07AR12-30

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Apologia Report 12:30

August 17, 2007

Subject: Is Hinduism polytheistic - or not?

In this issue:

CHRISTIANITY, GENERAL - how a Los Angeles Times religion editor lost his faith

CONFUCIANISM - ancient philosophy competes successfully in China's religious marketplace

HINDUISM - Hindu prof denies that Hinduism is polytheistic

MORMONISM - Newsweek pushes Krakauer's book with unexpected emphasis

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CHRISTIANITY, GENERAL

"Religion beat became a test of faith" by William Lobdell -- this story by the religion editor for the Los Angeles Times (Jul 21 '07 issue) is a heart-breaker. He tells of meeting Christ, then dreaming of doing an honorable job of representing faith in the news, switching from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism, and then finding his faith destroyed by the news he covered.

The following is but a fraction of how he describes the greatest stumbling blocks he encountered. There is more to the story than just the two examples we mention here - and the first is no surprise.

First, "In early 2002, I was assigned to work on the Catholic sex scandal story as it erupted across the nation. I also continued to attend Sunday Mass and conversion classes on Sunday mornings and Tuesday nights. ...

"I began going over the documents. And interviewing the victims, scores of them. I discovered that the term 'sexual abuse' is a euphemism. Most of these children were raped and sodomized by someone they and their family believed was Christ's representative on Earth."

Next, "Some of the nation's most powerful pastors - including Billy Graham, Robert H. Schuller and Greg Laurie - appear on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, benefiting from TBN's worldwide reach while looking past the network's reliance on the 'prosperity gospel' to fuel its growth. ...

"I spent several years investigating TBN and pored through stacks of documents - some made available by appalled employees - showing the Crouches eating $180-per-person meals; flying in a $21-million corporate jet; having access to 30 TBN-owned homes across the country, among them a pair of Newport Beach mansions and a ranch in Texas. All paid for with tax-free donor money.

"One of the stars of TBN and a major fundraiser is the self-proclaimed faith healer Benny Hinn. I attended one of his two-day 'Miracle Crusades' at what was then the Pond of Anaheim. The arena was packed with sick people looking for a cure. ...

"TBN's creed is that if viewers send money to the network, God will repay them with great riches and good health. Even people deeply in debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards."

One in attendance "was thrilled to tell me that he had stopped getting dialysis because Hinn had said people are cured only when they 'step out in faith.' The decision enraged his doctors, but made perfect sense to Gibson. Despite risking his life as a show of faith, he wasn't cured in Anaheim. He returned to Canada and went back on dialysis. The crowd was filled with desperate believers like Gibson.

"I tried unsuccessfully to get several prominent mainstream pastors who appeared on TBN to comment on the prosperity gospel, Hinn's 'faith healing' or the Crouches' lifestyle.

"Like the Catholic bishops, I assumed, they didn't want to risk what they had. ...

"For some time, I had tried to push away doubts and reconcile an all-powerful and infinitely loving God with what I saw, but I was losing ground. I wondered if my born-again experience at the mountain retreat was more about fatigue, spiritual longing and emotional vulnerability than being touched by Jesus." <http://tinyurl.com/2hn2ce>

Closer to home, it probably wasn't encouraging for Lobdell to file at least two damaging reports on the Christian Research Institute - one of the evangelical organizations known to keep watch on religious wrongdoing - in 2003 (http://tinyurl.com/3an837) and again in 2005 (http://tinyurl.com/2j5z64).

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CONFUCIANISM

by Matthew Philips -- "After half a century of state-enforced atheism, loosened policies in China have prompted millions to flock to traditional Eastern and Western faiths. A recent poll by a Shanghai university found that 31 percent of Chinese 16 or older are religious, putting the number of believers at 400 million, four times previous estimates.

"Still, a recent U.S. report on religious freedom slammed the Chinese government for restricting practice to state-sanctioned groups and registered places of worship. Only five religions are officially recognized: Buddhism, Taoism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam. The government itself is promoting a revival of Confucius - a philosopher all but purged from Chinese society by Mao. Beijing plans to establish 500 Confucius institutes by 2010. Membership in the Communist Party, though, still forbids any religious practice." Newsweek, Jul 2 '07, n.p. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19389348/site/newsweek>

In its April 6, 2007 "News" column (page 9), The Week briefly noted that "A new interpretation of Confucius has become China's best-selling book of all time, beating out the Harry Potter books. The Analects of Confucius was written around 500 B.C. in a dialect that is now archaic. Author Yu Can's new version retells each parable in modern Chinese, using modern examples. Her book has sold 3.5 million copies since it first came out, in November. Many Chinese have had little exposure to their most famous philosopher. Mao Tse-tung purged Confucianism from Chinese textbooks during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s."

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HINDUISM

Have you ever read a Hindu account denying that Hindus worship a multitude of gods? In "Is Hinduism Polytheistic?" professor Arvind Sharma of McGill University in Montreal writes: "One distinct and very visible feature of Hinduism is the presence of numerous deities and divinities within it. These are both male and female and can be angelic as well as theriomorphic (of the form of an animal). Even natural objects come to enjoy a divine status. It is thus easy to see how the casual observer may form such an impression about Hinduism.

"However, the fact that Hindus worship God in many forms does not mean that the Hindu thinks that there are many Gods, no more than one would think, on seeing many photographs of an individual, that there are as many individuals as the number of his or her photographs. Just as it is the photographs that are many, not the person; it is the forms of God that are multiple, not God itself.

"The conclusion that there is only one God underlying the many forms was reached quite early in Hinduism. The following passage from the Brhadaranyaki Upanishad (III.9.1), assigned by modern scholars to circa 800 BCE, makes the point clearly:

"'Then Vidagha Sakalay asked him, 'How many gods are there

Yajnavalkya?' He answered, in accord with the following

nivid (invocation of the gods). 'As many are mentioned in

the nivid of the hymn of praise to the visve-devas, namely

three hundred and three, and three thousand and three.'

'Yes,' he said, 'but how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?'

"Six.' 'Yes,' said he, 'but how many gods are there

Yajnavalkya? 'Three.' 'Yes,' said he, but how many gods are

there Yajnavalkya?' 'Two.' 'Yes,' he said, 'but how many

gods are there, Yanjavalkya?' 'One and a half.' 'Yes, said

he, but how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?' 'One.'"

"Another later but well-known Upanishad, the Svetasvatara Upanishad states (VI.13.11): 'The one God hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the inner self of all being, the ordainer of all deeds, who dwells in all beings, the witness, the knower, the only one...'

"Thus Hindu polymorphisms should not be confused with polytheism." HPI adds this note at the beginning of this item: "Dr. Sharma submitted this article in response to the outburst of Christian fundamentalists in the US Senate protesting the Hindu prayer as polytheistic." Hindu Press International, Jul 16 '07

(If the Hindu prayer in the US Senate interests you, HPI ran a number of related items on the subject that may be of interest.)

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MORMONISM

Some might say that thanks to his 2003 book, Under the Banner of Heaven [1], Jon Krakauer has become to Mormonism what Dan Brown has become to Roman Catholicism. Imagine the horror that Newsweek brought to mind for Mormons in the U.S. when it posted an excerpt from Krakauer's book on its web site beginning August 5th.

It begins: "In his last book, Jon Krakauer explored radical Mormon sects, focusing on two fundamentalist brothers who butchered their sister-in-law and 15-month-old niece in the name of a divine revelation." One would expect this excerpt to expand on that introduction. Not so. Instead, you learn that...

"Mormons and those who call themselves Mormon Fundamentalists (or FLDS) believe in the same holy texts and the same sacred history. Both believe that Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in 1830, played a vital role in God's plan for mankind; both LDS and FLDS consider him to be a prophet comparable in stature to Moses and Isaiah. Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists are each convinced that God regards them, and them alone, as his favored children.... Followers of the FLDS faith engage in polygamy, they explain, as a matter of religious duty.

"There are more than thirty thousand FLDS polygamists living in Canada, Mexico, and throughout the American West. Some experts estimate there may be as many as one hundred thousand. ...

"The religious literature handed out by the earnest young missionaries in Temple Square makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Smith - still the religion's focal personage - married at least thirty-three women, and probably as many as forty-eight. Nor does it mention that the youngest of these wives was just fourteen years old when Joseph explained to her that God had commanded that she marry him or face eternal damnation.

"Polygamy was, in fact, one of the most sacred credos of Joseph's church....

"[E]ven as LDS leaders publicly claimed, in 1890, to have relinquished the practice, they quietly dispatched bands of Mormons to establish polygamous colonies in Mexico and Canada, and some of the highest-ranking LDS authorities secretly continued to take multiple wives and perform plural marriages well into the twentieth century." An interesting passage for Newsweek to excerpt, wouldn't you say? <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122874/site/newsweek>

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Sources, Monographs:

1 - Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday, 2003, hardcover, 400 pages, ISBN 0-3855-0951-0)

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385509510/apologiareport>

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