Month: January 2011
Sightings
Martyrdom and Acquiescence
– Martin E. Marty“Iran Targets Christians with a Wave of Arrests,” “Egyptian Copts Mark Christmas Cautiously,” and “Anti-Christian Crimes Downplayed,” were all Friday headlines that set the tone for weekend coverage of bad news. Google some words like “Christian Martyrs” and scroll down from early Christian accounts to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will find claims that hundreds of millions of Christians died for their faith in the twentieth century and that several hundred thousand still do each year of the still new twenty-first century. I’ve often questioned the methodology, definition, or mathematics of the tabulators, but when all is done and said, it’s in place to say: “No matter. Even a single death for this cause is one too many.”
The stories are played because there is such terrible news daily, but Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Huntley also wrote that these “crimes”–and they are that–are “downplayed.” There is no reason to disagree with his reporting of the crimes, but it is in place to ask what is at issue in the charge that they are “downplayed.” A reader has to ask who is doing the downplaying, for which readership, and for what reason.
Huntley has a mission; look him up and you will see that he is regularly pursuing those he regards as soft on Islam. His charges begin: American media talk too much about Islamophobia, but not enough about “the bloody persecution of Christians in parts of the Muslim world.” That the persecution goes on is unquestionably true. Whether it receives too little media space or time is harder to assess. Huntley continues his mission: merely report an Islamist threat, he complains, and you will be subjected to charges of bigotry. But most pressing on Huntley’s mind is the fact that too much of “Islamist terrorism,” backed by “radical theology,” bad clerics and bad governments is “enabled” also by “too much silence, or worse, acquiescence in the Muslim world.” I think that all these charges by Huntley are grounded, but columns like his prompt further questions which need to be faced.
What is to be the end result of such pleading for “playing up” the stories and their meanings? Should America undertake armed intervention in the “top 10 countries that are most dangerous for Christians to practice their religion in?” (Eight of these are Muslim, according to some assessments). First, America is deeply involved already. Second, should Americans find more ways to protect endangered Christians in Muslim societies? Yes. Exactly how that is to be done is hard to say. Will whatever “we” do be better received if we play up instead of merely play or certainly downplay the crimes? The history of hysteria in wartime suggests that the loss of perspective is costly, and it often issues in atrocity or blunderbuss actions. We obviously need accurate reporting and mature interpretation, and the media at their best can promote both.
On a different track we note that many reports chide Christians in America for “downplaying” or at least for not being sufficiently agitated and counter-aggressive when their brothers and sisters in those eight Islamic nations suffer. In my sightings, I do see and agree that many of them do not put as high a priority on playing up and calling for responses to Islamic (or other) persecutions of Christians. One hears fewer reports of Christian identification with Christian sufferers as Christian than, say, of Jewish identification with and support for beleaguered Jews in distant lands. Yet Christians are urged first to be “working for the good of all” and then, especially, for “those of the family of faith.” The two objects of their concern are not mutually exclusive.
Resources
Farnaz Fassihi and Matt Bradley, “Iran Targets Christians with a Wave of Arrests,” Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2011.
Amro Hassan, “Egyptian Christians’ Christmas Celebration Clouded by New,” Chicago Tribune, January 7, 2011.
Steve Huntley, “Anti-Christian Crimes Downplayed,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 7, 2011.
Words Matter
As the country directs its attention to the violence in Tucson, the news cycle churns out segments and the talking heads talk. It is a reminder that words matter. My words, your words, the words of people we listen to over the air (or online). The words we read in newspapers, magazines, and blogs. How diverse is your listening, reading or writing? (see: Arizona Shootings: We Need to Stop Talking About Politics as War)
My listening and reading has changed. I read less online news coverage (The New York Times, LA Times, Wallstreet Journal, my local paper are a few I do read) based in this nation and more from the perspective of other nations (BBC World / EU News). What do the Europeans think of what is happening in this nation? What I observe is a mix of both sympathy and reality. It was the same response back on Sept. 11, 2001. As much as other peoples sympathize with the current level of violence, dysfunction and uncertainty in the United States of America they also know this kind of violence and dysfunction exists in every direction of the compass; and has for a long time. Our news has become more entertainment rather than information, sound bite rather than fact oriented. We are a free and open society where citizens, mentally balanced and not, consume all kinds of things: dollars, weapons, religion, news, words, art, ideology. Some have more ability than others to filter, sort, and order.
I’m grateful to Laura for her posting of words from former senator Robert F. Kennedy on her Facebook page.
Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded. (Robert F. Kennedy, April 5, 1968)
She linked to the entire text of his remarks from 1968. Here is two of my favorite paragraphs from Kennedy’s remarks:
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
This kind of rhetoric, this kind of national world view is needed, but few of our nation’s leaders are capable, it seems to me, to get beyond their ego to find this depth. An example from this week are the two representatives that believed they could attend a fundraiser, disguised as a celebration of their re-election to Congress, and embrace the oath of office by watching the oath via TV. Who in their party’s leadership approved their absence? Is there any consequences for their actions or does their class give them a pass? Their actions clearly put raising money for future elections above their duty to receive the oath to represent the people’s business. Now, their political leadership and party, are trying to undo what they clearly knew to be wrong. To claim that they didn’t know it was wrong disrespects those that taught them civics in high school and the electorate. Where are the serious leaders of our time (Independent, Republican, Democrat, religious, agnostic, art, or music)?
Follow this link to read all of former Senator Kennedy’s remarks from 1968.