The Love Guru Offends Hindus

The film “The Love Guru” featuring former SNL comedian Mike Myers has fallen flat on its face in just two weeks. Panned by critics, it is a box office bust in the States, despite a blitz marketing campaign that even paired Mr. Myers with Deepak Chopra, the prominent self-help/new age author of Indian heritage.

Now the film’s about to aired in India, to the Indian/Hindu culture the movie satirizes. (Mr. Myers plays an Anglo born in India who becomes a guru with a potty mouth and an aolescent sexual appetite.) Many in India take offense. They contend that those who are unfamiliar with Hinduism will acquire an inaccurate, if not bad, impression.

At the very least the film has caused an uproar. At the very worst is has stirred up a call for a nation-wide boycott.

In my estimation this film’s tone is but one example of a scornful attitude toward Indians, yes, but also many other people/cultures. There’s a metaphor to describe this attitude: Apu, the owner of the convenience store in the cartoon series “The Simpsons.” When Indians describe the stereotyping they experience, they use a form of the verb “to Apu.”

The world is shrinking and culture butts up against culture. Rampant globalism recommends that we all —all 6.6 billion of us—practice understanding, acceptance, and even respect for the world’s diversity of race and culture.

James Dobson Blasts Barack Obama

James Dobson, a leader of the religous right, on his Tuesday, June 24 broadcast of Focus on the Family, for 18 minutes blasted Barack Obama for distorting the Bible and for presenting a "fruitcake" intepretation of the U. S. Constitution. At issue was a June 6, 2006 speech that Mr. Obama gave to a meeting of Call to Renewal. In the speech Mr. Obama declared that faith had a place in political discourse. But he also said that any faith that sought to implement its agenda had the obligation to present it, not in its narrow sectarianism, but in a universal way that would appeal even to secularists.

Mr. Dobson took offense. He declared, “What the senator is saying is that I can’t seek to pass legislation that bans partial birth abortion because there are people who don’t see that as a moral issue. Now that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution. … We don’t have to go to the lowest common denominator of morality which is what he is suggesting. Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?"

In my estimation I'm surprised it's taken the religious right so long to respond to Mr. Obama's 2006 remarks. (See my February 15 post about this remarkable speech in which I opined that these were the most important contemporary remarks regarding the place of faith in American political life.) Mr. Obama's rubric regarding narrow sectarianism versus a universal outlook is akin to what was once known as "suasion versus coercion."

Suasion stands in opposition to coercion. Suasion prevails over time because of the moral truth that drives it. (Truth outs!) It's axiomatic that faith groups should be committed to suasion in contrast to coercion, if only for the realization that coercion inevitably fails.

Picking Up Trash as Religion

Eighty-nine year old Pete Seeger spends most of his Saturdays at the intersection of Route 9 and 9D in Wappingers Falls, New York. He stands vigil with a dozen others in protest of the Iraq War. On the other side of the intersection pro-war supporters counter demonstrate.

He also picks up litter. “This is my religion now,” said Mr. Seeger. “Picking up trash. You do a little bit wherever you are.”

In my estimation Mr. Seeger has long had a personal narrative rich in activism, one song at a time, before thousands of small gatherings and a few large gatherings, year after year. He has distilled his activism into a strategy of little deeds. He now reckons that a hundred little demonstrations across the country might have more effect than in one big demonstration in New York City. So he stands by the roadside in Upstate New York with a home fashioned peace sign and picks up litter.

Pete Seeger is our culture's greatest ethiticist--both in practice and theory. (You can measure his success through his instrumental role in the miraculous cleanup of the Hudson River.)

And I recommend that if you understand and implement his organizing precept ("do a little bit wherever you are."), you will align yourself with an irresistible moral force. You will also feel good at the core of your being.

[See the New York Times June 22 article about Pete Seeger's roadside vigil: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/nyregion/22seeger.html]

A Wide-Ranging Religious Tolerance in America

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has published the second part of its expansive U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. (See blog entry February 26: "A Long Arc of Decline" for commentary on the first part of the survey.)

In this telephone survey of 35,000 persons, a majority of respondents claimed that religion was very important to them. Of that group nearly 75% believed faiths other than their own could effect salvation. This has been widely interpreted in two ways: 1) Americans of faith traditions are exceptionally tolerant and 2) Americans of faith traditions obviously don't adhere strictly to their faith groups' exclusive teachings. For example, 79% of Catholics agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life."

In my estimation surveys are like Rorschach tests. They reveal the interpreter's point of view. Traditionalists, rather than first seeing the virtue of tolerance, say this survey demonstrates a luke warm commitment and/or ignorance to doctrine and dogma. I'm somewhat of that mind, too, that commitment to and ignorance of professed faith traditions are at work. In this regard I further read that the seeming tolerance relates to that "long arc of decline" of traditional religion I wrote about in a February posting. Traditional religious forms are losing their hold in face of secularism and in what has become a familiar refrain by many, "I'm not religious, but I am spiritual." I read the results of this survey as evidence that doctrine and communal ritual are giving way to individual experience and personal practice.

Visit the Pew Forum at http://religions.pewforum.org/

Undermining Science in Louisiana

The Louisiana legislature has passed a bill that allows local school districts to seek help from the State Board of Education to teach “critical thinking” and “objective discussion" on the origin and evolution of life, global warming, and human cloning. To become law the bill needs the signature of Governor Bobby Jindal, who is a potential candidate for vice president on the Republican ticket.

In my estimation the Louisiana proposal is yet another transparent strategy by the religious right to undermine sound science. Critical thinking and objective discussion are certainly worthy intellectual skills. But to present creationism/intelligent design as an equal and parallel theories to evolution is simply a disservice to students already knowledge-impoverished. It also places an unnecessary burden on teachers.

I’m going to keep an eye on Governor Jindal. How he proceeds will be a test of his own critical and objective skills, as well as a measure of his qualifications to hold our nation's second highest office.

Triage Ethics

We have catastrophe on the mind--a society wide disaster that will severely tax resources, including medical care. Such a catastrophe might be pandemic flu or a terrorist attack.

The medical community is drawing up emergency plans to meet such catastrophes, using the battlefield principles of triage. Triage divides the injured into three groups: 1) those for whom immediate care will save lives, 2) those who can wait for care and will probably survive, and 3) those with the severest injuries, whose survival is least likely. The third group also includes individuals who fall into undervalued categories, such as the most aged. Medical care is not first come first served, but in the order of group 1, group 2, and finally group 3. In extreme circumstances group 3 may never get care.

Ethiticists justify triage on the grounds of maximizing the survivors, while best using limited resources. In May the American College of Chest Physicians issued a report in their magazine "Chest" that declared, "If a mass casualty critical care event were to occur tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health care system conditions may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions owing to deficiencies in supply or staffing."

Among those in the triage bottom third are (as summarized by CNN) people older than 85; those with severe trauma, which could include critical injuries from car crashes and shootings; severely burned patients older than 60; those with severe mental impairment, which could include advanced Alzheimer's disease; and those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes.

In my estimation this and the many similar reports (including a recent 1900 page California document) has had insufficient attention rather than say the likes of gay marriage with which society is obsessed. Triage causes us to consider both the essential and the contextual value of life. For example, relative youth trumps advanced age.

A thoughtful conversation about triage ethics might make us all more compassionate and understanding of what really matters when it comes to the human co0ndition.

(The Rev.) Mr. Obama

Barack Obama and family went to church in Chicago on Sunday, Father's Day, not Trinity United Church of Christ from which he and his wife recently resigned, but another black mega-church on Chicago's south side, the Apostolic Church of God. Mr. Obama addressed the audience: "Too many fathers are MIA, too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes." He spoke to his experience as a son, abandoned by his father; and he spoke to his own imperfections as a father of two young daughters. His larger audience was a black community not in the pews: its young men who conceive children but do not father them, particularly in a functioning family.

As Rev. Al Sharpton quickly pointed out, some in the black community see this as airing dirty laundry and also a beating up on the victims. So Mr. Obama's remarks in the black community are somewhat controversial.

In my estimation Mr. Obama spoke on a topic and to an audience no white politician would/could address, using his stature to speak from a proverbial "bully pulpit." He has a preacher's rhetorical skills (reminiscent of Dr. King). He also has a preacher's inclinations to moralize, as in this Father's Day address that preached the virtue of personal responsibility in the context of self-confession. ("I trangress, too.") Even his motif of hope, as in his memoir The Audacity of Hope, has a profound theological dimension.

I'm beginning to think that Mr. Obama might be the most integrally religious presidential candidate we've had since Woodrow Wilson.

Elegant Truth of Evolution

An editorial in the Saturday, June 7 New York Times once again stated the case for not letting creationism or any other faith-based explanation of life on earth creep into the science curricula of our public schools. The editorial focused on the deliberations of the Texas State School Board of Education regarding a proposal to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. The Times accurately identifies this as just another attempt by creationists to further their religious agenda. The Times declared, "Every student who hopes to understand the scientific reality of life will sooner or later need to accept the elegant truth of evolution as it has itself evolved since it was first postulated by Darwin."

In my estimation the Times has it right. I love the phrase the "elegant truth of evolution." All proponents of a naturalistic and scientific view of reality know an elegance that satisfies the aesthetic/religious sensibility. Proponents of the origin and evolution of the universe, including the evolution of life on earth, can further the cause by speaking to this undeniable elegance in inspiring ways.

Obama's Resignation from Trinity: Too Bad!

Father Pflager apologized, his Cardinal publicly reprimanded him, and he was suspended from his parish for a time of reflection. But Father Pflager's mocking tirade of Hillary Clinton at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, captured for the world to see in a video clip, was the final straw for Barack Obama's campaign. He and his wife resigned their twenty year membership from Trinity.

In my estimation the Obamas' resignation was "too bad." We, meaning American society, had much to learn about the culture of the urban black mega-church through Mr. Obama's association. In the promised dialogue on race, Trinity would have been a wide window on the African American experience. I'm afraid that opportunity has been lost. I doubt we be able to get beyond video clips of the Revs. Wright and Pflager to ever see the real Trinity.