{"id":1666,"date":"2009-10-30T08:25:05","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T14:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=1666"},"modified":"2009-10-30T08:25:05","modified_gmt":"2009-10-30T14:25:05","slug":"western-way-of-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=1666","title":{"rendered":"Western Way of Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Culture Warrior Ross Douthat<\/a>, columnist at the New York Times, opines on the coming religious war:<\/p>\n

\n

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle<\/strong> between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.<\/p>\n

Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts<\/strong>. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched<\/strong> Islamic presence across a fault line<\/strong> running from Nigeria to Sudan. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address<\/a> in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged<\/a> Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The riots reference is silly and self-congratulatory, but "the Western way of reason" as an exclusive European notion betrays and ignorance of both the notions of "western" and "reason."  <\/p>\n

Douthat at least, as a graduate of college, ought to know there would be precious little Western way of reason worth giving a crap about without, for instance, Averroe–che il gran commento feo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So it's compatible, to say the least–one wonders, however, about whether Douthat's militant Christianity is.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Culture Warrior Ross Douthat, columnist at the New York Times, opines on the coming religious war: But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam. Here Catholicism and Anglicanism … Continue reading Western Way of Reason<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[581,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ross-douthat-op-ed-writers-sources","category-things-that-are-false"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}