Tuesday Voice: Missionary Kid

My first hunting trip

By Vic Midyett

The only meat we ate in Assam, where I was born, was what Dad shot in the jungle. The reason no meat was available for purchase is that the locals were all Hindu by faith. They didn't eat meat. Many animals were sacred in their faith.
    Dad had a twelve gauge shotgun and a .30-06, and he would go hunting in the jungle once or twice a week. The jungle was about a ten-minute walk away through some rice paddies. Because the average annual rain fall was about 350 inches, it was an extremely dense jungle. One would walk about 20 feet into it, in some areas, and be required to turn on a flash light to see. Dad had a watchman by the name of Beejooly (who slept all night, but that was another Missionary Kid story) whom he took with him for security. Beejooly would cut a path with a machete when needed.

Fish for Friday

By Morris Dean

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Is it any surprise that "In Black Men, Internalized Racism Speeds Up Aging"? Excerpt:

Racism is a powerful enough force that it can wear down a man’s body. Those are the findings, at once common-sense and groundbreaking, in a study led by University of Maryland epidemiologist David Chae which examines the relationship between white blood cell telomere lengths and experiences with racism.
   The study, “Discrimination, Racial Bias, and Telomere Length in African-American Men,” to be published in the February 2014 issue of the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, is the first of its kind to explicitly measure the role that racism-related factors play in the aging process.

Thor's Day: Which days are holy?

By Morris Dean

Which day or days do you think are holidays—in the literal sense of holy days?
    My own answer to the question has been settled for a number of years, and has served me well. I'll say more about that in the concluding paragraph.
    Two books nicely epitomize two contrasting ways of answering the question. The first is Yann Martel's 2001 novel, Life of Pi, which I reviewed on Monday. The other is a book mentioned recently in a local newspaper; I'll identify it later. For now, consider the following passage from Life of Pi:

Review: Life of Pi (the book)

The author of Life of Pi

An inconclusive
theological analogy

By Morris Dean

After reading Yann Martel's 2001 novel Life of Pi, I went back and read Jonathan Price's review of the movie (December 9). I haven't seen the movie yet, but it appears that the movie story and the book story have several significant divergences. It wouldn't do to dwell on them.
    The book is structured in three parts, plus a foreword by the author. The foreword appears to abet the fiction that follows, attempting to cast it as a true story that the author learned about from someone he met who told him if he wanted a compelling story to write, he should go find Piscine Molitor Patel. "Pi" could tell him "a story that will make you believe in God."

Truce to the preposition war

That the First Amendment calls for a truce is obvious. When it comes to religion (and non-religion), there are many potentially warring factions, for even though there is essentially only one non-religion, there's a big raft of religions. And the first clause (the one that guarantees freedom from religion) doesn't protect just the non-religious (from religion generally); it also protects the followers of the various religions from each other's religion (from religions particularly).

Episcopaleans, for example, are fully as happy as I am not to have to indulge Evangelicals or Jehovah's Witnesses (or anyone else who "reads the Bible literally"). And the really true-believing religionists, of course, are generally happy not to have any truck with those agnostic or (horrors!) even atheistic Unitarians and Episcopaleans. And many Americans, including religious Christians and Jews as well as the non-religious, are a little jumpy right now about Muslims, not least because many of even the most religious-sounding Christians don't really take their religion quite as seriously as really believing Muslims do (probably not even Mitt Romney). (Islam after all means "submission [to God]," and Muslim "one who surrenders [to God].") And, of course, American Muslims are reciprocally a little uneasy living in a country whose current "president" (born-again, no less) talks about crusading in the Middle East. (Muslims who aren't Americans are a little uneasy about that too. Bush of course would remind us—since he no longer has Gonzales to do it—that those Muslims aren't protected by our Constitution....)

So, the first clause protects everybody (who is covered by the Constitution).

Whom does the second clause protect? It says, "Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]." Since the non-religious don't "exercise religion," they have nothing for the second clause to protect. (Their interest in the First Amendment comes back into play in the third and following clauses.) So, the second clause is there to protect the religious, that they may go about "exercising" their religion "freely."

But what does "free exercise" mean? It must, of course, at least exclude actions that nullify the first clause....

Open letter to my friends at the Democratic Party blog

Yesterday I wrote to my set of friends at the Democratic Party blog:

Hey, all of you guys and gal been doing okay? I haven't checked my Demo blog in weeks. I have been fairly active (on the subject of religion) lately on my main blog. As a sort of "spontaneous moment" a few weeks ago, I put up a very informal "religion survey" and was surprised and gratified to have two Muslims (so far) take it.

As you may have seen, I had read Sam Harris's The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, and my reaction was both to become very suspicious of Islam and to let my own Christian beliefs get stirred and shaken up. As a whirlwind result, I've gone from doubtful Christian to agnostic non-Christian, to God-believing but Jesus-as-savior-rejecting Christian, to (at the moment) leaning toward Islam (as more accurately expressing my way of thinking and believing about spirituality; that way of thinking, by the way, is very well expressed by Maliha's long [fifth] comment [now yesterday] morning on my post titled "Grave second thoughts".... ; I commend her comment to you for what I think is a reliable, responsible representation of Islam).

However, I can't see ever converting to Islam formally. I very much dislike its outward trappings (and, of course, its still being associated with radical Islamism, however illegitimate Islam's hijacking by the Islamists might be. Part of my "whirlwind experience" (even before I read Harris) involved my being turned off by misguided, Bush-supporting Christian fundamentalists' "hijacking" Christianity. I decided that that was a very stupid reason for getting soured on Christianity, so maybe I shouldn't hold the suicide-bombers against Islam, whatever Harris says.

Anyway, it has been an interesting time for me. And, at the age of 64, your body stiff, your joints noisy, your sex-drive off, you kind of want such times!

Please take my religion survey

A friend of mine told a friend of hers who used to be Muslim of my interest in Sam Harris. He read my posts on Harris, especially the ones discussing what Harris says about Islam in The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. (You can call up all of my posts that have the Sam Harris label by clicking on that label at the bottom of this post.) As a result, he wants to meet me, and I've agreed to join my friend and him for lunch.

In thinking about what a former Muslim might ask me, I've begun to think of what I might ask him. And in doing that, I've found myself thinking of questions I might ask other people, such as a cousin whose father (like my mother) was very religious and regularly attended an Assembly of God church. I've always suspected that this cousin isn't what you'd call particularly "religious." But I don't really know, and I'd sort of like to find out before it's too late. After all, it has been many years since we were teenage cousins together (and even rode in the same car to that Assembly of God church).

That's sort of where this survey comes from. If you'd be so kind as to take it and give your answers publicly (as it were), I'd appreciate it. (If you're not familiar with how to make a comment, click on "Comments" below.):

1. Religiously, how would you describe or classify yourself? (not religious, Christian, Muslim, Judaic, other: _________)
2. Whatever you answered, what is it about you that leads you to say that?
3. If you answered Christian, how much, if any, do your religious beliefs influence how you vote?
4. If you answered Muslim, do you approve of martyrdom "in defense of Islam"?
5. If you answered Judaic, how do you feel about Israel's policies toward the Palestinians?
6. Anything else you'd like to say by way of your "religious statement"?

In fairness, I'll answer these questions myself:

1. Religiously, how would you describe or classify yourself?

   agnostic Christian

2. Whatever you answered, what is it about you that leads you to say that?

   While I'm uncertain as to whether God exists and do not believe that Jesus was the "son of God" in a way different from how you or I might be "a child of God," I have been raised in the Christian tradition, and I more or less try to imitate Christ's example of love and doing unto others.

3. If you answered Christian, how much, if any, do your religious beliefs influence how you vote?

   Surprisingly (to myself), I'd say quite a bit, but in the "liberal way" of influencing me to vote "for the common good." To me, Jesus was a champion of social justice.

4. If you answered Muslim, do you approve of martyrdom "in defense of Islam"?

   not applicable

5. If you answered Judaic, how do you feel about Israel's policies toward the Palestinians?

   not applicable

6. Anything else you'd like to say by way of your "religious statement"?

   I once gave an impromptu sermon in an Episcopal church in San Jose, California. In the couple of minutes I had to prepare, I "called on the Holy Spirit" to come to my aid, and I spontaneously chose as my text the passage from the Book of Exodus in which the burning bush says unto Moses to tell the people that he's been talking with "I AM THAT I AM." In the short sermon that I then delivered I said that God is as God is, and God is going to be that way regardless of what you or I believe God is. Either or both of us could be wrong. I said that, in that sense, it doesn't matter what we believe about God.
   
   I'd add now that God is, OR IS NOT, as God is, OR IS NOT, and what we believe doesn't affect it one way or another. So let's not fight over it.