[Buddha-l] Religious Persecution [was: NYTimes.com: Let Us Pray forWealth]

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Dan asked,

> Are we living in such a hypersensitive PC world that I need to explain 
> what
> I wrote?

Well, I guess. But really I think it might be equally about my 
denseness as the age's hypersensitivity.

I won't comment on your detailed explanation of the political aspects 
of anti-Christian (=Catholic) persecution/policy in Japan. Well, I'll 
say I'm confident that on the political level it was a wise policy for 
the victors to pursue and I'm glad for the end result (despite the Tom 
Cruise movie) of the preservation of Buddhism as the dominant religion 
in Japan. That preservation allowed the migration of Japanese Buddhism, 
Buddhisms really, to the United States, which has in turn immensely 
enriched our culture and my life. Yours too! And without that 
preservation we wouldn't have the continuing living presence of Shinto, 
either. And without that there'd be no "My Neighbor Totoro" and my 
daughter would be deprived of great joy.

Still, I'm must not comfortable with this sort of politics. Call me 
weak, call me cosseted, call me an only-in-safe-America idiot, but I 
can't get away from some kind of gut level disgust with anti-religious 
policies. Don't get me wrong, I *can* get behind anti-violence policies 
and I can get behind policies focused on depriving violent religious 
zealots of their power to act. I just can't support preventing them 
from other forms of their religious practice, which as I understand it, 
did happen to the Japanese Christians. (Note that I'm *not* speaking of 
foreign Christians in Japan, just native Japanese who had converted or 
been born into Christian families. Like the Muranos, I recall they hung 
around for centuries.)

Franz