| At first glance, it looked to be a triumph of the human spirit. There, at a joint news conference last week in Jerusalem, stood the patriarchs of the rival faiths of the Middle East -- Israel's chief rabbis, the deputy mufti of Jerusalem, leaders of the Catholic and Armenian churches -- Jews, Muslims and Christians, together at last.
And the cause that had united them? A gay pride festival scheduled for August in Jerusalem. The leaders of religious orthodoxy had come together to help ban the festival. Interreligious harmony reigned as historic enmities gave way to a common loathing of homosexuals. |
For a brief moment these men put aside centuries of pain and misunderstanding to untie to... create more pain and misunderstanding? These are men of faith, leaders of communities and congregations that have stood divided for centuries. And the only thing they can come together to agree on is hatred. Disgusting.
But Meyerson has a bigger point to make, one that's worth paying attention to (once you've recovered from his introduction, that is).
| Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington has argued that we are now engaged in a clash of civilizations that pits the liberalism of the West against the orthodoxy of Islam. Huntington's on to something, but I think he has located his fault line in the wrong place. The opposition to liberalism -- Jeffersonian liberalism, with its belief in science and, correspondingly, human equality -- extends well beyond the backwaters of Islam. It includes the church that the pope bequeaths us, the Protestant Christian Right, the Orthodox rabbis of Israel.
The blue state-red state division in the United States is increasingly a global reality as well, and just as it sunders nations, it can also at least partially erase some preexisting borders. In the Middle East, it's not just onetime orthodox rivals who look increasingly alike. My friend Jo-Ann Mort, one of the keenest observers of Israeli society, has noted the similarities between the young, nightclubbing, pro-democracy demonstrators in Beirut and the young, nightclubbing, pro-peace demonstrators in Tel Aviv. The real Green Line in Israel and Palestine may one day separate the red and the blue. A specter is haunting modernity. Powered by tradition, by a misogyny and homophobia for which a future pope will one day apologize as surely as John Paul did for the church's anti-Semitism, the Orthodox International marches forth to do battle against liberalism, invoking ancient beliefs against the claims of a common humanity. |
I think he's dead on. The cleavage with the Islamic world might be the most obvious, but it's not where the real fault line lies. As we've seen these past few weeks, there are deep divisions here at home between those who embrace the future and those who fear it.
Yet ANOTHER example of the coming realignment. For those counting, that's 3 realignment posts today!
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