{"id":6859,"date":"2014-12-27T05:13:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T10:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=6859"},"modified":"2014-12-13T20:21:48","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T01:21:48","slug":"jay-smith-and-david-wood-on-religious-confrontation-vs-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/jay-smith-and-david-wood-on-religious-confrontation-vs-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Smith and David Wood on religious confrontation vs. dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>We mustn&#8217;t <em>offend<\/em> people in other religions, right?<\/strong> That&#8217;s a standard of behavior many present-day Americans, Europeans, Indians, and others accept. And it&#8217;s a standard assumed as obvious in many academic contexts.<\/p>\n<p>But is it consistent with <strong>Christian values<\/strong>? The two bold apologists in the video below argue that it is not, citing New Testament precedents.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4za3QAU_uiQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We could also ask whether this no-offense standard is consistent with classically <strong>&#8220;liberal&#8221; political values<\/strong>?\u00a0Another question: is that standard consistent with <strong>traditional Islamic values<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d have to answer: <strong>no, no, and no<\/strong> &#8211; the no-offense demand violates all three of the aforementioned\u00a0sets of values.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Smith and White are correct about the New Testament precedents for offending with Christian preaching. Truth and the spread of the gospel have traditionally been valued over people&#8217;s feelings.<\/li>\n<li>Traditional Islamic law forbids anything that might defame the Prophet or Islam, but has no problem with offending others, e.g. by outlawing idolatry and idols, or calling out people in other religions for the sin of <a title=\"shirk explained\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shirk_(Islam)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>shirk<\/em><\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Traditional &#8220;liberal&#8221; political value of free speech, <em>as enshrined in American law<\/em>, doesn&#8217;t forbid merely offensive speech, even speech which offends a whole religion of people, or nearly so.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Obscenity<\/strong> is one thing, but mere offense is another (i.e. what in India they call &#8220;hurting the religious feelings of a community&#8221;). All three traditions restrict obscenity to some degree.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an interesting question<strong> why so many people think<\/strong>\u00a0the no-offense\u00a0standard\u00a0to be obviously correct, a indisputable\u00a0<a title=\"&quot;sine qua non&quot; explained\" href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/sine%20qua%20non\" target=\"_blank\"><em>sine qua non<\/em><\/a> of any diverse, tolerant society. And among them, many professed Christians, Muslims, and supporters of free speech.<\/p>\n<p>Another interesting question is how so many of these people loudly denounce offenses against some (e.g. Islam, Buddhism) while gladly participating in offending others (e.g. Roman Catholics, Hindus, Evangelicals). It&#8217;s not just that offending no one is difficult&#8230; though it is, if you&#8217;re going to discuss religions at all.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a big supporter of inter-religious <strong>dialogue<\/strong>. (What other alternative is there?) But I don&#8217;t see how it can really proceed on a deep, honest level while a no-offense rule is assumed, and I also don&#8217;t see how it could replace the traditions of religious preaching, apologetics (positive and negative), and arguments in the philosophy of religion or religious studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We mustn&#8217;t offend people in other religions, right? That&#8217;s a standard of behavior many present-day Americans, Europeans, Indians, and others accept. And it&#8217;s a standard assumed as obvious in many academic contexts. But is it consistent with Christian values? The two bold apologists in the video below argue that it is not, citing New Testament&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/jay-smith-and-david-wood-on-religious-confrontation-vs-dialogue\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jay Smith and David Wood on religious confrontation vs. dialogue<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,21,6,45,59,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-complaints","category-hinduism","category-islam","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6869,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6859\/revisions\/6869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}