Shhh, keep it to yourself: we can discuss religion

I hear about it again and again. I wonder at times if I’m so much a part of it I can’t see it.

In an e-mail conversation I had a few weeks ago with Father Stephen Felkner, rector of All Saints Anglican Church in Fountain Valley, he wrote to me: “I hope you won’t be offended by my position on bias in the media. To me, it’s as clear as the nose on your face.”

The bias, as he sees it (and I’d said I didn’t), is against Christianity and its worldview.

As many Christians have done, Father Stephen pointed to how the media handled the Muslim protests against depictions of Muhammad drawn by Danish cartoonists. Muslims insisted they were hurt by images they considered to be blasphemous.

Worldwide and especially in the United States, print and broadcast media kowtowed to their objections. Newspapers refrained from publishing and television networks begged off broadcasting the cartoons.

When the protests became whirlwinds of deadly violence, Father Stephen felt the media justified the bloodshed.

It’s hard for me to agree that editors and journalists justified the carnage, which left an estimated 139 dead (285 if deaths in Nigerian riots are counted) and hundreds more injured.

On the other hand, after my cyber-conversation with Father Stephen, I re-read many of the reports of the violent incidents and often found myself tripping over what struck me as a dismissive gloss.

There’s no doubt the media took Muslim opposition to the cartoons seriously. Was it a matter of religious respect or tolerance? Or was it a matter of fear? I know some Christians have wondered aloud if the only way to get taken seriously is to get violent. Not that they intend to.

Father Stephen contrasted the response to Muslim protests of the Muhammad cartoons with reactions to Christian protests of Andres Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine and Chris Ofili’s “The Virgin Mary,” made from paper, oil paint, glitter, polyester resin and elephant dung on linen.

Like the Danish Muhammad cartoons, Serrano’s creation, titled “Piss Christ,” stirred a global controversy when first exhibited in 1989, as did Ofili’s 1996 collage, in which Mary, whose right breast is shaped from elephant dung, is surrounded by crudely-shaped cherubim and seraphim fashioned from photos of female genitalia cut from magazines.

When Christians cried blasphemy, the comeback amounted to “blasphemy, smasphemy ? oh, get over it.” The images were offered to the public ensconced behind Plexiglas to protect them from harm.

A more current and more telling event might be a “South Park” episode aired during Holy Week.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the edgy animated sitcom, featured Muhammad ? along with Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses and Joseph Smith ? in a 2001 episode called “Super Best Friends.” In their two-part “Cartoon Wars,” a sardonic commentary on the fervid Muhammad cartoon controversy, they were going to have the Islamic prophet on the show again.

Network executives told them no way.

A rewritten “Cartoon Wars II” episode takes a jab at them for the decision. Kyle, a regular on “South Park,” tells a network decision-maker, “Either it’s all OK, or none of it is.” Kyle urges him to “do the right thing.”

Instead, the exec censors the appearance of Muhammad in the episode and leaves the rest.

In place of the prophet, a black screen is seen bearing the words, “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Muhammad on their network.” The episode then wraps with a scene of Jesus (who to the repeated chagrin and criticism of Christians has made several “South Park” appearances over the years) and President Bush defecating on one another and an American flag.

To those who complained about Comedy Central’s refusal to include Muhammad in the episode, its executives defended their choice by saying, “In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision.” As far as I can determine, Christians who wondered why Stone and Parker’s potty-humor depiction of Jesus won the network’s blessing received no explanation from the network.

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, asked, “Is Comedy Central trying to suggest that the sure-fire way for Christians to get dung-flinging Jesus off of ‘South Park’ is to riot and burn some buildings down?”

During the uproar over the Muhammad cartoons, Muslims explained to the West time and again that any representation of any of the prophets (among whom Jesus is one) is blasphemous and offensive, but in this case I didn’t hear them raise so much as a mild objection.

After reading my column for the Thursday before Easter titled “Easter attacks are a burden to bear,” several readers e-mailed me (anonymously) to tell me to quit whining. John Boag had the mettle to write a letter to the editor and sign it.

(By the way, an editor wrote that headline, not I. Writers rarely get to write the headlines for anything they write.)

The column enumerated a small part of the implicitly and explicitly anti-Christian books, articles and television shows scheduled for release during Holy Week. With it, Boag wrote, I “joined the choir of whiners singing from the hymnal of Christian persecution.”

I think Father Stephen, for one, would be surprised to hear that.

I didn’t think, or mean to suggest, Christians were particularly disrespected among this nation’s religious. I intended only to note an increasing media trend ? one I gather must garner good enough ratings to be profusely lucrative.

In truth, at the time, I would have sworn all religions in this country enjoyed equal opportunity scorning.

While polls repeatedly show that some 85% of those dwelling in the United States claim to be Christians, it often seems we don’t much care for religion (any religion) having much to do with the way we ? the collective we ? do things.

Being religious has become akin to passing gas, something people expect you to keep to yourself.

Father Stephen and “South Park” have me considering whether that might not be all the more true for Christians.