Ernie: About Gandhi, I do not know enough about him to take a position
that I could defend from criticism. I tend to be favorable but some Hindus I have communicated with in the past have some critical things to say about him. About MLK, maybe you do not remember, but about a decade ago I wrote one of my massive essays about him in two parts. Basically very favorable, especially when I learned that he studied Zoroastrianism during the time he was in divinity school !!! Well, he did not go on to become a mobed, a Zoroastrian priest, and there is no question that he was a sincere Baptist, but, still... To keep this in proportion, I know of one (1) sermon MLK preached in which he quoted various Z ideas, vs. maybe 5,000 where the subject never came up. Regardless, I am gratified. :-) Possibly there were two sermons, I'm a little hazy about this. But I clearly remember a reference to Z ideas which he talked about at Riverside Church. The Wise Men / Magi who visited the infant Jesus were Zoroastrians or, anyway, that is the best guess of who they were. About various Christians whom I admire, and their presumably preaching values like “forgiveness” and “self-purification,” well, while it is entirely possible that they did so, I do not recall any of them stressing forgiveness and, as for "purification," I have no idea what you are talking about. The religion that was BIG on purification was the ancient religion of Mesopotamia and my theory is that this focus passed into Judaism. There is a whole scholarly book on the subject of Mesopotamian purification observances. I also have no idea why you place so much emphasis on forgiveness. For me, and thinking back to virtually all the believers I have known in my life, it is simply one theme out of many, many Christian themes. Billy ________________________________ From: Centroids <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2019 4:40 PM To: Billy Rojas Cc: [email protected] Subject: MLK Je Re: Belief Re: [RC] Critique of Religion and Philosophy & other etc Hi Billy, > Luther, Schweitzer, Kierkegaard, Barth, Rauschenbusch, Niebuhr, and so forth. > Actually the list can go far back in time, all the way to Clement -or all > the way back to Paul. That reminds me: where exactly do you stand on Gandhi and MLK Jr? I presume you admire them, but as best I recall they also preached values like “forgiveness” and “self-purification” that you have taken exception to. But I don’t think anyone would say they lacked the ability to take effective action... E -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
