Religion & Beliefs
Bad Christians. Bad Muslims. Bad Jews?
By Laurel Snyder / December 13, 2006
This story at Jewschool (God, how I love Jewschool!) seems not unrelated to what I was blathering on about yesterday.
We think the Catholics are honoring/respecting a bad guy and want them to stop (Pius). But then some Muslims think that we’re honoring/respecting a bad Jewish guy (Prager).
The question is…. How much power should one group have over another, particularly in the incredibly subjective world of faith? Is it our place to tell other people when they’re being wrong/politically incorrect? Should we threaten each other with bad PR? Repercussions?
There are many many important differences between the two situations (namely that the US Holocaust Memorial Council is not a religious agency like the Catholic Church) but there’s something funny about reading the stories side by side.
Jews want to affect the way Catholics decide their own leadership/hierarchy/ agenda… and then are bothered by the idea that Muslims would feel the right to affect the process by which Jews determine their own leadership/hierarchy/agenda (assuming one can call the Holocaust Memorial Council a bunch of “Jews”. And one can argue that it’s not, but we certainly claim it most of the time.)
I’m still not sure that I have a “position” of any kind on this, but I’m trying to think about both situations and sort them out. I feel like we can pick at the differences in the situations, but in the end… it seems hypocritical to view them too differently.
Not that culture and faith don’t turn everyone into hypocrites, but in this case… both sides are trying to apply logic… and it isn’t quite working.
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Catholics, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, remain a subject that require I spend significantly more time on the bias-elimination phase of critical thinking to feel I have any hope of considering objectively. In this instance, however, it’s wholly unnecessary — not only is who the Catholic Church gives a gold star and a cookie too their choice, exclusively, the attempt to pick that particular fight lends the institution a credibility I don’t personally think it merits.
I can’t decide if the whole thing with Prager and Ellison was a publicity stunt or what, but stupid is stupid and loyalty shouldn’t trump fairness or basic considerations of civility.
Since I’m not in danger of being elected, it’s a non-starter, but I couldn’t swear an oath on a Bible, either — it’d be hypocritical.
It strikes me that you say that “both sides are trying to apply logic”, though. I disagree. Both sides are attempting to apply logic to the extent that it supports their specific agenda and disregarding it when it does not.
Good stuff, as always, though. The site has an awesome consortium of writers as a whole, but Faithhacker is the more substantial part of the reading to me. It’s ironic that my interest is purely academic, but religion is also the sole public exercise in the exploration of philosophy as an adjective. While Storahtelling has required that I do a little extra reading to make sense of it, for example, it’s focus on symbolism and meaning apply as universal concepts, the same way it’s possible to appreciate drum circles as an exercise in the power of ritual.
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