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A Court of Appeals has upheld the original slaughter order for Shambo, a bull held sacred by a Hindu community in Wales. I know that a lot of people are happy about this ruling, including my most faithful comment poster, DH. And every farmer in Wales, apparently, who were feeling really hard done by. I just have to say that I don't see how anyone could have lived through the Stygian nightmare that was the foot-and-mouth crisis, and seen those hideous piles of burning cows and sheep, and seen the very real grieving tears of the farmers forced to see "in the flesh" and all at once the slaughter of the animals they cared for, and not understand what this case is really about. Ask yourself why it is raising such curious levels of passion for people who aren't Hindus or vegetarians, on the one hand, nor farmers, nor atheists, nor bloodthirsty animal-haters, on the second, third and fourth hands. (Take my husband for example: he called it "obscene" and said it "made him sick".) (See what I did there with the third and fourth hands? A little subversive Hindu humour.)
I submit to you that a cattle farmer has got to harden his heart to the suffering of animals, to a great degree, to do the job he does. And an eater of meat similarly has to be in denial about what goes on, or brazenly proclaim a lack of feeling, as many do. And yet they remain good men (or women as the case may be). When I saw farmers grief-stricken on TV over the slaughter of their herds, it was not just about the money, or their "way of life", it was an awakened compassion for the animals themselves. I must therefore make my position clear: I do not think that religion is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for unpleasant laws. I think this law is one example of a law that was made without consideration of compassion, of what Shakespeare's Portia called "the quality of mercy that is not strained" and it needs refining. Some day, we will all be refined and there will be no herds of cattle that live only for the slaughter, but in the meantime, we do not have to be monsters, or Terminators with no off-switch.
Shamba the Bull, who lives in a shrine in a Hindu monastery in Wales, was saved from slaughter by a court ruling. The bull has tested positive for bovine tunerculosis, and was under an order to be destroyed. In addition to appealing the order in the traditional way, the monks also set up a blog of the bull's "daily thoughts", launched an internet petition to save him, and put images of him on the internet through a site called "Moo Tube". It is doubtful whether this contributed to the judge's ruling though, which seems based more on the commonsense conclusion that even if he is incurable infected with tuberculosis, which is far from certain, he poses little threat to other animals due to his protected status. Still, I am happy for the bull. And as a closet Hindu, I feel vindicated. Thank you, Welsh judge, for your compassion.
Have you ever had a situation where you had two good friends, that you never saw together, and never really thought of together, and then it turns out they know each other better than they know you? That was sort of how I felt when I received today's SojoMail, the e-mailing from Jim Wallis, a left-leaning religious politics pundit well-known in the US. The segment was titled Someone You Should Know, but it turned out to be about someone I know (of) very well, and in fact had been thinking about most of the day - Gordon Brown! It was strange, because the piece was obviously aimed at Americans (real Americans, not phony ex-pats like me) and it presumed the reader had heard little or nothing about Gordon Brown; whereas I had been bemoaning the fact that I was so busy at work, I had still not found out who was on his new cabinet at 8 pm tonight.
Just a quick link here, because I don't need to add anything to this insightful piece by Diana Butler Bass on the Sojourners-related Blog, God's Politics. She talks of Reinhold Niebuhr's definition of irony in the context of American Protestantism and how conspicuous is its absence in the "theology of glory" espoused by a lot of religious conservatives. Deep but worth it.
Tonight I watched a BBC special on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As is usual for me, I was in or near tears through much of the show, not simply because of the emotional power of the message of Dr. King, but also, I am ashamed to say, through a sort of self-indulgent nostalgia. The civil rights struggle dominated my childhood to such an extent that merely watching a documentary on it is like a visit back home. I was stunned by a segment that was shown of a speech given in 1967 against the Vietnam War. The documentary led one to believe that it was part of the historic Riverside Baptist Church "Beyond Vietnam" speech of April 1967. But when I googled that speech, the segment was not in it. So then I googled just King's name and a short segment of the excerpt, and found it listed as "attributed" on Wikipedia. Well, I think they can correct that "attributed" because I just saw and heard him saying it. To read the words here will not have one tenth the power of hearing him say it, so I urge you to see if either BBC Four in the UK or The American Experience in the US have a clip of it on a website somewhere. But here are the words:
Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be - a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I am God." George W. Bush, you can have that one for free.
Here is a fascinating article in the Guardian Unlimited about one of the major difficulties to be overcome in agreeing to an EU constitution. It's probably due to my strong Jeffersonian philosphical background, but I think they are rather missing the point. The squabbles over how to word a "reference" to Europe's religious heritage, whether that be called Christian or Judeo-Christian, merely points up the need for religion to be mentioned in the document. But the powerful disestablishmentarians, those who are adamant about the "separation of church and state" (that's mainly the French, with typically wishy-washy backing from our Tone) want to enforce a policy of no references at all to religion of any sort. What is needed is an explicit statement that the union itself and the member states will have freedom of religion and no state-sponsored religions; then, a mere historical reference to Christianity will be unable to be used harmfully, to oppress or exclude.
I have to say, I have a hard time understanding why so many people are unable to either understand or embrace religious tolerance. The "separation of church and state", too, although a cornerstone of American liberty, is widely misunderstood in America, by Bible-thumpers and militant atheists and everyone in between. Christian fundies think the amendment is their enemy, not realising that they wouldn't be there today without it. Those wary of religion think the amendment is a weapon to silence religious discourse about politics. It seems like madness to me, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the chaotic approach in Europe.
This excellent post at Body and Soul is about the difficulty with American Democrats and "the language of faith". All I can say is 1) amen! and 2) it's even worse in Britain, despite the two (supposedly) progressive Christians at the head of government.
Jeanne's post refers to an article by Amy Sullivan in the Washington Post titled "Do the Democrats have a prayer?" which discusses the same issue. Sullivan notes that the only two Dems to be elected since 1964, Carter and Clinton, were also the only two with significant references to their Christian faith, and I would just point out that they are both Southerners as well. East Coast "Yankees" and West Coasters just don't seem to be able to "do" religion in a political context, sothat may mean that the only Dems who do "have a prayer" are Southerners and Midwesterners who have a religious base.
You have to give the people what they want in politics, but, as a very successful Republican once said, you can "appeal to their better angels".
This is a very frightening story, frightening in what it reveals about the current state of the religion-politics dialectic in the world, and especially in the US. Essentially, Mel Gibson, and others like him, seem to be going all medieval on us.
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