[Buddha-l] Religious Persecution [was: NYTimes.com: Let Us PrayforWealth]

[Franz Metcalf]

Dan et al.,

I'm afraid my mangled syntax is more a sign of my fatigue and age than 
my ambivalence. Still, ambivalence I do have, and in abundance.

I appreciate your continued efforts at pointing up the complexity of 
the politico-religious situation in Japan in the 16th and 17th 
centuries. It also strikes me that your underlying point is worth 
continually coming back to, as it is in such contrast to anachronistic 
projections we make on past eras: Japanese Christianity at the eve of 
the Tokugawa shogunate was not a matter of some kind of Jamesian 
relationship of a lone person to their god, but a matter of public 
policy and public allegiance, and such was most religiosity in all 
times but our own. So my concern with the free practice of individual 
spirituality may (or may not be) paramount now, but it may also be an 
inappropriate projection onto prior times and religions.

I am lucky, indeed, to be living in the 21st century in a country that 
may now condone, indeed embrace, torture but still more or less upholds 
its First Amendment (providing a separation of church and state).

Franz

On Nov 8, 2007, at 4:56 PM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Franz and gang,
>
>> Still, I'm must not comfortable with this sort of politics.
>
> Is the mangled syntax a sign of your ambivlence?
>
>> I
>> can't get away from some kind of gut level disgust with anti-religious
>> policies. [...] I just can't support preventing them
>> from other forms of their religious practice, which as I understand 
>> it,
>> did happen to the Japanese Christians. (Note that I'm *not* speaking 
>> of
>> foreign Christians in Japan, just native Japanese who had converted or
>> been born into Christian families. Like the Muranos, I recall they 
>> hung
>> around for centuries.)
>
> This may get a bit complicated, but your initial sentiment is a good 
> one.
> The problem is the issue is more complex than that, and email (and 
> other
> demands on my time) prevent a full airing. The problem for the 
> Japanese of
> that time (and history should always be viewed in its own historical 
> context
> as much as possible, at least initially, before me revert to moralistic
> judgementalism) is the question of loyalties. Catholics, especially at 
> that
> time (and arguably until the Vatican tried to ban that horrid movie
> Cleopatra in the early '60s for showing a bit of Liz's flank), paid
> allegiance to Rome and the Pope. We needn't recite how Christianity 
> spread
> through Europe -- Charlesmagne, Ferdinand and Isabella, etc. -- or the
> various religious wars and struggles for *political* autonomy from Rome
> (Reformation, the Dutch battles mentioned recently, the War of the 
> Roses,
> Hundred Years War, ad infinitum), to remind ourselves of the nature of 
> the
> Vatican in those days.
>
> What that means is that the neat partitioning of "private" religious
> practice from public citizenship and loyalty is something Christians of
> various stripes were fleeing Europe until recent times to establish 
> here in
> the evil USA. It was not in any way an obvious fact in the old days -- 
> and
> may not have been a fact at all.
>
> Japanese converts had not just converted to a "religion" (the concept 
> itself
> being a Western construct that, in Japan, the Catholic missionaries of 
> the
> time were busy trying to invent a word for -- none existed in any East 
> Asian
> language), they had sworn allegiance to a foreign despot, whose 
> intentions
> toward Japan had revealed itself in military, seditious expressions.
>
> Another dimension (I said this gets complicated), is that the Japanese
> understood better than we moderns that religion and fidelity to the 
> State
> were one and the same. Buddhism won over support in China, in part, by
> proposing that Buddha and Buddhism were protectors of the State; this 
> aspect
> became more prominent in its acceptance in Korea, and even moreso in 
> Japan.
> So religion and national integrity are not separable issues -- or at 
> least
> they weren't until the Founding Fathers drafted the First Amendment to 
> the
> evil USA's Constitution.
>
> It was in this same period in Japan that the Buddhist monastic armies 
> that I
> mentioned awhile back were also confronted and wiped out -- militarily 
> -- by
> some of the same cast of characters as purged Christianity from Japan. 
> They
> didn't expurgate Buddhism per se from Japan, but demilitarized it, and
> eliminated some of its power centers (monasteries).
>
> Today we tend to think of religion as portable and decentered. In 
> those days
> it was very much place and political-power centered. So the concept of 
> a
> privately practicing Christian would have been a category error -- very
> likely for the Christian converts as well.
>
> Clearer?
>
> Dan
>
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