RELIGION SHOULD UNIFY

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RELIGION SHOULD UNIFY, NOT DIVIDE,SAYS ALBRIGHT.
by Mary Frances Schjonberg [ENS]

The people of the world can longer afford to allow religion and
religious
leaders to divide them, former Secretary of State and
U.N.Representative
Madeleine Korbel Albright told the annual gathering of the Consortium
of Endowed
Episcopal Parishes February 25.

"Religion is not the problem," she told a packed conference room at the
Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City, but religion has always tended
to fuel partisan strife.

What is different now is the extent of the damage that can result. It
is one
thing to go after each other with clubs, she said, but another thing
to be able to go after your perceived enemies with today's high-tech
weapons. ??
The underlying problem is how to harness religion's unifying potential
and block its tendency to divide people and nations against themselves
and others. She
compared the challenge to that of doing brain surgery:
"It is a necessary task but it can be fatal if not done well."

The attacks of September 11 forced the world to look at the role that
religion plays in politics, foreign policy and everyday life,Albright
said.

It is a "trend that was lying in plain sight" that we can no longer
ignore.

Albright called for all religions and nations to live and set their
domestic and foreign policies from the basic principles of valuing
individual life and seeking justice for all which she argued are at
the heart of all religious belief.

She politely termed as "balderdash" the attitude some religious
leaders,
fundamentalist ones in particular, that "the individual is a
disposable pawn"
who is in the hands of "an insecure and vengeful God" who wants
killing to be
done in his name.

Instead, Albright argued for a foreign policy that values the
individual. A
nation with such a priority will not allow torture even out of fearfor
its
safety or the knowledge that it is easy to get away.

Such apolicy would do much more to help other human beings. Albright
noted that the United States is last among developed nations in
foreign aid giving. She argued that more avoidable deaths happen in
the world from causes other than terrorism but that strengthening the
divide
between"people of plenty and people with plenty of loss
of hope" is a way to breed terrorism. ??

Nations ought to fight terrorism from a stance both does not ignore the
influence of religion and does not set it up as a battle between good
and evil,
Albright said.

We must realize that all of our efforts to be good are partial and
incomplete, and that it is tempting to misuse the power given to us.If
we
must make it an either-or choice, Albright suggested "evil and pretty
good, evil and not bad, evil and doing the best we can."

Perhaps, she suggested, we might consider the divide as evil and, in
Abraham Lincoln's words, "right as God gives us to see the right."
Leaders must stand for something but not believe that they have the
sole claim on all truth, she said.

Later, during a question and answer session, Albright drew loud
applause when she argued that it is hard for the U.S. to claim to be a
unifying force across the religious divide these days "when the
president believes that God talks to him and not to the rest of
us . . . we believe that God is on our side when infact we ought to be
on God's side."

She also agreed with a questioner who asked her if "fervent
moderation" ought to be the religious person's stance in the world.
People of faith cannot base their
belief on what they don't like in someone else, she said, lest "your
pride in yourself curdles into hate of someone else."

Albright, noting her party affiliation, said she was sad that words
like
"democracy" and "freedom" that the Clinton administration had used
with hope are
now interpreted as imperialistic. "I really do believe that the United
States is
an exceptional country but we can't expect the world to make
exceptions for us," she said.

Americans have the right to live as we believe but we cannot expect
everyone else to live like us.

"You cannot impose democracy and you cannot impose
religious faith," she said.

Albright noted that her diplomatic stance has always
been one of engagement. "You cannot get your point across if you are
not there,"she said.

Albright became the first female U.S. Secretary of State in
1997,serving in
President Bill Clinton's administration. She was also the U.S.
representative to
the United Nations and a member of Clinton's National Security
Council.

She has served on the National Cathedral Chapter in Washington, DC,
and the Board of
Directors of the College of Preachers. She now teaches at Georgetown
University,
where she taught before her appointment as Secretary of State, and
heads The
Albright Group in Washington, DC.

Her autobiography, "Madame Secretary," has become a bestseller. She is
currently writing a book about the intersection of religion and
politics.

Its working
title is "The Mighty and the Almighty: God in American Politics."

--Mary Frances Schjonberg is the assistant rector of Christ
Church(Episcopal) in
Short Hills, New Jersey

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