Post #19 - Diversity and Deprivation

"Four Freedoms" - Freedom of Religion

America, too, has had a history of religious diversity and toleration, as well as bigotry and persecution. Native Americans can attest to the hardships they have had in trying to retain their spiritual traditions under the hegemony of European Christian settlement. In the early days of our republic Roman Catholics were unlikely to fare very well outside of the “Free State” of Maryland (so-called because one was there free to be Catholic in Protestant-dominated colonial America). Anti-semitism has had a long and lamentable history in this country (A Gentleman's Agreement was one of the first films that opened my eyes to what was not right about the world around me). Still, the “freedom of religion” pillar of our Bill of Rights represents a significant benchmark of the world’s progress toward wider amity and toleration. Regrettably, the current association, in many minds, of Islam and terrorism is straining the capacity of some Americans to maintain this attitude of tolerance. I pray that we will try harder to know our brethren in faith communities that are unfamiliar to us, for we all work out our salvation with one another rather than by ourselves; surely, this is part of the meaning of Jesus’ metaphor of “the sheep and the goats” on the Day of Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). He did not say that we would be sorted on that day by our membership in this or that sect, but by our compassion, or lack of it. He said:

“I was hungry and you gave me no food” -- our country, still the envy of the world as a powerful economic engine and incubator for entrepreneurship and innovation, cannot find a way to nourish adequately all its own people, much less make an end to starvation around the globe. Our preoccupation with security concerns and war make finding solutions to such basic problems even more difficult. We give a smaller percentage of our gross domestic product to international aid than most other industrialized countries. Our half-hearted devotion to poverty alleviation makes our global standing deteriorate further.

“...thirsty and you gave me no drink” -- according to the Ecumenical Water Network, clean drinking water is the most urgent need for the world's poor; over 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone lack access to safe water. Exacerbated by factors such as deforestation, pollution, global warming and saline infiltration of aquifers, many of the world's poor are, literally, dying of thirst. Yet, we seem to moving toward privatization of water, with designer bottled water replacing the reliable local tap water for many Americans.

“...naked and you did not clothe me” -- in the United States, France and elsewhere, modesty on the part of Muslim women has been sometimes treated as a blight to be eradicated. The hijab (Islamic head covering) arouses feelings of threat or disgust among many Westerners, and becomes another front in the larger clash of civilizations. The Institute of Islamic Information and Education quotes an Iranian young woman as saying in defense of hijab, “We want to stop men from treating us like sex objects, as they have always done. We want them to ignore our appearance and to be attentive to our personalities and mind. We want them to take us seriously and treat us as equals and not just chase us around for our bodies and physical looks." A sophomore at Stony Brook University was quoted by an interviewer for The People Speak as saying, “After I started to wear hijab...things started to change. Though there have been many positive aspects, such as people smiling and greeting you, being granted a bit more respect, there are also some not so cheerful events. I've been spit at and cursed at, stared at and yelled at. ”

“...sick and in prison and you did not visit me” -- The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its citizens than most other industrialized countries; are we asking the question “why?” Paul Grenier, founder of The Common Task, a center devoted to the humanization of culture, cities and economies, has pointed out that there are now a number of prisons that the Bush administration has ruled off-limits for visits by Christians who would minister to those incarcerated – Guantanamo, where prisoners are stripped of rights that an enemy soldier or a U.S. civil defendant would have, the overseas venues used for “extraordinary renditions,” and possibly others about which we don't yet know.