A Historian on Evangelical Zionism at a Spiritual Site: He Doesn´t See Any "Overwhelmingly Peaceful Religion." Ahem.

A post about evangelical Zionism at a spiritual site. La RoAuthor Martin Wainstein These evangelical Zionists are far more destructive to my nation than yours. They misrepresent my religion more than yours. You may think they are good allies, but such an alliance has implications far beyond Judaism and Israel. I… See more Reply Share 7hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro La Ro This is a Contemplative Mystics site. I´m fully multidisciplinary as the result of my spiritual path, and have no problem integrating this subject matter at this site. Your view, however, demonstrates a kind of prevailing scapegoa… See more Reply Share 5h La Ro Author Mark Rego Monteiro I regret the political turn away from the spiritual significance of the issue. Fundamentalists are attacking mystical schools of thought all over the world, often with violence. Understanding that violence and the worldviews behind it is significant to this page. Reply Share 4h Mark Rego Monteiro La Ro Sure, absolutely, but this site provides a special responsibility, as well as opportunity, to make sure to express spiritual awareness and make it an exercise of that. Is Israeli Zionist racism characteristic of all Israelis? No. Is such an attitude unprovoked? No. What inflames any and all attitudes, there and elsewhere, in Islamic countries? How does it related to Saudi apparent genocide in Yemen? US corporate business profiteering since Reagan´s deregulatory coup, and its basis in ideological rich businesspeople? A good Buddhist review of the Eightfold Path of Right Thinking and Meditation helps! My recalling my discovery of the Native healers Black Elk and Sganyadiyo (Handsome Lake), and Native prophetic activist and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Joann Tall, all helps! Reply Share 3h La Ro Author Mark Rego Monteiro I don't think Rabbi Singer is characterizing Israeli Zionists as racist as he very obviously is one. He is specifically talking about fake Jews pretending to be Jews to subvert Judaism. And I would never make broad characterizations of all Buddhists, of all Christians, of all Israelis, of all Muslims, etc.etc. I have not done so here. Nobody has suffered more from those using deceit in religion than those of us, of all faiths, with a worldview of non-dual transcendence Reply Share 3hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro La Ro More clearly stated, I´d say that the founders of a spiritual-religious tradition left a certain portrayal. In the case of Christianity and Buddhism, it was overwhelmingly peaceful, as in the case of Rumi´s Sufi Islam. Yet, Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in philosophical scholarship gives us the tools to evaluate integrity. Hypocrisy can also be evaluated in relation to a founder, and whether peace or aggression is indicated either way can be assessed. Was Mohammed peaceful? If not, then peaceful Sufis like Rumi may be "Islamic hypocrites." Reply Share 2h La Ro Author Mark Rego Monteiro Sadly, as a historian, I find no examples where "overwhelming peaceful" faiths have been put into operation. Neither, Burma, Israel, Afghanistan or the United States. I can no more make broad positive characterizations of entire peoples than I can make negative ones. I would never challenge the authenticity of another human being no matter how much I disagree with their words and actions. With one exception, those who intentionally to be a member of a faith when they practice another. That is the subject of my post, a post whose content that those who have so far commented, are aware of. Reply Share 2hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro Lawrence Rockwood Your post is a video. As an independent scholar activist spiritual practitioner with one degree in Bio Anthropology, and another in International Relations, and diverse experience including social services with substance abusers and financial services, I have justified my college interest in individually based biological anthropology to learn how individuals in groups learn symbolic behavior based on nothing more than Pavlov´s mechanism of conditioning. My spiritual practice and personal growth work naturally converged, and confirmed those same dynamics in the context of personal and self-development in community. That was also confirmed and deepened by my studies in International Relations, in which overly broad concepts with misnomers like "Realism" and "Liberalism" that mean "state militaristic" and "institutionally aware", with both underlaid by the third and most recent, Alex Wendt´s social constructivism. It combines insights from subdisciplines like symbolic interactionism in sociology and social psychology. How do individuals interact, and how do they develop symbolic expressions such that a social consensus can get misled by reifying concepts? Or, as I prefer to focus on in activist fashion, develop social movements to engage social reform? In fact, I also turned up social constructionism with that very kind of focus. As such, my approach to evaluating "faiths" requires understanding historical sociology, the multidisciplinary issues involving psychosocial and cultural components. It is thus that we can take your concept of "overwhelmingly peaceful" and apply it where it belongs. High integrity Buddhists deserve first recognition because of the clarity of Buddha´s Four Noble Truths with such points of focus as Right Livelihood and Right Meditation, along with the spread of his religion. Yet, my ability to appreciate the Buddha´s clarity actually derives from University-based philosophical scholarship, the heritage of which pivots around the monk Thomas Aquinas at the U of Paris. He, of course, stands as a key nexus in the psychosocial and historical development of Jesus´ living legacy of loving integrity. The monk Luther´ s later courage and clarity then led to the British Puritans from whom emerged George Fox who led the co-founding of the Quaker-Friends. With little formal education in the UK, his spiritual brilliance led him to stop bowing to aristocrats, value women, and protest unfair criminal sentences. He inspired the high born Marj Fell intensely and she was an even earlier writer of women´s rights than Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein´s Mary Shelley´s mother (nice phrasing!). That was the 1600s, in fact, as Newton, Locke, and co. were all gearing up. It was, however, Fox et al´s Quaker-Friend proteges who agitated against slavery that inspired University activity like an essay contest that sparked young dissenting Anglican T Clarkson to join up with the Quakers and others in a Society, as he led the grassroots social movement organizing that pioneered such campaigns. That is, Civil Society. The Quaker-Friends, no less, were parents to Thomas Paine, Susan B Anthony, and Walt Whitman, and Emerson admired them intensely. As many dissenters took the lead of the Quaker-Friends in Civil Society activism, that led to the Swedenborgian CC Bonney and dissenting Presbyterian J Barrows organizing the 1893 Parliament of World Religions. That followed University-based developments in comparative religious study, like Max Mueller in Darwin and Russell´s day. In addition, the notable phenomenon that I´ve named resurgent integrity in Christianity appeared in the form of W Gladden´s inspiring the Social Gospel movement in 1877 that then influenced FD Roosevelt. Normally ignored, FDR was not merely a good guy, he was, "not a communist or capitalist, but a Christian and a democrat." It was he who prompted the pro-social New Deal after the go-go years of Coolidge and Hoover popped with rich misdeeds and carelessness. It was FDR who pioneered the unprecedented peacetime draft in the face of conservative business isolationists. What would have happened if such early preparation had been delayed? And the cherry on top is FDR´s vision and legacy of the United Nations and human rights. His legacy proposed it to the world after the demonstration of the new destructive power of the advanced countries and knowledge. The rest of the world negotiated with the proposal as Eleanor shepherded the human rights declaration negotiations. I find your failure to identify the specific nature of Christian integrity in relation to human tendencies to indulge in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure unsurprising. In fact, that´s why I´ve found myself drawing on my particular background to develop these historical psychosocial terms and expressions of dynamics. You can be sure that your own freedom of expression, and the consciousness of responsibility that I am sharing with you, is indeed not random for a species inclined to brawls, civil wars, and political infighting. The beauty continues, since Christianity´s role in developing Civil Society social movements and UN human rights-sustainability-pro-social-co-op business with structured pluralism requires the complementary skills of other traditions as much as it provides the structure of organized learning for individuals in the full range of communities. History is not enough. Sociology takes it further. However, I´ve developed the expression Multidisciplinary Philosophy, because efforts like Fritjof Capra´s Systems Theory of Life, JB Cobb´s transdisciplinary studies, and Karen Armstrong´s religious history for interfaith practice are all clearly inadequate for the needs of academic philosophical scholarship.