The Question: John McCain's spiritual guide, televangelist Rod Parsley, calls Islam a "false religion" that should be "destroyed." Should McCain renounce Parsley? Will Islam be an issue in this year's U.S. presidential election?
Will the recent media obsession with statements made by Barack Obama’s former pastor soon be replaced by a new national obsession – statements made by John McCain’s spiritual guide Rod Parsley and endorser John Hagee, both of whom are popular televangelists – and both of whom have said things that easily rival statements by Jeremiah Wright?
We certainly could have a new media feeding frenzy like the one we’ve had in recent weeks, this one favoring Democrats who seek to embarrass the Republican nominee by demanding that he renounce and denounce his spiritual associates. I suppose that would be “fair,” if we want to indulge in eye-for-an-eye politics.
But Senator Obama himself, in his “A More Perfect Union” speech, urged us not to take that path:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.…
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
The phrase “nothing will change” gets the attention of someone like me who recently wrote a book calling for radical change regarding four profound global crises. I hope we don’t fall victim to another “weapon of mass distraction,” because too much is at stake.
Sojourners founder Jim Wallis noted the self-destructive cycle of the Jeremiah Wright debate:
I've said before that the constant replaying of the tapes has become a metaphor for the continual replaying of our old racial tapes in this country. Black anger and frustration because of real grievances, provoking white indignation revealing the lack of white understanding, causing more black frustration and alienation etc; it just goes on and on.
We need to get beyond these vicious (in both meanings of the word) cycles. That’s why I agree with Stanley Fish who said: The whole denouncing and renouncing game are part of a debased and tired politics of personal destruction.
The odd thing is that the press that produces these distractions and the populace that consumes them really believe they are discussing issues and participating in genuine political dialogue. But in fact they have abandoned genuine political dialogue and have committed themselves to a conversation that differs only in subject matter from conversations about Eliot Spitzer’s and David Paterson’s sex lives. It’s not politics; it’s titillation clothed in political garb.
We should collectively denounce and renounce denouncing and renouncing.
Thankfully, dialogue about the Obama-Wright connection has in at least a few cases gotten beyond denouncing and renouncing. When that happens, productive national dialogue about race opens up and we are all better off for it. For example, consider Condi Rice’s recent statement in which she compared slavery to a birth defect in our nation’s history. For her to constructively engage helps keep this needed conversation about race going, and we can hope that all of us can foster it around dinner tables and over coffee in the months to come.
Similarly, if we get beyond the denounce-renounce shame-game regarding the McCain-Parsely-Hagee connection, I believe we can have some needed and productive political dialogue about religion, and in particular, the relationship between Christianity (our world’s largest religion, comprising about 33% of the world’s population) and Islam (our second largest religion, with about 21% of the world’s population) and Judaism (small in terms of population, but large in international relations because of the profoundly difficult and complex Israeli-Palestinian crises).
As some courageous and irenic Muslim scholars recently stated in A Common Word:
Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.
I agree. As a committed Christian deeply committed to better understanding and loving and working constructively beside my Muslim and Jewish friends and neighbors for the common good, I will do what I can to steer conversations I am involved in toward the profoundly important issues that we too frequently skirt around or skim over in media orgies and faux discourse.
Maybe Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Keith Olberman, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Larry King, and other influential custodians of our national conversation will seize this opportunity to promote genuine political dialogue – about race and religion and their role in national and international affairs. God knows these are conversations we need to have. This, by the way, is another reason this On Faith website is an important resource, and readers who come here should be thanked for their interest and involvement.
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