After the jump, four interviews with contemporary liberal figures on questions frequently posed about religion and violence. These are examples of the voices trying to counteract the damage of the Religious Right. Each interview is about twenty minutes long.
A warning: At one point or another, each of the speakers will invoke some version of what some call the "No True Scotsman" Argument, or the idea that religion, properly applied, does not imply violence. I do not think this argument is as weak as the construction of it put forth in the "No True Scotsman" formulation suggests. The formulation of the "NTS" put forward to dismiss claims that religions offer valid ethical principles conflates statistical norms and evaluative norms. Those are two different kind of norms. An example of how the distinction works is the mission statement of this website: We're here to elect more and better Democrats. We have principles by which we decide what is better - those principles are evaluative norms. If we were completely ineffective, and let the Democratic Caucus be completely taken over by Blue Dogs, there would be a gap between our evaluative norm for the Democratic Party and the statistical reality of it. That would not invalidate our evaluative norm.
This kind of gap between statistical and evaluative norms exists in every social situation where one advances some kind of standard. Our job here is to fight to narrow that gap in the Democratic Party. The voices in the videos fight to narrow that gap in their religious traditions. Furthermore, what the evaluative norms of a religion are to begin with is something that is always subject to discussion and revision in any religious tradition that has lasted more than ten years.
That out of the way, here are the interviews.
A Protestant: James Cone
Cone begins his talk with the contrast between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, a pairing he wrote about in Martin and Malcolm in America: A Dream or a Nightmare. (This is my personal favorite of the four interviews).
A Muslim: Tariq Ramadan
Ramadan, author of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam makes an extremely important point about the dynamics of advancing conversation. He notes how, on the basis of a common faith, he was able to change the minds of a group of Muslim clerics toward a more liberal position. This opening of perspective was possible because he did not come into the group as an outsider trying to impose a "false universal," but spoke from within the same commitments as those he spoke with.
A Catholic: James Carroll
Carroll is the author of an exhaustive study of Christian anti-Semitism, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews.
A Jew: Susannah Heschel
Heschel is the author of The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany.