Second Thoughts on Peter Khan
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- Category: Brendan Cook's Column
- Created: Sunday, 02 August 2009 13:54
- Published: Sunday, 02 August 2009 13:51
- Written by Brendan Cook
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I first wrote about one of Peter Khan’s addresses more than four years ago. I was concerned at the time because he was part of the highest administrative body in the Baha’i Faith and because his words were being studied in my community. This time around, my attitude has changed. I don’t know what’s being studied in the Toronto Baha’i community these days, and I don’t care that Peter Khan remains a member of the Universal House of Justice. I’m writing now because I see something to learn in Peter Khan’s latest address. His speech is instructive because it illustrates the religious impulse at its worst. In the space of a few words, he makes his listeners an offer which is at once deeply immoral and profoundly false. He promises us something that we can never have in exchange for something that we should never give up. More explicitly than many religious leaders, Peter Khan appeals to the less admirable aspects of the human personality. And all of us can profit from considering how he does this.