Focus 580; Religion on the Global Scale: The Killer That Heals

In this hour of focus 580 we'll be talking with one of America's best known historians of religion. His name is Martin Marty. He is the Fairfax Koen distinguished service professor emeritus of the history of modern Christianity at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He is the author of over 50 books including the three volume modern American religion published by the University of Chicago Press. He is the George B Caldwell senior scholar in residence at the Park Ridge Center for the Study of health faith and ethics he's contributing editor of The Christian Century and editor of the newsletter context. He is visiting the campus of the University of Illinois and will be giving the 11th Annual Mortensen distinguished lecture this afternoon at four o'clock. This takes place in the Colwell playhouse of the Credit Center for the Performing Arts. The main sponsor here is the Mortenson Center for International Library programs. This is an organization set interested in building ties among libraries and librarians around the world for the promotion of international peace education and understanding to this

date. More than 500 librarians from 75 countries have taken part in programs of the Mortenson center. Also this is an event in the Miller come series so as is the case with all these programs they're free and open to the public and anyone who is interested here in and around Champaign-Urbana should feel welcome to attend the lecture at 4 o'clock this afternoon. We're also very pleased that Dr. Marty can be here and talk with us so that all of these people who are not here in Champaign-Urbana can also have the opportunity to hear from him as we talk questions and comments really are welcome all we ask of people listening is that people try to be brief just so we can keep things moving along and getting as many people as possible but of course anyone is welcome to call the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 wy L.L. and toll free 800 2 2 2 w. wattle. Well thank you very much Professor Murray for for being here. Overplays are going to

be here. You were involved you were in fact you were the director of a project that was undertaken by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences a multi-year project which resulted in a multi-volume study aport talking about fundamentalist religious movements around the world. Yes I fear this is a dangerous question to ask because it's such a big question but can you talk a little bit about what you feel you learned you and your colleagues who were involved and learned by studying fundamentalisms in 23 religions Islam Judaism Christianity Sikh ism and all the rest. We did learn that every religion has its vast majority of moderate faithful people and it has a counterforce usually very small and usually quite militant. That draws on different parts of the ancient texts or events. We learn all kinds of things one thing we would have noticed if we hadn't compared is that all 23 of them

have portrayed themselves as being the old time religion and all 23 of them are extremely at home in the modern world. There are really modern movements and they use the modern technology. Tape recorders for the Ayatollah. Television for American Fundamentalist evangelists. The weaponry for the Gershom moneyman Israel and Taliban forces etc.. I think that was interesting. I don't think it occurred to us that all 23 of them are extremely male centered. God is very masculine and macho and the human race is supposed to be run on models of that. So it's good things like this would show up now at the same time last thing I'll say now is we also stressed how different they are from each other. So if we have an American Protestant Fundamentalist listening. I hope she isn't thinking that we're saying they're like them. That's not the point. We

stressed how different they were. We listen to the tape recording we don't really find their own movements their own way. Our whole study would have been useless Had it not been fair minded and I think the people studied found they're fair minded. So the purpose of studying them in common was to see what leaps out at you in their externals not in their core. I think it's important to acknowledge as you do when you talk about fundamentalism that we are not talking about one thing. We are talking about a multi faceted phenomenon. But having said that the question that had been raised when we see people like this coming forward in many different religious traditions all within it seems a relatively short period of time then one must ask well why why why this time. Have we seen this happen. In different places and different traditions what seems to be going on that has has

inspired that's a good question. We did not study historic conservatism's like the Protestant Reformation or medieval Catholicism. We didn't study orthodoxy as like with Erics Jews. We didn't study Traditionalism is like high church Episcopalians. We studied movements that rose after people thought there'd not be any more like that. That is the first thing had to happen was the assaults. Of modernity however defined could come in a lot of different ways. And most of these movements started American Protestant version it's been nine hundred twenty days. The Muslim Brotherhood which has some backing behind what we're seeing today now did one thousand twenty eight. That's when the first wave of this hit radio came. The world got smaller and people started studying in other countries and bringing their customs and so on. And so the key word in all we studied always turned out to be all these movements are reacting against something they think they're protecting the

old way of life by reacting and they almost always overreact. But these forces came and then they came again in the 1970s 80s with the rise of the new technologies again. Globalization of markets of ethics et cetera. And I think the end of the Cold War meant that a lot of forces that had been invisible and suppressed by Soviet totalitarianism and everything else had their chance to sprout and flower and become visible and bid for power in the world. We have a caller to bring into the conversation I think I will do that rather than make them wait. Other people who are listening are welcome to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5. Here's a caller in champagne and it's Line 1. Hello good morning. Yes. I'd like to ask Dr. Marty if he could think of a well he's just

cited some historical date but historical precedent for our disaster of the present and also. Some Words to live by. At this time in what obviously will be other stressful times following up to this emergency. Thank you. Probably in all of history there are terrorist movements but this usually means a little band of people come over the hill with slingshots and bow and arrow and then go back having. Destroyed things. I think what's qualitatively different in the current version that makes it hard to say president is in the change in weaponry that people in many nations can be in touch with each other and plan things together that you can and use gases and airplanes

and so many kinds of instruments of this sort has meant that what used to be as I described it a few people coming over the hill at you or subverting and blowing up one house now are capable of impinging on whole civilizations. And I don't think we can ever lean back. With security the same we way we did you want is some little advice I don't know I'm a good advisor I would say we have to be extremely discriminating. I think any time and American who is not a Muslim turns to any of the seven million American Muslims and thinks they're part of it and acts that way you're playing. Indeed in the hands of the terrorists that's exactly what they'd like to have happen and confirm. I think if we disrupt everything in our way of life and roll over and play dead and make no moves that aren't in the general pattern of keeping our homes families jobs and ways of life recreation healthy we're playing into it. I think if any in the

patriotic sphere. I think if we start judging everybody if they don't shout quite as loudly as we do in anger or wave the flag quite as strenuously as we if we think they're not as patriotic. I think that's a great flaw. I think we're getting some positives in that we have pulled together we've seen awesome heroism in the firemen the police the chaplain sees that are on the scene in New York. There are great strengths on which to rely but that would be the first family things I think we should watch. Again I'm not a military expert so I'm not going to give them advice but I'm talking about what the civilian and the citizen can do at the very beginning. Shortly after the attack a very prominent American religious leader said he thought of that God had allowed this to happen because God was mad at us. For those people of faith who believe God does not work that way. How does one think about this.

Good question. I've talked to reporters in several cities. I report on reporters and the religious field. The Los Angeles Times the Fort Worth newspaper The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today I watched the New York Times USA Today Washington Post who covered sermons the way they've never covered sermons for many many years because humans are one of the close to the ground things they say overwhelmingly they're done very responsibly. And I think the first responsible thing to say is by the best known preacher in America who hasn't a perfect record on these things but he sure did it right the other day when Billy Graham was asked precisely that question. What's what is God doing. And he said I have to be an honest man I ask that question off of my I don't know. And I think when the clergy get up and say that it's a much better protection for the people over against that impulse that every move we make God legitimate needs every move they make that he saved and that's the way they talk we shouldn't talk that way. That doesn't mean that if you are a

believer there's no discernment of the hand of God in history. My own approach here is following. Right now labor wrote a good book 50 years ago called The irony of American history in which no matter what you do something is going to go wrong and you are partly an agent of it. And he says therefore you have to act on your knowledge but you have to know there's ignorance going with it. You have to act on your innocence but you know there's guilt under it. You have to act with your virtues but you have to know there's a price within it. You have to act with your security but you know their insecurities within. And there's just enough of that that I always fall back upon you. But yeah he said and this is very much the spirit of Abraham Lincoln the other great I have theological ironist in American history. The Almighty has his own purposes and we're not controlling them. I think as Lincoln said both sides play to the same God both with the same Bible both want to win. Both Can't you try to discern the mysterious will of God and when neighbor has said that things will go wrong he doesn't say therefore be passive. He says he like to quote

to verse for when the nations get to uppity God who sits in the heavens laughs at them and holds them in derision. He says we don't see that in order to be cynical or passive or apathetic or let ourselves be victims. He says the same God who says that also holds us responsible and honors human aspiration. And at their best I think the clergy and the leadership are trying to get that idea across to their people as we prosecute whatever kind of prosecution we're going to be doing in their seasons ahead. Our guest this morning in this part of focus 580 Martin Marty and he is professor emeritus of the history of modern Christianity at the Divinity School University of Chicago and has written a lot about religion in America other matters of faith he's the author of over 50 books has been over the years widely interviewed. And we're pleased that he could be here with us he's here on the campus of the university today to give a talk. This is the 11th Annual Mortenson distinguished lecture and we're talking this afternoon at

four o'clock in the Colwell playhouse of the Credit Center for the Performing Arts. And anyone who is listening who is in and around Champaign-Urbana certainly welcome to attend. And we have another caller here so why don't we talk with him. Why Number one there in Urbana. Hello hello. Yes I just wanted to comment that I raise this point with you up to that. Among the largest Muslim nations of Indonesia for example there is the same fundamentalist movements going against their democratic government. And the same's true in Malaysia. And I think we need to remember that this is not a movement. That's a good point I think we often forget in America that there are more Muslims in the non Arab world than in the Arab world. Indonesia is the third or fourth most populous nation in the world and largely Muslim with great numbers varieties of peoples there and they have this I think the second thing to remember and I'm glad you brought that up is in most places where you have had militant and then sometimes

terrorist fundamentalist movements they main enemy for them starts being their own government their own polity the Muslim world and the Southeast Asian world have many nations in which the leadership are not maybe democratic after our model because we'd see it. But there's some openness there's some diversity. They are often relax and leave Muslim. They sometimes may be military and corrupt they may be all those things and they're in the gun sights. These are who took out set out in Egypt there who overthrew the government in Algeria and so on. So the enemy isn't always Washington and New York and the U.S. the enemies often. Right near home and I think one of things we don't want to do in our action these days is to increase the size of those militant and terrorist movements and lose the support of the governments elsewhere who are quite open

to participating in our attempt to isolate and reach and punish the terrorists in the way that we have talked about this. What happened last week and other things like it. I think that Muslims have complained rightly so with some justification that it's that it seems to be almost the only case that we couple religious affiliation with the acts that that we're talking about. And it seems that we're dealing with here are acts that are that are largely political acts and actually as I think about it it's it may be in fact that they are a political acts not religious ones. How does one decide entangle the political intent. From the faith of the person committing the act.

They're fact that what you said. It's true that we don't usually associate religion with the others is our near-sightedness not their doing. There's hardly a day going by we don't see the word Protestant and Catholic in the news of Northern Ireland. Now this is not the Catholic Church and the Protestant church. They've had leaders they've had women who win Nobel Prizes for trying to reconcile cos he's boundaries. But these things these marches start in churchyards and in them they start and end with prayer they invoke all of these things. Nigeria is torn between Muslim and Christian and Christians are fighting rough there too and have to push and name it Israel is. Responsible for a lot of the West Bank building and meet all the criteria we did study under fundamentalism and there have good weapons and good weaponry and so on. So I think the first thing we have to say is it's all over the place but now the other point of your question how do you

discern and disentangle you don't totally disentangle most movements are not. Somebody gets up in the morning and says I believe in God this way now I got to shoot at somebody. In most cases it's attached to something else. In the present case evidently resentment revenge envy and so on just takes over. And in this case for the bin Laden assuming he is the main one is very clear in his talk. That is a big factor and it has to be seen as religious when you notice that whatever we know about these people they have a promise of instant access to paradise. If you're going to flight school and simulator school for months after months after months lining up credit cards in mining investments because you're going to bash into a building you better have thought through what you're doing and they've thought through that. This is always will. So religion is in it just as it is so many other places. Well it is the is the. Is it the case

that with funding the various fundamentalisms that that you have studied and and you talked a bit about or at the very beginning do they all have in common this notion. To put it very bluntly that we're right and everybody else is wrong. Yes you have to have that. And that's what they don't like about conservatives and traditionalist American Protestant fundamentalism which is by no means the largest movement most conservative Protestant America call themselves even Jellicoe are Pentecostal and they're not quite over to this camp. But when it was formed in the 1900s the word was invented in July of 1980 21 in a Baptist magazine when somebody said in our dominations everybody wants to be conservative but they won't fight for the Lord. We need a new word to say we've got the fundamentals of the faith and we are reacting. We're fighting for the Lord and we know what we're doing. When Billy Graham says I don't know it's a little harder to fight for the Lord that way and that's why he's

friendly to so many religions that Real American fundamentalists book by American fundamentalists is the biggest enemy of the Faith in America in the last 50 years have been Billy Graham who could agree with every one of their doctrines but is but is moderate. So yes you have to have that sense that that God is guiding you. That's why I think that it's easier to be fundamentalist in the monotheistic religions where there's a clear scripture there's a boundary to koran and Sharia there's a boundary to Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament. But in Hindu ism. You don't have the boundaries of the scripture there and all kinds of scriptures and still you will take on the Moslems in the name of your gods or whatever you have to be sure you know where history's going you can know that you are the agent of God to effect God's purposes in history and without that it would fall apart. Well that makes it you know it's a I think some people I honestly have have said well you know maybe we wouldn't we wouldn't have so much conflict in the world if we could

just get everybody and not metaphorically have an in way everybody literally to sit down with sit down around a big table will talk will get to know each other work out our differences if a lot of the people who are coming to the table come to it with this attitude that says my way or the highway then can such a discussion actually take place. In the end no. But that doesn't mean other discussions aren't worthwhile. When you identified me or identified me with the Park Ridge Center for the Study of health faith and ethics where we study the religious role in understanding sexuality the life cycle abortion in vitro fertilization euthanasia whatever. And we know that on many of these issues you can get all kinds of people to sit down and hear each other. But if you have an absolutist fundamentalist there no it doesn't pay. So what you have to do is get all the people who are open to hearing the other to do it and I've chaired the number of sessions I chaired the House of Representatives office building one day they said invite

26 people at the table who quote can't stand each other. Gay and straight Planned Parenthood versus anti abortion or whatever and the only rule of the game was to talk in the room to each other not about each other. And there are painful things but they had a look in each other's eyes and so on. Now no pro-life person stop being pro-life that day was none of our business to do that. But she looked into the eyes of Planned Parenthood and had never they never met each other. They never knew each other. So I think we often assume that people can't be reached but once you're utterly in that camp utterly in that camp the word we would use is fanatic or something like that. No you can't dislodge them. You have to turn that over to history and God and circumstance. A lot of people leave these movements in America. The HUGE will from extremely militant fundamentalism into the moderate even Jellicoe movements occur because if you want power you moderate if you want. If you want to

change Supreme Courts you hang out with a lot of moderates and elect a president who you think will appoint people there. Well that's not pure fundamentalism anymore. You may have that theme but you're hanging out with all kinds of people that you think are kind of smelly Otherwise it's in some people's minds. They would say that the point we are is if you choose. You know if you're going to choose a philosophy a set of guiding principles I'm something to live by we're at this point where we seem. To be invited to choose between extremes between fundamentalisms perhaps on the one hand and between postmodernism or something like that on the other. Or maybe I guess there will be there'll be a few humanism saying humanists hang out in the corner somewhere. Who would would think that they were well somewhere else. And and I think that leaves a lot of people feeling that they don't know where to go because they're not comfortable with fundamentalism. But they're also not comfortable with post modernism

and there they say OK OK where where is there for me. I'm one of them. You said it very nicely for a picture I use the word America used these years. This is not globally but America's culture wars. I always have an image of the culture war in a landscape in which there are too many sighs. And a huge valley between and 5 to 10 percent of the people are on those two mazes and that's where the artillery is going and an awful lot of other people go in the right of where the last shells fell you know. I think I'm with a camp and I hear them and I don't know if the other side a little bit has a vast majority and that's healthy. I mean we're a pluralist society with a lot of voices and a lot of choices. Let's take an instance around the world there are a billion Catholics a thousand million. They have a very very traditionalist pope and current leadership. But it's not fundamentalist because Catholicism officially defines itself as

development of doctrine and you can't be fundamentalist in that its fundamentals can be adapted to change. The vast majority of Protestants 25 percent of America identifies with what we call mainline Protestant. They're not all out there in the pew every Sunday but that they identify and there are no fundamentalists among them. The group I've called even Jellicoe these are not the people that are. Totally open to other kinds of things. So I we haven't had enough of that kind of voice. And at the core of that I think is the ability to have profound conviction of your own and the ability to listen to the other. So strong conviction that you might be tempted to be intolerant. I don't see the world prospers from wishy washiness but. The gift the most profound people of the past century John the 23rd and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day and Dietrich Bonhoeffer a modest kind of I could make a list of the top 20. Everyone is deeply

identified with a religious voice and every one of them was capable of forming coalitions with others and appealing to others. Martin Luther King is in comprehensible for me a black Baptist pastor and he could've made a move if he didn't have the rabbis nuns ministers and leaders of the religions and plenty of good agnostics at his side. He didn't lose his conviction by doing that but he gave the world one more model of how you can effect change in the world without loss of conviction. Our guest in this hour focus 580 Martin already he is emeritus professor of history of the history of modern Christianity at Divinity School University of Chicago. And as I mention is the author of many books over 50. Dealing with religion and its place in American life including the three volume modern American religion published by University of Chicago Press is also associated with the Park Ridge Center for the Study of health faith and

ethics. He's contributing editor of The Christian century he has been affiliated with University Chicago since 1963 before that he served for a decade as a Lutheran parish pastor. He was ordained into the ministry in nineteen fifty two and he is here on the campus to give a talk this is the 11th Annual Mortensen distinguished lecture this afternoon in the Colwell playhouse at the Credit Center for the Performing Arts at four o'clock and anyone interested in hearing him hear it in and around Champaign-Urbana is welcome to attend it's open to the public. I have to say thanks to my host for setting it for because I just heard that President Bush is talking to a joint session of Congress at 8:00 and I would hate to be to expiate 8 o'clock for the hearing that would have been difficult you know. Yes that works out there. Here we have someone else with question comment something to share with us here on in Urbana line one. Yes. The quality of religion is good. I see a

war through the world. Can you envision like the world became secular. And what that might be like. Yes I can I can envision it but it isn't going to happen. That is the world is very very very full of religious people and more so all the time the world is one seventh Muslim in one thousand fifty It's one fifth Muslim today around the world Christianity is holding it it's 33 percent. And the more intense forms of it have been have been growing Judaism is statistically quite small but it is very dedicated in its various forms to its own common purposes. So it isn't going to go away so it's kind of futile to ask that but I think the other thing to do is to say and now it's very delicate because some people mis hear me. I think very clear. I believe that you can be a good citizen. I believe that you can

be a great agent of a democratic republic life. Without belief in God very very much so and we don't honor that enough. But I don't picture over the long pull whole societies going to it and the other thing is if you leave a vacuum you might get something worse. The one thing about the religions for your very first sentence they are divisive but they all have in them a final vision of Shalom of peace and reconciliation to which they're working. They're working with very frail and broken timber of humanity which messes it up but that's their goal. And there's been numbers of efforts in the last century to go godless Lee and they got ism's name too and they were Stalinism or Leninism and my always m and Naziism does well with Buddhism I don't publish Buddhism it doesn't it doesn't have to say God but it says the sacred and the spiritual. But but it it but it wasn't winning during the century. And so these hundred million member movements in which God wasn't allowed didn't give us a lot

of encouragement that that the world would be better off if you got rid of the gods and the god followers. Thank you. Thank you. Good questions comments are welcome 3 3 3 W while toll free 800 to 2 2 W while 1 in my listening over the many days here to the so many voices talking about what happened last week I was really struck by someone and I don't know who it was but about someone who said that we have been a nation obsessed by the trivial. It certainly seems to be the case that one of the responses that people have had to last week's events was to start really start reflecting on what is important what really matters. And I wonder whether you think if if indeed we were starting to question our obsession with the trivial I start thinking about what matters. Whether that's something that will stay with us or that it's

temporary and after who knows a month six months a year. We'll be right back where we were. America and its mentality moves I like to think of in two ways glacially and seismically. It is glacially we move the way glaciers move all the time imperceptibly but we are moving and seismically big sharks come and things happen. The Civil War the Great Depression second world war the Vietnamese War know this and then there was a shock. Now these two interplay with each other immediately after the shock you do nothing but talk about the shock. I have no doubt that the campus chaplains at the University of Illinois saw every pew filled last Sunday and they be very naive to think that they're going to be that way a year from now or two years from now because that's just not how it works when the earthquakes over it will be some increase and certainly more increase in seriousness and search for consolation and direction. There is no doubt about that part of the glacial move but

they're all smart enough to know that no matter what you don't sustain the intensity of the moment. So I think the question is going to be asked what will be the nature of the glacial change this time. And I do think that the fundamental fact of the current one is we're never. Never going to be able to sit back in apparent security the way we thought we could even months ago. Anybody who knew anything about terrorism knew we shouldn't be secure then but we we thought we were. And I know the background of what you're saying and trivia and entertainment and a lot of campus life directionless knows what I want to do. I want to do anything at all. Apathy. And this is a great clear of the mind you better ask what use you want to make of your life. So the number of serious people I think is going to grow. Now let me say on the other hand a little good word for trivia. It depends on who's trivia that is there's there are kinds of trivia that are terribly terrible. But I think it's very important in the midst of crises that the

gestures go on. If you keep having parties you know dancing on graves when you're doing a party you're not capitulating. I think it's. I don't. Like I'm going to speak for binge drinking on campus but I think camaraderie collegiality is good. I think writing a little e-mail love letters to each other looks like trivia but that's the network of the things that make valuable what we're fighting for. There's bad trivia good trivia but I don't think that we serve the cause well by thinking that everything has to be grim. One of things I haven't liked this week is that some people are measuring how pickguard AQR by how brutally muscular macho you can sound you know that if I say kill them all blast them all. Lance morrow in the back of Time magazine I thought was a terribly offensive editorial I would say you gotta hate Scott hate hate hate hate hate this nuff hate out there already. What we need is clarity of thinking the keep of many things in focus to get them. But I don't think you know better for that and the other thing is that you're measured by who is

most enthusiastic as a flag waver flag is beautiful I love to see em all over the place but I don't think you're more that patriotic. Why if you make an idol out of it and and so on. So the trivial little gestures the other things alongside the flag and the call up the service and the airport screening and the attempt to get bin Laden. I'd like to see them keep on too. Let's go to champagne. Another caller here learn to solo. Good morning. First of all Professor Marty I want to thank you for coming to Champaign Urbana and being on this program. I would like to ask you if you think there is any possibility that these terroristic from the Middle East fundamentalist movements could be discredited particularly to their followers. The inner core followers I wouldn't bet on because there you have your whole life investment you take no signals except those that are given by the group. Twenty years ago in America when what we call new religious movements and others called cults were around

you heard our would be a talk one of James Jones's people out or have in the gates people out or any of the people that are that far over they they just I don't know and I don't use the word brainwashed but they live in a mentally furnished apartment that has no windows and they're not going to change. But there are just tremendous numbers of people and that's why I think our strategies have to be after who who can be reached by them if we're not careful or we can drive people to them if we're not careful. And yes there are great numbers of conservative and fundamentalist Muslims who can be won over in a good case would be Iran. Best knowledge we have I think is that probably 80 percent of the people of Iran would like a far more productive society a more Republic society. The leadership strains some of it to move toward that but is held back. Well we have to make it easy for them to make that kind of move. And that's that's a kind of conversion not from Islam but into it's an

interactive dialogical mode. So I don't despair of that. A lot of hardliners don't stay hardline when some of the things disappear but for the inner core the people who are after I really would not be optimistic about seeing many of them want to go. So you seem to be saying that the only way to be free of them is for them to do. I have to go they have to die or lose their weaponry. They have to be so isolated the fuel they have to have the money supply is because off weapon supply cut off. You know if if there are 10 or 20 or 30 thousand of them around the world I don't think you can go up in every cave and find them and shoot them and kill them. But I think you can do something to neutralize a good deal of their force. But not in the short range I have to be with the folks who are running this is coming along. The best we can hope for is not to be safe but to be safer. Yes I thank you very soon and let's go to another caller here this is

champagne and line one. Hello. Hello Dr. Marty. I have within the last two years changed from being Protestant to becoming Orthodox. We have a mutual friend Father Gregory Rogers I believe. Yes indeed. And anyway in so doing I've discovered another view on Middle Eastern politics in Miami jungle days I was going to be pretty pro-Israel. Since then I've met people from other cultures Middle Eastern cultures. I heard the other side of the story I wonder if you could speak to why. In America in particular we tend to be more pro-Israel. Traditional Christian people. All right. Good Start where you start in saying that great numbers of Christians Mennonites Lutherans almost anybody who works with the Palestinian Christians has been very very critical of the policies in Israel and have sided

with the dissenters in Israel who until two years ago or so were a much stronger force than they are today. So there are all kinds of such voices and I know the Orthodox Christians in his role also have that. Most of them are Israelis and want to be but they don't like the policies to the point you question why so many right up the way they do on a stronger theme. I think you'd have to say that the ones who are most militant have a particular Biblical interpretation which Jews themselves don't share. And most Catholics most Protestants and most orthodox don't share. And that is that Israel can do anything it wants because it has to exist a certain way or else Jesus will come again. That's not really what a Jew wakes up in the morning in Israel waiting for but that's what the American people any old dispensational Tribulation will rapture all fundamentalists to give the whole name to do now is to disappear not huge but they're producing the the Left Behind movies and the things which become New York Times bestsellers So that's one core.

A larger number as. But I'm up in my Lutheran Sunday School or Catholic parochial school. The childhood map of Israel was stand to Beersheba and Mediterranean to the Jordan and as a sort of an instinct. Third it is a democracy. It may not be quite our style but it is someone we identify with. For Thirza strong sense of after the Holocaust is a people that have been denied a nation and so we have to do things with it. I think any time American Jews Christians or anybody else give a free ride to everything Israel wants to do we exacerbate the problem and therefore we have here many of the voices in your describing some of them try to be at least one more person here line to Urbana. Hello hello. Yes thank God. Professor Marty focus on the morning. But I would point out that when it comes to terrorists they're not all fundamentalists or

one strain where they are offensive. But we've had as much trouble with our own homegrown rightwing terrorists. Timothy McVeigh what was Smith's name but anyway what I was going to say. There's one common thread if you can remove the issue. Bring people to support them in the Middle East of course the Israeli Jordanian problem that's right there are others. What is seen in our bullying or exploiting the third world another. You decrease support for the terrorist element of the fundamentalists. Actually we could live quite nicely with fundamentalists but I may not agree with them but the people most of them are indeed Well I certainly I certainly agree you have the fundamentalist down the block the one who's running the computer one is in my classroom

the one that's my neighbor. I don't worry about them one little little bit and I like the point you make that not all terrorism is religious fundamentalism. The Christian skis and the Greys and others you mention. Saddam Hussein I see is a terrorist and he tried to call a jihad a holy war and to their credit most Muslims didn't bite because they don't see him as being fundamentally religious you can be terrorist or many gods. I do like your point that that you do everything you can to remove the circumstances that give them legitimacy which means generous foreign policies generous foreign aid a real attempt to be close to people a lot of Americans have done that. But when they move beyond that when they use God as legitimate and for terrorism as I say it's too late in the game. I don't think anything we would do to try to build up a wonderful economy and Afghanistan today would produce bin Laden. But I think our policy of not trying to Pakistan shows we're going to have to give them foreign aid

where there's got to be some dollar sign attached to the things we're doing there. And I'm I'm all for that the more friends we have the better off we are and will take circumstances out of which these things go. So thank you for good question and there will have to stop because we are at the end of the time for people in and around Champaign-Urbana if you like to hear more from our guest Martin Marty. He'll be giving a talk it's the 11th Annual Mortensen distinguished lecture on the U of I campus this afternoon four o'clock in the Cole will play also of the credits that are for the Performing Arts Martin Marty is professor emeritus of the history of modern Christianity at University of Chicago. Thank you very much. Good to be with you.