Rabbi Amy Small makes a point about religion and culture as Stephen Moore, a professor at Drew University Theological School, left, and Ferhan Tunagur of Rutgers University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, look on.
Photo by Robert Wiener
June 26, 2008
Despite disagreements on theology viewpoints, a rabbi, a Christian Bible scholar, and a Muslim educator all agreed on June 17 there needs to be better understanding of the ways their religions and cultures influence one another.
The interfaith luncheon, attended by 30 Jews, Muslims, and Christians, was sponsored by the Newark-based Interfaith Dialog Center, a Turkish-American community organization, Rabbi Amy Joy Small, leader of the Reconstructionist Congregation Beth Hatikvah in Summit, opened the discussion by joking about the chosen topic: “Does religion drive culture, or does culture drive religion?” she asked. “The answer came to me pretty quickly: ‘Yes.’”
Citing the Ten Commandments as an example of both religion’s influence on culture and the reverse, Small said that in ancient times, “a rulebook was absolutely an expected part of any society.”
Asking her audience to “imagine the Near East in a time that could be violent and chaotic,” she described the Ten Commandment as “a very important statement. These rules emanate from a force beyond ourselves, and the first rule is, ‘Remember who’s boss’ — an absolute statement of religion leading the way” for the development of the prevailing culture. “In other ancient societies it was the king who was believed to be the god,” Small said.
The acceptance of the Ten Commandments is also an implicit acceptance of their not being intended only to the elite or to men. The Decalogue, rather “applies to all of us equally and comes from the one source of goodness and morality,” said the rabbi.
Then, when Moses summoned the Israelite elders “and put before them all that the Lord had commanded,” said Small, “all the people answered as one.” That collective acceptance of a relationship with God, she said, has “influenced Western religion and filtered in different ways through Christianity and Islam.”
Citing another example of a religious precept influencing culture, Small referred to Leviticus and its presenting as “an absolute” the giving of tzedaka, based on the justice inherent in sharing with others. That imperative, she said, “is a way of equalizing our society. The principle of justice is a core principle of Judaism…and a place where we would like to think religion affects culture.”
Following the rabbi, Stephen Moore, professor of New Testament at Drew University Theological School, gave the discussion a political twist.
“Christianity began as a sect of Judaism,” he noted, but in the fourth century, “Christianity moved from the margins of empire to the center of the Roman Empire….”
Contemporary Christians, and most of all, contemporary American Christians, still stand within that moment because the world’s “sole superpower is also a Christian superpower.”
Moore said with the death of Pope John Paul II, “the present occupant of the White House became the best known Christian on the planet, at the head of a nation that in terms of military might, in terms of wealth, in terms of global influence, far exceeded the wildest dreams of a Queen Victoria or Charlemagne or any previous emperor or empress.”
And “because Christianity is the dominant culture in that dominant nation, it is impossible to say where it is that Christian religion ends and secular culture begins,” said Moore. The question rather becomes “Whose Christianity? Whose culture?” American Christians today are divided between those for whom the presence in the White House of somebody who prays and reads the Bible most mornings “is a cause for celebration or rejoicing” and those for whom it is “a cause of great concern…, a scandal, or indeed a tragedy.”
Oppression of women
Steering the discussion toward conflicts within his own faith, Ferhan Tunagur, a part-time lecturer and Turkish language instructor at Rutgers University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, spoke of a “tension between religious rules and limitations and the cultural aspects” of Islam.
“The religion of Islam allows flexibility within the culture, but the tension doesn’t stop there,” he said. “You have to be similar in the idea that you are praying five times a day to the same God, but not in your clothing…. In clothing, the only limitation is what covers your body parts. The limitation is religious — but how you do it is cultural.”
Turning to the treatment of women, Tunagur noted that “the wife of the prophet Muhammad was, in fact, a scholar. She built one third of the whole Islamic world. She was the one most frequently with the prophet, so she knew the most. Women actually gained their status and right to be involved in anything in the society.
“But the predominant treatment of women persisted, even today.” So in regard to Muslims, “if we see the oppression of women, it is actually the oppression of religion by the culture. Since women have been culturally oppressed for a very long time, you see those effects in people who are Muslims by religion, but those effects are still very much culturally informed,” he argued.
Quoting from a rabbinic text “to make a point” regarding religion’s effect on women’s status in society, Small read:
“Women are light-headed. Women are incapable of giving legal decisions, and so one is not to rely on what they say. There are three things a man would rather not have: grass in his standing green, vinegar in his wine, and a female among his children.”
“Ugh,” much of the audience groaned.
“Now, there is an example of where culture found its way into religion, and for some people, that becomes law; it sticks,” she said.
Turning to Tunagur, Small said, “What you presented is an important point of the necessity to separate it out. But the problem is you can’t always cleanly separate the two.”
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