GUEST BLOG: Loving diversity
How students can learn from the past can lead to a tolerant future
By Cydney Cappello, BTS Editor
November 2, 2007 | 2:49 p.m.
Imagine. You are startled awake by a loud sound and rush to the door to find officers ransacking your home, taking the things that they like, breaking those that they don’t. When they see you, they immediately begin to beat you violently, within an inch of your life, then when they are satisfied, they leave without saying a word. Does this sound like the plot of the latest cinematic thriller? A plot so unbelievable, there is no way it could be true.
The truth is, on the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938 this scene was a reality for many Jews of Germany, on that night 96 Jews were killed, 30,000 of them sent to concentration camps, 1,000 synagogues destroyed and about 75,000 Jewish-owned businesses demolished. The night was known as “Kristallnacht” or “the night of broken glass,” and Holocaust survivor Jacob G. Weiner recounted his families’ experience in an article for Time Europe, “The Night Hope Shattered,” that this was a turning point in the treatment of the Jewish community because it was the first time that the Nazis openly targeted the Jews for their ethno-religious views.
History of intolerance toward Jewish faith
The Holocaust was not the first time in history that the Jews have experienced this degree of religious intolerance. According to professor emeritus of religion at Temple University Gerard S. Sloyan, in his work, “Christian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries,” Jewish struggles began in ancient Greece and Rome. Several aspects made the Jewish religion different from other religions of the Roman Empire, the main being their refusal to worship the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, earning them the label of “atheists.” Another label the Jews came to wear was, “enemies of the human race,” because of the difference in their diet and social activities; they would not participate in gymnastics, the theater, or race courses.
The earliest report of mass killings of Jews was 66 of the Common Era by three different sources: Galilean historian Josephus, the Alexandrian Jewish thinker Philo, and the Christian historian Eusebius. Even in 386, Jews were called “Christ-killers,” as the Patriarch of Constantinople, Chrysostom, so colorfully accused of them in his sermons, where he also told his Christian audience “they [Jews] killed the son of your LORD, and yet you dare to gather with them in the same place?” further separating Jews and Christians.
During the Middle Ages, Jews were forced out their homelands in the thirteenth century by France, England, Spain and those that remained in Europe (allowed back only after a large payment) were subject to mass killings by Christian mobs on their “crusade”. The deep hatred of Jews did not help during Hitler’s rise shortly after World War I, in which his propaganda convinced the rest of Germany that the Jews were to blame for the former fallen government, the inflation crisis of 1923 and the depression of 1929. Sloyan claims that it was the repeated offenses of the Jews by Catholic Church fathers during the Middle Ages and the view of Jews as social outcasts that fueled Hitler and the fire of modern anti-Semitism.
Jews today, as well as many other religious peoples, still face intolerances for the same reasons that they have in the past, if we can learn anything from their history it should be how to tolerate one another regardless of beliefs, which can be done through understanding what religious intolerance is, the sources of religious intolerance, and also how we can overcome this intolerance.
What is intolerance?
According to an article by Moses Oke entitled, “A Philosophical Approach to Positive Religious Tolerance,” there are four types of religious intolerance, though for their purposes of this paper we will only investigate two, but before those types are explored, a concrete definition needs to be made on what religious intolerance is. Oke explained that religious intolerance is, "The conjunction of some kind of initially negative opinion about a religion, a religious doctrine, or a religious practice, and some type negative act directed at either the disliked or disapproved religion, religious doctrine or practice, or the persons, or institutions, etc committed to such despised religious phenomena and events."
Religious intolerance, according to Oke, is originally a thought or belief against another’s religion that may lead to a negative action, even if that action is exclusion, as it was in so many cases with Jews.
The first type of religious intolerance, “intra-religious intolerance,” which is disagreements amongst peoples of the same religion, can be found in religious doctrine, liturgy and even behavior. This type of intolerance often leads to “splits” within one religion, which is easily displayed through the different sects of Christianity; Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans and Pentecostals, to name a few. There is a group at the Ohio State University that call themselves, “Queers for Christ,” this is a very obvious example of how intra-religious intolerance works; this group of people did not like how the doctrine of their organization treated homosexuals, so they set out to worship Jesus Christ in their own way. I have also seen this within sects of Judaism that accept Jesus Christ as the son of God, but continue to practice all other aspects of Judaism.
“Inter-religious intolerance,” marks the second type, which may be defined as one religion’s ideals versus another religion’s ideals. This intolerance is obvious when the two religions are vastly different, such as Christianity and Islam, these two religions, according to the differences in their doctrine, will have a hard time finding common ground and this type of intolerance often leads to violence. Oke provided the example of ongoing inter-religious intolerance in Lebanon, where thousands have died at the mercy of internal Christian and Muslim wars. To simplify this type down, it’s similar to the pro-life versus pro-choice argument, no matter how many sides of the argument are heard, pro-choice will always be pro-choice and the same goes for pro-life supporters, the argument for each is too strong to accept the other.
In order to truly find acceptance with different religions, we need to actively understand each other. In his speech, “Rebuilding Nation Building: ‘Religion Conflict and Peace,” David Little, a Harvard Divinity Professor, referred to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an answer to civil unrest, "The American religious leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., used to tell those who blamed the civil rights movement in America for disturbing the peace that genuine peace is much more than the absence of violence. Genuine peace, King said, is based on justice and mutual respect, and these ideals are seldom achieved without arousing the hostility and often the violent response of the profiteers of oppression."I completely agree with Little that King’s philosophies can be easily translated to religious struggles as well.
What can students do?
I would like to see every Ohio University student actively learning about the different religions of their neighbors in order to reduce the amount of animosity toward an opposing religious view in the future. According to a survey taken by Ohio University’s Office of Institutional Research last year, 8% of first-year students participate in a religious organization and 57% of students are involved in intramural sports. It seems that many more students take an interest in sports than religion, but sports could be a good way to get people to start participating with students of different religious backgrounds and serve as a jumping off point for conversation.
I challenge the entire campus of Ohio University to find a an interesting and exciting new way for them to meet others of a different religion, whether it be a coffee hour, Sunday night dinners, or something as big as the event that Campus Crusade for Christ hosted last year with actual scholars of theology and an open forum in an auditorium, anything to strike up constructive conversation is better than nothing. Any confusion or frustrations a student or faculty may have against an opposing religion could be comfortably addressed in one of these atmospheres and hopefully relieve any future strife. More importantly, though, I would like them to not only gain tolerance for one another’s religions, I want the students of Ohio University to gain acceptance of different religious beliefs and become more aware of the different people that make up the world around them, we don’t want to make the same mistakes, so we need to keep the lines of communication open.