:: Actually, I have a number of books by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jewish rabbis, all of whome bring of this precise point. They do not view a discussion of this as an attack on Judaism; they view it simply as a description of the changes that Jewish people have experienced since the Enlightenement and emancipation of the late 1700s and early 1800s. All of the major Jewish movements regard responding to this phenomenon as part of their religious mandate. I think many Christian groups feel the same way. I think a better differentiation would be that this description does not fall under theology, but under some other category describing the religion. Real world Judaism has less than 50% of American Jews following any form of Judaism as at all (recent surveys published last month have reaffirmed this.) Even a personal survey of gentiles I know shows that many, many people in America's northeast are only "cultural" Christians, and do not accept most tenets of their faith as expressed in their particular church's principles of belief. This phenomenon is growing among American Muslims as well, although I have no idea how widespread this actually is. RK
:: Michael Tinkler writes "There's certainly a place for it, but not on the pages devoted to the description of the religious groups themselves for themselves." Do we really have any such pages? I don't think so. If we did, then the entry on Islam would have a long list of proofs "proving" the Torah, the Tanach, and the New Testament are all corrupt, and that only the Koran is true, and that Jews and Christians are trying to fool the followers of God. If we had such pages, then the entry on Christianity would have entries proving that the Jews are stubborn and the offspring of the Devil, and that worshipping Jesus is the only way to God. If we had such pages, then the entry on Judaism would contain polemic after polemic condemning idolatry and any form of polytheism, as well as condemning all those who follow atheism and agnosticism, and Deism. But we don't have this. Instead, we try to impartially describe what each faith/community teaches, but not 100% from their own point of view. More from a friendly outsider point of view, right? Thus, perhaps each section might include a paragraph on the real world sociology of the followers of these faiths, as distinct from the theoretical positions? RK
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