On Tiger and Brit Hume

Emory University's Frank Schaeffer:

Hume’s clumsy and ignorant attempt to turn Tiger away from the darkness of Buddhism and toward the righteous Christian path of forgiveness and redemption is at once both completely predictable and utterly offensive. The real story here is not what Brit said, or how his remarks reflect a dominant and desperate Christian narrative of human behavior that is selectively employed by the overprivileged to forgive and forget and profit; no, the real story is Brit’s chutzpah in making this kind of public judgment on national television. Even William Kristol followed up on these remarks with a remarkably humble-sounding (!) refusal to comment on the state of the Tiger’s soul—along with a prediction that he'd come back and win the Masters.

Perhaps this kind of religious moralizing should not be a surprise, coming as it did from a Fox news program. Perhaps this shocking display of religious arrogance is simply another instance in a long line of examples throughout American history of Christians dissing other religions while claiming the superiority of their own. Perhaps more important than any of these possibilities is another element in the religious story of Tiger; an element that has nothing to do with the sacred powers of Christianity or Buddhism or his soul, but everything to do with the sacred powers of sex and sports.

Here's the video for those who missed it.