Sunday, February 8, 2015
Take it Easy on Brian Williams
Let's cut Brian Williams some slack. I told people for years that I was
on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday until some smart aleck
pointed out that I was only 15 at the time and where was my Momma?
Somehow I had convinced myself. . . . oh, nevermind.
Extremism in All Religions
Was Obama right about the Crusades and Islamic extremism? (ANALYSIS)
President
Obama spoke about how religion can be abused and the common theme of
loving thy neighbor during his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast
on Feb. 5, 2015, in Washington, D.C. Here are highlights from that
event.
“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
This would seem to be Religious History 101, but it was nonetheless met with shock and awe.
“Hey, American Christians_Obama just threw you under the bus in order to defend Islam,” wrote shock jock Michael Graham. Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., called the comments “dangerously irresponsible.” The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue said: “Obama’s ignorance is astounding and his comparison is pernicious. The Crusades were a defensive Christian reaction against Muslim madmen of the Middle Ages.”
More thoughtfully, Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called Obama’s comments about Christianity “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison. ... The evil actions that he mentioned were clearly outside the moral parameters of Christianity itself and were met with overwhelming moral opposition from Christians.”
Really?
1. The Crusades
The Crusades lasted almost 200 years, from 1095 to 1291. The initial spark came from Pope Urban II, who urged Christians to recapture the Holy Land (and especially the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem) from Muslim rule. Like the promise of eternal life given to Muslim martyrs, Crusaders were promised absolution from sin and eternal glory.
Militarily, the Crusades were at first successful, capturing Jerusalem in 1099, but eventually a disaster; Jersualem fell in 1187. Successive Crusades set far more modest goals, but eventually failed to achieve even them. The last Crusader-ruled city in the Holy Land, Acre, fell in 1291.
Along the way, the Crusaders massacred. To take but one example, the Rhineland Massacres of 1096 are remembered to this day as some of the most horrific examples of anti-Semitic violence prior to the Holocaust. (Why go to the Holy Land to fight nonbelievers, many wondered, when they live right among us?) The Jewish communities of Cologne, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz were decimated. There were more than 5,000 victims.
And that was only one example. Tens of thousands of people (both soldiers and civilians) were killed in the conquest of Jerusalem. The Crusaders themselves suffered; historians estimate that only one in 20 survived to even reach the Holy Land. It is estimated that 1.7 million people died in total.
And this is all at a time in which the world population was approximately 300 million — less than 5 percent its current total. Muslim extremists would have to kill 34 million people (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) to equal that death toll today. As horrific as the Islamic State’s brutal reign of terror has been, its death toll is estimated at around 20,000.
2. The Inquisition
While most of us regard “The Inquisition” as a particular event, it actually refers to a set of institutions within the Roman Catholic Church that operated from the mid-13th century until the 19th century. One actually still survives, now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was directed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before his 2005 election as Pope Benedict XVI.
These institutions were charged with prosecuting heresy — and prosecute they did, executing and torturing thousands of suspected witches, converts from Judaism (many of whom had been forced to convert), Protestants, and all manner of suspected heretics, particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries. Historians estimate that 150,000 people were put on trial by the Inquisition, with 3,000 executed.
Arguably, the Islamic State’s methods of execution — including crucifixion, beheading, and, most recently, burning a prisoner alive — are as gruesome as the Inquistion’s, with its infamous hangings and burnings at the stake. ISIS is also committing systematic rape, which the Inquisition did not, and enslaving children.
As for torture, however, it’s hard to do worse than the Inquisition, which used torture as a method of extracting confessions. Methods included starvation, burning victims’ bodies with hot coals, forced overconsumption of water, hanging by straps, thumbscrews, metal pincers, and of course, the rack. Believe it or not, all of this was meant to be for the victim’s own good: better to confess heresy in this life, even under duress, than to be punished for it in the next.
Contrary to Moore’s statement, the Inquisition was not “outside the moral parameters of Christianity itself and ... met with overwhelming moral opposition from Christians.” Though Moore may distinguish between ‘Christianity’ and the Roman Catholic Church, for all intents and purposes the Roman Catholic Church WAS Christianity at the time, or at least claimed to be.
3. Slavery and Jim Crow
“Slaves, obey your masters,” the New Testament says — three times. And indeed, Christian teaching was cited on both sides of the slavery debate, with both slaveholders and abolitionists using it to justify their actions. Segregationists also looked to the “Curse of Ham,” from the story of Noah, and the notion that God had separated the races on different continents. The effects were world-historic in scope: Nearly 12 million people were forced on the “Middle Passage” from Africa to the Americas.
More recently, though the vast majority of Christians abhor it, the Ku Klux Klan, to the present day, still insists that it is a “Christian organization.” There’s a reason the Klan burned crosses alongside its lynchings and acts of arson, after all.
Of course, there was also organized Christian opposition to slavery and to Jim Crow, and Christianity is at least as much the property of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as of the segregationists and slaveholders of the Old South. But this was precisely Obama’s point: All religions have their hateful extremists, and their prophets of justice.
What about popularity? Do more Muslims support the Islamic State today than Christians supported Jim Crow in the past? No. At the height of the KKK’s popularity in the 1920s, approximately 15 percent of white male Americans were members. That number is eerily similar to the 12 percent of Muslims worldwide who support terrorism today.
In other words, not only is Obama factually correct that Christian extremism across history has been at least as bloody as Muslim extremism today, it is also factually true that such extremisms have been equally popular. True, as Rush Limbaugh points out, the Crusades were “a thousand years ago,” the Inquisition ended 200 years ago, and Jim Crow legally ended in the 1960s. But the president specifically noted that “humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history.”
Which is the real point. There are two narratives about radical Islamists, and indeed about enemies of any sort, that coexist in American culture. According to one, they are different from us — Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis, Communists, you name it. Thus, in the battle against Islamic extremism, Islam is, in part at least, the enemy.
The other narrative is that all peoples, all creeds, all nations contain elements of moderation and extremism. Thankfully, racist Christian extremists are today a tiny minority within American Christianity. But only 100 years ago, they were as popular among American Christians as the Islamic State is among Muslims today. Thus, in the battle against Islamic extremism, it is extremism that is the enemy.
Hysterical commentary notwithstanding, no one is suggesting that Christians are just like the Islamic State. But Obama did suggest that Christianity is like Islam; both faiths have the capacity to be exploited by extremists.
Christians should not be insulted by the facts of history. Rather, all of us should be inspired by them to recognize the dangers of extremism — wherever they lie.
Copyright: For copyright information, please check with the distributor of this item, Religion News Service LLC.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Friday, February 6, 2015
The Talk
About the new Harper Lee novel is fascinating. It will be interesting to watch it all unfold.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Amazing
Second Harper Lee Novel to Be Published in July
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"To Kill a Mockingbird" will not be Harper Lee's only published book after all.
Publisher Harper announced Tuesday that "Go Set a Watchman," a novel the
Pulitzer Prize-winning author completed in the 1950s and put aside,
will be released July 14. Rediscovered last fall, "Go Set a Watchman" is
essentially a sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird," although it was
finished earlier. The 304-page book will be Lee's second, and the first
new work in more than 50 years.
The publisher plans a first printing of 2 million copies.
"In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called 'Go Set a Watchman,'" the
88-year-old Lee said in a statement issued by Harper. "It features the
character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty
decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's
childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became 'To Kill a
Mockingbird') from the point of view of the young Scout.
"I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it
(the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when
my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought
and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was
pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am
humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these
years."
Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal was negotiated between
Carter and the head of Harper's parent company, Michael Morrison of
HarperCollins Publishers. "Watchman" will be published in the United Kingdom by William Heinemann, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
According to publisher Harper, Carter came upon the manuscript at a
"secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of
'To Kill a Mockingbird.'" The new book is set in Lee's famed Maycomb,
Alabama, during the mid-1950s, 20 years after "To Kill a Mockingbird"
and roughly contemporaneous with the time that Lee was writing the
story. The civil rights movement was taking hold by the time she was
working on "Watchman." The Supreme Court had ruled unanimously in 1953
that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the arrest of Rosa
Parks in 1955 led to the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott.
"Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to
visit her father, Atticus," the publisher's announcement reads. "She is
forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries
to understand her father's attitude toward society, and her own feelings
about the place where she was born and spent her childhood."
Lee herself is a Monroeville, Alabama native who lived in New York in
the 1950s. She now lives in her hometown. According to the publisher,
the book will be released as she first wrote it, with no revisions.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is among the most beloved novels in history,
with worldwide sales topping 40 million copies. It was released on July
11, 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a 1962 movie of the same name, starring Gregory Peck
in an Oscar-winning performance as the courageous attorney Atticus
Finch. Although occasionally banned over the years because of its
language and racial themes, the novel has become a standard for reading
clubs and middle schools and high schools. The absence of a second book
from Lee only seemed to enhance the appeal of "Mockingbird."
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Thomas C. Foster - Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America
You can argue with the 25 books that this critic chose, but you can't argue with his wit and presentation. This is fun reading!
The sun never sets on Hemingway. The author makes the most out of his simple words in The Sun Also Rises just as Hemingway makes the most out of a sparse story. At the same time, the author perhaps stretches things when he says there would have been no Raymond Carver with his famous minimalist prose. How do we know there would have been no Carver without Hemingway?
I have read so many things about the symbols in The Great Gatsby I don't know what to say. My hunch is that your guess is as good as mine on the green light and the ashes.
The author makes some sense of Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, but I doubt I will ever attempt it.
I'm glad I read Moby Dick in college. I could never go thru it again. Let the whiteness of the whale and what the whale symbolizes rest.
I'm glad this Yankee included To Kill a Mockingbird. Perhaps there's hope for some Yankees.
This is a fun book.
The sun never sets on Hemingway. The author makes the most out of his simple words in The Sun Also Rises just as Hemingway makes the most out of a sparse story. At the same time, the author perhaps stretches things when he says there would have been no Raymond Carver with his famous minimalist prose. How do we know there would have been no Carver without Hemingway?
I have read so many things about the symbols in The Great Gatsby I don't know what to say. My hunch is that your guess is as good as mine on the green light and the ashes.
The author makes some sense of Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, but I doubt I will ever attempt it.
I'm glad I read Moby Dick in college. I could never go thru it again. Let the whiteness of the whale and what the whale symbolizes rest.
I'm glad this Yankee included To Kill a Mockingbird. Perhaps there's hope for some Yankees.
This is a fun book.
Super Bowl
It's
a good thing I don't care about the Super Bowl. Who cares who wins?
Who's playing anyway? The outcome will not improve my digestion or make
my dreams any sweeter. Not caring about this game is one less stress
point in my life. I don't like chicken wings. I don't like guacamole.
I don't like watching football in groups. Guess I'm out of luck today.
P.S. Go Seattle. Beat New England!
P.S. Go Seattle. Beat New England!
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