Global Culture

Update: after reading the transcript of the session, I thought it was important to reflect the words of Bishop Tutu as accurately as possible.

Dave Johnson has been blogging at Live From The Clinton Global Initiative. This one quote from Desmond Tutu at the Managing Diversity plenary caught my attention when, Bishop Tutu, asked about the Pope’s speech said:

There is no faith that I know that propagates death, murder, as a principle of that particular religion. There is no faith that I know which does not, in fact, seek to propagate compassion, justice, love, caring. And we need to hold on to that and underscore the fact that religion, in and of itself, is actually morally neutral. It is neither good nor bad. As I’ve sometimes tried to say, it is like a knife. When you use a knife for cutting bread, it’s good. If you use that knife to stick into somebody’s guts, it’s bad.
And I am deeply concerned that even here, you know, we are sliding in the thing of saying Muslim terrorism. Muslim - I haven’t heard people describe the guy who bombed Oklahoma. Those, that’s an example of Christian terrorism. I haven’t heard them speak about the guys who are fighting in Northern Ireland. Christian against Christian. But those are Christian terrorists. They will say IRA. I haven’t heard that the Christians were responsible for the Holocaust, the Christians were responsible for apartheid. Somehow, we are able to define Christianity. Most Christians would be appalled if you said that that is a characteristic of Christianity. We would say it is a perversion.

It is great when someone explains the sentiments of a foreign culture in terms that are understandable to yours.