Broken windows, religion and the American League

Banners bearing emblems, slogans and symbols of loyalty and belief. Angry, painted faces displaying the colors of one's side. Surreal mobs with raised fists, beating the air above the cursing, cheering choruses of local accents and dialects.

This is not a scene from "Braveheart" or a pro-life rally. It is a glimpse into the passion and excitement surrounding last week's ALCS. Divisions tore apart friends: Boston fans upstairs, Yankees fans, downstairs. Hostilities ran high. Dreams were shattered. And so was a window.

I was stirred by such displays of animosity and violence, particularly after hearing again and again in the dining hall that same night that religion and religious belief are major sources of warfare and conflict in society. Look at the 16th and 17th Century wars of religion, my secularist friends tell me; look at the situation in Ireland, or in the Middle East. I offer this challenge to them: Turn on ESPN. Take me out to the ball game. ....Certainly, a trip to the World Series is hardly comparable to a crusade to the Holy Land; a broken window is not the same as Krystalnacht. Some will say it is absurd to reflect with moral seriousness upon such a trivial event. But in those shards of shattered glass are reminders of a fragmented, violent human nature; they call us to piece back together our own fragmented ignorance about the nature of what it means to hold a belief, about what it means to be human.

Beliefs don't kill people; ignorant believers do. Sometimes, these actions are not committed by individuals in service to belief; rather, belief is too often made to serve individuals and their selfish ends. Religious people often commit violent acts; this does not mean they have acted religiously. On the contrary, it is evidence that one has chosen the way of the self and the world, rather than the way of the crescent, the cross, the star, or even the squad.

Violently acting out a belief often says more about the individual than the individual can claim to say about the belief he is abusing. I do not know the person who broke the window at Tower, and do not wish to judge him personally. But the same friends who tell me that religion leads to violence also regularly tell me that drunkenness induces truthfulness, so I take his actions to be more than intoxicated idiocy. Did this attacker see something in that Red Sox banner that seemed to threaten the feelings of security and power he found, if only for a moment, in the victory of his favorite sports team? Were this win and the feeling of supremacy it provided so illusory as to dissolve into violence at the first sign of opposition? More importantly, would we have done the same thing?

Whether religious or secularist, our greatest illusion, to quote ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, "is that we are a peaceable people, nonviolent to the core." In reality, "We are peaceable so long as no one disturbs our illusions." People fearful of losing their illusions and mindful of their own ignorance always fall back to some form of violence when they feel their personal order threatened. And so, a dilemma faces everyone who holds some kind of belief: Do our beliefs lead us to confront the tragic reality of humanity's sometimes violent nature by way of honest self-examination and active peacemaking? Or do they simply lead us to argue with the umpire when we willingly half-swing at pitches outside the moral strike zone?

We should certainly not abandon our beliefs for passive pluralism and a tired tolerance; rooting for our side is what makes the game exciting, interesting, and diverse. The challenge of those who hold beliefs is to ask ourselves not only what gives meaning to our lives, but further, what kind of lives we are living because of the meanings we think we have found. Belief is often the only force we have to check our otherwise destructive, subjective impulses; it gives direction towards actively seeking and living in peace with our brothers and sisters of all beliefs.

It would be a shame to lose that lead because we lack the courage to push ourselves harder near the end of the game. When victory is in sight, the worst thing we can possibly do is smash a window that looks out to a wider perspective and stain its fragments with the blood of our own violence.