Until Friday, when Tiger Woods stood up in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and apologized for his sexual infidelities, the American public confession was a Christian rite. From President Grover Cleveland, who likely fathered a child out of wedlock, to Ted Haggard, who resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals after allegations that he had sex with a male prostitute, our politicians and preachers have bowed and scraped in Christian idioms. Jimmy Carter spoke of “adultery in my heart.” Jimmy Swaggart spoke of “my sin” and “my Savior.” In any case, the model derives from evangelical Christianity ”” the revival and the altar call. You confess you are a sinner. You repent of your sins. You turn to Christ to make yourself new.
Woods was caught in a multimistress sex scandal after Thanksgiving. In January Brit Hume, channeling his inner evangelist on Fox News Sunday, urged Woods to “turn to the Christian faith.” “He’s said to be a Buddhist,” Hume said. “I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.” Woods in effect told Hume Friday thanks but no thanks.
Part of Woods’ carefully prepared statement followed the time-honored formula that historian Susan Wise Bauer has referred to as the “art of the public grovel.” Though he did not sob like Swaggart, Woods seemed ashamed and embarrassed. He took responsibility for his actions, which he characterized as “irresponsible and selfish.” He apologized, not just to his wife and children but also to his family and friends, his business partners, his fans, and the staff and sponsors of his foundation. And he was not evasive. Whereas President Clinton confessed in 1998 to having an “inappropriate” relationship with Monica Lewinsky and took potshots at the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, Woods said, “I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did is not acceptable, and I am the only person to blame.”
But this was not your garden-variety confession. Though Woods spoke of religion, he did not mention Jesus or the Bible, sin or redemption. He gave us a Buddhist mea culpa instead.
It was neat to come and see a Prothero link. I will have to go and read more of it. I thought Prothero’s book about Religious Literacy was very well done!! It’s only too bad that the context is this whole celebrity-adultery-apology thing. We’d all be a lot better off if we weren’t so interested in other people’s private lives. Seriously, once we are out of adolescence there should be a lot of other subjects that are a better use of our time, minds, resources, etc. Even so, this is an interesting insight.
This is in my view an important moment indeed for America’s ‘civic religious culture’. But rather than merely advocate “religious literacy†– which I too take to be a first step – phenomenological readings of religious experience are never ‘neutral’ in fact. They often smuggle in the presumed premise that “all is equal according to the doctrine of pluralismâ€. And so, as well as looking forward to sighting Prothero’s text in due course, may I promote again on this site for the beginner’s benefit, Ravi Zacharias’s The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha.
It is IMHO one of the very best introductions, not only conveying some of the key “differences†between Christianity and Buddhism, but also interpreting their significance (“why these matterâ€) according to a set of criteria well beyond that of mere phenomenology. For in the end each and every religious tradition has to contend with what constitutes “revelationâ€, in their view, and whether this purported revelation can be integrated with the rest of human reality. And it is the view of the East that fundamentally it cannot: one needs to escape ‘this world’ to seek ‘the goal’ – variously described. The Judeo-Christian tradition would seek on the other hand an impressive integration between ‘this world’ and the fulness of revelation, even as it also of course proposes the means of this world’s radical transformation into something new (sin is dealt with) which is nonetheless still original (the good creation does get genuinely fulfilled).
It is this dichotomy that western “religious literacy†mostly fails to address adequately – and so is not literate enough!
[b]Hebrews 9 (New International Version)[/b]
22In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood [b]there is no forgiveness.[/b]
15For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
Thanks Art! Those are all absolutely legitimate statements. Not everyone is at a point where they will appreciate them however. Some people will find them offensive; others irrelevant and/or facetious. But I think they are part of a mature stage of argument.
Your recommended website sounds very interesting and I will check it out straightaway. Thanks.
People do think religions are the same. The brother of the owner of the coffee shop I frequent came over to my table and wanted to talk religion with me. But first I had to agree that the purpose of religion is to “make people behave like good little boys and girls.” Since I didn’t think that was the point of my faith, we never did get to discuss religion. He didn’t think “new life in Jesus Christ” was a serious discussion topic.
In reality, there are substantial differences.
I don’t think one can understand a religion from the outside. You need to at least experience some of the ramifications to get a feel for it. I didn’t see the downside of eastern philosophies until I went to work for a famous craftsman as a day laborer for a few months during the early eighties. There were about fifteen men working there. The Austrians were in one building, the Germans in another, the locals in another area, etc.. There was an Italian guy there named Mario. He had just come over from Italy when the boss hired him 37 years earlier. Mario still couldn’t speak much English. He had never been in the boss’s house (which was a stone’s throw from the workshops). The boss was famous for giving nickel-an-hour raises after so many years employment. The boss was a follower of a certain east Indian mystic.
The boss definitely was not his brother’s keeper. In fact, he thought he had an obligation never to interfere with a worker’s karma. And he didn’t want them being too friendly with each other either. Much better to keep the various nationalities separate and suspicious of each other. And he never hired anybody who was skilled. Much better to hire people who could just barely do the job. He liked to hire locals and immigrants. They stayed around longer. One of the locals said to me that actually things were much better now than they used to be. There hadn’t been a knife fight in the machine room in a couple years.
The Boss’s wife came in to my work-room one day and began complaining about how demanding a certain customer was. The Jews were like that she said. I left at the end of the day and never went back.
At least I might expect a Jew or a Christian would try to hide their contempt for the foreigner sojourning among them.