I do not know a single religion or atheism that is not dogmatic in the sense that they are all sectarian, rather than being all-inclusive, universal. In my mother tongue, Hungarian, the word for church is ‘egyház’. ‘Egy’ means one and ‘ház’ means house. So, church means one house. Note, not two or many houses but ‘one house’. A house that is a house for everyone, all-inclusive, irrespective of dogmas.
Every religion tends to claim that it is the only true religion and anyone who does not follow it, is misguided. In my opinion, religion has two components: one is its dogma the other is faith.
Tragically, faith and religion are conflated not just by the followers of particular religions, but also by their atheist critics. The latter tend to throw out the baby (faith) with the bath water (religious dogma). The essential difference between dogma and faith is that dogmas are always sectarian, only catering to that section of the population who believe in a certain religion. Whereas true faith is all-inclusive, universal.
Paul says: “Faith, hope and love! These three abide! But the greatest is love.” (1 Corinthians 13, the last line.) Now the love, Paul refers to here is universal or unconditional, because Paul says that such love “bears everything and believes everything”. Here is the contrast: religion does not believe everything, only its own dogmas and that is how every religion tends to be sectarian, not universally inclusive. There are the chosen, the members of a sect, the blessed ones, and there are the ‘infidels’, anyone, who does not belong to the sect. But pure faith; faith without dogmas, by contrast, recognises a God who loves everyone equally, whether fidel or infidel; like the sun that shines on everyone, sinner or saint alike.
One with true faith, indeed attempts to love his/her neighbour as him/herself and even tries to love ‘his enemies.’ A person of true faith loves his/her enemies, in so far as, being an unconditional lover, that person would perceive and label no one as his/her enemy. Rather such person of faith would identify with everyone as his/her other half, whom he would see as loved by God as much as himself, as he would see everyone as a beloved child of God.
Would Christ be a Christian? I wonder.
In the Gospel Of The Sophia of Christ, Jesus calls God androgynous: “The Saviour Father and the Life Giving Mother, dwelling in Oneness.” Yet Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even many Eastern religions, perceive and call God exclusively as Father, airbrushing Mother out of the picture. In that Gospel, Jesus calls SHimself unambiguously an Androgen. So, SHe is not just the Son of God but also SHis daughter, in one.
Yet most Christians won’t have a bar of this. Their traditional dogma reigns supreme. Even the English language dichotomises God into either a male or a female instead of recognising that SHe might actually be both. For English, gender-splits the living third person into either he or she.
I had to coin the word, SHe in an attempt to do justice to a god, who as a whole, is made up of a Yin, the female aspect and Yang, the male aspect, to perhaps more accurately describe God as SHe.
Oh, those appalling religious wars fought in Christ’s name against SHis exhortation to love one’s enemies. SHe did not ask SHis followers to love SHim because SHe saved them. Rather, SHe appealed to them that if they really wanted to serve SHim then they should love the ‘least of their brothers and sisters’. Do refugees pop into mind here?
SHe eloquently argued that those who quenched the thirst of the hungry, who fed the poor, who cared for prisoners and the sick, who let the homeless into their homes, would do all this to SHim. SHe did not ask for piety towards SHimself. But SHe asserted that faith without love, was no faith at all, as SHis half-brother, James famously observed.
So faith, when based on universal, active love, could be the essence of all religions and atheism, if only, they could override their divisive, sectarian dogmas by all-inclusive, unconditional love.