Fareed Zakaria: evaluation

Transcript context

…What did you learn from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer? I went to a high Anglican school in India until 12th grade. We’d start every morning singing a hymn, reciting a prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer. I learned probably two things. One was a reverence for tradition, and in particular, I loved the hymnal. I think Britain’s great contribution to music is religious music. It doesn’t have anything to compete with the Germans and the Italians in opera and things like that. Religious music, I think the Brits and the English have done particularly well. The second thing I would say is an admiration for Christianity for its extraordinary emphasis on being nice to people who have not been lucky in life. I would say that’s, to me, the central message of Christianity that I take, certainly from the Sermon on the Mount, and it’s imbued through the Book of Common Prayer: to be nice to the people who have been less fortunate than you. Be nice to poor people. Recognize that in God’s kingdom, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. There is an enormous emphasis on the idea that those things that make you powerful in this world are not the things that really matter, that your dignity as a human being doesn’t come from that. I think that’s a very powerful idea. It’s a very revolutionary idea. Tom Holland has a very good book about this. He’s a wonderful historian in Britain. I think it’s called Dominion. Yes, he’s been a guest.…

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