Rev. Danny Fisher

This is where I’d remind you about the Brit Hume saga before giving you the latest updates, but you probably know the drill by now.

First, the Associated Press offered a brief piece yesterday about the upset among Buddhists over Hume’s comments.  The AP interviewed Robert Thurman, Brad Warner, Stephen Prothero, James William Coleman, and Tricycle editor and publisher James Shaheen for the article. 

Predictably, Pat Robertson applauded Hume for what he said this week.

Finally, over at the Religion News Service’s fabulous Religion News Blog, Kevin Eckstrom points us to Christianity Today reporter Sarah Pulliam Bailey’s conversation with Hume, in which she got him to expand on his comments.  Among other things, he said:

Instead of urging that Tiger Woods turn to Christianity, if I had said what he needed to do was to strengthen his Buddhist commitment or turn to Hinduism, I don’t think anybody would have said a word. It’s Christ and Christianity that get people stirred up.

I can’t speak for everyone, but that’s actually not what bothered me.  What gets me is the way Hume turned religion into a “mine-is-better-than-yours” contest.  Odd as it may be for him as a newsman to do, couldn’t Hume talk about the virtues of his chosen religion without explicitly denigrating another?  (And, yes, denigrating is what he did–that’s what it means to belittle or disparage something.)  That’s what irks me.