| The following column appeared in The River Reporter on April 30, 1998. |
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thursday, April 30, 1998
— George Bernard Shaw
Almost all great religions, both monotheistic and polytheistic, are founded on the concept of not doing anything harmful to anyone else; harmful meaning that which you would not like done to you.
This Golden Rule appears in both the Old Testament and the New. It is in the Muslim Koran, the Hindu Upanishads, and the Zoroastrian writings, among many others. Yet Moslems kill each other over various interpretations of the Koran and kill Jews, whose Bible they partly share. Hindus murder Sikhs, Catholics fight Protestants in the streets of Belfast, and Jews fight other Jews over their varied understandings of what is written in the Torah.
Just about the time of Jesus, the renowned Jewish scholar Hillel was called before the king of his country and asked to explain what his religion was all about while standing on one foot. Hillel stood on one foot and explained, "Do not do unto others that which is hateful unto thee. All else is commentary." If it had been left at that, all would have been just fine.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire and the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, all was quiet for a bit. Then, starting in the 11th century, came the Crusades to free Palestine from the heathens — Moslems and Jews. So, wearing tunics with the Cross of the Prince of Peace emblazoned on them, soldiers rode across Europe shouting "Deus vult!" ("It is God's will!") and left a trail of arson, rape, and looting behind them. When they reached the Rhineland duchies they found another way to delight Jesus: there were Jewish settlements so they could add murder to their accomplishments.
When they reached Jerusalem — the City of Peace — the priests, who were the only ones who could read and write, wrote how delightful it was to wade through streets calf-deep in blood of heretical Moslems and Jews of all ages and sexes.
And so it continued through to our century, through the Inquisition and slavery, to Nazi Germany and the USSR, where modern technology brought "productions" up to the millions.
And America, home of the free, wasn't exempt. There were the Puritans, who had laws that empowered them to flog or hang Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, and Jews if found within the Massachusetts colony. Mormons, an odd sect of Christianity, believed in multiple marriages, such as did Abraham, David, and Solomon, and were exposed to brotherly love by their Methodist and Baptist neighbors, who drove them out into the winter in New York and then Illinois.
You don't have to go back far to find more examples. The Ku Klux Klan was very active hereabouts in the 1920s, burning crosses on people's property and, on Rt. 17B in the Town of Thompson, setting fire to the barn of a Jewish farmer. All in Christ's name, of course. And the father and grandfather of one of our supervisors had, according to FBI files that are now open, an American Nazi Party camp in our county.
Has it ended? No way. As I sit at my typewriter I have before me a round, plastic button with a pin back, similar to those buttons handed out by political candidates. This one, an inch and three-quarters across in bright red, reads "Kill a Commie for Christ." I obtained this emblem of "Love thy Neighbor as Thyself" from a local churchgoer.
Perhaps writer George Bernard Shaw was correct when he stated that the biggest obstacle in the way of Christianity is Jesus Christ. I say to all of you out there — Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems, whatever, let's make an effort to prove Shaw is wrong!
