Just an idea, but maybe the tactful course for him to take would be to show that fat woman beating the snake up and draw the religious comics for his church newsletter or something, instead of publishing them in his nationally syndicated comic strip? Just an idea.
Funny? no.
Appropriate for the comic section? no.
Anti-semetic? no.
Is it telling Christians to destroy Judaism in the name of Jesus. uh, no.
Dude, this isn’t anywhere NEAR the same kind of thing.
I agree with Chaim.
Unless a person hates Jesus, or sees Jesus as evil, or believes that Jesus is despised by God, why would he take offense at this cartoon? It would be like a Christian being offended by a cartoon depicting Mohammed taking a baton from Jesus in a relay race.
You’re absolutely right. (Too many hours commuting to my new client has fried some synapses.) I saw “JDL” and confused it (for no good reason) with B’nai B’rith’s CJI. Yeeeesh.
It makes sense for the JDL to sound like the Catholic League since I always figured the JDL was the inspiration to found the CL.
Leaving aside the question of the tactfulness or the appropriateness of the expression of this strip, I have noted a few suggestions in this thread that Hart should not express his faith in the comics of public papers. Are you folks suggesting that FoG should be right and that no one (or, at least no Christian), should be allowed to express any religious beliefs outside narrowly focused fora of religious discussion?
I don’t much care for B.C., but I didn’t find this any more offensive than what Chaim said.
Of course, I am a Christian, so the message that Christianity came out of and fulfilled Judaism is a familiar one to me.
I don’t suppose the ADL is as offended by “A Rugrats Passover” rejecting Christianity, so I guess the simple presentation of religion in comics is OK with them.
Doonesbury is a comic strip that proselytizes as blatantly in favor of a liberal agenda as the B.C. comic does for Christianity, but I suppose the ADL doesn’t have a dog in that fight, so they only want pro-Christian comics silenced. Go figure.
Regards,
Shodan
Apples and oranges. The Rugrats celebrated the Jewish Holiday Passover, and thus celebrated Judaism (as did Jesus). They did NOT denigrate Easter. If the Rugrats, in their delightful innocence, had found a crucifix and affixed candles to it to make it into a menorah, that might have been offensive.
As another alalogy, would “reformed” Jews denigrate “Orthodox” Jews in this way?
Aside:
I showed the cartoon to my friend here at work for his input. He is also a cartoonist of sorts:
Will you people PLEASE stop confusing the ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) with the JDL (the Jewish Defense League)? It’s kinda like confusing the NAACP with the Black Panthers.
I can see where Hart is coming from. Evangelical Christians do see Judaism as as a precursor to Christianity. They teach that the Law was given to Moses as a sign of God’s inflexible standards against which no man can be justified on his own. It took the Atonement and resurrection of Jesus to wash away the sins of believers so that sinful humanity and a just Creator could be reconciled.
However, it ought to have occurred to Hart that not everyone thinks like he and FoG do, and the strip looks highly offensive to Jews and to anyone who believes that one ought not to denigrate another religion in celebration of one’s own.
Except that Doonesbury is actually funny, and therefore has a good claim to being on the funny pages. I have never seen a Doonesbury strip preaching any sort of message without also attempting to be funny, even when major characters are dying. B.C., on the other hand, abandons its humor altogether in favor of straight-ahead proselytizing, and it does so on a regular basis. If some newspapers think Doonesbury is so “political” that it has to be on the editorial pages, I would similarly argue that B.C. is so religious that it belongs in the religion section.
It seems like there are some mixups here with people confusing the JDL with the ADL. Here is a link to what the ADL has to say on the subject:
http://www.adl.org/frames/front_news.html
The significant portion of the ADL article reads:
“The menorah has no place or role in the Christian religion, yet the cartoonist uses this core symbol of Judaism and makes it disappear into a cross with the words, “It is finished.” It is as if Johnny Hart is telling his audience that Christianity now supersedes Judaism as the “true” faith. Whatever the cartoonist’s intention, the simple fact that this comic strip may be interpreted in this manner makes it insensitive, inappropriate and unnecessary. The cartoonist could have easily chosen a different theme to illustrate his religious beliefs.”
The comic section is not really the place for this. Luckily, our paper here does not carry BC on Sundays, so I won’t have to have it around on yom tov (the last days of Passover).
I wonder what Hart is planning for The Wizard of Id, the other strip he creates that also is heavily slanted towards
Christian witnessing.
Sigh. I’m an atheist, and I know this is wrong.
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According to Christian scripture, Jesus was executed on Passover by the Romans, after the Sanhedrin (Jewish priestly assembly) turned him over. Jewish authorities under Roman rule lacked the power to inflict capital punishment. So, the first sentence above is backwards.
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“Christ” and “Messiah” do not mean “King of the Jews”. Both mean “Annointed One”. “Christ” was not a posthumous title - it is the Greek translation.
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Judaism and Christianity are indeed entirely separate religions. If nothing else, many Jews consider Christianity a polytheistic religion (the Trinity), anathema to Judaism’s monotheistic beliefs.
Sua
As I’ve suggested before, the relationship of Christianity to Judaism is much like that between Mormonism and traditional Christianity. Christians believe that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s covenant with the Jews, and Mormon’s believe that Joseph Smith was carrying on where Jesus left off. On the other hand, Jews and Christians both think their religions are just fine as they are, and didn’t NEED fulfillment, thank you very much.
Just imagine that there’s a devout Mormon cartoonist. He draws a cartoon showing a football game, with Jesus as the quarterback. Jesus drops back, throws a deep pass to Joseph Smith, and say, “Here you go, Joe, YOU take it the rest of the way.”
Would I (a traditional Christian) endorse that cartoon?
No, certainly not, because I do not believe that Joseph Smith’s teachings are either necessary or the logical next step after Christianity (in the same way, a devout Jew does NOT believe that Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism).
But while I wouldn’t and couldn’t endorse such a cartoon, neither would I rage that it was anti-Christian bigotry! Clearly, the cartoonist would NOT be mocking Jesus- in his own way, he’d be paying homage to Jesus!
I grant you, it would be easier for all of us, if the world’s major monotheistic religions didn’t have so many commonalities. Jews would LOVE to pretend that Christianity is merely another Goyish pagan religion that has NOTHING in common with their faith, and many fundamentalist Christians would like to believe that Judaism vanished centuries ago, along with Moloch worship.
Problem is, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all their variants DO have much in common. Just enough to infuriate each other! It’s human nature that we hate the people who are sort-of-similar-but-not-quite-the-same-as-us much more than we hate people we have nothing in common with (Hinduism is SO alien to Jews that it bothers them far less than Christianity, which they see as a distorted, twisted version of their faith).
I’m starting to feel less sanguine about the tolerance of mainstream Christianity, based on this thread.
If you believe that Judaism is useless and extinct, and think that it’s perfectly alright for the overwhelming majority religion to jam the symbolism of this concept in the face of Jews (taking into account recent historical events), then yes, I believe you are anti-Semitic.
Hart could have drawn his strip showing Christianity evolving, without extinguishing Judaism. He chose not to, perhaps because he views Judaism as a continuing threat.
I don’t have much affection for any organized religion, but even if my view was that of the majority, I would not cruise by a Baptist church with a giant Darwin fish mounted atop my car. Such an action would be provocatory and offensive.
“Since you don’t allow us to dominate you, you obviously hate and are persecuting us.” This is the sort of line rabid Christians use when they face restrictions on proselytizing in public settings, i.e. in the schools.
“Be kind to people who are
Inferior to you.”
- from National Brotherhood Week by Tom Lehrer
Chaim still has put it best.
The ADL was right when they said that this cartoon depicts Christianity as superseding Judaism. That’s what Christianity is about! If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have Christianity at all.
So yes, it’s anti-semitic. But, if you’re honest enough about the subject, so is ALL of Christianity.
This may be the best analogy. The comic is offensive to Jews in the same way that the Darwin fish is offensive to (some) Christians. It takes a cherished symbol of faith and perverts its meaning.
(By the way, how many of those who were outraged by this cartoon see no harm in the similarly-offensive Darwin fish? Or perhaps even sport one on their bumpers?)
(And for the record, I am an atheist, myself.)
You could say that the Darwin fish, like the Gay community’s pink triangle or the Christian cross, takes a symbol of oppression (Roman cruelty, Nazi genocide, Fundamentalist Christian intolerance of atheists/science) and turns it into a symbol of defiance and personal triumph.
And to the extent that Jews oppressed early Christians, you could make the same argument about Hart’s comic. And it would be a ridiculous argument in that context as well.
Sorry, but I don’t buy your vision of the Jesus fish as a “symbol of oppression.” It is a symbol of religion, and nothing more.
Both the Hart comic and the Darwin fish are offensive because they take a religious symbol and, knowing all of the deeply-held spiritual beliefs that symbol embodies, use it to tweak the adherents of that religion.
As I said, I’m an atheist myself, but I see no reason to taunt Christians with a Darwin fish. Debate 'em, sure, but harrass them? No.
Perhaps I’m missing something here.
Judiasm, historically, “came first.” Christianity grew out of Judiasm literally. In what way could this cartoon be considered anti-semetic? Are we referring to Jews as a social classification or Jews as a religious one? I think even Christian Jews(and yes, I even know a few) would take the bullet in ol’ Nazi Germany.
Not only am I confused about that, but I think (from my view, anyway, which is decidedly un Jew/Christian) that the death of a prophet, whether he be the son of God or not, is a decidedly upsetting event. And, IIRC, don’t Jews feel that Jesus was in some ways a prophet? Oh, that was Islam…
Are we to feel that the cartoon is completely anti-islamic since there wasn’t even mention of it there? It is so low, we can simply ignore it!
Or, perhaps, I’m not missing anything and it is, simply, a cartoon by a guy who found an interesting if not secular approach to Easter.
Perhaps I should start up the Erisian Liberation Front, I know “you people” don’t think Discordianism is a true religion… 