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There’s nothing wrong with believing you’re right, or having strong convictions. Yet in approaching religious conversations we have more options than dogmatic fundamentalism on the one hand, and freely negotiable theology on the other.
There is a simplistic view that the Europeans who first came to America’s shores yearned for a society with religious freedom. In fact, many brought their bitter prejudices with them from the Old World. Like a child groping in the dark, the young colonies felt their way through their earliest years amid strident religious disagreements as they sought to define what kind of societies they would be, and what place religion would play in them.
From an early age, discriminatory feelings about Catholics were a puzzle to me.
I try to make it a habit not to pick fights with people of other faiths, and it’s not because I don’t disagree with them. Even when I read the Pope’s reassertion last week of the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, including the statement that other churches are not actually churches “in the proper sense” but communities, I saw no compelling reason to change my habit.
The word “cult” in common usage is almost always a pejorative and, in my experience, usually used by someone with an agenda.
No people in history have been as successful as the Jews in retaining their roots while embracing change in an environment of hostility.
We believe that all religious societies have a right to deal with their members for disorderly conduct, according to the rules and regulations of such societies; provided that such dealings be for fellowship and good standing; but we do not believe that any religious society has authority to try men on the right of property or life, to take from them this world's goods, or to put them in jeopardy of either life or limb, or to inflict any physical punishment upon them. They can only excommunicate them from their society, and withdraw from them their fellowship.
"We believe that men should appeal to the civil law for redress of all wrongs and grievances, where personal abuse is inflicted or the right of property or character infringed, where such laws exist as will protect the same..."
-- From a declaration of belief regarding governments and laws in general, adopted by unanimous vote at a general assembly of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Kirtland, Ohio, August 17, 1835.
De Tocqueville called it “restive curiosity” – that peculiarly American trait of always seeking for something different, something better.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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