Here’s the game: everyone knows that lots of religious leaders are scoundrels. What about the ones that aren’t? Name your favorite! Also, why you think he or she is “admirable”.
Some rules: just to make it interesting, don’t name one from your own religion (or religious tradition, if you aren’t religious).
Don’t name one who is so ancient as to be mostly mythologized (like “The Buddha” or “Jesus”). Should be a more-or-less real individual.
If you can help it, please don’t start a debate about the worth of religion.
To start the game off: I know next to nothing about the Sikh religion, but as an item of trivia, I recently learned that the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur allegedly laid down his life for freedom of religion - not his own religion, but for Hindus!
Story goes that a Muslim emperor was forcing Hindus to convert or die. Some Hindus went to this Sikh Guru and asked for his advice. He told them to tell the emperor that, if he (the Guru) converted, then so would they. The emperor arrested the Guru, who refused to convert, and was killed.
As an atheist who has nothing but contempt for the sexual politics (and several other political stances) of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis strikes me as a really cool guy who walks the walk and is genuinely interested in improving the lives of the poor and downtrodden.
[ul]
[li]St. Teresa of Avila (Carmelite mystic and reformer, 1500’s Spain)[/li][li]St. John of the Cross (ditto)[/li][li]current Dalai Lama[/li][li]Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (popularizer of zen practice in the West)[/li][li]George Fox (Quaker)[/li][li]Brother Roger Schutz, who founded an ecumenical international movement based in[/li]France called Taize, which draws thousands of young people together to sing and pray. Taize music has passed into common usage in many churches.[/ul]
I’ve always found Umar II a fascinating fellow. Of all the dynastic Caliphs ( and at this time his office effectively combined both secular and theocratic authority ) he seems to be the one you could point to that actually walked the walk of piety in a non-aggrandizing way. Granted at this remove you have to assume a bit of hagiography - the Abbasids that succeeded the Umayyads had evey reason to put him on a pedestal as an example of the ‘good Umayyad’ in contrast to the rest of his ruling clan. That he comes across as a bit of a sainted martyr done in by the cupidity of the dynasty whose priviledges he was circumscribing might by partially the work of some post hoc apple-polishing. And he probably wasn’t a barrel of laughs in person - he certainly comes across as an arch-puritan in social terms and he had no trouble in crushing rebellion.
Still that he seems to have shunned the trappings of wealth, made an attempt to provide for economic fairness for converts and the poor and put an end to aggressive expansion all seem to have kernels of truth. Dunno if I’d out and out call him admirable in a completely objective contest, especially since we can’t be sure to sources as above. But he is one of the few guys that rose to govern a massive emperor who you can point to as seeming to try to do the right thing by even the sometimes questionable moral standards of their times.
Many years ago, I heard one of the most awesome and memorable pieces of advice for domestic stability: “The most important thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.” It was from Father Theodore Hesburgh, the president of Notre Dame University. For that fact alone, I admire him.
OK, there may be more to both of those stories, but I still think he has earned his name “Leo the Awesome”. Or “The Great”, or whatever.
If your neighbors are having a loud party and you need someone to knock on their door and ask them to turn the music down, or the Hells Angels have decided to hold a picnic on your front lawn and you need them to go away, Leo is your guy.
Beyond that, I think Martin Luther is pretty admirable, all things considered. It takes some serious balls to take on the Catholic Church and tell them to knock down their bullshit a few notches. Or at least I would imagine that it did back in the 1500s.
Robert Schuller, famous for building the Crystal Cathedral in Anaheim, California (not far from Disneyland) was a pretty good joe. He taught a kind of “good thoughts” Christianity, emphasizing peace, love, friendship, and the like.
You’ll laugh, but Harold Camping, for all that he was one of the wrongest-most theologians ever to quote the Bible, was a good man. He had the longest-running Bible Q&A radio program – “Open Forum” – and I liked to listen, because, to begin with, he knew his Bible. His interpretations were wacko…but his presentation was very decent.
As an example, he refused to let his show become political. People would call and ask if Obama were the Anti-Christ, and Camping just wouldn’t go there. He was unfailingly polite and proper.
Yes, he used up the entire earth’s quota of wrongness for the next seventy years, but he was, in fact, truly admirable.
Billy Graham comes close, but allowed himself to become too political, and got himself too tarred with the “hate” end of the Christian spectrum. His instincts were good, but he lacked the discipline to keep himself clean.
Dunno… He took a tough line against the peasants in the revolts in Germany, and he stood by, taking no action (at least) during the witch-burnings. (Some say he approved.)
If he had stuck to a purely theological brand of reformation, that might have been good, but he got much too involved in the political end of it, and usually in a cruel and unpleasant fashion.
Adi Shankaracharya. Born in 788 CE. Walked the length and breadth of India, defeated in debate just about every extant philosophical doctrine, including Buddhism, Jainism and numerous schools of Hindu thought. Unified Hinduism at a time it was split into many groups. Wrote numerous scholarly works and commentaries. Established four institutions of Hindu scholarship and monasticism in the four corners of India, that still live today. Consecrated temples of immense power. Died at age 32. His life was short but incredibly influential in the history of India.