Brit Hume blasts Tiger Woods' Buddhism

Ooh, I'm so excited! It's just what we needed to spice up the New Year -- a new front in the religious wars.

Brit Hume of Fox News has dissed the 350 to 500 million Buddhists in the world by saying Tiger Woods needs to ditch Buddhism and embrace Christianity in order to recover from his infidelity scandal and be a great example to the world.

Not surprisingly, this has irked Buddhists, who usually are pretty darn mild-mannered. I'm not sure what a Buddhist "jihad" or "crusade" would be called, but the Progressive Buddhism blog has started one against Brit Hume.

Could Hume get away with saying something like this about Jewish people or Black People or the Muslim Faith? You betcha he couldn't. Why should he be able to skate away scott free when speaking about Buddhists? Because we are only 3 or 4% of the population in the US? Hell NO! Sometimes we do have to speak up, sometimes right speech is getting in someone's face saying, "hey you can't say that about us...you know nothing at all about us!"

Responding to the call to arms, I wasted a few minutes of my life and sent off an email to Fox News expressing my indignation and asking for an apology from Hume -- as if anyone there cares about what agnostic/ atheist/ churchless/ Buddhist types think.

It turns out that Brit Hume isn't apologizing, but rather is repeating and amplifying his praise of Christianity and disdain for Buddhism. 

Tonight, in an interview with WTOP News radio in Washington, D.C., Hume did more than shrug off critics. He ramped up his pitch of the superiority of Christianity, a religion he says is "uniquely and especially about redemption and forgiveness," as the one right choice for Woods.

Hume went on to testify on Christ's sacrificial death and how his "deepest hope" is for Tiger to accept this gift and "be transformed."

Theologically and practically, Hume is skating on thin ice. Christianity clearly is a religion, while Buddhism arguably isn't.

Societies that are the most religious also are the most dysfunctional. So this is one reason Christianity is so big on forgiveness: people in devoutly Christian nations are much more prone to screwing up than people in secular countries.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

If we step back and consider Hume's remarks as an anthropologist would, someone observing the beliefs of a primitive tribe, they're simply freaking weird. 

Devout Christian that Brit Hume is, he thinks that Tiger Woods doesn't need to be forgiven by his wife, but rather by some imaginary being. Woods is being advised to bow down to the gods, who will reward him by absolving his calendar-filling conduct.

Most people would ridicule such notions if they came from ancient Babylonia, but somehow they're accepted as, well, gospel in twenty-first century America, even though they're as ridiculous now as they were back then.

Tiger Woods is an on-again, off-again quasi-Buddhist. He'll go through plenty of changes during the rest of his life, as everyone does. Woods might even decide to embrace Jesus and be "born again."

But he apparently believes he's already on that track, so why take a different route?

Missing from Woods's description of his daily routine is meditation - learnt from his Buddhist mother and one element of a religion that clearly shapes much of his attitude to life.

"I practice meditation -- that is something that I do, that my mum taught me over the years. We also have a thing we do every year, where we go to temple together," he said.

"In the Buddhist religion you have to work for it yourself, internally, in order to achieve anything in life and set up the next life. It is all about what you do and you get out of it what you put into it."

Comments

[tucson]

Yeah, Brit Hume's remarks surprised me. Generally he comes off to me as a pretty rational, level headed guy that doesn't venture much from conventional wisdom or take any risks. To some that opinion may be debatable but that is not the point of my comment.

Apparently Hume's faith in Christianity is so strong that to him suggesting that Tiger submit to Christ for redemption does not fall into a matter of personal faith but into a completely acceptable, rational and level headed solution to his personal problems.

To Hume, this solution is so obvious, so blindly accepted that he can't see that his position is tenuous, unacceptable, impossible or even outrageous to others not of the same faith which may include Tiger.

Hume apparently is not even aware that some forms of Buddhism do have redemptive practices which comes as no surprise given his comments.

Hume's remarks definitely fall out of the realm of news commentary and into the realm of preaching and therefore is out of place even in a news commentary format.

I imagine that this will blow over rather quickly since the majority of Americans are still Christians and aren't going to get too bent out of shape about this. After all, Christ is their lord too. Some polls even show the numbers of Christians are growing somewhat lately even though in total numbers more people than ever either do not consider themselves religious, are atheist/agnostic or have alternative beliefs.

Anyway, Fox executives will probably tell Hume to watch it and that will be the end of the story unless this is just the beginning of a full blown evangelical mission on Hume's part. I had heard he was planning on retiring, but that was a while ago.

Maybe he will be the next evangelist to get caught in a motel with a female (or male)(or both) "escort".

Maybe I am getting a bit too cynical.

Time to say good night.

[Catherine]

Well, Finn, it is a little like jumping off a cliff, but the ocean below is cool and as natural as the jump.

And politics in a democracy is just a group of people elected by fellow citizens to distribute the taxes to benefit the people. When politcs and religion mix, well there's a great place for churchless people to splash a little water.

[Rain]

Brit Hume came across to me as a pompous idiot before I stopped watching Fox News which was before I stopped watching all televised news programs. What he said about Woods was ridiculous in the face of Mark Sanford (divorce pending) and John Ensign (criminal charges possible). These guys were out there in that Christian bragging world (which has nothing to do with the person they claim to follow who talked of praying in closets and doing your good deeds in secret). To feel good because you can do bad and just ask forgiveness to get absolved insures more doing bad-- or so it appears from the evidence to date.

To add to it, Hume is self-serving in this as he knew he'd be noticed, get the coverage he then got and somebody would be talking about him-- good for ratings with those he most desires to please. Not to mention he gets points in heaven for sticking up for his concept of god who needs that kind of blow-fest no matter what Christ said about it, I guess. *witnessing = more gold stars*

[Roger]

I wonder what religion was Tiger's dad. Did his dad have an influence on Tiger's infidelity? I think Bret Hume needed some shock media attention. Boy, did he get some. He doesn't care what any of us think.
FOX ratings will be high this week, and more money coming their way. This could simply be meda whoring at work here. happens all the time.

[Kevin]

Hmmm... the mythological kettle just called the mythological pot [insert color here].

When you start taking seriously the comparative efficacy of various fantasies, I think you're mything the point. What's next? Getting in a snit over Big Bird's opinion on fairies vs. trolls?

[Jonathan Elliot]

I hadn't heard any of the stuff about Tiger and Buddhism, but coincidentally I've just written about the dark side of Buddhism http://spritzophrenia.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/the-dark-side-of-the-buddha/