Why Do We Miss Our Common Humanity and Make People Religious Scapegoats?
Have you ever thought about the fact that “religious” people all over the world – I mean everyday people, not elite thinkers or those who use religion to push their career and political agendas – care about the same things when they practice their religions? I’ve been observing that in my formal studies and teaching as a historian of religion for over fifty years. The religious thinkers, philosophers, theologians, and organizational leaders can give us all the great theories, scriptural quotations, logical cosmologies, and great doctrines all they want. And when these experts talk about various religions, that’s usually what they tell us theirs is. Likewise when people refer to other religions they like to speak in terms of those doctrines when the majority of the people who visit their shrines, temples, mosques, and churches couldn’t care less. How many people think that Zen (Ch’an) temples are places where all that contemplative Zen philosophy we read about in books is being taught a...