Tuesday, June 25, 2002
In Africa, in Asia and in Europe, religious differences and antagonisms have been the basis of ongoing "holy" wars between Protestants and Catho lics, Muslims and Christians, Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Muslims. As if there were not enough hate in the world already, once again the Southern Baptist Convention steps into the fray to generate hostility toward those who don't share the group's evangelical outlook.
A few years back, former Southern Baptist Convention head Bailey Smith said, "God almighty doesn't hear the prayer of a Jew." In 1999, the SBC issued a prayer book describing 900 million Hindus as "lost in the hopeless darkness of Hinduism & quot; and calling on Southern Baptists to & quot;pray that the darkness and that the power of Satan will be broken." In that same spirit of brotherhood, a prominent Southern Baptist minister has now assailed the prophet Mohammed as a "demon-possessed pedophile."
It wasn't that long ago that Southern Baptists were leading the fight against Civil Rights laws in the United States. Now that the SBC has apologized to African-Americans and asked for their forgiveness, apparently they need other targets for their zeal.
There are certainly fanatics in most religions, those willing to kill or be killed for what they believe in. And few religions are without elements in their history of which they cannot now be proud. After all, more than 100 years ago, Southern Baptists were instrumental in the founding of the Ku Klux Klan.
Most oppose violence
But we have to believe that the deadly fanaticism that impelled the tragedies of Sept. 11, the assassinations of Itzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat, the bombings of black churches, the killing of women's health center doctors and staff and the brutalizing of Afghan women, for example, are not shared by the vast majority of any given religion's practitioners.
Similarly, many practices found in the holy books of the world's religions are no longer in common use. For the most part, the days of animal sacrifice are long past. And those who ask, "What would Jesus do?" don't really want to hear that he would have read the Scriptures in their original language, eaten only Kosher food and kept the Sabbath. So much for an English grace before the Sunday barbecue.
But religions, like the people who practice them, evolve over time. The SBC did not exist until 1845. Yet we would not assume that the 16 million members of Southern Baptist churches today share the pro-slavery views of their religious antecedents. But neither should their leaders assume that the many, many more Muslims are one with the violence of the past or today.
We would suggest that the Rev. Jerry Vines, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who condemned Islam remember the injunction: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."