Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: Attention, Senate prayer hecklers: Hinduism is monotheistic

July 12, 2007

Attention, Senate prayer hecklers: Hinduism is monotheistic

I would love to see President Bush apologize to India for the tasteless bigotry of the Christianists who disrupted this morning’s opening prayer in the U.S. Senate (video). For the first time in its history, the Senate had invited a Hindu chaplain to lead the prayer. Although Rajan Zed invoked “the transcendental glory of the Deity Supreme” to help the senators “strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world,” the hecklers knew the work of the devil when they saw it. Why waste time studying comparative religion when the Holy Spirit and the inerrant Bible tell you who the troublemakers are?

For Christianists, the main problem with Hinduism seems to be its alleged polytheism. Religious scholar Huston Smith would surprise them by pointing out that the multitude of gods and goddesses in Hindu iconography represent only one Supreme Being:
How is [devotion to God] to be engendered? Obviously, the task will not be easy. The things of this world clamor for our affection so incessantly that it may be marveled that a Being who can neither be seen nor heard can ever become their rival.

Enter Hinduism’s myths, her magnificent symbols, her several hundred images of God, her rituals that keep turning night and day like never-ending prayer wheels. Valued as ends in themselves these could, of course, usurp God’s place, but this is not their intent. They are matchmakers whose vocation is to introduce the human heart to what they represent but themselves are not. It is obtuse to confuse Hinduism’s images with idolatry, and their multiplicity with polytheism. They are runways from which the sense-laden human spirit can rise for its “flight of the alone to the Alone.” [The World’s Religions, 1991, p. 34]
Libertarians and psychonauts, take note: in another of his books, Smith argues in qualified favor of the religious use of psychedelics.

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Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 4:06 PM

  • Blogger Shantra Harmony left this comment at July 14, 2007 10:07 AM  
    I heard some of this on the radio, but to actually SEE it ... wow. Nice work here! That the Christianists get all hot and bothered over a misconception about the world's oldest religion is appalling but not surprising. (Hey, Christianists: if you don't believe me about the oldest religion in the world bit, then read Swami Sivananda's "Hinduism" essay. Oh, sorry, I forgot. He was a Hindu, so you'd better just burn the essay instead.)

  • Anonymous John Bambenek left this comment at July 15, 2007 6:32 AM  
    I thought that it was pretty tasteless BS too... gives Christians a bad name

  • Blogger Velu left this comment at July 26, 2007 11:19 AM  
    Actually i thought that it was pretty mild. You should see the things they do to each other in the Indian Parliament. :)

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