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| Quentin L. Cook, a Harvard "African-American Studies" prof, and an Archbishop |
Historically Mormon Apostle Quentin L. Cook (previously featured on this blog for his 2012 sermon "Don't Wear Masks") spoke at an interfaith summit at Notre Dame University on Monday. CJCLDS Church News summarizes his remarks thus:
Elder Cook noted how religion has moved religious people, such as William Wilberforce (Great Britain) and the Quakers (early America) to abolish slavery. He also pointed to the animating force of faith in people such as Martin Luther King Jr., who promoted civil rights in the United States in the 1960s.Elder Cook said some people claim that upholding the principles embedded in the U.S. Constitution (such as religious freedom) does not square with protecting the rights of minority groups. He pushed back, saying that support of the Constitution and advocacy for “strong, peaceful efforts to overcome racial and social injustice are not opposites. Eliminating racism at all levels needs to be accomplished. And, historically, religious conviction has been one of the great forces in accomplishing that goal.”Helping the world better recognize the good that people of faith do must be a joint project, Elder Cook said.“My plea today is that all religions work together to defend faith and religious freedom in a manner that protects people of diverse faith as well as those of no faith,” the Apostle said.
Christianity is one potentially effective means (among others, including atheism) to the end of fighting "racism."
3 comments:
CS Lewis remarked (somewhere) that it was usual for civilizations/ societies to focus their efforts on avoiding one sin particular or pursuing a particular virtue - far beyond the point at which this was good and on and on to the point where it became overall very bad - while ignoring completely other sins and virtues.
This can vividly be seen with 'racism' - indeed, it can be seen best in the changes in the actual usage of this concept (its 'in-practice definition').
If we were to apply the usage of 'racism' from the first half of the twentieth century (or earlier), when it was reasonably coherent; then The modern West is objectively By Far the least 'racist' society ever in the history of the world.
Yet, of course, the focus on 'racism' is far greater than at any time in the history of the world. (The same could be said of feminism, or any other left-ism).
Hence, anyone who regards 'racism' as a significant problem here and now, and advocates even-more focus upon it; is objectively on the side of evil and against God.
That's why antiracism is such a valuable litmus test issue. It is really very simple and very clear.
There was a passage in Ch. 25 of The Screwtape Letters that said something like that:
"The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real
dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of
which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which
we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire
extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which
is already nearly gunwale under.
Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers
of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and
lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with
emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere
“understanding”. Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless
and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and
whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the
prime bogey."
@NLR - Yes - that's the one I meant.
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