Brit Hume: The perils of proselytizing

The year is still young, said Tom Shales in The Washington Post, but last week Fox News analyst Brit Hume delivered a remark sure to rank “as one of the most ridiculous” of 2010. During a panel discussion on the adulterous Tiger Woods, Hume opined that Woods’ stated religion, Buddhism, doesn’t offer “the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.” Hume then addressed Woods directly, saying, “Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.” Bad enough that Hume “dissed about half a billion Buddhists” with his pompous proselytizing. Since when was it a journalist’s job to tell people—on a Sunday morning news program, no less—“what religious beliefs they ought to have?”

Brit Hume gets “paid for giving his opinion,” said Gregory Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times, and that’s precisely what he did. Would there have been this outcry if Hume had praised capitalism and trashed socialism? Of course not. So why isn’t he allowed to recommend Christianity over Buddhism? For some reason, liberal secularists think religion is a topic not to be discussed in public, said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. But “the differences between religions are worth debating,” since they concern the most important question of all: “How then should we live?” Why not discuss this question on TV?

Imagine, though, if a Muslim TV commentator were to offer advice to evangelical Christian Mark Sanford, the adulterous governor of South Carolina, said Jonathan Chait in The New Republic Online. Dear Mark, the Muslim might note, your Christianity obviously didn’t stop you—or a host of other Christian politicians—from cheating on your wife. Convert to a real religion, Islam, and find true virtue. All hell would break loose, because the Christians defending Hume really aren’t interested in a “theological free-for-all in our public discourse.” What they’re defending is the right of Christians to proselytize. And if Hume is going to critique Buddhism, said Stephen Prothero in USA Today, he ought to know something about it. The Buddha himself as a young man led a privileged existence “eerily reminiscent of the life of Tiger Woods,” before realizing there was more to life than “money or power or sex.” There are many paths to peace and redemption, and not all of them require you to go on TV, weeping like Jimmy Swaggart, saying, “I have sinned.”

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