[Buddha-l] religious pluralism in Asia

[Dan Lusthaus]

> I think you read more into what I posted than warranted.

Folks seemed to miss the rough and tumble atmosphere, so I thought I'd shake
it up a bit.

> Yes, it was political. (In fact, many of world history's religious
> persecutions were political, au fond.)

Yes and no. Lots of what we might tend today to classify as political events
were indeed political events with political motives, engaged in by political
agents who identified themselves and their motives as religious. It can get
thorny when one wants to avoid the two extremes, in this case reductionism
to "religion" and reductionism to "politics." When religious oranizations
like the Vatican are both simultaneously (depending on how much fairy dust
is in the eye of the beholder), it can get dizzying, but in the Japanese
case...

>No, it was indeed against
> "Christians," regardless of which denominations got off and which
> didn't--that is how they were identified.

But not for being Christians (e.g., the Dutch), nor even for their belief in
the Virgin Mary (Japanese could have cared less). When the missionaries
arrived -- with the merchants and military; let's call them the 3 "M"s -- 
they were not only accepted, once passing an initial probationary period of
suspicion, they had worked their way into some of the higher echelons of
Japan, into places even ordinary Japanese couldn't go. So there was nothing
intrinsically anti-Christian in the Japanese ethos of the time. They abused
that trust by supporting, with arms -- of a type only being manufactured in
Europe at that time -- potential rulers for the future. Maybe the
missionaries thought that backing a future leader would save Japanese
"souls" in the future, but the reality on the ground, especially as seen by
those who were victorious, is that they were military-political players
allied with a foreign power, envoys, if you will, of the 3 Ms, of mixed
nationalities, but united in loyalty to the Vatican. Hence the Vatican and
its cronies had to go, however they dressed up. The intimate interlacing of
religious and political institutions was well recognized by Japan since its
own history was on in which the Imperial powers exerted inordinate control
over the various Buddhist organizations, temples, and sangha membership,
etc. Hence, they understood, probably more clearly than most of us, the
inseparability of politics and religion in the European adventure in Asia.

> Quite probably, those who were in danger and their priests (Catholics as
you
> reminded us) felt that Christianity itself was being persecuted.

And they probably thought the Japanese were agents of Satan, preventing the
salvation of countless souls, obviously evil for rejecting such enlightened
frocked gun-runners as themselves.

> Oh, and BTW--I did not frame anything in the terms of the separation of
> church and state as we in the USA debate it. So that point is irrelevant
to
> what I posted.

That wasn't directed toward you or anyone in particular, but just an attempt
to identify the sort of classicatory presuppositions we bring to such
things, which, in my opinion, help to muddy rather than clarify the waters.
If someone tries to purge jihadis in order to keep their country safe, is it
a persecution of Islam, just because the jihadi's motives are drenched in a
certain type of pro-Islam fanaticism? Are Witzel and Farmer anti-Hindu
because of what they did in the California Textbook controversy -- as the
Hindutvas claim?

best,
Dan