{"id":47200,"date":"2024-05-21T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=47200"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T02:26:04","slug":"my-sacred-envy-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/05\/my-sacred-envy-list\/","title":{"rendered":"My \u201cSacred Envy\u201d List"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cSacred Envy\u201d is the well-known idea (at least in Latter-day Saint circles) of having the humility to recognize some positive attributes of other faiths, so I thought I would make my \u201csacred envy\u201d list.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To be clear, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is my faith because I think it is the best and it is what it claims to be, to speak rather bluntly. It\u2019s not my faith because of inertia or because I feel some kind of sociocultural connection. Still, I\u2019m open to recognizing places where other faiths get it right, even if in recognizing these points I\u2019m not necessarily saying that I think we should adapt the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

Buddhism, Jainism, or other religions based around ahimsa or non-violence: <\/b>While most Western faiths have some history of religious\/ethnic entrepreneurs using religion as a justification for violence, I\u2019m going to go out on a limb and say that that\u2019s quite rare in faiths based on <\/span>ahimsa<\/span><\/i>, or non-violence towards living things. If you\u2019re part of a faith that covers your drinking water in a cloth so that you don\u2019t inadvertently hurt insects, or who doesn\u2019t engage in farming because it might hurt some worms, you\u2019re probably not going to be burning people alive in the name of your faith, no matter how creative the exegesis. They simply don\u2019t have the seeds for religious violence in their theology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, combined with other things (e.g. Buddhism in militaristic, World War II Japan) it\u2019s not always a sufficient condition to prevent bad outcomes, but, and maybe I just don\u2019t know my Asian history well-enough, I can\u2019t think of a Jain tyrant slaughtering people in the name of <\/span>ahimsa<\/span><\/i>. The inability to leverage the faith to violent ends in turn affects its ability to be used as a political tool, so <\/span>ahimsa<\/span><\/i>-based faiths seem to have the lowest instances of people leveraging the faith for their own power.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jewish:<\/b> The Jewish story is a miraculous one. Their history could be described as heroic, thriving in the face of constant, bloody, brutal persecution, with their country rising to be one of the most powerful militarily, and their diaspora one of the most accomplished in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I am also one of those annoying Christians who think that Israel as a state was ordained of God (indeed, with Orson Hyde\u2019s mission to Palestine we were \u201cthose Christians\u201d before it was a thing). Of course, that\u2019s not to say I agree with genocidal Israeli Prime Ministers or every position that the current Israeli governing coalition takes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Catholics: <\/b>There are a couple of traditions that give off \u201cMormon vibes,\u201d and more traditional Catholics fit in this category. Catholic structure, liturgy, art, and music are beautiful things, and much of Western civilization, including basic norms about human rights, stem from the Catholic Church (Rodney Stark\u2019s \u201cBearing False Witness\u201d provides an excellent overview of all of this). Canon law is also eminently logical and reasonable given their premises. For example, the Vatican\u2019s <\/span>ruling on Latter-day Saint baptisms<\/span><\/a> was a bit of a shock to me because it\u2019s so rare to see a non-LDS religious organization analyze our theology in a systematic, rigorously evidence-based way (even if I obviously disagree with their conclusion that ours is not a Christian baptism).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Catholics also have a keen sense of ritualistic permanence. While we Latter-day Saints tend to treat complete inactives as basically non-members, Catholics treat very seriously the idea that once a baptized Catholic you are seen as Catholic by God regardless. And my understanding is that, when Catholic Church buildings are sold off, there’s a huge process involved to make sure that the ground is not being used for sinful activities, because in some sense it is still a consecrated space, even if it is no longer actively used as a church.<\/p>\n

Protestants<\/b>: Protestants definitely have a much better preaching game than us or, say, the Catholics. The fact is that if they didn\u2019t their congregation would die off, so competitive market mechanisms are at play, and Protestant services are typically more professionally produced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Islam:<\/b> Islam has provided a unifying framework across a variety of cultures and peoples that can be inspiring. For example, it wasn\u2019t until he took a pilgrimage to Mecca that Malcolm X saw that people from a wide variety of races and backgrounds could come together to worship God.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hindu:<\/b> Literally every Hindu I\u2019ve met is super nice and hardworking. Of course, a lot of this is a spurious correlation with immigrants. Since I\u2019ve never been to India every Hindu I\u2019ve met is 1st or 2nd generation who\u2019s working their derriere off to make it in either America or Europe. Also, while I recognize that there are radical, nationalistic forms of Hinduism in the homeland\u00a0 (see the current Indian government), the diaspora at least seems to be impeccably polite and eminently tolerant of other faiths and perspectives; as immigrants they seem to be stalwart citizens, and score quite high on measures of education, mobility, etc.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Atheist\/Agnostics: <\/b>For some reason I really enjoy the rich tradition of atheist\/agnostic comedians like George Carlin, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Louis C.K., Jimmy Carr, and Bill Maher. Their existential cynicism can lend itself to a sort of dark humor that I often find deeply funny.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sikhs, Zoroastrians, and other Minority Faiths:\u00a0<\/b>As a Latter-day Saint I feel a certain kinship with faiths that are big enough to form a clear community, but small enough in most places that they have to take their faith seriously and learn to stick together, despite in some cases (like with the Sikhs) being visibly distinctive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSacred Envy\u201d is the well-known idea (at least in Latter-day Saint circles) of having the humility to recognize some positive attributes of other faiths, so I thought I would make my \u201csacred envy\u201d list.\u00a0 To be clear, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is my faith because I think it is the best and it is what it claims to be, to speak rather bluntly. It\u2019s not my faith because of inertia or because I feel some kind of sociocultural connection. Still, I\u2019m open to recognizing places where other faiths get it right, even if in recognizing these points I\u2019m not necessarily saying that I think we should adapt the same. Buddhism, Jainism, or other religions based around ahimsa or non-violence: While most Western faiths have some history of religious\/ethnic entrepreneurs using religion as a justification for violence, I\u2019m going to go out on a limb and say that that\u2019s quite rare in faiths based on ahimsa, or non-violence towards living things. If you\u2019re part of a faith that covers your drinking water in a cloth so that you don\u2019t inadvertently hurt insects, or who doesn\u2019t engage in farming because it might hurt some worms, you\u2019re probably not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":47201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comparative-religion"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/a199b73e-0a24-42f9-90ca-0cc94d080a84_2.c7352f49fed805da13522ce537b11964.jpeg.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47200"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50251,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47200\/revisions\/50251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}