Over the weekend, Brit Hume began taking some heavy flak for comments he expressed on air during a Fox News program. Asked about Tiger Woods, the veteran newsman said the following:
“The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith,” Hume said. “He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faitoth. My message to Tiger is: Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”
It’s not hard to see where someone would disagree with this statement. At least one politically conservative Buddhist — there’s a Venn diagram one doesn’t expect to overlap — understandably took issue with Hume’s statement.
“Please mention to Brit that his knowledge of Buddhism leaves enough to be desired that he probably shouldn’t opine thereon,” Colorado computer scientist Charlie Martin wrote on his blog. “Having no concept of transcendent forgiveness, we replace it with the idea that having harmed someone, you should make amends and reconsider your behavior in the future. You tell me which is more productive: being Forgiven of Sin, or making amends and remedying your faults?”
Debate about the merits of Hume’s statement and his understanding of Buddhism is warranted and healthy. Unfortunately no one is talking about that.
Sure, Americans go to yoga classes in droves, gobble up pseudo-religious wisdom offered in best-sellers such as “Eat, Pray, Love,” and don’t object to their tax dollars funding PBS specials by new-age hucksters such as Deepak Chopra. Despite this, a good many Americans have decided public discussion of the tenets of Christianity in particular is verboten.
Left-wing watchdog Media Matters headlined its post on Hume, “Religious freedom, Fox News style.” Any reasonable definition of religious freedom involves a robust conversation about religion in the public square — not the suggestion that it’s inappropriate for someone to invoke his personal faith when asked questions about morality.
Isn’t it dishonest to pretend otherwise?
On Monday, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, whose unthinking liberalism is of secondary concern to his obnoxious bloviating, attacked Hume’s journalistic credibility by way of accusing him of engaging in “Holy War” and comparing him to Islamic extremists. That hyperbole impugns itself.
If you’ve ever publicly professed your faith, you hate freedom and have no credibility? Presumably this standard does not apply to Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Elie Wiesel or any of the unabashed religious figures venerated by liberals.
Olbermann’s guest, columnist Dan Savage, then suggested that Hume was in no position to give Woods advice because he is previously divorced. It is said that Hume’s turn to Christianity was related to his son’s suicide.
Before criticizing Hume, you should probably understand the basics of his faith.
Christians have spent 2,010 years proclaiming man is sinful and in need of redemption. Yet its critics have spent those two millennia arguing that every time a member of the faith justifies that observation, it somehow invalidates Christianity as a whole.
Christianity has never promised to keep men from sinning — it does, however, have a remedy for what to do after the fact.
Hume believes that plan is superior to the one offered by Buddhism. That statement seems worthy of discussion, and a little civil disagreement should not be a barrier to productive dialogue. But the idea that it’s somehow inappropriate to have an opinion on the religion in the first place or that it should always be left unexpressed seems to be a matter of far greater concern than Hume’s proselytizing.
Mark Hemingway is an editorial page staff writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
