, to justify violence, to excuse subjugation.
Let us speak plainly: religion has been both balm and blade. To deny this duality is to betray our collective memory. Now is the time—not for sentimental reflection but for unapologetic reckoning.
I. The Uneasy Marriage of Faith and Power
Faith, when unexamined, becomes vulnerable to hijacking. It morphs from spiritual compass into political instrument. Across centuries and continents, faith has sanctioned inquisitions, crusades, genocides, colonialism, misogyny, homophobia, and the indoctrination of children into fear-based dogmas. Its scriptures have been weaponized—not by accident, but by design. When power and belief lie together, history becomes a graveyard.
Let us no longer sanctify silence. When belief becomes a bludgeon, neutrality is complicity.
II. A Lexicon in Need of Liberation
Our dictionaries, thesauruses, and theological glossaries still treat religion as inherently noble, as though its institutions are immune to critique. They reflect not truth, but tradition.
I propose something radical only to those afraid of inherited truth: Let us revise the language of religion—not to erase sacred yearning, but to name sacred harm. Let our cultural lexicons describe religion not as a virtue, but as a construct. A human invention, capable of invoking grace or inciting destruction. Our words must be as courageous as our convictions.
III. Sacredness is Not a Monarchy
This is no indictment of the sacred. I believe in transcendence—in the beauty of mystery, the miracle of compassion, the aching search for meaning. But these are not monopolies of creed. They are the birthright of every soul.
No doctrine—however ancient, however revered—should be immune to scrutiny if it sacralizes violence or justifies division. Reverence without accountability is idolatry.
IV. Faith as Bridge, Not Barrier
Imagine a world where religion does not seek conquest or control. A world where it humbles itself before humanity. Where scripture is read not as a weapon, but as an invitation. Imagine faith as a bridge—not a battleground. Where belief leads to dialogue, not dogma. Where absolutes dissolve into shared truths. Where the Eden we once lost is not a mythical garden, but a resurrected possibility: woven through acts of kindness, tethered to justice, and reimagined by love.
In such a world, the divine is not seated on thrones built of theology, but walks barefoot among us—in the cry of the oppressed, the courage of the peacemaker, the question of the skeptic.
V. The Sacred Call to Reformation
These words are not a rejection. They are a plea. To clergy and laypersons, to zealots and seekers, to the faithful and the faithless: let us begin the holy task of reformation. Let us unshackle the spirit from dogma. Let us raise a theology that dignifies rather than dominates.
The soul of our humanity—wounded though it may be—still yearns to rise. To breathe freely. To reclaim the sacred from the scaffolding of power.
Let us meet at that altar—not of dogma, but of truth. And there, may we forge a faith worthy of our times.