Were religious beliefs/was Islam responsible for the bombings in Boston?

In case you didn't realize it, some people would answer both of the questions above with a resounding "yes!" They would claim that militant intolerance, even violence, are the inevitable consequence of deeply held religious belief.

The Panda's Thumb blog, not exactly a friend of conservative Christian beliefs, at least beliefs on origins, has blasted biologist Jerry Coyne, who, in addition to being an important scientist, is a militant atheist, for his "yes!" responses, and given evidence to show that Coyne, and other people who want to make religious belief the root of all of violence, and other problems, are wrong. There are some pertinent links in the Panda's Thumb post.

Good for the Panda's Thumb!

The Panda's Thumb also posted a reaction to a believer in Intelligent Design, who claimed that "Darwinists" are incapable of showing proper compassion.

Most any tragedy can be used to reinforce our prejudices, and often gets used as such by people with a wide variety of such prejudices. Sigh. 

The Last Safe Place on Earth, by Richard Peck

Richard Peck is an award-winning author, mostly writing for young people (which means that I can understand what he writes). My wife and I have enjoyed his A Year Down Yonder (Which won the Newbery award), A Long Way from Chicago, and The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts. These books are humorous, and about life in the early twentieth century, in rural America. They are coming-of-age novels, too. So I checked out The Last Safe Place on Earth, expecting the same. Wrong!

No date is given for this book, but the telephone and autos are taken for granted as part of life, and computers, and cell phones, aren't, so it must have been meant for the 1960s through the 1980s. The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, which was published in English in 1952, and Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, by Ray Bradbury, are important class assignments. The setting is apparently a suburban community. Todd, a tenth-grader, is the protagonist, and the entire story is told from his point of view.

Todd's family consists of his sister Diana, his little sister, Marnie, and his parents. Diana isn't his biological sister, but his cousin. Her parents were killed in an auto wreck when she was small. She is also a tenth grader. Marnie is in elementary school. The family has moved to this community to escape crime and other problems they were experiencing elsewhere. Diana, Todd, and his parents are good to each other, and clearly love each other, but they are in lots of activities. Their lives are scheduled pretty thoroughly. So they get Laurel, also a tenth-grader, recommended by others, and apparently posing no reasons for worry, not even a boyfriend, to babysit Marnie. Todd finds that he is strongly attracted to Laurel.

So what is Peck getting at? In a word, intolerance.

It turns out that Laurel, and her family, are fundamentalist Christians. Laurel has a lot of time with Marnie, in the afternoons, before the parents and older children get home from their activities. Todd is awakened one night by Marnie, in the bathroom. She has tried to flush her Halloween witch costume down. The reason is that Laurel has told her that witches and ghosts are real, and evil. Marnie's mother tells Laurel that her services aren't wanted anymore.

There are other examples of intolerance, not involving fundamentalist Christians. High school kids are naturally pretty intolerant, although they usually don't think so, and Peck captures that. But he also has Laurel's church oppose Frank's book, apparently because it shows Jews in a favorable light.

There is plenty of food for thought for me here. How should I treat Halloween? Is it a harmless part of our culture, or a celebration of the devil's work? Do I really listen to ideas that are foreign to me, or do I just ignore them? How aggressively do I try to evangelize others? Are people who don't believe in Christ as I do really lost eternally?

Unfortunately, Peck seems a little intolerant himself. Laurel's family, and the other families in her church, are shown as all having serious problems, which they hide, even from themselves. (Laurel's father has gone elsewhere, perhaps to look for work, perhaps for other reasons. Laurel's young teen brother hot-wires cars and wrecks them.) Fundamentalists aren't the only people, Christian or not, who pretend that they have it all together when they don't, and, on the other hand, many of them have exemplary family lives, and Peck should know that. If he does, he's not letting on.

Todd's family is appealing. They have disagreements, and face problems, but work things out. They can drop their scheduled lives to help each other, and even to help one of Todd's friends, and Laurel, herself, when she has nowhere to turn.

Peck is a good writer. This book is more than just a good read, however. There's a message, and that message is one that needs to be received with great care.

Two more good books by Karen Cushman

I have previously posted on two books by Karen Cushman, Newbery winner, and Newbery Honor winner.

I have been privileged to read two more of her young adult novels. One of these is Catherine, Called Birdy (New York: Clarion, 1994). As in the books previously read, the protagonist is a girl in her early teen years. In this book, which is set in 1290 AD, in England, Catherine is the daughter of the Lord of a manor. As such, she has some privileges -- for example, she can read, and has her own room, although she shares it with a servant and, often, with guests. She is aware that the villagers lack the privileges that she does.

The book is written as a journal, and each entry begins with an excerpt from a book of saints, indicating which saint is honored on the particular day, and why they are honored. Some of this is serious, and some is simply hilarious. Cushman ends the book with an Author's Note, in which she indicates that she has tried to look at time in the same way a person living in 1290 would have. If she is correct, they looked at days according to their religious significance, and, of course, according to the agricultural season.

Catherine, Called Birdy gives the reader a feel for the Middle Ages, complete with privies and fleas, and illnesses that can't be cured. It is depressing, but yet uplifting. Cushman has done her usual good job. Birdy does examine her faith in the book, but that's not the major thrust of the author.

The second book is more depressing, because it is written about Los Angeles in the middle of the 20th century. The theme is lack of tolerance. Francine Green, of The Loud Silence of Francine Green (New York: Clarion, 2006) is a student in the upper grades of a Catholic girls' school. The major intolerance is toward perceived communism, but the book is more subtle than that. The characters all see that Russian communism is bad, but some of them enthusiastically climb on Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist bandwagon. Some of them, including Francine's friends, are grievously hurt by this sort of thinking.

There is also intolerance of independent thinking. Francine is silent, too silent. She doesn't speak up when she should, and she becomes convicted, in her own mind, of sinning by omission.

As I say, this is a depressing book, but the issues are real, and individual Christians, and the church as a whole, walk an uncertain line between tolerating independent thinking and rejecting thinking that isn't like ours. Thinking about that is good for us. It's a good book.

Thanks for reading.