The four proselytizers who were arrested for handing out copies of the Gospel outside the Arab International Festival were arraigned a couple of days ago on disturbing the peace charges and will have to appear at more hearings. I wrote earlier that unless more stuff went on that no one is talking about, I didn’t think what they were doing justified an arrest.

So this is what Steve Pardo of The Detroit News wrote about the arraignment:

Negeen Mayel, 18, of California; Nabeel Qureshi, 29, of Virginia; Paul Rezkalla, 18 of New York, and David Wood, 34, also of New York, face fines of up to $500 each and up to 93 days in jail. Dearborn authorities said the four “chose to escalate their behavior, which appeared well-orchestrated and deliberate” as they handed out religious literature and talking with people at the festival. The woman and three men are members or founders of a group called “Acts 17 Apologetics.” …

…City officials said police received a complaint of the members of Acts 17 Apologetics “harassing and intimidating patrons of the festival and that a large crowd was gathering.”

The behavior of these individuals drew and incited a large crowd to a point where they were in violation of city ordinances, including breach of peace and failure to obey the lawful order of a police officer, according to the city’s public relations department.

Festival rules require religious groups to distribute information at paid booths or outside the event.

The proselytizers released a YouTube video that appeared to show hardly anyone was nearby when police arrested them. The group also is complaining that the police confiscated their video cameras and haven’t returned them.

Just for fun I checked out the Acts 17 website, which is very attractive. The organization exists to convert Muslims to Christianity. From there I found some YouTube video from the same festival in 2009 in which the Acts 17 people clearly were proselytizing inside the festival area, not outside of it.

The video I linked to (if you don’t have the stomach to watch it) shows an Acts 17 guy behaving like a five-alarm asshole, aggressively (in a verbal way) challenging the religion of Islam right in the middle of this festival and then whining about how unfair it was that the security people at the festival made them stop filming and go away. Personally, I say the fair attenders showed enormous restraint by not breaking the video camera over the jerk’s head.

I think it’s important to recognize that aggressive, in-your-face proselytizing is an act of hate and hostility. The message behind it is “I hate you, and I’m going to keep hating you until you become like me.” It’s beyond obnoxious, but the proselytizers are incapable of seeing themselves as others see them.

I just hope for their sake they don’t spin off an organization to convert Buddhists. We may be non-violent, but we also invented kung fu.

Any large group of people will include individuals who are doing harmful or shameful things — by which I mean things outrageous enough to be newsworthy — out of public view. This is true of families, clubs, companies, political parties, nations, and all manner of other institutions, including religious ones. The larger the group, the more inevitable this becomes. For the sake of brevity I’m calling this observation Spitzer’s Law. (I considered calling it Edwards’s Law, but decided I’d rather not deal with that clumsy “s apostrophe s” thing.)

When an outrageously harmful or shameful thing comes to light from within a group we don’t like, there’s a knee-jerk tendency to judge everyone in the group as being equally guilty perpetrators (the Little Lulu Corollary). This is juvenile, because Spitzer’s Law has no exceptions. It applies to every group we all belong to that contains more than, I’d say, 50 people. Probably not even that many.

Of course, when a public figure who has marketed himself as a paragon of virtue is caught being a hypocrite — the Haggerty Scenario — we do all line up to throw rotten tomatoes, don’t we?

There is also a very human tendency to overlook obvious behavioral problems in people we like personally. We’ll squelch our own suspicions that sweet Uncle Ted cheats on Aunt Melba, or that our office friend Sally who gives everyone funny birthday cards is skimming off the books. Up to a point, that’s very normal and understandable.

In fact, I’d say the more terrible the act being perpetrated, the more likely it is that people who are close to the perpetrator will not see it, even if the evidence is all over the place. It’s the old cognitive dissonance thing.

There’s also the truth of the “banality of evil.” The most ordinary, unremarkable people can be capable of the most diabolical atrocities. We expect villains to bear some physical mark of villainy, or at least to be jerks so that we don’t like them. But in the real world, that’s not how it works. Genuine psychopaths often can be downright charming.

So, when an individual is caught doing something criminal or immoral, this doesn’t necessarily prove anything about groups he works for or belongs to. However, how a group responds to the bad behavior, once it’s discovered, speaks volumes.

If people in a leadership position saw what was happening, did they acknowledge the bad behavior and take steps to stop it? Or did they try to cover it up but let it continue?

If the bad behavior becomes public knowledge and the group faces public criticism, does the group forthrightly atone for the harm done, or does it close ranks and make excuses?

By now you probably realize I’m thinking of the widening Catholic clergy scandal. The Church is not exactly covering itself in glory on this one.

It doesn’t shock me that an institution as large as the Catholic church contains some members who are sexual abusers, or alcoholics, or thieves, or sadists, or who just engage in some sort of secret harmless kinkery. This will happen. It’s Spitzer’s Law.

I think it’s often the case that people who are genuinely warped are given to ostentatious displays of religiosity. In fact, I’d say the more flamboyantly or stridently religious someone is, the more likely he/she is hiding something (the Haggerty Scenario, again). And it doesn’t surprise me that people with harmful sexual compulsions would join a religious organization with a repressive attitude toward most sexuality. Moths to a flame, folks. (However, this does not mean that all religious people are warped.)

The sexual exploitation of children is something that so stuns most peoples’ sensibilities that it’s common to react by looking the other way and pretending one didn’t see what one saw. If the perpetrator is someone one knows, it’s a huge thing to process. Someone with no habit of introspection may be unable to process it.

However, most religions encourage moral introspection of some sort — reflection on and confession of one’s misbehavior. Obviously, this often doesn’t “work.” The degree to which it obviously isn’t working, as measured by a religious institution’s handling of its members’ bad behavior, is the degree to which a religious institution relinquishes public moral authority.

So I don’t criticize Catholicism per se because “A small minority has sinned, gravely, against too many,” as the Anchoress wrote yesterday. I criticize church leadership for covering it up and letting it continue. Especially the latter part. If they’d covered it up but made sure the “problem” priests were removed from contact with parishioners, the Church’s behavior would be less heinous. But that’s not what the Church did.

And I say that anyone involved in covering it up, allowing it to continue, and then deflecting public criticism with whiny excuses, has no authority whatsoever to assume public leadership on any moral issue, henceforth. Period.

Individuals will be flawed, but an institution assuming a role of moral leadership over the rest of us must demonstrate it can rise above its own bullshit. Otherwise, it should assume nothing more than humility.

See also: The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s flawed understanding of “morality.”

Update: Cluelessness abounds —

While I cannot excuse the actions of those who abused innocent children or who failed to intervene, I utterly reject the self righteous fury of those who would condemn an entire church for the actions of a few.

Although I’m sure the scandal has brought out the knee-jerk anti-Catholic and anti-religion crowd, most of the criticism I have seen has been leveled at the Church’s continued clumsy and clueless reaction (and it is a reaction, not a response) to the whole issue. And when I say Church, I am not talking about the Church Universal, but just the current, temporal institutional authorities, who have yet to forthrightly own up to their failures in this matter.

Sorry I’ve been scarce. I’ve spent the past several days struggling over a review of the book Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor. It’s a very long review. Short version: Mostly, the book sucks.

Research shows Buddhists are less likely to cheat on their spouses than Christians.

Or, one of the dumbest things any human being ever said … a comment on Bill O’Reilly’s blog …

As for the comment on Atheists – keep in mind – by claiming to be an Atheist – a person is acknowledging the absolute and certain existence of God! Otherwise there would be no God to Not Believe In!

Snark away, troops. Just don’t forget — the real enemy is not God. It is Teh Stupid.

(And read on to “I Am Misquoted by Bill O’Reilly“)

This is actually a Buddhism issue, but I’m posting on this blog so I can cross-post everywhere I can think of. Something I wrote on my Buddhism site has been misrepresented by Bill O’Reilly, and I want to set the record straight.

The back story: As I mentioned on The Mahablog earlier this week, on Sunday Brit Hume said some obnoxious thing on Fox News Sunday about how Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity —

“The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith,” said Hume. “He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, ‘Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”

My first reaction, from the Buddhism blog, is titled “Let’s Forgive Brit Hume“:

I don’t like to point out others’ faults, but given the record I would think Christians would show a little more humility about offering advice to the sexually wayward. As Jesus once said, let those who have never sinned throw the first stones (John 8:7).

However, Mr. Hume is right, in a sense, that Buddhism doesn’t offer redemption and forgiveness in the same way Christianity does. Buddhism has no concept of sin; therefore, redemption and forgiveness in the Christian sense are meaningless in Buddhism. Forgiveness is important, but it is approached differently in Buddhism, and I’ll get to that in a bit.

From there I went into a very general, brief, basic explanation of the way Buddhism guides people with, um, problems such as Tiger Woods’s, and I linked to articles with more detail. I don’t know Tiger Woods personally, I can’t imagine where his head is, and I don’t presume to offer spiritual counseling to people I don’t know and who haven’t asked for it.

But the point was that Buddhism has an entirely different approach to dealing with our imperfections. In brief, instead of redemption and forgiveness, you might say we do atonement and “cleansing.” The lack of “redemption” in the Christian sense is utterly irrelevant. It was by no means an “admission” that Christianity is the superior religion, or that Tiger Woods would be better off converting to it.

And you probably already see where this is going.

Initially the post had some good responses, including a nice mention on U.S.A. Today‘s Faith and Reason website.

Then the Family Research Council stepped in, quoting me but out of context to suggest I approved of what Brit Hume said. Then the FRC writer repeated the old slander that Buddhism is a religion without faith or hope, in which humans are doomed to trudge wearily through one life after another working off old, bad karma.

However, Buddhism is a path of liberation from the wheel of samsara, a little point the Family Research Council left out. The Buddha explicitly rejected the idea that people are fated to be punished in the future for the bad deeds of the past. Further, Buddhist teachings on karma and reincarnation are very different from what most people think they are, but I don’t want to go into a long lecture on that here.

Frederick Clarkson graciously gave me a spot at Talk to Action to rebut the FRC. And there I wrote,

A problem with side-by-side comparisons of the relative merits of Christianity versus Buddhism is that the two religions are understood and practiced within very different conceptual frameworks. For example, Sprigg and other conservative Christians persist in extolling redemption as an essential feature of their religion that Buddhism lacks. But to Buddhists, this is irrelevant. It might be said of Buddhism that it is a means to perceive, deeply and intimately, why we don’t need to be redeemed.

Finally we get to the Devil himself, Bill O’Reilly. Today I discovered I am quoted on his blog.

My colleague Brit Hume has aroused the ire of some secularists as well as some Buddhists by advising Tiger Woods to seek redemption through Christianity in place of his mother’s religion of Buddhism. Said Mr. Hume about Mr. Woods, “He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn your faith—turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'”

Almost immediately, the far left began mocking Hume as a religious fanatic. Some of the comments directed at him were as hateful as anything directed towards Tiger Woods.

So, let’s look at what happened. According to the Buddhist journalist Barbara Hoetsu O’Brien, Hume is correct about Buddhism. That faith does not offer forgiveness and redemption the way Christianity does. That’s because Buddhism has no concept of sin.

The clear implication is that I absolved Hume of disparaging Buddhism and agree with everything he said. But he did disparage Buddhism. That’s plainly obvious. And I disagreed with what he said except for a minor doctrinal technicality.

And, of course, O’Reilly didn’t bother to link back to my site.

O’Reilly goes on from there to claim Hume wasn’t really proselytizing, which is absurd on its face, and that the only reason people are carping about what Hume said is that they hate Christians. Dissing Buddhism doesn’t count. They got a Buddhist to say so!

One other thing, unrelated to O’Reilly — all my life I’ve heard the phrase “let those who have never sinned throw the first stones” as a metaphor about not accusing others of something one is guilty of oneself. I assumed anyone with basic American cultural literacy would know that, especially when it is near a link to a list of scandals involving famous evangelicals.

But the conservative blogger The Anchoress came up with this —

Ms. O’ Brien seems to be mistaking Hume’s obvious compassion for Woods as “stone-throwing.” Having watched the video several times, it seems to me that Hume is doing no such thing. Like Creative Minority, I see Hume taking Wood’s situation, and the state of his soul very seriously, and from the perspective of his own beliefs. Rather than hoisting a stone of judgment in Wood’s direction, Hume is offering what he believes to be a healing balm. The distinction between stoning someone to death or offering them hope for their lives is not exactly a fine or subtle one; the fact that Ms. O’ Brien can’t make that distinction suggests that she -like most of us- has allowed a prejudice -or her condescension- to dull her own clarity, and that -again like most of us- she finds it hard to resist the urge to cynicism.

To which I can say only — WTF? She utterly misinterpreted the metaphor. Is she from this planet?

I also got this comment to the blog, which I mostly deleted, from somebody named Mark —

So suggesting someone consider Christianity as a faith tradition is somehow synonymous with stoning someone to death? How? Please give me a logical argument as to how those two concepts, suggesting someone adopt a particular religion, and executing someone by pummeling them with stones (a brutal, slow, and painful form of death) are equivalent? That is the most bigoted statement against any particular faith tradition I think I have ever read.

When the Jehovah’s Witnesses ring my doorbell and try to hand me literature, I don’t consider it to be the equivalent of taking my life. When a Hare Krishna tries to sell me a flower at the airport, I don’t see them as executioners.

How did you come up with such a hateful comparison? How dark is your heart to think this stuff up? How bigoted is your soul to have such a closed mind?

If I have a closed mind, this guy seems to have no mind at all. How twisted does one have to be to have interpreted what I wrote that way?

I understand that early Christians developed a martyr cult that glorified death by martyrdom. It seems some Christians still get their kicks out of imagining they are being martyred.

Where it comes to proselytization, I take very seriously the third of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Precepts of Engaged Buddhism —

Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrow-mindedness.

It honestly doesn’t bother me when people choose other religions, or no religion. I try to clear up misconceptions and ignorance about Buddhism, but I don’t push it on people.

That said, I’m saying Buddhism is superior to Christianity in one way — enabling people to stop bullshitting themselves about themselves. The sincere practice of Buddhism leads one to a deep self honesty, especially about one’s fears and pain. Christianity — at least in its current popular formats — all too often amounts to slapping a band-aid of dogma over your wounds and then pretending you’re not still bleeding.