Sunday, January 17, 2010

Another beer

This morning, I came across a surprising (to me) online ad for a big Saddleback College MLK event: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration: Exploring Social Action Through Religious Diversity

“Uh-oh,” I thought. “Religion meets the New Age meets PC.”

The college evidently produced a promotional blurb that appeared in Friday’s OC Reg:

Saddleback College to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There, we were told:
To commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Saddleback College will host a celebration entitled "Exploring Social Action Through Religious Diversity" on Saturday….

Topics will include social justice, women's roles in reconciliation, social change, and church and state issues. The event is a joint effort of the Saddleback College Associated Student Government, Diversity Student Council, and participating community groups.
The “keynote presentation” involves “Members of the Southern California Committee for a Parliament of the World's Religions,” who will “discuss the 2009 conference in Melbourne, Australia.”

This is followed by panel discussions:
Workshop on the Parliament of World Religions
What My Worldview Means to Me
Social Justice and Action From Multiple Perspectives
Interpreting the Words ‘Separation of Church and State’
The Woman's Role in Conflict Resolution
The Sacred Art of Listening: Hearing With the Heart
Interfaith Café
The Pillars of Peace: “Stephen Fiske will outline the Ten Pillars of Peace, and through spoken word, music and participatory process, lead us to a deeper commitment to building bridges across our differences and to peace, both within ourselves and in the world.”
Then there’s a closing ceremony with Fiske and Reverend Richard Rose.

Yesterday, the Reg reported the event:

Saddleback event honors King's legacy and activism
The Rev. Mark Whitlock sat near the back of the room … as the mini-conference honoring Martin Luther King Jr., "Exploring Social Action Through Religious Diversity," got going.
. . .
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," Whitlock said to himself, quoting the words King wrote in his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail"….

Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day…. Whitlock and the church where he is the senior minister, Christ Our Redeemer AME in Irvine – the county's only large predominantly black church – organized the Saturday program as part of a weeklong series of events dedicated to King's contributions.

The event brought together a roomful of people of many races, ethnicities and religions – and non-religions…. Many of them, in speeches and in seven different panel discussions, talked about the elemental need for peace and understanding across cultures and national borders....
. . .
"We have the benefit of what King lived and died for, but there is injustice in south Los Angeles, …there is injustice in Haiti, with buildings that were not built well enough to sustain an earthquake," [Whitlock] said. "While we may benefit from a peaceful environment for the most part in Orange County, we must not be lulled into apathy or a feeling that we have no responsibility to those places. So this week is a wake-up call."

Richard Rose, who's an associate minister at Christ Our Redeemer and whom Whitlock placed in charge of organizing the Saddleback College event, said the interfaith movement inevitably lost momentum after King was murdered in Memphis in April 1968. Much of his work on other issues besides race has been overlooked. Before his death, King was becoming increasingly outspoken against the Vietnam War, and addressing issues of poverty. He went to Memphis to help striking garbage workers – an issue of economics, which is, after all, what King spoke most about in his August 1963 March on Washington speech, before he got to the famous "I have a dream" part....
I happened to refer to MLK’s famous “letter” in class last week, illustrating a tradition in understanding law and its basis or legitimacy. I assumed that most students had read the letter—they had—and so it’s a convenient reference.

I'm happy to talk about King's actions and philosophy. If you're gonna have a hero, he'll do, I suppose.

But I have always wondered about this “interfaith” business. It has always seemed to me that different religions tell different stories, identify different creators, different ultimate truths. No doubt one can make a case for a certain amount of overlap among traditions, but surely, after that area has been identified, there will be contested zones, and not just about nits neither, but about the crucial, the really real. —Beyond all the bullshit. (I realize that some faiths are exceptional in this regard.)

I figure that the interfaith crowd are all “bracketing” disagreement about ultimate truth so that it doesn’t interfere with the project at hand—like Rommel and Montgomery meeting for drinks to discuss how best to handle all those goddamn sandstorms and desert fleas.

I'm not sure this bracketing is such a good thing. If you fundamentally disagree with somebody, then you should say so. Start there.

Or are these Kumbayasters all assuming that, despite the differences among them, they're all finally looking into the abyss and seeing the same ultimate truth, the same impossible-too-get-at really real cosmic "it"?

Why on Earth would anybody assume something like that?

In grad school, I had a good friend who was a devout theist. After a while, I got the idea that he, along with others of his particular faith, supposed that non-believers are headed for eternal torment.

He knew I was a non-believer. I made no bones about it.

One day, I said: “So you think I’m headed for eternal damnation?”

“Well…”–he seemed uncomfortable, but not very—“that’s what the church teaches.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yeah. I do.”

I looked hard at him: “Then how come you never try to convert Kathie ‘n’ me? Doncha care about us?”

He seemed amused. Then he shrugged. He had nothing to say.

He seemed OK with his picture of our differing fates.

He went off to the kitchen. He brought me another beer. He changed the subject.

Asshole.

Stephen Fiske (the "Ten Pillars of Peace" guy)









Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...