There are three kinds of large Islamic conferences: academic (boring and ignored); populist (consumerist and boisterous); and public relations (schizophrenic and confused). I've attended the first two myself, in debates about the hermeneutics of the Quran at various elite universities, and at the Islamic Society of North America's annual Labor Day convention, where everyone from Howard Dean to DOJ and DHS officials make a showing amid the bazaars and lectures. As I am not important (or interested) enough, I have never been invited to the third sort, but those are the ones I want to talk about.

Muslim bigwigs --- especially since 9/11 --- are the ones who go to the international public relations conferences. These are always promised to be genuine and honest discussions about the issues of the age: something about healing the rift between Islam and the West, something about a "dialogue" of civilizations, something about harmony of reason and revelation. They always have long and verbose titles.

Unfortunately, as two recent PR conferences show, such events are rarely true Delegates Meet At The Kuala Lampur Conference: Real leadership goes missingattempts to imbue the Muslim majority world with the spirit of liberty, inquiry and freedom of the kind that helped make it a world-historical religion. What they turn out to be, more often than not, is a showcase for dictators and theocratic stooges to wallow in self-pity.

Just last week, the elaborately titled 3^rd Annual International Conference on the Muslim World and the West opened in Kuala Lampur. Such Muslim luminaries as Turkey's Ekmeleddin Ihsanouglu (head of the 55 member Organization of the Islamic Conference and a member of the Post-Islamist AKP Party), Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (which, if you haven't heard, is not a dictatorship anymore), and Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al-Faisal, were in attendance.

So what kind of principles did these political leaders from three great Muslim nations put forward? Joshua Trevino was there and in the aptly titled piece --- Speechless in Kuala Lampur --- reveals that one of their primary interests was proving that there is no such thing as freedom of expression.

In other words, rather than acting as leaders, these men played to the lowest common denominator: They peddled, pandered, dare I say, got down on their knees and gave a sumptuous blowjob to the guy who starts spitting when he hears words like 'Geert Wilders', 'Danish Cartoons', or 'Salman Rushdie'. Not one of them could manage to stand up and show Muslims that the best reaction to people like Wilders is to let them spout their ignorant head of steam while averting one's gaze. In fact, when it came to Wilders' movie (the subject of plenty of debate here at Jewcy) most Muslims in the West did simply turn a blind eye to it. Rather than use Western Muslims as an example, these three so-called leaders chose to give legitimacy to the idea that when people invoke religion to engage in violence against artists and poets and filmmakers they are doing a service to their faith. Shameful stuff.

Could it be that the Kuala Lampur conference was just a fluke, and others will be better? Not if Saudi Arabia's recent interfaith conference, held a week before the Kuala Lampur meeting, is any indication. The Saudi king's conference was focused not on relations between Islam and the West, but among Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. And from external appearances, it looked promising: a conference in Mecca! a few steps from the Holy Mosque! with not only Jews invited, but even prominent Shia leaders as well as other, mostly spiritual leaders of Islam! So, how did it go?

Well, let's check in with Guardian journalist Riazat Butt, who was there. A quick glance of her report reveals that shortly after King Abdullah's adequately harmonious tidings of tolerance, he was contradicted by the Grand Mufti of his own state, according to whom:

[D]ialogue with other religions was a way to bring non-Muslims into Islam. The cleric, who is the highest official of religious law, told the delegates that converting people to Islam was the ultimate goal of dialogue, a point he made several times. "It is the opportunity to disseminate the principles of Islam. Islam advocates dialogue among people, especially calling them to the path of Allah."

In other words, no one had told the most important religious leader in the room that tolerance is different from evangelism. The contradiction was so thick that Ms. Butt, a journalist, was forced to follow up her report with a blog-piece, where she called the views at the conference "dogmatic, intolerant and inflexible." (There was also the issue that no one really bothered to take the point about not bringing politics into religion very seriously, but let's not go there for now).

Light-hearted ribbing aside, there is a very serious issue underlying these two failed conferences, namely that neither political leaders (as with the Malaysian conference) nor religious leaders (as with the Saudi conference) are making any real effort to clean up their houses. Political leaders use these conferences to score cheap points before the audience. Religious leaders use the venues to galvanize their followers' evangelist zeal. In the process, the very real issues of women's emancipation, treatment of minorities, and separation of mosque and state go wholly ignored.

What these conferences show is that the very idea of international Islamic conferences is completely irrelevant. There is no such thing as top-down change. It is usually just pageantry or farce. If there is reason to have hope about resolving thorny issues in the Muslim world in liberal and democratic directions, that hope doesn't reside with Muslim leaders. It resides with average people who live and suffer through extremism and oppression, and thus can understand the value of qualities like generosity, tolerance, and openness, in ways no dictator or theocrat ever could.

Israel's beauty shines brightest in its diversity. The country possesses one of the most culturally and physically diverse societies on the planet. No matter the kind of Jew, from Yemenite to Ethiopian to Polish, from Orthodox to Reform to secular, there is a place for you under the Mediterranean sun. Yet there is at least one group of Jews who is excluded from the Zionist mosaic. They are the Messianic Jews --- a religious community that follows a Torah inspired life-style while believing in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

The Messianics view themselves as returning to the roots of early Christianity as aMessianic Jews Rally For Israel: Israel doesn't return the favor Jewish sect. According to Paul Liberman, author of The Fig Tree Blossoms, a messianic Jew is "a person who was born Jewish or converted to Judaism, who is a 'genuine believer' in Yeshua [Jesus], and who acknowledges his Jewishness." Practicing bi-spiritually, as it were, the Messianics stand outside the theological and historic spheres of normative Judaism and Christianity. Yet according to their own beliefs, they are engaged in an authentic expression of Judaism. In fact, they consider themselves "complete Jews."

Around the world the Messianic Jewish community number roughly 350,000. In Israel they stand at 15,000 and have over 120 different congregations. Not surprisingly, from their inception the Messianics have managed to rouse the ire of the ultra-Orthodox and (to a lesser extent) secular communities in Israel. That anger has frequently turned into aggressive physical and verbal confrontations precipitated by religious radicals (Jews and Arabs) who oppose the presence of what in their view are dangerous missionizing Christians (in contrast to the fact that not a single Messianic Jew has ever stood trial for illegal missionary activity --- e.g. forced conversion, or conversion of minors). Most recently, in the settlement of Ariel, a bomb planted under a Purim gift-basket left a 15 year-old boy belonging to a prominent family of Messianic Jews in critical condition.

In addition to being targets of persecution at the hand of religious radicals, theIsraeli Messianic Jews Dedicate A Cemetary Messianics have also faced state-sanctioned discrimination. The Ministry of the Interior, with the backing of the Supreme Court, has rejected the appeals of Messianics for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. The argument being that since Messianics believe in Jesus, they either belong to another faith, or in the case of Jewish-born Messianics, have willingly converted into another faith, and therefore have forfeited their right to make Aliyah as Jews. In addition, the government has also discriminated against Messianic Jews who have migrated to Israel by refusing to renew their passports, register their newborns, firing them from government posts, and in some cases revoking their citizenship.

While historically some Messianics have been gentile "philo-Semites" who have used the cover of Judaism as a Trojan horse to enter Israel with the purpose of turning it into a Christian nation, for the most part the Messianic community in Israel is made of upstanding citizens (most of whom were born Jewish) who go into the army (unlike most of their haredi antagonists), pay their taxes, vote, are peaceful, and lead a quite Jewish lifestyle. Their situation forces us to ask the uncomfortable question: Should people who have chosen to practice and interpret their Judaism differently from the majority (which itself was never hegemonic or monolithic), live in a (Jewish) state of fear and persecution?

It seems that the unholy alliance between state and the ultra-Orthodox establishmentIsrael Defense Forces: Messianic Jews serve in the IDF, but do not have the same rights as Haredim who do not has created the absurd reality of inverse crypto-Judaism: Where in the medieval era Jews who had converted to Christianity kept their Judaism in secret, today many Messianics feel compelled to hide their beliefs from the rest of Israeli society. The price of disclosure may not be a visit to the Israeli equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, yet social ostracism, harassment, bullying, and state-sanctioned discrimination is enough to keep many (though not all) living secret lives.

From its beginnings the twin purpose of Zionism has been the creation of a safe haven for Jewish people(s) and culture(s). Likewise, the Declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel promises to "open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew," and guarantees freedom of religion to all. Yet when organs of the state and its citizens discriminate against certain Jews for their beliefs, they are betraying the very core of the ground on which they stand on.

Take for example Law of Return as it applies to Jewish-born Messianics. The notion that a Jew who accepts Jesus as the Jewish Messiah loses his/her right to make Aliyah is in complete contradiction with the purpose and logic of the law. It is bad enough to deny citizenship to a Jew who willfully converts to another religion (as the 1970 amendment to the law stipulates). It is something else all together to deny it to a Jew whose self-identity remains Jewish. Surely, antisemites do not care wither or not a Jew believes Jesus was the Messiah, or whether he/she is a Jew who converted to another faith. And from the perspective of the Law of Return, shouldn't the ubiquitous gaze of the antisemite be the deciding factor of whether or not someone is Jewish?

Of course Israel can define for itself who counts as a Jew, but it should be consistent. Yes, the Messianics stand in two worlds. But so do many Israeli Jews. If you can be a Jew and an atheist, a Jew and a Buddhist - why can't you also be you a Jew who believes that Jesus was the Jewish messiah? If we are going to accept Jews whose self-identity does not snugly fit into one mold, then we need to make room for the Messianics as well. If we are going to say that Hitler and not Halacha determines who is a Jew, then we need to make room for Jews who also believe in Jesus --- as Hitler would have done.

In the end, the existence of Messianic Jews is good for Israel. It forces us to stretch the boundaries and re-think the definition of an Israeli Jew. The sad truth is that anyone who has a bone to pick with the Orthodox/state monopoly (the list is long) does not want to make cause with the Messianics. To align with them is to commit political suicide. But make no mistake: today it is the Messianics, and tomorrow it will be you.

There are a number of points on which Ali Eteraz and I agree. Despite my general hostility to organized religion, I too have little patience for Robert Spencer-type arguments that Islam is possessed with a preternatural desire to force unbelievers into a state of "dhimmitude," nor am I terribly concerned that the minarets of "Eurabia" will soon encircle the Islamisized capitals of Western Europe. As I noted in my Reason column, I have little interest --- and little academic qualification --- in such conversations, and will leave the discussions of Koranic interpretation to theologians and historians. But thankfully, for the sake of Jewcy's readers, there is much on which we disagree. But let me start be reiterating that I too was unimpressed by Wilders film, and his views of Islam still strike me as reductive and, to put it mildly, incomplete.

Prior to Geert Wilders' release of the film, Fitna, Reason Magazine's Michael Moynihan wrote a piece on the subject, which is worth reading as he and I are about to engage in a mini-dialogue on many of the questions it raises.

Michael argued that while Wilders was "something of an extremist" and whose views on Islam were "both reductive and puerile" his film, once released, needed to be engaged "on its intellectual merits." Further, he argued that "not to support Wilders" was tantamount to acquiescing to "bullying" by "religious crackpots."

At the broad level, Michael and I agree that Wilders' film should not have been banned and needed to be engaged on its merits.

In my review of the film, I did precisely that. So did numerous other people,Iranian Student Protestors: Far more deserving of our sympathy than an illiberal fraud like Wilders including Irshad Manji (in both English and Arabic), Sadegh Kabeer, (Iranian in the Middle East) and Mona Eltahawy (Egyptian in the US). Not one of these three Muslim dissenters -- each with a long history of disavowing Muslim extremism -- found Wilders' film interesting or coherent. The film is intellectually lacking.

Where I particularly disagree with Michael -- and why I maintain that we owe nothing to Wilders -- is over the fact that Wilders is a threat to liberal society. I do not believe that Wilders' views must be criminalized by the state, but they should be deemed out of the bounds of liberal society much the same way that we consider discrimination on the basis of gender unacceptable. Further, the threat of a civil and democratic discussion --- yes, the threat of a discussion --- about the criminality of his views should be left on the table as a deterrent. Our aim should be to rid liberal society of people like Wilders. This can only start if we ignore Michael’s exhortation about looking out for Wilders’ rights, and spend our time either ignoring or mocking him.

Wilders' obfuscations are pernicious. He conceals his xenophobic nativism by waving (incorrectly translated and randomly picked) verses of the Quran. Sprinkled in the middle of Fitna, which Wilders would have us believe is about the Quran, are Dutch news clippings included for no other reason than to provoke an emotional backlash against immigrants. This is why I don't believe this film had anything to do with theology. Fitna was nothing more than a veiled attack on the newest "outsider." Jews and Chinese in the past, the Polish in London today and Latinos here in the US, have been the butt of similar tactics by ideologues. Demagogues enjoy taking pot-shots at the things immigrants hold closest --- in this case, the Quran. I have no doubt that if it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Muslims held dear, Wilders would be trying to equate Muslims with Oompa-Loompas. The job of public intellectuals like Moynihan is to cut through the veneer and get to the heart of the matter.

Here, the heart of the matter is nativism, not Islam, and not whether Wilders has an unqualified right to speak.

Today, in Europe, immigrants from Muslim countries are viewed as being inherently incapable of becoming good citizens in the West. It reminds me of the late 19^th century when discussion waged in Europe about how it was impossible for a Jew --- who gives obeisance to Talmudic Law --- to simultaneously give allegiance to the state.

Similarly, the threat of "Eurabia," promulgated by men like Wilders, is not very different from the threat of "Aztlan" raised by anti-immigrant forces in the US. Neither scenario is likely. But in a picture where immigrants are painted as gang-bangers, rapists, arms and drug dealers, rioters, and multiplying like the Borg, the narrative quickly shifts from irrational phantasmagoria to social policies that are either explicitly bigoted, or which turn a blind eye to the immigrants' concerns. This shifting is what men like Wilders excel at.

What Wilders manages to do with relative ease is to shift the discussion away from how power and resources should be apportioned between native and immigrant Europeans into a referendum on jihadism. This is wrong and unfair. By and large, European Muslim grievances with Europe are grievances with the state apparatuses --- with unemployment, with police brutality, with poverty. Yet Wilders and his cohorts would have us believe that the issue is all of Islam all across the world and if you do not characterize immigrants' agitations in a theo-political manner then you are either "with the enemy" or have already turned into a "dhimmi." This is called missing the point.

A perfect example of this missing-the-point occurred during the riots by immigrant youth in France. The New York Times and various other news agencies took a barracking, right here at Jewcy, for referring to the rioters as "youth" and not as "Muslim." Yet, the fact was that the latest rounds of the riots were touched off not only by the 40% unemployment rate --- a rate that matches Saudi Arabia's --- among immigrant youth but the police mandate to deport 25,000 illegal aliens a year and the specific incident of the police rather bizarrely running over a pair of youth on a motorcycle. As the UK Spectator and Reuters both noted, what needn't have been about Islam, became about Islam.

If Wilders were interested in discussing extremism, jihadism or even Islamism, he would have done it in a way that allowed Muslims who oppose these things to join with him. However, he purposefully chooses to marginalize such people in order to pretend that they don't exist. In some quarters this is called bigotry. I’ve already pointed out, even dissenting Muslims are acknowledging that while Wilders shouldn't be banned, they are also feeling that he isn't someone to be taken seriously either. There are reasons for this, reasons having to do with the fact that the guy is not just a bore but also a boor. We don't jail boors, but we shouldn’t be particularly interested in what they are saying either.

What people like Wilders ultimately do is to encourage the worst parts of the discourse to feel empowered, whether Islamophobic or Islamophilic. I am, for example, not particularly surprised that on the heels of Wilders film we have news about French Muslim graves --- from World War I no less -- defiled by Islamophobic elements (which previously used Nazi imagery on Muslim graves). Nor am I surprised that around the world handmaidens of dictators have tried to stir violence in response to the film. (The Jamat-e-Islami’s protests are particularly disgusting given that they participated in the rigged 2002 elections of Pakistan and boycotted the 2008 elections because they were free and fair).

While I do not believe that we ought to be influenced by what ayatollahs and extremists on the other side of the globe think, I do think we ought to speak in a way that will promote our values: democracy, decency and exemplarism. When the philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty went to Tehran to criticize religious oligarchy, their lectures were attended by an astonishing 1500 people. Those of us who profess to support democracy cannot forget that in the world today our allies aren't people like Wilders, but those 1500 dissenters in Iran who brave torture and prison to exchange in the best of our ideas. If for no other reason than for the sake of their emancipatory project, we should reach out to them and tell them: As you fight your supremacists, we fight ours. The only way we can make this showing is if Wilders is aware that he is perpetually "this close" to losing his right to offend. I don't want Wilders criminalized but I certainly don't understand why I ought help make him more audacious.

At the end of the day, Michael, when I bully Wilders, it's not because I am a religious crackpot, or in league with any such people, or antagonistic to free speech, but because I consider Wilders a threat to our liberal principles (and so does the Dutch Parliament). As you said, people like Wilders have a right to offend, but simultaneously people like me have a right to chastise the offensive. My optimistic sense is that in liberal societies people like me far outnumber people like Wilders and always will. I happen to think this is a good thing.

Pluralism is one of the buzz words in the Jewish community these days, and usually it means either a) there are no Orthodox people involved or b) the event is de facto Orthodox because of having to cater to the highest standard. Regardless, everyone has been hailing pluralism as the future of successful Judaism and no one has bothered to parse the exact meaning and implications of pluralism in a comprehensive and cogent way—until now.
pluralism: untiting the Right with the Far Right
Check out Dov Friedman’s article in the Columbia Current, “Two Jews, Three Opinions? In Search of Pure Pluralism.” (Full disclosure: Dov is an old family friend.) Friedman does an impressive job of explaining the conundrum that is Jewish pluralism, and his article blows the top off of all of the ‘why can’t we all just get along’ BS that is usually billed as pluralism.

There is one central division among Jews with regard to proposed unity of religious practice. In one group are those who believe that Jewish law is binding on all Jews because that law is mandated by God. These Jews also believe that living their lives according to this law represents the single authentic way to practice Judaism. In the other group are those who see Judaism (and sometimes religion in general) as housing an infinite number of truths, all of which attempt to connect with one aspect of God or another.

For those who believe that law is fundamentally correct and that other conceptions of Judaism are incorrect, their theology precludes them from creating and joining in communal practices that deviate from their understanding of Jewish law.

Alternatively, those who believe that Judaism houses an infinite number of truths are always at risk of losing a coherent foundation upon which to build their community; they may build a pluralist community, but what would tie such a community together? It would have nothing to rally around except pluralism itself—making pluralism the end instead of a means to a more harmonious community.

 

 

Rock, meet Hard Place.

Friedman then runs through all of the various ways to view pluralism, taking into account everyone from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik to Jewschool’s Dan “Mobius” Sieradski. In his conclusion he hopes for what he sees as the truest form of pluralism: educational pluralism. If kids are given strong Jewish educations that enable them to explore Jewish text, Jewish Law and Jewish thought, then pluralistic ideals will be easier for them to inhabit and maintain in the future.  As the product of some pretty hardcore Jewish education, I’m with him 100%.

Related: I Am Not Crunchy Enough for Jews in the Woods, Scrap the Mechitza

We have spoken about love for the Bible. But let me lift up the larger aspect of this love and refer you toward the end, to one of the most beloved passages in the beloved book: I Corinthians 13, the Ode to Love. Here Paul has to deal with the question, How can diversity and pluralism be an asset instead of a liability? How can we learn, as some of the feminist theologians have taught us, to turn the old statement around and say, How much diversity do we need? How much unity can we afford? We are used to asking, Can the center hold? How much unity do we need? How much diversity can we allow? Paul has an image that love is measured by how much diversity can handle. And he had to learn it hard, because in Galatia, in an earlier part of his ministry, he thought that by stamping his foot, he could get his way. You remember what he says in Galatians I: If anybody preaches and teaches otherwise than I do, be it so an angel form heaven, damned be that one. That's chutzpah. But now he knows in Corinth that he is one of the many, and he is even, perhaps, low man on the totem pole, so he gets ecumenical.

It's so moving. Oh, how I love that book which tells me these things. It's so moving: he says that we now see like in an old-fashioned bad mirror, in a glass, darkly. And now our knowledge is only partial. That's called relativism. It is when he thinks about the diversity that he has to tell us: Don't be so cocky about the truth. You have your insights, but you are just at the beginnings. And then he ends by saying, so there remains those three: faith, hope, and love, and greatest of them is faith. Well, that's what he should have said, according to his own thinking.Love: It's the best The basic line: He is the apostle of faith, everything depends on faith. But here, suddenly, there is a breakthrough in his thinking, and he says: And the greatest of these is love, agape, esteem of the other, not "insisting on its own way," as the RSV puts it.

So, it is proper for me to end these five points where the Bible teaches us to deal with it-as a friend, not to give it honor by just inflating it, but to hear it as that strange way in which the divine has broken in through human thought and human words and human experience.

Finally, let me leave you with a word which is the one that, in my own long love relationship to this book, I want to have in my mind when my end comes. It reads, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, like this: "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit."

Ultimately, I came to learn that there are at lest three quite distinct symbol systems, or paradigms, for Christian theology coming out of the Bible. One is dominated by the idea of God as the judge, and what is going to happen to us on the day of judgment.God is the judge: Arnold is the bailiff

Everything circles around God's judgment, and sin and forgiveness and redemption and the cross-that's Western Christendom in Catholicism and Lutheranism. Then there is God as Lord. And that has to do with God as Lord and we as subject, and the world is full of covenants-that's Calvin and also the Jewish tradition. And the model gave the basic model for the federal structure of the United States; foedus in Latin means convenant. It's the sociopolitical model of God.

And then there is the third, the Johannine. It's all about life. Sin is sickness, not primary guilt. It's not about obedience and Lordship. It's life: He came that they should have life, and have it abundantly. In him was life. Out of his innermost parts, streams of living water will flow (John 7). And everything is to be born anew, born out of water and blood (John 3). That's John, and that's Eastern Christendom. There is no crucifix in an Eastern church; there is the icon, where the divine life shines through the human image.

These are three different ways of thinking about God. What a richness. And you don't see them until you lay them apart. Of course they flow into one another, in all our traditions. But it is by studying the scriptures to get the integrity of each of these that they come to life. It is a little like the Gospels: if you mix them, you don't get the feel of how many theologies there are in scripture. It's like with homogenized milk: when you homogenize milk, you can't make whipped cream anymore.Dairy products: Thick like Scripture And for sermons, that's a deadening thing.

So when the preacher preaches Luke, it should sound like Luke. And even the Lutherans should not mix in a little Paul to make it kosher. So, not so uptight. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Richness. Plurality. Plurals. Yes, meanings is better than meaning. Isn't that, in a way, what the Trinity is about? Isn't that odd, these confused monotheists who speak about the Trinity: We couldn't quite settle for something which was just oneness, we had to have more of a fullness of an interplay, of a giving and receiving. Do you remember how it is with the oneness in John 17, where Jesus prays that they all be one? And you, father, are in me, and I am in you, and they are in us. It's like the biological world: Everything is interdependent. It's a giving and receiving. It's a oneness that is not a glob, but a living interplay. Plural.

Which leads me to the fifth point: Not so universal. And here I come full circle. I said in the beginning that I read the Bible as if it was just about me. And now I say, the Bible, my beloved Bible, it is indeed my Bible. There might be other holy scriptures-and that might not be as threatening as some people think. Not to claim universality and uniqueness? I always felt that to speak about the uniqueness of Christianity or the uniqueness of Christ does more for the ego of the believer than it does for God. Has God Only One Blessing? is the wonderful title of a recent book. How can I sing my song to Jesus with abandon, without telling negative stories about others? What one religion says about another religion, what one beloved scripture claims to be over against other scriptures, comes pretty close to a breach against the commandment "Though shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." What we say about the others is usually self-serving. We say, Is it self-serving? Oh no, it is just giving God honor. But think about it. Think about the scriptures themselves. Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before people that they see your good deeds and become Christian." That's not what it says. It says, "Let your light shine for people so that they see your good deeds and praise your father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5). Your father-so that people have a reason to be happy that there are Christians in the world, instead of getting irritated at them, if not worse. Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth." But who wants the world to become a salt mine?

We are born as a minority religion, as a religion among religions. And we are heirs to the Jewish perspective on these things: that's what I learned from the scriptures. It says, to Israel, that Israel is meant to be a light to the nations. That's what Jesus speaks about: a light to the nations. The Jews have never thought that God's hottest dream was that everybody become a Jew. They rather thought that they were called upon to be faithful and that God somehow needed that people in the total cosmos. What a humility, but we called it tribalism. From the enlightenment, everything had to be universal. But when Christianity started its universal claim, and got power, it led to the crusades. We couldn't really think that it was not God's hottest dream that everybody be like us. So I say, no, the Bible is my Bible. The milk of salvation: Suckling from the gospelsThis is the breast that I, as a child of God, have been nourished from. And for the little child, when the child is born that's the whole world, the mother's breast. But maturing means to recognize that other kids have sucked other mothers' breasts. That belongs to growing up.

Now this is my Bible. It was given to me as a gift, and it is full of love, for which I am grateful. If I have found a doctrine, that is my doctrine. I don't need to bad-mouth all others. This is theology for the next generations. Paul was on to that. Paul, late in his mission, had to learn to deal with plurality.

PART FOUR: Final Thoughts 

                     Rev. Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr., August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007

I was first introduced to Jerry Falwell by his protégé, Evangelical leader Mel White, who ghost wrote Falwell’s books until the struggle with his own homosexuality drove him to attempt suicide. White is now the leader of Soul Force, an organization working to end religious discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Conservative Christian leaders are not always comfortable speaking with me, since I produce the radio show Interfaith Voices. But I had several incredible phone conversations with Falwell in his office in Lynchburg, Virginia. As Interfaith Voices was on the air in Lynchburg, I like to imagine he might have listened in his home before trekking to Thomas Road Baptist Church on Sunday mornings. I wonder how he felt when I reported on Mel White‘s weekly Sunday protest against Falwell’s continued ostracizing of gays and lesbians.

I will remember Jerry Falwell as an eloquent speaker who tapped the power of modern media as few other religious figures have. Liberal Christians have never been able to match the power of his voice or his actions. But I will also remember Falwell as a characteristic Sodomite—polluting Democracy with a veiled and dangerous Christian nationalism. Falwell and a small cabal of Christian leaders—including James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Don Wildmon of the American Family Association—popularized their fantasy of a so-called culture war in which Christians are being persecuted by a liberal elite.

For all of Jerry Falwell’s power, much of it needed to be bought. He paid to air his sermons on cable television, and used the power of his fellow TV preachers to extend his message and help turn fallow radio stations to teaching tools for gospel. And in doing so, Falwell developed the tithe-driven gospel of prosperity now threatening to tear apart the creedal Christian community he worked to build. Prosperity theology is a doctrine used by televangelists to separate viewers from their money under the pretext of establishing God’s covenant on Earth. Its rise has brought millions of dollars and much controversy.

Falwell had extraordinary influence on the relationship between Jews and Evangelical Christians. He founded The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which successfully used late-night infomercials to goad Americans of all denominations to support the migration of Russian and Eastern European Jews to Israel. But Falwell was vague about his motivation for supporting the cause. He often said it was to “Help us complete God’s covenant with the Jewish people.”

Whether this was a nod to the American-Israeli relationship or to apocalyptic scripture, no one could be sure. While only 28 percent of Evangelicals support Israel for reasons related to the second coming of Christ, 59 percent do so for the reasoning of Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless Israel and the Jewish people and curse those who curse Israel and the Jewish people.”

Before the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, Falwell had stayed out of politics and the Southern Baptist Convention was a moderate, apolitical, and reluctantly pro-choice Christian denomination. But the legalization of abortion deeply affected Falwell. By 1976, he was claiming “The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country.” Falwell embarked on a successful ten year battle to put the Southern Baptist Convention permanently in conservative hands. By 1981, the SBC had completely changed its positions and become a dynamic force on issues of sexuality and life issues. Moderates were forced out, and biblical literalism, a 20^th century invention, became a virtual commandment for evangelists.

Jews took a back seat at this time, as they dealt with the rising force of Jews for Jesus, a group Falwell supported until just a few years before his death. Falwell also cavorted with many of the so-called Messianic Jews who name Jesus as their messiah and yet worship in a way that is essentially but questionably Talmudic.

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There’s this guy that I see at the coffee shops that I frequent, he’s always working on his laptop and he’s cute and every once in a while we kind of nod and smile at each other in a way that suggests one day we’ll flirt but not today when we have 3000 words to write in the next four hours. Anyway, recently I saw him at one of my favorite haunts, and just next to him was a table of three attractive girls who were drunk. I don’t know what they were doing at a coffee shop, but that’s not the point. They were drunk, and they were talking about Jesus, which is fairly typical in Nashville. If you recall, everyone in Nashville seems to be talking about Jesus all the time.
Frum Atheists are so Annoying: But so is this sign
I wasn’t paying any attention to their conversation both because they were obviously smashed, and because I had a lot of work to do. But my coffee shop buddy apparently was listening to them, because eventually he turned to them and said, “Come on girls, you’re too smart to believe that.” Then the girls started drunkenly defending the Bible, and my buddy just shakes his head and says, “We know none of that is true. It’s just an old story. You don’t need to get hung up on an old story just because someone told you it has meaning.” I don’t remember what the girls said to that, but I do remember that what I thought was, “Asshole.”

I’ve hung around a lot of academic institutions, and these “too smart to believe in God” guys are all over the place, sneering haughtily at everyone who can list the first five books of the Bible. I think if you’re an atheist or you’re an agnostic, that’s fine. I don’t actually care, but I expect you to be at the very least equally passive and apathetic about my practices if I’m not preaching to you or breaking any laws. Not every religious person in the US is a registered member of the Republican Party, and I’m annoyed by the assumption that because my politics are liberal, I couldn’t possibly be doing anything as dumb-ass as observing the Sabbath.

I have no interest in convincing anyone that I’m right about God, that I know the Plan and that I can direct anyone, even myself, in any definitely good direction. And these days, when zealous atheists (my friends and I call them frum atheists) give me their typical shpiel about how there’s really no way that there could possibly be a God, or no way that Moses got the Torah directly from God, or no way that the Exodus actually happened, all I can think is, “Shut up, man. You really don’t know any better than I do. That’s why it’s called faith.”

I’ve been thinking about it today because there’s an article on Jpost called Atheism is Not the Answer, about, well, why atheism isn’t the answer. And while I think it’s convincing in some ways, it certainly leaves much to be desired on an intellectual level.

Happily, scholarship and religion meet in a series of interviews published in the Biblical Archaeoloy Review about how scholarly research has effected the faith of a bunch of Biblical archaeologists. That is, people whose job it is to determine whether or not what it says in the Bible really happened. The interviews are definitely worth a read, but a lot of what’s said is that religion serves a larger and more important function than just dogma. Which is a great point.

I have at least 600 more words of rant on this subject, which I will save for later this week, but I’m wondering if there are other people out there who have something they always say when presented with the whole, “But you seem too smart to be religious…” argument. Anyone got some heavy ammo for the frum atheists?

A few years ago, before Mischa Barton was killed off The OC and I could stand to watch Adam Brody smoke a joint and doodle comic book heroes without wanting to gorge my middle finger down my throat, I caught a holiday episode called Chrismukkah in which the Cohen family and their gentile friends came together around a Chanukah bush. So fond was I of this particular show and the cute little all-inclusive, politically correct catch phrase it spawned that I vowed to watch the show for another few months.

Nowadays, Chrismukkah and the commercialization of Chanukah is everywhere. Personally, I think the attempt of the Market/economy to capitalize on the holiday under the guise of "non-denonominational" undermines its intrinsic value. For the reasons above, I'd like to share the following story with you, in which a blogger relays his frustrations over religious pluralism.

 

I’ll share a Chrismukkah encounter that took place in New Jersey. My two younger sisters are ballerinas. Since their toddler years, they’ve performed in The Nutcracker, a performance that involves doing pirouettes in glittery tutus around a Christmas tree that magically grows upward from the stage floor. This year’s Nutcracker performance was “special,” perhaps even “progressive” in the minds of many-a-shallow person. It included an additional scene about the Maccabees and their “Eight Crazy Nights.” As a grand finale, the entire Nutcracker cast appeared on stage to joyfully exclaim: L’Shana Chanukah! -- “To a year of Chanukah!” During rehearsals, my sister informed the non-Jewish directors that L’Shana Chanukah! made no sense at all, and that if they’re going to wish the audience Happy Chanukah, they should at least use the correct greeting -- Chanukah Sameach. But the directors explained that they liked L’Shana Chanukah! because it sounded catchy and romantic. They really didn’t care about its bizarre meaning (especially since the handful of Jews in a predominantly WASPy audience were probably too assimilated to know that the ever-so-inclusive Chanukah greeting had been butchered).

So what does this all mean?

Call me jaded, but if all that most non-Jews know about Judaism is L’Shana Chanukah!, we’re in bad shape. And perhaps the saddest part of all is the excessive American Jewish pride in knowing that chocolate gelt, plastic dreidels, and paper cut-out Chanukiahs have joined the ranks of green and red cupcakes, Jingle Bells, and Santa’s rosy face pressed against the windows of grocery stores, pharmacies, and nursery school classroom doors.