I’ll be the first to admit that as a person of faith and a leader in a faith community, I’m disturbed by Britt Hume’s comments concerning Tiger Woods on Fox News Sunday. If you haven’t caught Hume’s comments, you can find the 35 second blurb on Thursday’s news and analysis segment, “Tiger Woods’ Come to Jesus.” I want to tip my cap to Caitlin’s work at finding such a breadth of responses to this little faux pas, because it revealed to me some problems in our understanding of religion and faith traditions that make not only Hume’s thoughts problematic, but those of some of his defenders as well. If we put aside the obvious softball pitchers like Bill O’Reilly, there are some intriguing defenders out there, even if their defenses aren’t nearly so intriguing.
Stuart Roy’s comments at The Hill really miss the point on this issue. He begins with a long apologetic for Christianity based on the statistical “fact” that it’s still the recognized majority religion in the United States. I feel like I would be repeating myself this week if I went into the problems of the moral tyranny of the majority, so I want to move on to his comments on Christianity vis-à-vis Buddhism:
Secondly, although there is a lot of discussion about this point, Buddhism isn’t a religion in the sense of belief in a higher being from whom to seek forgiveness. Instead, Buddhism says you get this from within. I’m no religious scholar, but that would put Hume’s analysis pretty much on point. In Christianity, you do seek forgiveness and redemption from a higher being, something not offered in Buddhism. You may disagree with whether or not it is necessary — if you aren’t a Christian — but his analysis was correct.
Roy is correct – he’s no religious scholar. The assumption that forgiveness can only be granted by or through some higher power is the failing point of both Hume’s original slap at Buddhism and Roy’s misguided attempt at a defense. If he were a religious scholar, he might realize that one of the greatest failures of Christian theology is its tendency to lock forgiveness into the relationship between an individual human being and some higher power. When a person may somehow feel absolved of failing in their relationship to another human being (or group of them for that matter), there is no reason to seek the forgiveness of the wronged party and to engage in a process of dialogue and reconciliation. Christianity has plagued the western landscape with this attitude that “Because I’ve made things right with God, I don’t have to worry about making things right with my neighbor.” I’m pretty sure that’s inconsistent with the red-lettered words in Mr. Roy’s unread Bible. To make matters worse, as Christian doctrine continues to blind some of its most faithful adherents from engaging in just and caring relationships with other human beings, the sayings of the Dalai Lama strike me as highly ethical and relational. Perhaps it’s time to take a step back and re-evaluate.
My second point of contention is more one of disappointment. Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s defense of religion in general as a response to Hume’s comments is well intentioned, but shortsighted. His attack on the liberal media and blogosphere failed to recognize that some of us self-proclaimed “liberals” are also religious.
Let’s face it, many people fear faith and even more genuinely resent it being discussed in public. While there is no question about the damage which religious faith can do, there should also be no question as to the good things it accomplishes in terms of both creating personal meaning and also motivating humanitarian action. So it should be a wash. Instead though, because Hume suggested Jesus instead of rehab, both he and those who support him are attacked as Jesus Freaks and fanatics. That’s not right.
While there may have been a loud outcry from the non-religious, it wasn’t the only cry. There are those of us within the religious community, and more specifically the Christian community, who treasure the diversity of our global religious pluralism and respect the voices of our neighbors and peers in the Buddhist faith. Since Hirschfield seems to share this value with me, I’m having a difficult time understanding why he went out of his way to defend someone like Britt Hume who obviously does not. He goes on to conclude his article:
I welcome Mr. Hume’s remarks even if I think his analyses of Buddhism is shallow, and his claim that it is only through Jesus that Tiger will find a better life, bordering on ridiculous. So why welcome his comments? Because I know that he meant well and because faith matters to people and it should not be banished from public conversation. Not if we are as committed to openness in the way so many of us claim to be. Now we will find out if we really are.
The sad fact is that there are a lot of people who mean well, but rather thoughtlessly and carelessly bring about more harm than good. I’ll resist the temptation to expound a list of “well meaning” politicians who have caused egregious harm, including pointless death and destruction. However, I will not stop short of saying that Hume’s thinking, well being though it may be, is provincial and narrow. If he were truly interested in offering his support to Tiger Woods, Hume would be extending the invitation to dialogue, rather than wagging his finger and admonishing Woods to come to Jesus.
To make matters worse, Fox News appears to have circled the wagons around one of their own. Not only do they fail to recognize that “fair and balanced” means you can’t casually cast aside a major world religion in an offhanded remark, but in refusing to acknowledge that Hume’s critics might have a point, they make it quite clear that the discourse is only “fair” when they are allowed to determine what is “balanced.” While I’ve quietly thought the media circus around Tiger Woods is more scandalous than the “scandal” itself, the failure of discourse that has followed in the aftermath is perhaps the greater scandal we fail to even recognize.
Cross posted at the Xenia Institute.
