{"id":2730,"date":"2010-08-19T16:13:24","date_gmt":"2010-08-20T00:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=2730"},"modified":"2010-08-19T16:13:24","modified_gmt":"2010-08-20T00:13:24","slug":"notes-from-god-is-not-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2010\/08\/19\/notes-from-god-is-not-one","title":{"rendered":"Notes From God Is Not One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/22280677@N07\/2295355354\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3219\/2295355354_e65354babd_m.jpg?w=840\" alt=\"Interfaith Banner\" title=\"Interfaith Banner\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" class=\"right\"><\/a>I recent\u00adly read\/skimmed Stephen Prothero\u2019s book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/God-Not-One-World---Differences\/dp\/006157127X\">God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Reli\u00adgions That Run the World\u2013and Why Their Dif\u00adfer\u00adences Mat\u00adter<\/a>. Prothero is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/religion\/faculty\/bios\/prothero\/\">a pro\u00adfes\u00adsor of reli\u00adgion at Boston Uni\u00adver\u00adsi\u00adty<\/a> who was raised Epis\u00adco\u00adpalian but has since reject\u00aded Chris\u00adtian\u00adi\u00adty. He now describes him\u00adself as con\u00adfused. Be that as it may, he makes some true but unfash\u00adion\u00adable claims in his intro\u00adduc\u00adtion. Here are some bits I was par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar\u00adly keen on:<\/p>\n<p>The book is well summed up on the inside front dust jack\u00adet: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To claim that all reli\u00adgions are the same is to mis\u00adun\u00adder\u00adstand that each attempts to solve a dif\u00adfer\u00adent human prob\u00adlem. For exam\u00adple:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Islam:<\/b> the prob\u00adlem is pride \/ the solu\u00adtion is sub\u00admis\u00adsion<\/li>\n<li><strong>Chris\u00adtian\u00adi\u00adty:<\/strong> the prob\u00adlem is sin \/ the solu\u00adtion is sal\u00adva\u00adtion\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Con\u00adfu\u00adcian\u00adism:<\/strong> the prob\u00adlem is chaos \/ the solu\u00adtion is social order\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bud\u00addhism:<\/strong> the prob\u00adlem is suf\u00adfer\u00ading \/ the solu\u00adtion is awak\u00aden\u00ading\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Judaism:<\/strong> the prob\u00adlem is exile \/ the solu\u00adtion is to return to God\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In a sec\u00adtion called \u201cAller\u00adgic to Argu\u00adment\u201d he described a frus\u00adtrat\u00ading real\u00adi\u00adty that I see almost every day as a min\u00adis\u00adter to col\u00adlege stu\u00addents:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In my Boston Uni\u00adver\u00adsi\u00adty cours\u00ades, I work hard to fos\u00adter respect\u00adful argu\u00adments. My stu\u00addents are good with \u201crespect\u00adful,\u201d but they are aller\u00adgic to \u201cargu\u00adment.\u201d They see argu\u00ading as ill-man\u00adnered, and even among friends they avoid it at any cost.\u2026 Espe\u00adcial\u00adly when it comes to reli\u00adgion, young Amer\u00adi\u00adcans at least are far more like\u00adly to say \u201cI feel\u201d than \u201cI think\u201d or (God for\u00adbid) \u201cI believe.\u201d (4)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I liked this bit, too:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>All too often world his\u00adto\u00adry is told as if reli\u00adgion did not mat\u00adter. The Span\u00adish con\u00adquered New Spain for gold, and the British came to New Eng\u00adland to catch fish. The French Rev\u00ado\u00adlu\u00adtion had noth\u00ading to do with Catholi\u00adcism, and the U.S. civ\u00adil rights move\u00adment was a pure\u00adly human\u00adi\u00adtar\u00adi\u00adan endeav\u00ador. But even if reli\u00adgion makes no sense to you, you need to make sense of reli\u00adgion to make sense of the world. (8)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I first heard the fol\u00adlow\u00ading obser\u00adva\u00adtion from Joe Zick\u00adafoose years ago, and the longer I reflect upon it the more con\u00advinced I am of its truth:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What the world\u2019s reli\u00adgions share is not so much a fin\u00adish line as a start\u00ading point. And where they begin is with this sim\u00adple obser\u00adva\u00adtion: some\u00adthing is wrong with the world.\u2026 Reli\u00adgious folk world\u00adwide agree that some\u00adthing has gone awry. They part com\u00adpa\u00adny, how\u00adev\u00ader, when it comes to stat\u00ading just what has gone wrong, and they diverge sharply when they move from diag\u00adnos\u00ading the human prob\u00adlem to pre\u00adscrib\u00ading how to solve it. Chris\u00adtians see sin as the prob\u00adlem, and sal\u00adva\u00adtion from sin as the reli\u00adgious goal. Bud\u00addhists see suf\u00adfer\u00ading (which, in their tra\u00addi\u00adtion, is <i>not<\/i> ennobling) as the prob\u00adlem, and lib\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtion from suf\u00adfer\u00ading as the reli\u00adgious goal. (11)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And I think his four-part analy\u00adsis is one of the more use\u00adful ways to sum\u00adma\u00adrize reli\u00adgions:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At the heart of this project is a sim\u00adple, four-part approach to the reli\u00adgions, which I have been using for years in the class\u00adroom and at lec\u00adtures around the world. Each reli\u00adgion artic\u00adu\u00adlates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a <i>prob\u00adlem<\/i>;<\/li>\n<li>a <em>solu\u00adtion<\/em> to the prob\u00adlem, which also serves as the reli\u00adgious goal;<\/li>\n<li>a <em>tech\u00adnique<\/em> (or tech\u00adniques) for mov\u00ading from this prob\u00adlem to this solu\u00adtion; and<\/li>\n<li>an <em>exem\u00adplar<\/em> (or exem\u00adplars) who chart this path from prob\u00adlem to solu\u00adtion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(14)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And in one of his many non-PC moments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>While in Jerusalem research\u00ading this book, I struck up a con\u00adver\u00adsa\u00adtion with an elder\u00adly Mus\u00adlim. When I told him I was writ\u00ading a book on the world\u2019s reli\u00adgions, he looked at me stern\u00adly, point\u00aded a fin\u00adger in my direc\u00adtion, and instruct\u00aded me to be hon\u00adest. \u201cDo not write false things about the reli\u00adgions,\u201d he said. Reli\u00adgious Stud\u00adies schol\u00adars are rarely hon\u00adest enough to admit this in per\u00adson, much less in print, but we all know there are things that each of the world\u2019s reli\u00adgions do well, and things they do poor\u00adly. If you want to help the home\u00adless, you will like\u00adly find the Chris\u00adt\u00adian Social Gospel more use\u00adful than Hin\u00addu notions of caste. If you want to find tech\u00adniques for qui\u00adet\u00ading the mind through bod\u00adi\u00adly exer\u00adcis\u00ades, you will like\u00adly find Hin\u00addu yogis more use\u00adful than Chris\u00adt\u00adian saints. (20)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The rest of the book is fine, I sup\u00adpose. If you need a sum\u00adma\u00adry of the glob\u00adal reli\u00adgions you could do far worse than this one, but it does\u00adn\u2019t live up to the promise of the intro\u00adduc\u00adtion (hence the skim\u00adming allud\u00aded to in the first sen\u00adtence of this post).<\/p>\n<p>That notwith\u00adstand\u00ading, I must con\u00adfess that I liked one image from his sec\u00adtion on Pen\u00adte\u00adcostal Chris\u00adtian\u00adi\u00adty:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>U.S. pres\u00adi\u00addent Abra\u00adham Lin\u00adcoln once remarked that, when he sees a man preach, he likes \u201cto see him act as if he were fight\u00ading bees.\u201d Pen\u00adte\u00adcostal\u00adism is replete with bee-fight\u00ading preach\u00aders. (87\u201388)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u2019s my tribe \u2014 the mighty bee-fight\u00aders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recent\u00adly read\/skimmed Stephen Prothero\u2019s book God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Reli\u00adgions That Run the World\u2013and Why Their Dif\u00adfer\u00adences Mat\u00adter. Prothero is a pro\u00adfes\u00adsor of reli\u00adgion at Boston Uni\u00adver\u00adsi\u00adty who was raised Epis\u00adco\u00adpalian but has since reject\u00aded Chris\u00adtian\u00adi\u00adty. He now describes him\u00adself as con\u00adfused. Be that as it may, he makes some true \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2010\/08\/19\/notes-from-god-is-not-one\" class=\"more-link\">Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cNotes From God Is Not One\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-I2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2742,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions\/2742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}