Violent extremism is about more than just sacred texts
There are those who insist that violence is intrinsic to religion's sacred texts. Here is what they're missing
(Credit: Reuters)
In a column for Salon earlier this month, “Faith-fueled forces of hatred: Obama’s religion speech was troubling — but not for the reasons the right alleges,” Jeffrey Tayler suggested that the real problem with the religious extremism which increasingly confronts us lies deeper than merely the heinous actions we have witnessed. Rather, Tayler argues, it is inscribed in the very sacred texts of the world’s largest religious traditions. “We should not ascribe vile behavior to misreadings of the canon,” the argument goes, because that sense of hatred and violence is actually at the heart of religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam — whose scriptures include some admittedly stomach-turning passages.
As a Biblical scholar, however, I beg to disagree with this analysis, which seems like an oversimplification of the situation, and a forced dichotomy where other options exist.
There is no denying that Judaism, Christianity and Islam contain in their sacred books verses and chapters that are distasteful, awkward, unpleasant, and (especially from our modern point-of-view) morally dubious. Not only scholars of religion, but all those who attempt to take those scriptures seriously, are forced to grapple with those issues.
While the heightened attention to the destructive potential of these texts is perhaps new, discomfort with many of these passages is not, and each of these faiths has significant interpretive traditions which face these difficulties head-on, in many cases managing to neutralize or tame them, so to speak, through symbolism, allegory, contextualization or similar approaches. With the exception of the most die-hard fundamentalist readers (who insist on a strictly literal reading, with no room for interpreters to “remediate” such difficulties), each of the three monotheisms offers credible and creative ways to address these texts thoughtfully, respectfully and effectively.
They do this because, at least in their classic forms, none of those three traditions consider themselves empowered to radically edit their canonical literature. Being unable to jettison words that previous generations judged to be inspired, the next best option is finding appropriate ways to de-fang these “texts of terror,” as scholar Phyllis Trible has aptly called them.
No comments:
Post a Comment