Should media tell religious organizations what they should believe, teach or do?

Rabbi REUVEN BULKA, head of Congregation Machzikei Hadas in Ottawa, hosts Sunday Night with Rabbi Bulka on 580 CFRA.

Yours is not really a media question. Take out the word “media” and your question remains — What do you think of religious organizations being told what they should believe, teach, or do?

Generally, any group, be it a corporation, a political party, or a religion, that thinks they are above being told anything about what they should do is in grave danger of self destruction, due to this type of creeping arrogance.

Authentic human beings, as well as bona fide organizations, actually welcome suggestions for improvement. Being open to criticism and advice is always a good thing. But there are caveats. One is the preference that the advice being “offered” is likewise done without arrogance, and with a sincere desire to be helpful. This makes the advice much more easy to accept. Your injection of the word “media” into your question may be because you doubt the media’s sincere desire to be helpful. But even were your doubts justified, once the media views are out there, the more responsible approach would be to look seriously at the recommendations. The other caveat is that no one should think that just because they have offered the advice, it must be followed. Carefully considered, yes; possibly rejected, also yes.

But the idea of checks and balances, which is at the heart of your question, is actually a most necessary component of individual and institutional life. In Biblical times, every king had an assigned prophet, whose task it was to keep the king in check and bring any behaviour breaches to the attention of the king, with the clear intent of having the king rethink, and recalculate.

In the retrospect of what has occurred in the past number of years, had those in positions of responsibility taken some advice more seriously, much undesirable activity could have been avoided, or at least dealt with more effectively. Praise and applause can be a toxic drug; critique and advice a welcome antidote.

Rev. KEVIN FLYNN is an Anglican priest and director of the Anglican studies program at Saint Paul University.

My immediate reaction to the question is a bit dyspeptic.

I think of Oscar Wilde’s line: “By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

Why the media should be telling members of a great religion what they ought to believe seems either the height of presumption or the depth of ignorance.

I don’t imagine journalists would much value my inexpert opinion on the disciplines and codes of their field. If that is true for particular jobs, it is even more the case with a religion for religion involves a complete world view.

Those who are outside of a religion, who do not share the experience from within, will have difficulty understanding particular beliefs. They are not in a good position to be dictating what those beliefs really mean or how they should be taught.

Journalists do, however, have a genuine role in holding religious institutions to account for the way they live those beliefs. The fact that I personally am not always truthful, loving, or peaceful is not really news.

If, however, I as a leader in a church, or my church as a corporate body, fail significantly to live the truthful, loving, and peaceable way that my faith teaches, then that may indeed be news.

Journalists who hold other institutions to account for their behaviour, or who speak truth to power, legitimately do so with churches.

There is nothing disrespectful in asking tough questions. Anglicans worldwide use as their motto a biblical text: “The truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). We should not be afraid of truth then, no matter where it comes from.

Rev. GEOFF KERSLAKE is a priest of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Ottawa.

The Catholic Church vigorously defends freedom of speech and freedom of religion. These two basic human rights are interconnected. We cannot limit one without curtailing the freedom of the other.

In civil discourse, it is important to be able to clearly articulate one’s beliefs and to be able to defend them in the public forum. Equally important is the need to respect the beliefs of others and engage in dialogue in a non-confrontational or judgmental manner.

We experience tension when one group tells another what they should believe. The best dialogues occur when we share what we believe and receptively listen to what others believe. The most fruitful ecumenical dialogues (discussions between different Christian denominations) and inter-faith dialogues (discussions between Christians and people of other faiths) are the ones where both sides clearly state what they believe and why without trying to change the other participants’ minds. The media can play a positive or negative role in this dialogue, depending on the angle they take.

It is most helpful when the media provides information and less so when there is an agenda seeking to change the minds of believers. Giving people the freedom to examine their own beliefs in the light of other traditions advances mutual understanding and, hopefully, tolerance and respect. Telling people that their faith is wrong and needs to change tends to have the opposite effect, especially when the criticism comes from outside of the faith tradition.

Clearly, believers are invested in their own faith tradition, so a conversation that starts with “you need to get with the program and change” is not going to be fruitful, especially if the conversation is a one-sided lecture carried out in the media, divorced from genuine conversation between individuals.

Rev. RAY INNEN PARCHELO is a novice Tendai priest and founder of the Red Maple Sangha, the first lay Buddhist community in Eastern Ontario.

There is nothing new in those outside of religious institutions commenting, gently or emphatically, on religious matters.

Once where it was kings and nobles, now it is politicians. Artists and musicians, playwrights and poets, scientists and philosophers, express all manner of positive and negative comment. Such dialogue shapes how religious teaching is presented and how institutions should behave. It is a valued and necessary interaction.

This influence may simply encourage religious institutions how to teach, that is, urging clergy to speak in a language or using methods appropriate to lay audiences; however, this may not impact the content or doctrine of teaching. The influence can frequently highlight issues or questions, such as abortion or women’s equality, and this too is of great use to religious teachers, since it serves to ground spiritual teaching in secular issues and concerns. As a consequence, this has involved religious leaders in peace, environmental and political rights movements, to the benefit of lay and clerical interests. To consider the relationship between media and religions, we must be alert that media include a very broad set of forms and interests. At their best, media can be that lens of objectivity for our world.

Increasingly, media, especially electronic, are now more intimately connected to commercial interests. Far too often what passes as “news” or “information” is little more than a series of infomercials for products or lobbying by interested points of view, some of these religious ones themselves. Therefore, it would seem suspect for such media sources to be shaping either religious pedagogy or doctrine, lest we find ourselves with more images of Jesus drinking Coke or Buddhist monks carrying Apple computers. Even less desirable would be reinterpreting current human events in support of particular religious doctrines, turning mundane events into super-human, divine versus Satanic ones.

KEVIN SMITH is on the board of directors for the Centre for Inquiry, Canada’s premier venue for humanists, skeptics and freethinkers.

It is rare to find a religious sympathizer in the media today. That’s not to say you won’t discover one if you care to search. You might stumble upon Michael Coren, the irascible defender of Catholic values, or Charles McVety, an Evangelical Christian who has mastered shrill as a most offensive art form.

Coren and McVety represent a past generation, when religion had more influence in the public square. Today, they are symbols of a lost generation, spitting venom at perceived attacks on their beliefs. It’s ironic that the media they embrace as a sacred soapbox to pontificate from are largely responsible for the demise of their religious privilege and power.

Mainstream media are not an entity independent of society. They are a mirror of our world; a growing moral majority of liberal-minded, socially conscious, secular people. The media are the voice of our progressive, pluralist society.

In its most benign and altruistic form, religion is an important component of our cultural mosaic. While many religious followers have a proud history of fighting for human rights, there remains a faction that embodies a divisive, Dark Age mentality, seeking to impose their regressive morality on society. This is when the media do, and must continue to, criticize religious values.

Conservative devotees of religion have consistently been on the wrong side of history. They opposed the abolition of slavery, denied woman’s right to vote and fought against interracial marriage. Their tradition continues as they subject women to second-class status and wage a global battle against marriage equality.

Social justice marches forward despite attempts to suppress it. By refusing to adapt to these changes, Coren, McVety, and those they represent will continue to be condemned, their religion creeping further towards irrelevancy.