Ross Douthat latest shows why he’s the best columnist at the New York Times:
Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.
That’s the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home.
A week ago, Brit Hume broke all three rules at once.
January 12th, 2010 | 5:13 pm
Contrary to Douthat’s evidently limited experience in the vibrant religious life in America, what he characterizes as an “illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion” is actually a constructive tactic that thankfully is widely used by most religious leaders in public interfaith dialogue (particularly when the discussion of religion is not on the agenda, there is no religious leader of even modest competence in attendance, the comment period is less than 60 seconds, etc., etc., etc.)
Although it’s merely an “idea”, not a “rule” as claimed by Douthat, so far that process for maintaining religious comity has proved pretty effective in avoiding the dysfunctional religious polarization that plagues societies in which that “idea” is rarely followed.
And I’m not sure where Douthat came up with that other “rule”, that one can’t “say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home”, but I’m not aware of anyone in my little circle of pugnacious Irish Catholics, calmly-certain calvinists, urbanized reform (and even one nominally conservative) Jews, passive-aggressive Buddhists, smug atheists, nice Bahais, unchurched Christian existentialists, etc. that is aware of, or has ever complied in the least with, such an alleged “rule”.
So, two out of Douthat’s three “rules” seem to have been little more than polemical straw-dogs of little consequence, other than to provide a platform for him to stir-up the emotionally precarious on both sides of the controversy.
To many of us, the inexplicable lack of evidence that Hume ever made even a token attempt to speak personally to Woods (either before or after Hume’s Sunday epistle on the inefficacy of Woods’ adopted faith) to share with Tiger Woods Hume’s own faith journey to Christ, forced us to a conclusion that Hume’s comments were much more likely to have been motivated by a cheap form of ostentatious religiosity than by some genuinely deep personal compassion for Woods as an individual (and not just a serendipitously provocative symbol for convenient placement in Hume’s prepared narrative).
Of course, I do agree that it is lots of fun to engage in spiritual jingoism and solipsistic triumphalism (and to take a break from the often arduous job of actually trying to walk in Jesus’ shoes) whenever the apostates, secularists, militant atheists, and jihad-apologists start slithering out of their hiding places to wail about the indignity of some public figure provocatively saying anything even mildly positive about Christianity.
But that sort of arrogant and myopic behavior by us goes a long way to confirming the suspicion of those religious troglodytes that we’re trying to reach that we Christians really are not much more than the unreasoning, hypocritical caricatures of us that are regularly presented in the media.
So, I guess it’s actually a blessing that none of the people in those demographics targeted for our evangelism will ever read any of the First Things postings on the Wood-Hume kerfuffle.
Otherwise they might be able to confirm what self-satisfied and spiritually-superior folks we often are !
January 15th, 2010 | 4:58 pm
You either believe the same as Brit Hume – that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the light and that no one comes to the Father but through Him…and Tiger needs to ask forgiveness for his sins to receive Christ’s forgiveness and love – or you believe there are other ways to do this. Forget whether or not Hume should’ve shared the advice at that time, on that program, or in his role. You either believe what he said is correct or wrong. Read more about it in “Politics and Religion: Knowing Little But Never Being Wrong” – http://richardtgarner.blogspot.com/2010/01/politics-and-religion-knowing-little.html
January 18th, 2010 | 8:49 am
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