Mistaken Identities

Kwame Anthony Appiah – The Reith Lectures BBC Iplayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07z43ds

At first, I found this to be slightly long-winded, but by the end, I realised the introduction was Appiah’s positionality and how they as a person has developed and lead a life in this field he is an expert in.

Identity as a fellow queer mass in a highly religious country can affect your curiosity which Appiah describes as a Western view of what have got apart that Christianity couldn’t offer. I took the latter in finding that Christianity especially catholicism didn’t want me, so I set my goals to find one that did, a turbulent journey of self-hatred and a confused position in finding a community. Funnily though, in gay culture, we are subjected to the community through appearance, especially in Western societies, be it the bears, twinks or jocks etc. We have placed our sense of community in our sexual identities to maybe feel a sense of belonging that we didn’t receive when we were younger (not to stereotype all gay/queer people in this field, but the community is quite tribal in that aesthetics control your place of belonging).

In part of the early lecture,
Appiah communicated that religion has 3 dimensions :

1. What you do – The practice one holds.
2. What you do with it – The community you are with.
3. The body of Beliefs – The religion you set your beliefs to.

I liked this breakdown of faith-based identity over religious identity and that the modern views are extremely heavy fundamentalist ideologies around religion and identity and that these can control a communities views on certain topics like women’s rights, abortion rights and LGBTI communities. One thing mentioned was that belief has a history of faith and that accompanies a history of doubt. In modern times, I believe the younger generation is fighting this sense of doubt in religion and faith practices that are filled with hatred or body-abling laws that constrict a person’s right to live freely, one thing to take was this has continuously been happening throughout the ages and that religious sectors use scriptures in personal or ‘choice’ based views to challenge or change the sense of identity or community surrounded by these doubt based challenges.

A few of the positives picked up from audience conversations are that, the value of choice in religious beliefs is a choice, that they shouldn’t control or master our lives and identities and that we as individuals should be the masters or mistresses of our own identities. The dictation of control through religion should be something we as a community of faith shouldn’t thrive for, as it can generate hatred or misconceptions of others’ lives.

Before we close up this review, I would like to say that this lecture slightly touched on the family identity of celebrating two scriptures of Christianity, but didn’t really explore the heritage of what effects that religion does and is being passed down to children, are children given a choice to follow this scripture and could this been a sense of child abuse that neglects a child’s identity growth through the pressure of being indoctrinated into the family faith.

Questions, that I am no expert in, but something I can only speak from personal experience, in the sense of how the church controlled what school I went to, what sins I committed and how I should devote parts if not all of my life too! As I get older, I feel that the church sectors and religion are just massive based cults that are associated with profit-building rather than community, if a faith asks you for money, why does this belief in money and also church come hand in hand.

The end of this lecture was my favourite, from a past pupil of Appiah’s, the question was centred around; whether should we remove the word religion and just describe these faith sectors as communities and does he feel this could change the future of faith and identity?
It was definitely an interesting question, one that made my ears prick up and listen, the idea behind this seems a lot more inviting than a static religion with rules and protocols. Appiah also found it interesting as the idea or concept is to focus on the interaction between people and the community, but they did mention that Western Christian views especially had or has this sense of superiority and the offering is so-called better than anyone else’s. This could be a troubling future to change the concept and it could provide a lot of problems but the benefits of showing the community over religion was a promising idea that needed further investigation.

I am guessing that this lecture is to inform me to look on the outside of religion and see how I can visualise it within my work, or my student cohorts, and how it affect their life using my positionality and experience can I navigate religion with an open view and embracing the cultural history it holds and that we shouldn’t shy away from the conversations between religions and encourage a positive interaction to share views or identities on faith together, in a sense of community and practice.

https://sfonline.barnard.edu/queerthinking-religion-queering-religious-paradigms/

This article is interesting in the area of queer thinking and religion, where I place myself in this, and how I go forward in my secular mindset, taking a position of care to embrace faith and religion. I believe sexual identity and religious identity have always been a double edge sword in this sense world of faith and beliefs. Overall it is an interesting read, can I place it in my research around faith and my practice?