Memo to Minnesota State Rep.

Monday, May 14, 2001

Memo to Minnesota State Rep. Arlon Lindner, R-Corcoran:

Wake up and smell the incense.

Lindner made news when he announced he’d boycott Wednesday’s visit of the Dalai Lama to a joint session of the Minnesota House and Senate. The Buddhist faith of the Tibetan leader is "incompatible with Christian principles," Lindner said in an e-mail to his colleagues.

"He claims to be a god-king, a leader of the Buddha religion, which historically has been considered a cult because of its anti-biblical teachings concerning the one true Holy God, creator of heaven and earth and his son, Jesus Christ," Lindner wrote.

Lindner’s confidence on these matters is staggering. It’s also unique: Even the Pope has acknowledged the need for humility, when dealing on a personal basis with people of other faiths. As Rep. Mary Ellen Otremba, DFL-Long Prairie, noted on the House floor, the Vatican recently recognized a Buddhist feast day and called for dialogue between Buddhists and Christians.

People need "to overcome all ethnocentric selfishness," the Vatican statement quoted Pope John Paul as saying.

Lindner’s planned boycott and his dismissal of a religion with more than 350 million adherents as a cult, shows how faith at times can make people cruel rather than kind.

As the Gaon of Vilna, an 18th-century Jewish rabbi, put it, religion is like rain: It brings forth both flowers and weeds. Surely, the closed-mindedness with which Lindner ponders the world is a plant of which no religion can be proud.

As importantly, it also violates the spirit of the Constitution in some way. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," read the first words of the Bill of Rights.

If those words mean anything, they mean lawmakers may not show official preference to one faith, regardless of its strength or place in American history. In matters of government, a grand American Unitarianism must apply.

And in St. Paul, that means the Dalai Lama is welcome.

Some 60 House members signed a "protest and dissent" statement scolding Lindner for his comments. They were right to do so.

In civil discourse, some remarks are beyond the pale. And Lindner’s anti-Buddhist statements are among them.