By David A. Sargent,Special to the Sun Journal

LEWISTON – Patience and principle are important elements in dealing with today’s clashes of religion and politics, according to ideas presented by an expert analyst of the Middle East who spoke at Bates College Wednesday night.

Charles Kimball, a professor of comparative religion at Wake Forest University Divinity School, said, “We are at a very pivotal time.”

He added that “What must happen in our world of nation states is that government structures will draw upon religious convictions, but will also find ways to respect and tolerate religious diversity and safeguard the rights of minorities and honor the rule of law.”

Kimball’s presentation was titled, “Hope for the Perilous Journey Ahead: Engaging the Volatile Mix of Religion and Politics in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.”

While only a small number of the world’s Muslim population espouse a policy of violence toward the United States, Kimball said, “there are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands who are angry and frustrated,” and he told the audience these people are in flash points all around the world.

Kimball noted three points from books he has written. First, he emphasized that religion is a powerful force. He said it inspires the best and the worst in people.

The second point is, “The world is awash in weapons of mass destruction,” he said, and the third point is, “It doesn’t take very many people to wreak havoc on a global scale.”

Kimball pointed out that the 9/11 hijackers turned box cutters and domestic airliners into weapons of mass destruction, and Timothy McVey used fertilizer for bomb-making.

He said America can be more effective if it advocates participatory governments rather than insisting on democratization everywhere.

Too often, other countries see America as paying lip service to democracy when we oppose elected officials who we wish had not been elected, he said.

“We, as American citizens, bear a particular responsibility to be much more actively engaged in our own democracy,” Kimball said. “If we hope to model something for the rest of the world, we ought to be modeling it for ourselves.”

Kimball noted the example of South Africa’s overturning apartheid as one of the best examples to follow. He said it happened because there were effective leaders and motivated citizens who demanded reform.

Kimball also said we must always be wary of any country or any person who insists they know or are acting on “an absolute truth.”

He said, “Anyone who thinks they have God in their pocket and they know exactly what God wants for them and for everybody else on the planet, I argue, is a disaster waiting to happen.”

An ordained Baptist minister, Kimball received his degree from Harvard University in comparative religion with specialization in Islamic studies. He has worked closely with Congress, the White House and the State Department for the past 20 years, including a period when he was one of seven Americans who met with the Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iran hostage crisis about 25 years ago.

Kimball delivered the 2006 Bertha May Bell Andrews Lecture at Bates, which since 1975 has been a memorial to a woman who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college.

Her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews of the Bates class of 1940, established the lectureship. Dr. Andrews, now a resident of Florida, was present at Wednesday night’s lecture, as well as other family members including Mark Andrews, who is a freshman at Bates.

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