Are there any decent religious leaders?

Great Debates
61

She could afford to do a lot more than that and chose not to and that is where her malignant influence lies. She specifically thought that suffering was a good thing. She was very interested in spreading the catholic faith and accumulating money in order to bolster her reputation, curing the sick was a long way down her list.

I’d rate countless other unsung and unheralded aid and charity workers far higher on the decency scale than her simply by the fact that they actually seek to alleviate suffering.

To be honest, I think it is far less likely for a religious leader to be a decent person than it is for a regular man in the street and we know this and so set a very low bar for them.

The current pope is still the head of a misogynist, acquisitive, discriminatory, criminally complicit organisation that has it within its power to advise millions on simple ways to improve and save their lives and yet does nothing. Because he is slightly less hard core than previous incumbents he gets a pat on the back but without that relative comparison his views do not stand up well against mine.

Yep, I think I’m a more moral and ethical person than the current pope and I suspect many posters in this thread could say the same.

62

[QUOTE=Evan Drake]
Well, I just read on a blog chatting about HIMYM a startling:

  1. Transphobic – I’m sorry, but if you’re transphobic you’re just a freaking garbage human

So, I’m gonna go with the idea the moderns demand total submission to whatever damnfool thing they’re thinking, so yeah.
[/quote]

:confused: How are you figuring that an anti-bigotry stance equates to “whatever damnfool thing they’re thinking”?

I mean, ISTM that not hating or shunning people because of their identity with regard to gender and/or sexuality is one of the most important fundamental human rights developments of the past few decades, along the lines a few decades prior to that of not hating or shunning people because of their race/ethnicity.

So yeah, though I know not everyone’s on board with that principle yet, I can see how somebody would consider it a fundamental component of decency, in a much less whimsical way than “everybody has to use the same translation of the Bible as I do” or “everybody has to refrain from eating the same things that I do”.

(By the way, just so we’re on the same page, being “transphobic” doesn’t mean simply not being sexually attracted to transgender individuals. Sexual attraction, as always, is still a matter of individual and not necessarily explicable whim.)

63

OK, so if Mother Theresa’s money wasn’t going to helping the poor, where was it going? Hookers and blow? Designer clothes and fancy jewelry?

64

And for many years Franklin Graham drew separate but concurrent full-time salaries from both Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, at one point adding up to $1.2 million. He stopped for a while after being called on it, but subsequently went back to double-dipping. Samaritan’s Purse also has been criticized for requiring charity recipients to sit through a half-hour “prayer meeting” before receiving their assistance, which suggests that promoting their agenda is a higher priority than the welfare of those they are helping, particularly when done in places with primarily Muslim populations.

Now personally I’ve known several good religious leaders, people who work hard to help those not only within their own congregations but in the wider communities around, but you wouldn’t have heard of them. These people tend not to be on television, don’t hold jobs in charities which pay them six-figure salaries, aren’t constantly promoting their books or DVDs, and aren’t telling people who can’t afford it that all they have to do is donate just a little more to them and suddenly wealth will come their way. Instead, they tend to live modest-to-poor lifestyles and lead by example. And I’m grateful that such people exist, tbh.

65

Not hating others for their gender identity is really a subset of not hating others, period, or perhaps abstaining from causeless hatred. (It’s only natural to hate someone who hurts you badly.) “Love one another” is hardly some newfangled liberal notion, but not enough of us do it well enough that we can afford to judge others for not doing it perfectly.

66

According to those who worked for the charity a lot of it simply sat in bank accounts, tens of millions apparently.

As has been said by others she saw the suffering of the poor as a positive.
she said herself…

Stick those words in the mouth of pretty much any other human being and see how they would be received.

67

I think the complaint against Saint Teresa is that she had a huge amount of funds, not really as “limited” as you’re implying, and used that money to spend on bibles and gospel outreach programs instead of helping the poor. Guided by her self-admitted philosophy that poverty is a good thing, and being poor should be encouraged as beneficial to the soul. The hospitals and kitchens were basically a poorly funded PR front for her missionary work, which was the real beneficiary of the donations she received.

I’m open to being corrected on that. But it’s what I’ve heard, so I included her in my list.

As to others in my list, I rattled them off the top of my head. Some are frauds, like Joseph Smith, Peter Popoff, Jim Bakker and L. Ron Hubbard. Some advocate for and even carry out murder, like Cotton Mather (Salem Witch Trials) and Mohammed Omar (Founder of the Taliban). Some are just hate preaching hypocrites like Haggard.

But I’ve never really been religious, so I admit I come from a place of ignorance here. That’s why I started the thread, and why I used a wishy-washy term like “decent” instead of something more concrete like “not a convicted fraud”. I basically only hear about the assholes. I know most religious people are good, decent folks, and I suppose that must mean their leaders are too, which is why I exempted your local reverend or pastor.

But let’s look at Fred Phelps. By all rights, looking from the outside in, he was a decent man. He was a lawyer who worked for Civil Rights, donating his time and skills so that the world could move forward past segregation and Jim Crow. He never killed anyone or stole or committed fraud. But somewhere along the line the man decided his life would be best spent terrorizing the families of dead soldiers and gay people. And that he should teach his whole family to also become hate preaching lawyers who picket gay and military funerals.

Most people would wholeheartedly agree that he wasn’t “decent” at all. But does the batshit craziness of his later years outweigh the work he did for Civil Rights? He never hurt a fly, as far as I can tell, he just held up (really awful) signs that offended people from the political right and left.

And where does that leave the Pope, who also seems to be pissing off people from both sides with his words, but has yet to do much of action one way or the other? Or am I mistaken there? What has he actually done besides improve the Church’s PR after the last Pope that everyone hated stepped down?

The Dalai Lama seems like a cool guy, but doesn’t he basically just advocate for a return to absolute theocracy in his homeland?

Anyway, I didn’t want anyone to think I had already “made up my mind”. This isn’t really a “bash religion” thread. Fight my ignorance, please.

68

You have to define ‘decent’ human being before you can really answer the question, and while my standards for that aren’t really high, but you have to believe in really basic stuff like equal rights for people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, and the like. Major religious leaders simply don’t believe in that, so I don’t see how they’d qualify as decent to me. They may do some good works, but someone who thinks that blacks or women or gays don’t deserve civil rights is still not a decent person. I’m not sure why people expect me to think the latest Pope is a good guy - he hasn’t done anything significant (like releasing all of the documents) about the massive cover-up of child abuse by his Church, he thinks one of my closest friends should be in jail or should have been used as a human incubator for her rapist’s baby, he opposes basic health measures like contraception, doesn’t think that any of my gay/bi friends deserve human rights like marriage, and many other things that are simply awful. This isn’t some abstract argument about whether communion should be done with grape juice or real wine, this is very basic ‘treat the people close to me as human beings’ stuff.

If we’re just limiting it to financial misconduct, anyone who gets a net worth over a million dollars while running a tax-free church counts as stealing from me - rich people running for-profit churches should pay taxes just like the rest of us, or at the very least should be preaching to their congregation to vote in chuch taxes. So again I can’t see anyone who’s famous above a local level not counting as a tax fraud by my book.

69

Well, perhaps she has never heard the one about the camel and the eye of a needle.

70

Even if I believed in either Judaism or Christianity — and I refuse to allow their tenets influence over my *Weltanschauung — *I find this another instance of the Christ’s intolerance: I may not care for the very rich, even if I don’t dislike them nor envy them, but it is idle to suppose their lives are automatically easy or less vital than the more wretched life of the slum-dwellers, and supposing they ought, or can, give up their wealth for their soul’s sake is sanctimony.
Particularly as 99% of the rest of us are seeking that repose that comes from increased riches. Whether by lottery-playing or working harder.

71

This is a ridiculous definition of decent. Say you have 2 guys Bob and Tom, Bob has a coke problem, has never donated a dime to charity, and has five kids he never sees with various women, and is pro-abortion. Tom is a good dad, a good father, and has worked full time raising and sending millions to orphans around the world and is anti-abortion. Yet you think Bob is a decent person and Tom is not.

If you think gay marriage is a decency litmus test there were almost no decent people in recorded history until 25 years ago.

72

Nonsense!
The Minnesota Democratic Party added Marriage Equality as a plank in their party platform at their Convention in June, 1972 – 45 years ago! And that vote came after several years of advocating for it by progressive party members.

73

Well, at the risk of repeating myself, why aren’t you looking at Desmond Tutu? The only objection posted to this thread about Desmond Tutu so far was a wishy-washy one- on behalf of other people- based on association with the ANC during the Apartheid era.

74

“pro-abortion” ?..what exactly is a “pro-abortion” stance? Do you mean pro-choice?

In the absurdist example above I see no evidence that Bob is a decent person and being pro-abortion doesn’t automatically confer decency by any measure and no-one has said that.
Tom on the other hand may well be a decent person because being anti-abortion does not mean that you automatically want to enforce it on other people. Without knowing more about him I cannot possibly say who’s rules I’d prefer to live under.
Being neglected by Bob or dictated to by Tom?

75

He seems a nice enough person with Liberal views but it is instructive to note his views seem liberal for a clergymen but wholly unremarkable were they expressed by Brenda who works in the next cubicle along.

76

Are you at all open to the possibility that your moral standards of decency are, you know, wrong?

What reason do you have to think your moral views on these issues are correct, and that the Pope’s are wrong? And why do you think the Pope has any obligation to abide by your standard of decency, rather than the other way around?

77

“Let me define ‘decent’ as conforming to my views, and then point out how people that don’t conform to my views are not decent!”

78

Someone who knows more about this is welcome to correct me, but I don’t think there’s much about Muhammad in the Quran. The sources for his life are in the hadiths, and in a series of biographies of him written from decades to a few centuries later.

List of biographies of Muhammad - Wikipedia

79

Shouldn’t everyone be? I know I am. Thing is, I base my reasoning on material harm to people in the real world.

You make the case and show the link to increased harm then I’ll spin on a dime to change my position. I suspect the church and its leaders are less flexible but I stand to be corrected on that.

He has no obligation but people should be judged by what they say and what they do…actions. As I’ve said before, the Pope has it in his power to save or drastically improve the lives of millions, simply by making a statement. He doesn’t, he won’t. I think that is unambiguously an immoral act when measured against the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

80

I am more than a little disappointed in the dope right now. :mad: It seems like everything these days is chasing after shiny easily accessable objects - a thread this far along and no mention of Krishnamurti.

From early age he was groomed to be a powerful religious figure in India, but eschewed the trappings of institutional religious power to seek the truth as he saw it, and to humbly pursue this path throughout his entire life. The man embodied the liberal ideals to the highest degree, and well before his time. He was also a religious leader that eschewed rigid doctrine and embraced science. His influence and legacy will last far beyond his death.

Personally he reminds me almost of a Dostoyevsky ideal. If you have never heard of him, you certainly have heard of at least a few of these people he has inflruenced :

Krishnamurti’s teachings have had an influence on the thoughts of several notable public figures, including Kahlil Gibran, Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller, Bruce Lee, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, David Bohm, Joseph Campbell, Beatrice Wood, Deepak Chopra, Indira Gandhi, Barry Long, and Eckhart Tolle.

                                                                                - Wikipedia