Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Deposing Anti-Intellectualism

In a recent blog entitled "Beyond Cynicism 4," Scot McKnight continues his discussion of Andrew Byers' book Faith Without Illusions.  I then mentioned in an email to our church that I especially liked this fourth entry in McKnight's series.  Rhandi Tyssen, one of our members, wrote back and asked why I liked this one best.  Here is my response:

Because it speaks against anti-intellectualism, which has certainly been a problem in the C of C.  I have heard come out of the mouths of our people some of the exact quotes Byers/McKnight mentions as prevalent among anti-intellectuals.  On the other hand, I virtually never hear academics and intellectuals speak badly of the average person in the pew, because they know that their education or erudition does not justify such attitudes; but anti-intellectuals often accuse the educated of thinking that they are better than the uneducated.   So, you end up with the uneducated being more often prejudiced against the educated than the other way around, all because the uneducated feel like the educated are slighting them!  Anti-intellectualism ends up hurting the church more than helping, just like hypercriticism against leaders or teachers does more harm than good.  Ultimately, I think all this comes down to self-esteem.  The uneducated feel deprived, or intimidated, or jealous, or denigrated by the educated, and so a diminished self-esteem causes them to respond negatively to intellectuals, when the poor intellectual was just trying to learn more and then to help others discover the things they had learned!  True intellectuals don’t look down on the uneducated and ignorant, because they know how ignorant they themselves are about so many things.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Wanting to Understand Islam Well, With Fairness

There is much being written about Islam and how we as Christians are to understand it.  For example, just how separated in our minds should Islamic fundamentalist terrorism be from the core of the Islamic faith?  Is Christianity just as guilty or reprehensible in places as the parts of Islam that are reprehensible?  In a blog sponsored by Ben Witherington III from August 3,

(http://www.patheos.com/community/bibleandculture/2011/08/03/the-norway-killings-what%e2%80%99s-the-truth-about-islam-christianity-and-violence/)

Witherington makes comments about the recent massacre in Norway and moves from there to discuss Christian attitudes toward Islam.  In response I have commented several times.  If you are interested you will want to go to Witherington's blog and see the thread, but, I thought I would include here my comments in reponse #44:

Aside from Ben’s description of Koranic literature as proverbial, aphoristic, sapiential (which it seems to me inadequately addresses the content of texts like the ninth Sura and their place in Islam), I still have not seen one comment that denies the significant difference between Islamic origins and Christian origins with respect to elements of violence being inherently part of the life of the founder and of the foundational literature. This seems to me important. There seems to be clear evidence that Koran and Hadith advocated violence against infidels and that Muhammad and some of his immediate successors carried out violent acts against infidels. Is this true and accurate or not? Juxtaposed, there seems to be nothing in the New Testament, and nothing in the life of Jesus, that advocates, examples, or even passively permits violence. Christian origins move entirely in the opposite direction of violence, despite whatever the followers of Christ have done in living out their faith. Is this true and accurate or not? This does not let Christianity off the hook for its history. This does not deny the gains made by contemporary Muslims or by Muslims throughout history. This does not allow for Christian smugness or self-righteousness or judgmentalism. This does not allow for the Americanization of Christianity, nor does it defend the legitimacy of manifest destiny, both of which are truly aberrations from Christianity. This doesn’t defend the horrors of the recent acts in Norway or serve as a means of separating modern Christian perspectives in some circles from violence. But, IMO, origins count for something and help to explain. Ken and others have argued effectively, I think, that this is the case, and it seems to me that these arguments (which don’t at all appear to be assumptions or misinterpretations of evidence available to all, nor are they jingoistic in character) require answers that are different than: accusations hurled at the mistakes of Christians, or mention of the truth that the vast majority of Muslims are non-violent and abhor terrorism, or assertions that the Koran may permissably be intepreted differently by Muslims today, or claims that argue that it is a mere caricature of Islam to assert that there was from the beginning violence within Islam. Such argumentation does not count for nothing, but original, paradigmatic texts and the lives of the founders of religions must be given their due, it seems to me, in considering what our opinions should be of those religions.

The long and short of this for me is that it is simplistic and inaccurate to make similar claims about the origins of Christianity and its link to violence or non-violence and the origins of Islam and its link to violence or non-violence.  Further, the differences between these two faith systems on this score, seem to me to be very important in formulating opinions about the fundamental character of these two faiths.