TFR Is At It Again: Slandering Buddhism

As a scholar of Comparative religion, I can honestly say that the Family Research Council's take on Christianity, not to mention Buddhism, is way off the mark.

By Hoetsu

We are pleased to welcome Barbara Hoetsu O'Brien as a guest front pager, and to provide a platform for her to respond to the Religious Right agency, the Family Research Council. She is the guide for the Buddhism section at About.com. Her writing can also be found at Mahablog. -- FC When Brit Hume told Fox News Sunday viewers that Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity to know forgiveness, I published a response to Hume's snub of Buddhism on my Buddhist website -- "Let's Forgive Brit Hume." But then the Family Research Council quoted me, out of context, to argue that even Buddhists agree Brit Hume was right. Um, no.

Arguing for the superior forgiveness/redemptive powers of Christianity over Buddhism,  Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council wrote,

Has Brit Hume slandered Buddhists by mischaracterizing their theology? Not really. Barbara O'Brien, author of "Barbara's Buddhism Blog," admits, "Mr. Hume is right, in a sense, that Buddhism doesn't offer redemption and forgiveness in the same way Christianity does. Buddhism has no concept of sin; therefore, redemption and forgiveness in the Christian sense are meaningless in Buddhism."

From here, Mr. Sprigg proceeds to slander Buddhism by mischaracterizing our "theology."

Sprigg describes Buddhism as a religion without faith or grace in which people are perpetually working off karmic debts:

The problem is, if Tiger Woods now gets out of this life what he's put into his moral life, he's in a heap of trouble. Buddhism is not tolerant of sexual libertinism--even Barbara the Buddhist Blogger agrees that it's "fairly plain that Mr. Woods's conduct has been falling short of the Third Precept." If Buddhism is true, not only is there no redemption for him in this life, but because of reincarnation, Woods will be paying a price in the next life as well. According to Eerdmann's Handbook to the World's Religions, in Buddhism, "[G]ood works automatically bring about a good rebirth, bad works a bad one."

But Eerdmann, whoever he is, doesn't know Buddhism from spinach. The Buddha explicitly rejected the belief that the karma of one life determines one's fate in another life. For that matter, there is no "reincarnation" in Buddhism as the word is commonly understood, but that's another lecture.

A problem with side-by-side comparisons of the relative merits of Christianity versus Buddhism is that the two religions are understood and practiced within very different conceptual frameworks. For example, Sprigg and other conservative Christians persist in extolling redemption as an essential feature of their religion that Buddhism lacks. But to Buddhists, this is irrelevant. It might be said of Buddhism that it is a means to perceive, deeply and intimately, why we don't need to be redeemed.

So, Mr. Sprigg, I wish you well with the redemption thing, but some of us are doing fine without it.

Of course, it's perilous to make judgments about things one doesn't understand. I have the advantage of having been a devout Christian earlier in my life, and I retain a reasonably good understanding of Christian theology. And I still genuinely respect Christianity, in spite of the best efforts of the Brit Humes and Peter Spriggs of the world to make it look bad.

But Christians -- westerners generally, in fact -- carry around in their heads a conceptual framework of what religion is supposed to be that doesn't apply to Buddhism. (This is one reason so many people argue that Buddhism is not a religion; I say it is, and the framework is flawed.)  So to say that Christianity is superior to Buddhism because it offers redemption and Buddhism doesn't is a bit like saying birds are superior to horses because they have feathers and horses don't. It's nonsensical.

As for grace and faith -- faith is enormously important in Buddhism, although in Buddhism faith is defined more as "trust" or "confidence" than as "belief." I agree that the standard definition of grace -- as the favor of God bestowed freely on humans -- does not apply to Buddhism. Yet in Buddhism I have experienced a different sort of grace, a grace at least as powerful, even though we Buddhists might differ with Christians about how grace comes to us.
Peter Sprigg and many other conservative Christians have taken the position that criticism of Brit Hume for dissing Buddhism is actually a viscous and hateful attack on Christianity.
Although I marvel at the mental gymnastics required to flop around to that perspective, I still feel compelled to attempt a correction.

I say with all kindness to Christians that you don't help yourselves by claiming an exclusive right to promote your religion over others. In my experience, such proselytizing alienates at least as many people as it persuades. This is especially true if you have to tell lies about other religions to argue that yours is better.

And, if I may say so, bearing false witness against another religion seems un-Christian.

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