there are two columns/op eds today that you may find relevant.
The first is in the Washington Post by a very unsnarky Dana Milbank, titled Remembering the remarkable Kayla Mueller. It begins with a quote from something she wrote in 2011, in italics, like this:
“I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine. If this is how You are revealed to me, this is how I will forever seek You.”
Milbank does not accept the assertion of ISIS that she was killed in an American airstrike. He notes that her family was warned not to disclose her identity if they did not want her killed.
What you learn is about a remarkable young woman, who lived her faith in service of others.
I will explore that a bit more below the squiggle, but if you follow the links and read this column, and the op ed I am about to describe, I will be satisfied with what you have done, although I will as is my wont offer some thoughts of a more personal nature.
The second is by historian Susan Jacoby in the New York Times and is titled The First Victims of the First Crusade. One paragraph explains why she offers this brief history of the attacks by Crusaders on Jewish communities in the Rhineland:
Cultural ignoramuses portrayed President Obama’s references to the Crusades and the Inquisition at the recent National Prayer Breakfast as an excuse for Islamic terrorism, but the president’s allusions could and should have been used as an opportunity to reflect on the special damage inflicted in many historical contexts by warriors seeking conquest in the name of their god.
I will explore both pieces below the fold, where I will introduce each piece with some personal observations. I invite you to continue.
Let me preface my further explanation with a few remarks of my own, which may help explain why both pieces struck me.
those who have read me for a while are probably aware of my own long spiritual search, what I have described as somewhat inchoate search for meaning. I have wondered through a number of religious traditions and studied many more. At the same time, I have spent much of my teaching career instructing young people in the history and structure of American government.
As a Convinced Friend, a Quaker by choice, I attempt (not always either consistently or successfully) to guide my life by the principle of George Fox that I should walk gladly across the earth answering that of God in other people. I understand the notion of living one's belief.
At the same time, recognizing the diversity of belief or non-belief in the world, something of which our Founders were aware both by the history of the European settlement in North America (which included its own share of intolerance and bigotry) and by the diversity that already existed in what became the United States (including a fair number of Muslims among those who were enslaved, although few acknowledged that), our system of government places loyalty to our constitutional principles above loyalty to one's faith in the running of the government. One takes an oath or affirmation to uphold the Constitution, and if that conflicts with one's sense of religious faith, the only choices should be to violated one's faith while following the Constitution or to resign the office in which one encounters the conflict. We have both historically and currently those who might want to argue differently, who seek to use the power of the state to impose their religious values by political or economic force.
Despite my strong belief in these principles, I honor and respect those who choose to sacrifice comfort and ease of life and position to serve others because of how they view their faith.
That brings us to Kayla Mueller. Let me offer this from Milbank to give a sense of who she was (and there are hyperlinks in the original to sources of material he uses):
Now that no further harm can come to Kayla, it can be told what an exceptional person she was. She joined the campus Christian ministry at Northern Arizona University and plunged into social action: She volunteered nights at a women’s shelter, protested genocide in Darfur and started a chapter of Amnesty International. She volunteered at a summer camp for young African refugees in Israel, and she went to Israel’s occupied territories to show support for the Palestinians. She protested torture in Guantanamo Bay, and she went on a humanitarian mission to Guatemala. In India, she taught English to Tibetan refugees and to poor women and children.
“This really is my life’s work, to go where there is suffering,” she wrote in 2010. “I suppose, like us all, I’m learning how to deal with the suffering of the world inside myself.”
She taught her captors how to make paper peace birds. She refused to give in. As Milbank notes, she would not have sought vengeance for her death.
Here is the conclusion of that column:
“[T]he hope of our reunion is the source of my strength,” she wrote her family. “Do not fear for me, continue to pray as will I + by God’s will we will be together soon.”
Kayla, we will all be together again, soon enough. Until then, thank you for leaving this world better than you found it.
Let me now transition to the piece on the First Crusade. My last name is Bernstein, although that represents Polish, not German or Austrian origin for my father's family. Thus we had no direct family experience of the horrors of the First Crusade. Yet no educated Jew is unaware of what happened, when Crusaders destroyed Jewish communities in the Rhineland before they went to the Eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps I can illustrate this by personal experience: my elementary school, Murray Avenue, in Larchmont New York, had one sports team, baseball. While I skipped from 6th to 7th grade (junior high school) in the Fall, my father had already made clear that i would NOT be allowed to try out for the team, because it was called the Crusaders, and he was adamant that no Jew should ever play for a team so named given the history starting with the First Crusade. As one who later spent 14 years in the Orthodox Church, I am also well aware of the destruction wrought by the 4th Crusade, whose sack of Constantinople quite probably so weakened the Byzantine Empire that it was only a matter of time before it fell on May 29, 1453, to the Turks.
Jacoby provides the historical context of that Crusade - the economic catastrophe of crop failure the year before, for example.
Allow me to offer a few selections from her op ed.
Pope Urban II did not tell crusaders to murder Jews, but that is what happened when at least 100,000 knights, vassals and serfs, unmoored from ordinary social restraints but bearing the standard of the cross, set off to crush what they considered a perfidious Muslim enemy in a faraway land. Why not practice on that older group accused of perfidy — the Jews?
The city of Trier, on the Moselle River, was one of the early stops. The Jews were, according to a Hebrew chronicle, offered the choice of conversion, exile or death — similar to the choices offered by groups like the Islamic State and Boko Haram. After the Jews of Trier made an unsuccessful attempt, by paying off a bishop, to persuade the crusaders to bypass their community, they sought refuge in the prelate’s palace.
The chronicle recounts that “the bishop’s military officer and ministers entered the palace and said to them: ‘Thus said our lord the bishop: Convert or leave this place. I do not wish to preserve you any longer.’ ” It goes on: “ ‘You cannot be saved — your God does not wish to save you now as he did in earlier days.’ ”
The idea of forced conversion - if offered, is an unfortunate part of Christianity's history. It certainly was part of the European settlement of the Western Hemisphere, especially by Spanish and Portuguese upon those they encountered.
Jacoby offers details about similar events in Mainz, another city in the Rhineland, where the events were also well documented. After writing about that, Jacoby offers this paragraph:
This account highlights several elements analogous to the actions of modern terrorist groups. These include attempts at forced conversion; the murders of women and children; and the imposition of financial penalties on coerced converts who try to remain in their homes. Albert’s disparaging remarks about Emico also reveal that there were Christians who felt about the crusaders exactly the way many Muslims today surely feel if they are unlucky enough to find themselves in the path of violent lunatics.
She also reminds us what ISIS did in Mosul, and follows with a single line:
When the brutal warriors established control, thousands of Yazidis were forced to flee for their lives if they did not convert to Islam. Christians were also ordered to formally convert, pay taxes to Shariah courts or face “death by the sword,” without any possibility of escape.
Sound familiar?
Let me offer her concluding words, before then returning to some of my own observations:
What we actually see today is a standard of medieval behavior upheld by modern fanatics who, like the crusaders, seek both religious and political power through violent means. They offer a ghastly and ghostly reminder of what the Western world might look like had there never been religious reformations, the Enlightenment and, above all, the separation of church and state.
Some might argue that the comparison is unfair, that we no longer use armed force to impose Christianity upon non-Christians.
I would argue the comparison is still apt, and thus the President's remarks about ISIS were appropriate. We are too often too blind to our own prejudice. If we think our religion is correct we seek to convert others, and the question of where it ceases to be invitation and goes beyond persuasion to compulsion is not always so bright a line. That is why the First Amendment is so forceful on the notion of no establishment of religion - words offered at a time when there were established Churches in a number of the states, that in Massachusetts (Congregational Church) becoming disestablished only in 1833.
I would argue that the work of people like Kayla Mueller is far more effective in persuading people of the truth of one's faith than is the fact that one can impose it - and it does not matter if the imposition is military, political, or economic, it is still an imposition by some element of force, even if physical death or dismemberment is not threatened.
One may believe one's religion requires one to advocate and seek to persuade on certain moral issues. I believe my own Quaker orientation requires me to demonstrate the respect for other humans regardless of their respect for themselves. It is why I support full marriage equality and protections against discrimination on the grounds of gender, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation. . . I do not expect that nations with a different history than ours will necessarily fully understand why we should insist on separation of religion and government for ourselves, nor do I think we should necessarily impose those values upon them, even as i believe it is correct that we insist that they not persecute those of faiths that are minorities in their own nations.
Much that is done in the name of religion would shock many who claim the religions involved as their own. That it does not shock all is a failure of the full morality of that religion.
Lest we be too proud, we should not read our own history selectively. The Puritans came to Massachusetts to freely practice their faith, but then sought to impose it on everyone, including mandatory church attendance, and not allowing dissent. I teach in Maryland, where some people like to brag about the 1649 Act of Toleration. But perhaps they ought to read the text of that document, wherein they will encounter the following words in the 2nd paragraph:
That whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto helonging shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is Curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity the father sonne and holy Ghost, or the Godhead of any of the said Three persons of the Trinity or the Unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull Speeches, words or language concerning the said Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons thereof, shalbe punished with death and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her lands and goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heires.
I remind people that Maryland's early constitution banned from public office anyone not Christian until an exception was made in the Jew Bill of 1826.
Just as I remind people that even before the 1st Amendment, Article VI of the Constitution contains a ban against any religious test for any office or public trust under the Constitution, and given that the oath of office mentioned just before in that Article includes state officials, was clearly intended to apply to ALL public officials in the nation.
I have no problem with people who live their faith. That is why I can admire Kayla Mueller. It is why I can similarly admire my deceased acquaintance Tom Fox, like me a member of Langley Hill Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, who was killed in Iraq for his work as a member of a Christian Peacemakers Team.
I accept that many faiths have a missionary component. But that should not go so far as to include compulsion of any sort.
I believe that we need some humility not only about our own history - national and of our various faiths - but about the lack of perfection in our own day of both nation and religion.
I include in that the Religious Society of Friends, many of whose adherents were involved in the slave trade until the efforts of John Woolman in the late 18th Century, some of whose Meetings today are still discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation.
If you are still here, I thank you for being willing to put up with my verbosity. I am honored you chose to keep reading.
Have a good day.