Notes for the next broadcast
Sitz im leben
Ordinary Time: Following Jesus
Wednesday, 25 August
What should we think about the plan to build a mosque near the World Trade Center?
- Perspectives
- Ecumenical issues: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam form a family of religions. All three claim to have descended from God's covenant with Abraham.
- Legal issues: Who has the right to stop a religious group from exercising their freedom of religion? Money talks.
- Matters of good taste: Is this the best way to "build bridges" between the culture of the United States and that of Islam?
- Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
- Any laws written to make it hard for a controversial group to exercise its religious rights could be used against other religious groups in the nation.
- Hacker's Law
- "The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions."
- I do not subscribe to the idea that we can be saved by dialogue. The reason that we can't "all just get along" is that we disagree about the highest standards by which we judge what is true, beautiful, and good.
- The Great American Religious Compromise is to agree to disagree peacefully.
- Our wars in the Middle East appear to some Muslims as Crusades.
- We believe that the use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan is justified.
- Many Muslims believe that our use of force is a religious crusade against them.