Well, as I usually do when I try to be brief (a very rare event!), I stepped in it again and managed to set off some warning bells for some people when I posted about the teacher who was arrested in the Sudan for naming a teddy bear “Mohammed.” Actually, nobody accused me of hatred, but that just looked more provocative in the title.
First, let me confess that I do not have much sympathy for fundamentalism and the attitudes that seem to drive it. You will probably feel that as I post. The idea of a fixed understanding of the truth to which we must cling bluntly just seems silly to me. As I observe the world, while I still believe there are things that are true and things that are not, I believe that our understanding of these must constantly change as long as we remain imperfect. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I haven’t yet attained perfection, and using my best rose-colored glasses, I can’t yet foresee the time when I will be perfect. So yes, fundamentalism is, from the start, not my cup of tea.
So fundamentalism, as such, is something that I do oppose, whether it is Christian fundamentalism, Muslim fundamentalism, or any other variety. But there is a difference between opposition to something, and believing that it is essentially violent or at least physically dangerous. There are more characteristics than just doctrines that go into that additional problem. In addition, I would note that just what makes one a “fundamentalist” differs by faith. That’s why I will point to a different line at the end of this post.
As I said in the previous posts, I think the most dangerous variety of fundamentalism is currently most commonly manifested by fundamentalist Muslims. The violent reaction to the publication of cartoons of Mohammed, and the recent “teddy bear” arrest indicate a high level of willingness to engage in violence over opinions. That willingness to engage in violence over one’s beliefs is the key characteristic that must be added to fundamentalism before I become seriously concerned.
Thus John Calvin in Geneva steps across a line when he burns Servetus at the stake for his beliefs. Of course, we should give poor Calvin due consideration based on the social structure and beliefs of his era, where such a thing was more common, yet I would note that a reformation that corrected any number of alleged theological errors somehow failed to correct what seems to me the greatest error of all–the notion that we can torture and kill other people over their beliefs and words. But one thing at a time, I guess.
Similarly, groups in the United States that use the word “Christian,” however far they may vary from what I would regard as Christian, do advocate violence in the name of Jesus. Fortunately for us here, their numbers are small. I do not worry on a day by day basis that there will be a terrorist attack by Christian fundamentalists, or even that there will be one by splinter groups calling themselves Christians. The event is simply too rare.
Further, I see a big difference between traditional Christian fundamentalism–belief in the “fundamentals”–and the violent splinter groups. They may both accept the major fundamentals, but the difference is in their extreme us vs. them attitude combined with a willingness to engage in violence over what one believes and expresses.
I hate to use slippery slope arguments, because they can be used on just about anyone. Even a nice, center of the road position has a slippery slope on either side. But I think a slippery slope warning is in order. If one indulges oneself in an us vs. them paradigm, one is in danger at some point of becoming violent and dangerous. The problem is with “at some point.” All of us have some “us vs. them” factors in our lives. Why do I belong to a particular church congregation? Surely there are things there that I like more than those in another nearby congregation. It’s a bit of us vs. them.
If I start wanting to tear down the other church’s signs, yell at them out the car window, or otherwise harass them, then I am crossing a dangerous line. It’s easy to become more and more hostile as we remain separate because we simply don’t know one another well enough. Then there is the problem of repeated division. As we become so certain that our opinions are right and will never need correction, we become less willing to fellowship with people who differ from our position.
Within a few mile radius of my own house I can identify at least three major divisions of Baptists. I don’t mean denominations, but rather movements. There are Southern Baptists, in this area a very substantial number. (For what it’s worth, I don’t call them fundamentalists, but evangelicals.) Then there are independent Baptists, who quite generally regard the Southern Baptists as too liberal. Then there is the home church of Peter Ruckman, KJV-Only writer, who regards all of the above as way off the liberal edge of the map.
How far off the map does someone need to be before we get concerned? Well, within reason, I think we can express concern about any beliefs we regard as incorrect. As long as we are willing to hear other points of view and to be corrected as necessary, this is just part of life. I’m human enough that I will express myself with greater and greater vigor as I perceive someone to differ from my own position.
The line that must not be crossed, in my view, is the one where I allow violence over opinions held and somehow expressed. (It’s a separate subject, but I believe that any violence that is not strictly defensive is to be rejected, and even some defensive violence.) No matter how someone insults my faith, I do not have the right to respond with violence.
Right now, this violence is coming largely from the Muslim world, but that is not an eternal verity. Christians are not immune. We become incensed when people speak against Jesus or the Bible. I have heard such speech referred to as persecution with people calling for Christians to prepare to defend themselves. If such defense is to be done also with peaceful expression, that’s no problem, but in many cases I know that is not the case.
And I do not mean only unofficial violence. Violence engaged in against others because of their opinions is even more dangerous when done as official policy. Who sets the boundaries?
Again, lest I be misunderstood, I do not mean any of this to say that we cannot respond to terrorism. But it does mean that we must not engage in a war against Islam. For the most part, despite my profound objections to some of our actions overseas, I don’t see us engaging, at least intentionally, in such a war. I do, however, see quite a lot of sentiment here for it.
Finally, while I do not accept the idea that violence always begets violence, i.e. I do believe that there are times when the use of violence is required, I do believe that any time one engages in violence beyond the provocation, becomes the first to resort to violence, or uses violence when other options are open, one will only produce more violence. It is that boundary between between having strong beliefs, and having beliefs so strong that one can do violence because of them that is where I see the danger.
Hatred? I hope not! But strong opposition, and a willingness to respond vigorously–absolutely.
I suppose it was inevitable, with all of the hype about the terrible evils supposedly caused by a belief in evolution, but it looks like some crackpots decided to express their views with threats.
From the Denver Post:
The first threat was e-mailed to the labs – part of CU’s ecology and evolutionary biology department housed in the Ramaley Biology building – on Friday. Wiesley said Monday that morning staff members found envelopes with the threatening documents slipped under the lab doors.
I hope these just come from a prankster without serious intent. We’ve seen too many times recently how someone who is truly demented can nonetheless get hold of weapons and cause considerable damage.
HT: The Panda’s Thumb. Further details will be posted there, though I will link to them from here as I notice them.
Update: Or really, just a better reference. I think this story from MSNBC covers the ground better in a single article.
I believe very strongly that we need to distinguish between radicals who want to kill us, and the very large number of Muslims who are peaceful people. But with the reaction to the knighting of Salman Rushdie, it is again important to point out that we need to be on our guard for violent people, and there are lots of them.
I am very aware that there has been calls for violence by Christians, or at least those who call themselves Christians. I live near where Paul Hill, a defrocked Presbyterian minister, took a shotgun and killed two people. I’m glad to say that he was a defrocked minister, as in not a minister any more, but nonetheless he did violence in the name of Jesus, and I condemn his actions. I will continue to challenge and condemn all violence and calls for violence from my own or from other religions.
But right now, in terms of numbers, the calls of violence seem to be coming most commonly from the Muslim world. I have been told that I don’t understand Islam, but my question is just who do I listen to in order to understand. Is Islam a religion of peace and of choice, or is it one that punishes apostasy by death? In many countries at least, it appears to be the latter. Is it a religion that is willing to become part of a pluralistic society, to win converts peacefully through persuasion, and to uphold the freedoms of other religions no matter how high a percentage of the population become adherents? It doesn’t seem so, if one considers those nations that are already majority Muslim.
Now I know from personal experience that there are Muslims who are peaceful people, good citizens, good neighbors. I believe that these are likely the majority, though I really can’t prove that. But events like this tend to make it hard to keep people’s attention on the moderates:
Salman Rushdie, who went into hiding under threat of death after an Iranian fatwa, has been knighted by the Queen.
His book The Satanic Verses offended Muslims worldwide and a bounty was placed on his head in 1989.
But since the Indian-born author returned to public life in 1999, he has not shied away from controversy.
A devout secularist, he backed Commons Leader Jack Straw over comments on Muslim women and veils and has warned against Islamic “totalitarianism”.
And the reaction? Were Muslims the world over willing to allow a man who opposed their religion to be honored? Well, years ago they had called for his death. What would happen now?
From Pakistan (source: here):
Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister, said giving the title to the author was an insult to Islam and ‘at the root of terrorism’.
Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses caused worldwide protests in 1989 and led to Iran issuing a fatwa ordering his execution.
Speaking about the writer at the National Assembly, Mr ul-Haq reportedly said: ‘If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified.’
But after the comments were reported on local news networks yesterday, the minister claimed he did not mean to condone or incite terrorism, merely to warn that such insults against Islam could lead to attacks.
Or the words of the one Muslim British peer: (from ABC Australia):
Muslim Labour peer Lord Ahmed describes the decision as provocative and damaging to Britain’s relations with Muslims.
“Actually I was appalled to hear that Salman Rushdie had been given knighthood, particularly when this man has been very divisive,” he said.
“This man – as you can see – not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people that were killed around the world and honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of because of what he did, honouring him I think is going a bit too far.”
My major point here is that while we must be careful to blame those who are actually guilty, we must also not allow a desire to be fair to keep us from recognizing evil when we see it. The reaction to the Danish cartoons was evil, and so is this. We in the west should not be intimidated by threats of violence. The insult is not the cause of the violence. People suffer insults without violence every day. The violence stems from the evil in the hearts of the people who preach it and carry it out.
HT: Dispatches from the Culture Wars (and commenters there). That article is worth reading.
I knew when the news of the tragedy at Virginia Tech came out that there would be religious responses that would be obnoxious, and even some that would be downright despicable. It seems that with every tragedy there are uninvolved people available to place blame and to pontificate. I personally have no words that are worth saying to those who have lost a loved one in this tragedy, or for that matter to the Virginia Tech community. They’re going through something I have never experienced.
I have, however, experienced tragedy, and I know how people use it for their own agendas. When our son died of cancer at age 17, and throughout the five year battle that preceded that event there were people who needed to question us. We were either grieving too much, in which case our faith was weak, or we weren’t grieving enough, and were thus in denial. We weren’t using the right treatment plan, out of the many dozens of non-traditional treatments suggested. Some thought that he would be healed if we just took him to the right church and had the right group pray for him. They couldn’t understand why we didn’t jump up and go where they suggested immediately.
Then there were those who just looked at us pityingly. My wife and I have taught–and still teach–weekend seminars on prayer. How could we be teaching about prayer, and yet our own son was not healed. For some reason these folks didn’t check what we actually teach, or they would have found that we do not and have never made the claim that prayer should replace medical care, or that there is some certainty of healing through prayer. In fact, we behaved precisely as we teach. We sought the best medical care available, and we maintained a strong prayer life.
Now the vast majority of our friends and neighbors were wonderful. I’m talking about a tiny minority who were nonetheless quite vocal. I learned how to ignore people. The point here is not what we or anyone else believe. The point is that everyone thinks they have the right to stick their philosophy and opinions into someone else’s decisions and grieving.
With that in mind, I’m going to comment on a couple of “Christian” responses to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Now if the bereaved want to sound off in any way they wish, I’m not going to jump in, but these are responses from people outside. They make me embarrassed to be a Christian. I’m never embarrassed to be a follower of Jesus; just sometimes the name “Christian” gets so horribly besmirched by this type of comment.
The first is a comment by Dinesh D’Souza:
To no one’s surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho’s shooting of all those people can be understood in this way–molecules acting upon molecules.
Now that paragraph is wrong in so many ways. I’ve recently responded to Dawkins’ book The God Delusion (see category “The God Delusion” on the sidebar), and while I have many disagreements with Dawkins, something that should surprise no one, I don’t see D’souza’s characterization as at all accurate. On the surface, yes. Dawkins is a materialist. But simply explaining everything as molecules acting on molecules, well, not so much. In addition, however much some Christians might like it to be so, Dawkins is not the sole atheist on the planet. Atheists work and hope, live and learn, love their families, make moral decisions, in short, they do the things that everyone else does. And there’s no evidence to suggest that they make worse neighbors.
But it’s not the wrongness of all this that embarrasses me. It’s the insertion of this religious (or philosophical) goal. I haven’t read any such, but if an atheist writer used the tragedy to announce gleefully that this proved there is no God, I would find that offensive as well. Let the tragedy be what it is. Especially let’s not use it to demonize any group of people. I’d also like to call attention to this very moving response (HT: Dispatches from the Culture Wars).
Then there’s Dr. Grady McMurtry, president of Creation Worldview Ministries, who believes that teaching evolution was the cause:
. . . people should not be surprised when mass shootings occur, such as the one on the Blacksburg university campus on Monday. “And at Virginia Tech, what do we have?” he asks rhetorically. “We have a person who, unfortunately, thought that humans had no more value than cats and dogs — and unfortunately, I think, probably felt the same way about themselves.” (source HT: Pandagon)
Probably felt that way about themselves? Does he think it’s appropriate to be gratuitously insulting at this point? I’ve discussed this issue before and am not going to revisit it now. All I’m interested in at the moment is the way the tragedy is being used to push agendas, and not in a kind way.
The agenda we should be pushing–and yes, I have an agenda as does everyone–is simple love and respect. I’m a long ways away and there’s remarkably little I can do, but I can speak with respect of the people involved, no matter what their religion or lack thereof. I can see them as human beings seeking a way to deal with the tragedy that has struck their lives. I can refrain from pretending I possess a one stop answer to their problems.
I think that’s what Jesus would do in these circumstances.
Professor Liviu Librescu gave his life for his students (Jerusalem Post). It’s worth remembering. I’m sure there were many others. In the midst of this terrible act, there are also people who showed true heroism.
Many of us right now are thinking about and praying for the folks at Virginia Tech. Others closer to the scene are responding as their duty calls them. But it’s an ill wind that blows no one good, and there are two groups of people who thrive on this sort of thing: The news media, and political activists.
One can’t blame the media for thriving on disaster, because so many of us glue our eyes to the TV during an event like this, just looking for the latest tidbit of information that they can dig up. Our tendency is to criticize the media for overplaying the situation, finding everyone who may have heard a gunshot and interviewing them, and bringing in commentators to make lengthy comments on things they cannot possibly no. The media provides it because we watch it. They even got me for about 15 minutes, but after that I moved on, and I’ll keep up with written stories on the internet (MSNBC story).
For political activists a tragedy like this is a godsend. People’s emotions are stirred up. They want a solution and are less anxious to spend time considering how effective a course of action will be. If it looks good, they’re liking to jump on board. So for people with pet projects, this is the time to get out there and pitch them if there is any possibility that someone might think they’re related to the cause of the tragedy.
Whether it’s gun control, or increased gun ownership, censorship of violent movies or video games, greater police presence, less restrictions on police monitoring of citizens, increased education, drug legalization or greater drug enforcement, restriction or increase of immigration, or whatever it is, people will [immoderate metaphor stricken with apologies, see comments-HN] quickly appear on television/radio with their pet projects. I’m sure there are readers for whom many of these things are pet issues, and they may well be offended at my list. I’m not sure it is balanced between conservative and liberal causes, but it could be if I thought some more.
What the rest of us need to do is demand that as actions are taken they are carefully chosen for their effectiveness. Just because something looks like it will doesn’t mean that it will. Politicians will be glad to pass legislation that will make their constituents feel better. It’s quite irrelevant whether it actually works. In fact, it’s very difficult to get government projects tested for their efficacy. Generally we assume that if the government has an Office for Making Everyone Safer, that office will actually make everyone safer.
So let the sympathy flow to the families, but keep your other emotions under control. Check out what is and isn’t done and check out just how effective it is. After all just because there are violent video games and there are violent people doesn’t mean that one caused the other. It’s a connection that has to be checked.
