Blog
TOLERANCE
Imagine you’re Hollywood. You’re not like everyone else. You’re passionate about your causes; about injustice and the relentless pace of climate change. You consider yourself tolerant. Liberal. Progressive, even. You oppose anti-Semitism in all its forms.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
The loss in viewership, attributed to A&E’s cancellation of its police show, Live PD, exposed a suppurating inoperable tumor in the network’s gut: a penchant for bigotry, violence and sensationalism. That penchant spawned an ultimately fatal addiction to shows featuring crime on the one hand, while whitewashing discrimination and hatred of minority religions on the other.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
A brief glance through the Renaissance reveals so many examples of art and architecture created in honor of and inspired by the artist’s faith. Grand churches made of massive stones have sprung up in every European city—a testament to the faith and love of the people who started building them, knowing they might never live to see them finished.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
When he awoke the following morning, #JewishPrivilege was again trending on Twitter, but not because of the anti-Semites who spawned it, but rather from the targets of their hatred, Jews themselves, who shared their stories of discrimination and injustice.
MEDIA & ETHICS
We’re living in strange times. As a virus sweeps through the world, people’s stress level has reached a boiling point, and many are fed up with the status quo. People of color and their allies are fed up with racism and police brutality.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
It sometimes takes an extraordinary amount of courage and patience—and maybe even what some would call grace—to allow someone else to live and see and operate in the world based on a reality that you as an individual just might not understand.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Watching a condemned person die by hanging was once a public spectacle. Today, that is not the case—there is no entrance fee, and witnesses are not allowed to throw vegetables or cheer. But most often the witnesses are hostile to the person. After all, this is the ultimate punishment, and the condemned will finally pay for their crimes with their lives. The families of victims will finally have their revenge, or simple closure of that which began with harm done to their loved one.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
That Scientology is fun is one of those things that’s so obvious and normal to those who actually know and practice it that it almost goes without saying. But my last blog on the subject seems to have struck a chord with readers, so I thought I would do a follow-up and use a little contrast.
TOLERANCE
Do people have prejudices? Unfortunately, absolutely. Do we have the right to broadcast our personal prejudices to others, and in a hateful way? I think not.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
As I dug deeper into his website I discovered a 28-minute video clip of a talk he gave several years ago at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Weldon Spring, MO. The talk was on Christian-Muslim relations. He was speaking passionately about increasing understanding between these two religious traditions. Turns out this is what he does. He says his calling is to increase the level of religious literacy in the world. Greater understanding paves the way to greater tolerance. He goes on to say that for him it’s more than work—it’s a divine inspiration.
