RE: Managing the B-HEBREW list. A note from the List Owner

From: Elizabeth Grace Frank (egfrank@cais.com)
Date: Tue Jul 30 1996 - 10:46:54 EDT


Our list owner has said:

>The difficulty with asking for "tolerance, civility
>and sympathetic respect for the views of others" is that those who
>would be the most likely to claim such virtues are often those who
>diislike evangelicals for not having these virtues. Since "tolerance"
>is often seen as a vice among evangelicals, to have a non-evangelical
>advocating that they have the virtue of tolerance is going to be like
>mixing oil and water.

This means that you may need ONE bonified evangelical to send
"tolerance" messages to other evangelical christians. It does not
mean that the board should be entirely evangelical.

These texts are religious documents for both jews and christians.
Just as there are some matters of sensitivity that may be best
understood by an evangelical christian, there are other issues that
require a jewish perspective.

I'm uncomfortable with evangelical christians trying to represent
the jewish perspective. I do a lot of jewish-christian dialog, and
its been my experience that even sympathetic christians do not
always understand the jewish perspective. I think therefore it
would be helpful to have people from both faiths on the board.

>helped the scholarly lists more than any other change has. Having
>some board members which can say, "Yes, I too believe that the
>Bible is authoritative in my life and have many of the same beliefs
>as you, but your post is still inappropriate because..." will do
>more for the list than trying to find common ground on the basis
>of scholarly tolerance.

Both religious christians and jews can make this statement. Surely,
you did not mean to imply that ONLY evangelical christians believe
that G-d has an authoritive role in one's life. Surely, you did not
mean that ONLY christians can affirm religious questions while limiting
the scope to scholarly discussions.

I agree that finding scholarly common ground can sometimes be
difficult. As a matter of course, I (I'm jewish) usually try to affirm
someone's religious search even when I offer criticism. I think I
demonstrated that when I made my post on the scope of the list
after the job posts. I'm sure I'm not the only jew who does so.

Yours, beth frank (egfrank@cais.com)



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