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Dec. 24th, 2003 10:51 amOur company is giving everyone a half-day today. Woo! Maybe I'll get my last-minute shopping done.
Dec. 24th, 2003
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Dec. 24th, 2003 09:43 pmThere is a critical balance between power and prophecy.
Britain's Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, says we remove religion from the political landscape at our peril, because without what George W Bush once called "the vision thing", politics is reduced to short-term matters of popularity or profit.
By the same token, though, Dr Sacks is also adamant that the religious voice in politics should remain powerless.
Religion's ability to win people's hearts and minds should depend on force of argument rather than the argument of force.
Religion, he says, has at its worst been responsible for genocide, tyranny, despotism and terrorism, but always and only when it has become confused with power.
"I can't imagine anything worse than rule by religious leaders and I would have nothing to do with it. You know, in ancient Israel you had people with power called kings and you had people with no power at all called prophets. Now, can you remember the kings of Israel? I can't.
"But the words of the prophets of Israel will never be forgotten as long as people turn their eyes to heaven. And therefore it's that voice from the side, the voice that speaks not to party politics and immediate interest, but to the innermost soul of the human within us, the divine within us, which actually succeeds because it has no power at all. And that is the kind of society I'd like to live in."
Blending Politics and Religion
Britain's Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, says we remove religion from the political landscape at our peril, because without what George W Bush once called "the vision thing", politics is reduced to short-term matters of popularity or profit.
By the same token, though, Dr Sacks is also adamant that the religious voice in politics should remain powerless.
Religion's ability to win people's hearts and minds should depend on force of argument rather than the argument of force.
Religion, he says, has at its worst been responsible for genocide, tyranny, despotism and terrorism, but always and only when it has become confused with power.
"I can't imagine anything worse than rule by religious leaders and I would have nothing to do with it. You know, in ancient Israel you had people with power called kings and you had people with no power at all called prophets. Now, can you remember the kings of Israel? I can't.
"But the words of the prophets of Israel will never be forgotten as long as people turn their eyes to heaven. And therefore it's that voice from the side, the voice that speaks not to party politics and immediate interest, but to the innermost soul of the human within us, the divine within us, which actually succeeds because it has no power at all. And that is the kind of society I'd like to live in."
Blending Politics and Religion