June 2009 Archives
For religious conservatives, "common ground" means we agree to talk and you agree to compromise.
Throwing the book at Bernard Madoff, Judge Denny Chin pronounced his crimes as "extraordinarily evil." Indeed, one of his victims noted that Dante defined fraud as the worst of all sins, reserving the lowest circle of Hell for those who betray those with whom they share particular bonds of love and trust. That certainly works for Madoff. His victims included many who trusted him as a member of their religious community, a fellow Jew who was, they believed, in business to look out for his people. But more than the individuals, he defrauded the community's institutional core--Hadassah, Yeshiva University, the American Jewish Congress, and many other educational and philanthropic entities. As Jerome Chanes points out in his cover story in the current issue of Religion in the News,
The issue was not that Bernard Madoff had bilked Jewish investors--and some non-Jewish ones--out of $50. It was that he had stolen directly, knowingly, and uncaringly from Jewish communal charity. Jews were enraged by his cynical use of his Jewishness to bilk Jewish communal funds. It was the worst kind of betrayal.Judge Chin noted that he had received not a single letter testifying to Madoff's strength of character or good deeds. Yesterday, his own wife denounced him. In the Divine Comedy, the punishment for the worst betrayers is to be frozen near Satan in a lake called Cocytus, unable to move or to emit a sound for all eternity. Madoff seems well on his way to that place.
The big moralizing about Mark Sanford has begun--I mean, the kind of typically American penchant for reading Large Meanings into the latest celebrity example of old-time human frailties (cf. Simpson, O.J.). Who can resist?
Certainly not the moralists of the New York Times. On Saturday, there was liberal statistics op-ed guy Charles Blow with some charts showing that it's not just Sanford who's hypocritical but the preponderance of states that tend to vote Republican. That is to say, when it comes to rates of divorce, teen birth, and subscriptions to online porn, it's the red states that cluster up at the top, the blue states towards the bottom. Then today comes Ross Douthat, the Times' fresh-baked conservative, with a little pop sociology claiming that it's the middle Americans who go in for romance and adultery and disorderly lives, not the hard-charging meritocrats.
Actually, they're both pretty much saying the same thing. The elites who drive the blue states talk libertinism and practice Puritanism while the ordinary folks who dominate the red states fail to practice what they preach. What gives?
Take their religion, please. As anyone who has lived in the South knows, it's a region that is, as it's always been, typified by a lot of bad behaving and a lot of moralizing religion. That's the whole point. The religion is there to keep the bad behaving in line, and every now and then it manages to. Read this account of the spiritual boot camp the Sanfords hosted at the executive mansion in May. The governor wasn't so much a hypocrite as a backslider. Stuff happens.
Certainly not the moralists of the New York Times. On Saturday, there was liberal statistics op-ed guy Charles Blow with some charts showing that it's not just Sanford who's hypocritical but the preponderance of states that tend to vote Republican. That is to say, when it comes to rates of divorce, teen birth, and subscriptions to online porn, it's the red states that cluster up at the top, the blue states towards the bottom. Then today comes Ross Douthat, the Times' fresh-baked conservative, with a little pop sociology claiming that it's the middle Americans who go in for romance and adultery and disorderly lives, not the hard-charging meritocrats.
Actually, they're both pretty much saying the same thing. The elites who drive the blue states talk libertinism and practice Puritanism while the ordinary folks who dominate the red states fail to practice what they preach. What gives?
Take their religion, please. As anyone who has lived in the South knows, it's a region that is, as it's always been, typified by a lot of bad behaving and a lot of moralizing religion. That's the whole point. The religion is there to keep the bad behaving in line, and every now and then it manages to. Read this account of the spiritual boot camp the Sanfords hosted at the executive mansion in May. The governor wasn't so much a hypocrite as a backslider. Stuff happens.
Amy Sullivan has the scoop on the Obamas' choice of church: Camp David's Evergreen Chapel. A politic move, and probably a wise one: Not only do the Obamas seem to want to be together as a family at Camp David whenever possible (so where else go to church?), but it was going to be a circus if they chose any D.C. congregation. What is Evergreen Chapel? Amy calls it a "non-demonational church," which is not quite accurate. It's a non-sectarian chapel, built with private funds raised by a planning committee of clergy from different faiths, and dedicated in 1991. The non-sectarian aspect of the place did not come without a struggle, as recounted by James Rudin, the rabbi who served on the committee in his capacity as the American Jewish Committee's director of interreligious affairs. The struggle had to do with the eight stained glass windows that adorn the place. Originally, six of them were dedicated to each of six mainline Protestant denominations, one was for Roman Catholicism, and the other featured symbols of various "others."
Rudin, who tells the story in chapter VII of his 2006 book, The Baptizing of America, successfully persuaded the committee that such privileging of Christianity (and Protestant Christianity of a certain kind at that) was not the American way, and in consequence a new set of windows was created featuring more abstract spiritual objects: the sea, an anchor, a mountain, a globe, an open book, a tree of knowledge, a sheaf of wheat, seven flames, a dove, and a lamp with a flame.
Evergreen Chapel does have a presiding chaplain, a military one assigned on a rotating basis by the Navy. The current occupant of that position is a Southern Baptist out of the Marines, whom Amy considers as close as possible to a "polar opposite" of the Obamas' former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. (But maybe not so much: Wright was a Marine too.) In any event, the Obamas chosen church is, strictly speaking, not a church at all, but a place for all faiths, fully achieved as such in a typical exercise of the American civil religion.
Update: Whoops! The White House has told Brody it ain't so. The Great Church Hunt continues. Maybe. Amy sources her story as "Obama has told White House aides."
Further Update: Amy stands by her story, suggesting that, sure, the Obamas will be on the lookout for a regular D.C. church, but not so's you'd notice. Meanwhile, Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is on the case of the current Camp David chaplain, Lt. Carey Cash. Turns out he's part of a hard-core evangelize-the-military ministry--which makes you wonder a little about the Navy's decision to rotate him into the Camp David position in January. From Amy's account, it seems as though there's a generic (evangelical?) Protestant congregation embedded in the formally non-sectarian chapel. Has the place has ever been used for services of other faith traditions?
I'm not so sure that it was such a good idea for Mark Sanford to justify not resigning as governor based on David's retention of the Judean kingship after taking Bathsheba and having her husband killed. God, exceedingly wroth, imposed some pretty severe penalties (conveyed by Nathan the Prophet in II Samuel 12:10-14):
A disclaimer at the beginning of the Thriller film reads, "Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult." OK, so what does it endorse?With apologies to Jacksonologists, for whom this may be a commonplace, as a non-fan I'm struck, viewing it for the first time (!), at the film's exposing of the Jackson self. "I'm not like other boys," Michael tells his date, before turning into a species of werewolf. Really? And then he becomes a zombie, joins the zombies, dances with them. No more the boy next door.
The film marks the apex of Jackson's career, before he descends into freakdom. That skin-whitening wasn't about becoming a white man, it was about becoming his own species of zombie. A zombie is a cadaver that returns to the land of the living as a hideous version of a live person. Jackson was an adult who tried to return to the land of childhood by turning himself into a hideous version of a child. Yes, yes, an outstanding entertainer. But also, by the looks of "Thriller," an angry, tormented guy.
WaPo's Manuel Roig-Franzia's has a story today on that mysterious "C Street" house where Mark Sanford went for some Bible study and help with his sparking problem. It's a Capitol Hill residence associated with "TheFellowship" or "The Family," the secretive religious organization best known for sponsoring the National Prayer Breakfast. The guy with the skinny is Jeff Sharlet, whose book The Family traces the history, current activities, and spiritual ideology of the group. For his initial take (and a peek inside the C Street domicile), look at his 2003 Harper's article, "Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats."While I think Jeff is too alarmist, there certainly is something creepy about The Family. Sure, if this were a century ago, it would be simply one more muscular Christian, Student Volunteer Movement-type exercise in mainstream American evangelicalism--making the world safe for Christian democracy, a la Woodrow Wilson. Its anti-"religion," Jesus-only credo has its roots in America's restorationist tradition. It is establishmentarian, welcoming Democrats as well as Republicans, specializing in networks.
But this is not 1909. A secret society of a global elite getting together to get themselves and the world right with Jesus cannot but seem ominous, even if it doesn't manage to succeed in keeping its members' pants on. (Sen. Ensign--remember him?--lives in the C Street house.) Call it a Protestant Opus Dei. The Family would have done better if Hillary Clinton been managed to become president, since her own involvement with The Family is not insignificant. Perhaps Sanford has inadvertently given Jeff a gift.
In his at times barely comprehensible press conference remarks yesterday, Mark Sanford did manage to make it clear that he'd been spending time wandering through the woods of Bible-based therapy, seeking to recover his moral compass and repair his marriage. It's about what one would expect of a Southern Republican politician these days.But Sanford does not hail from the religious right wing of his party. As noted in Sarah Pulliam's recap of Sanfordiana yesterday, he's kept clear of political evangelicalism, and just last month opined that the religious right has wielded too much influence. In a Back-to-Basics-for-the-GOP column on Politico after the election, his prescriptions had everything to do with small governmentism, with nary a mention of moral values. At the South Carolina state party convention last month, Lindsey Graham heatedly told some libertarian hecklers, "I am not a libertarian. If you are, you're welcome to vote for me and build this party. Sanford rejoined, "I've been accused of being a libertarian and I wear it as a badge of honor."
Sanford's painful exit from the national stage is a blow to the kind of Republican who wrote to the Wall Street Journal a couple of months ago, "Mark Sanford is precisely the type of man this country, particularly in these trying economic times, needs to hear from more." In other words, social conservatives can relax. It's the money boys who have lost one of their own.
The latest issue of Religion in the News is now on line, for those of you who can't wait for your hard copy. The cover story is Jerome Chanes' look at how the Madoff scandal played in the Jewish press--and why it's been such a huge disgrace in the Jewish world. In the Catholic world, Steven Avella traces the rainbow that Timothy Dolan has followed to the Big Apple and Andrew Walsh recounts Benedict XVI's trials with his right wing. On the evangelical front, Christine McMorris explores the world of multiple child Reality TV (what hath "Jon and Kate" wrought?), while Brendan Kelly reviews Ted Haggard's second act. For afficionados of the Episcopal Wars, there's Al Salvato's tale of the Buddhist lay ordinand who would be bishop and Marc Stern's primer on how the American courts adjudicate religious property disputes.
Finally, Dennis Hoover provides the latest chapter in the saga of the Faith-Based Initiative and I offer my editor's perspective on our amazing adventure as purveyors of the Great Religious Identification Story of 2009, and what it says about American religion in our time.
According to a new Gallup poll, confidence in religion is up four points over the past year, with 52 percent of Americans now expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in "the church or organized religion." The big winner in Gallup's annual institutional confidence sweepstakes is the presidency, which shot up from 26 percent to 51 percent, the organized religion level. Wonder why? As for the losers, big business brings up the rear at 16 percent, down four points and trailing Congress itself by a point. The big losers are the banks, down from 32 percent to 22 percent. Thirty years ago it was 60 percent. Wasn't that just before deregulation mania struck?
One of the guilty pleasures I discovered during my turn in the South was following the Southern Baptist Convention, that huge grumpy quasi-denomination that once bestrode the region like a colossus. It's fallen on hardish times of late, what with baptisms down and membership aging. To gin up institutional revival, SBC president Johnny Hunt last month released a Great Commission Resurgence Declaration (GCRD), which comprised:1) A Commitment to Christ's Lordship; 2) A Commitment to Gospel-Centeredness; 3) A Commitment to the Great Commandments; 4) A Commitment to Biblical Inerrancy and Sufficiency; 5) A Commitment to a Healthy Confessional Center; 6) A Commitment to Biblically Healthy Churches; 7) A Commitment to Sound Biblical Preaching; 8) A Commitment to a Methodological Diversity that is Biblically Informed; 9) A Commitment to a More Effective Convention Structure; and 10) A Commitment to Distinctively Christian Families.Looks like pretty unobjectionable stuff for Southern Baptists, doesn't it? Not so fast. The poison pill is number 9, which turns out to entail permitting individual churches to serve the greater SBC weal by giving directly to institutions they choose to support--not, as traditionally, via the Cooperative Program where state conventions and the Executive Committee get their cut. As a result, the Declaration drew the bitter opposition of the guys who run the state conventions and the head of the Executive Committee.
Being an SBC thing, however, the debate managed to get enmeshed in an ongoing theological war over the influence of resurgent Calvinism in the SBC. In his speech to the Convention meeting in Louisville yesterday, Executive Committee president Morris Chapman tied the GCRD to the Calvinists--who, he suggested, were to blame for the denomination's declining fortunes. The GCRD passed anyway, the with result that a report on changes to be made will be presented to the Convention next year in Orlando. Oklahoma pastor/blogger Wade Burleson held his nose and voted for it because he's a big-tent guy.
Speaking of big tents, the Convention did manage to disfellowship Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, which made so bold as to publish pictures of same-sex couples in its membership directory. On the other hand, it has thus far avoided severing its ties with First Baptist Church, Decatur (Ga.), which had the temerity to call a woman pastor a few years ago--not that it's easy to find Julie Pennington-Russell on the church's website. Ah, Decatur Baptist, down the street from my old home, on whose hallowed softball team I used to play! (Glad the SBC never got wind of that.)
There's been a fair amount of div. school-type talk linking Barack Obama to Reinhold Niebuhr, the great political theologian of post-World War II America whose star has of late been in the ascendant. And indeed, Obama (unlike many a politician who once upon a time invoked him--e.g. Jimmy Carter) seems to have actually read and absorbed Niebuhr's Christian realist perspective on man and society. For the latest on Obama as Niebuhrian, check out Hent de Vries' "The Niebuhr Connection: Obama's Deep Pragmatism" over at Immanant Frame.
The closest actual theologian to Niebuhr today is Gary Dorrien, who appropriately enough is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological
Seminary in New York. Dorrien knows Niebuhr's work like the back of his hand, and he's not uncritical of a thinker whose mind changed more than most on the important issues of his day. But in contrast to Niebuhr's current neocon admirers, Dorrien recognizes that he never abandoned the liberal reformism of the social gospellers whose optimism about human nature he made his bones criticizing. Dorrien himself is that kind of dyed-in-the-wool liberal.Over at Religion Dispatches, they've posted "Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?," an adaptation of a lecture given by Dorrien in the Spring. It's very much an exercise in foreign policy analysis a la Niebuhr--detailed in its review of the policy questions, unencumbered by God talk, animated by a clear moral vision. The last sentence puts it all in a nutshell:
Now as much as ever, we need a self-consciously anti-imperial movement that seeks to scale back the military empire and opposes invading any more nations in the Middle East or Latin America or anywhere else.With respect to Iran, Dorrien urges the kind of full-scale diplomatic engagement that gives neocons fits. After a couple of years of negotiating, he says:
The U.S. could declare that it recognizes the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It could acknowledge Iran's right to security within its present borders and its right to be a geopolitical player in the region. It could accept Iran's right to operate a limited enrichment facility with a few hundred centrifuges for peaceful purposes. It could agree to the French nuclear power reactor and support Iran's entry into the World Trade Organization. And it could return seized Iranian assets. In return Iran could be required to cut off its assistance to Hezbollah and Hamas, help to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, maintain a limited nuclear program for peaceful ends verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency, adopt a non-recognition and non-interference approach to Israel, and improve its human rights record.But this is an assessment based on the Spring status quo. Since last week, the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at least as presently constituted, is increasingly open to question, not least by its own people. As Obama himself put it at his press conference today, "And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is its legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States."
Perhaps with a little assist from Obama's Cairo speech, the game in Iran has now changed. And now that it's changed, now that the iron fist of the regime and the democratic aspirations of the populace have been revealed for all to see, the Dorrien scenario looks more problematic. What would Reiny say?
Update: I'm reminded that Dorrien offered his own take on Obama The Niebuhrian, over at IF.
Sen. Chris Dodd, fighting for his political life here in Connecticut, has announced a change of heart on same-sex marriage: He now supports it. Anti-SSM professional Peter Wolfgang of the Family Institute of Connecticut calls Dodd out for political expediency:
Political expediency there may be, but it doesn't have to do with dollars. Dodd's got plenty of them--over $5 million, as compared to less than $45,000 and $20 (!) for possible GOP challengers Sam Caliuguri and Rob Simmons respectively. He's going where the voters are. Just after the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered the state to recognize SSM last October, Nutmeggers supported SSM by 53 percent to 42 percent; two months later, another poll showed 52 percent in favor and 39 percent opposed. With SSM having, in the intervening months, become the law of the land in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire, it's likely that those numbers have bumped up.
Don't look for Wolfgang to be charging Dodd with pandering to a pro-SSM electorate. But the five-term senator may well relish the opportunity to hold his Republican opponent's feet to the fire on the issue.
"He took a position against same-sex marriage when he was running for president because that was the most politically palpable position," Wolfgang said. "Now suddenly he's in favor of same-sex marriage because he is in a very tight campaign for re-election. ... He needs every dollar he can get and he cannot afford to alienate the very well-heeled cultural left."
Political expediency there may be, but it doesn't have to do with dollars. Dodd's got plenty of them--over $5 million, as compared to less than $45,000 and $20 (!) for possible GOP challengers Sam Caliuguri and Rob Simmons respectively. He's going where the voters are. Just after the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered the state to recognize SSM last October, Nutmeggers supported SSM by 53 percent to 42 percent; two months later, another poll showed 52 percent in favor and 39 percent opposed. With SSM having, in the intervening months, become the law of the land in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire, it's likely that those numbers have bumped up.
Don't look for Wolfgang to be charging Dodd with pandering to a pro-SSM electorate. But the five-term senator may well relish the opportunity to hold his Republican opponent's feet to the fire on the issue.
Having discussed the matter in executive session and gotten out of Dodge...er San Antone, the Catholic bishops have now issued a statement on behalf of their comrade, the Ordinary of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who criticized and boycotted his local Catholic university when it bestowed an honorary degree on the President of the United States last month. To wit:
Read the statement. It's D'Arcy's pastoral concern, solicitude, and loving care that they are affirming, not what he actually did. I'd say, for the sake of unanimity, they punted. Liberal claims, in other words, can still be made.
The bishops of the United States express our appreciation and support for our brother bishop, the Most Reverend John D'Arcy. We affirm his pastoral concern for Notre Dame University, his solicitude for its Catholic identity, and his loving care for all those the Lord has given him to sanctify, to teach and to shepherd.John Allen reports this pretty much straight up, with a kicker about how much respect the 78-year-old D'Arcy enjoys among his peers. Dan Gilgoff opines that this "makes it even harder for liberal Catholics to claim that the U.S. bishops who kept quiet about President Obama at Notre Dame represent a "silent majority" that's embarrassed by a minority of outspoken socially conservative bishops." [Update: And this from GinG's William Wan: Catholic Bishops: D'Arcy handled the Obama and Notre Dame incident right."]
Read the statement. It's D'Arcy's pastoral concern, solicitude, and loving care that they are affirming, not what he actually did. I'd say, for the sake of unanimity, they punted. Liberal claims, in other words, can still be made.
Anyone interested in following the fortunes of Son of Faith Based: the Obama Years needs to download "Taking Stock: The Bush Faith-Based Initiative and What Lies Ahead," a Pew-sponsored report of the Rockefeller Institute of Government's Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy released this month. Author David J. Wright gives provides a fine (if at times understated) narrative of the Initiative since it was just a twinkle in John Ashcroft's eye, including the extent of the Bush administration's embedding of the thing in the federal administrative machinery, largely without congressional warrant. As Wright puts it:
Apart from the details, what's striking is how the Initiative came to define the Bush administration as religion--besotted. It proved a boon for secularist groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which saw their membership rolls swell during the Bush years. Probably nothing did more to strengthen the Democratic Party's hand with non-religious voters.
Congrariwise, the Obama administration has hung its own faith-based shingle from the White House to assure the religious that it feels their faith. And it has studiously avoided taking sides in the single most contentious aspect of the Initiative: allowing FBOs to hire only their own religious kind if they so choose. This tangled question now lies buried deep within the bowels of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, awaiting resolution even as the Initiative rolls on, with different rules applying to different federal programs depending on how the relevant provisions of particular laws and executive orders were written.
For example, the Workforce Investment Act, which comes up for reauthorization this year, was only temporarily extended last time because Congress refused to go along with providing the FBO hiring discrimination exemption that the Bush administration wanted. Perhaps the Obama adminstration will dodge the issue by just plumping for the status quo ante. That won't be so easy next year, however, when Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the major federal program for the poor, itself comes up for renewal. TANF was where the country started down the current faith-based road, and it comes with the FBO hiring exemption. There will be major Democratic opposition to continuing the exemptions. WWOD--What Will Obama Do?
Whatever the future may hold, however, and whether or not one agrees with the policy objective, the methodical character, breadth, depth and scale of the Bush Faith-Based Initiative mark it as a remarkable example of executive action.Would that the Bushies had devoted half so much attention to, say, post-Katrina or Iraq reconstruction. That said, the actual impact of the Bush initiative--in terms of shifting the weight of social service provision towards faith-based organizations (FBOs)--was negligeable. Those FBOs that saw their share of the pie increase were the big regional and national agencies, not those at the congregational, municipal, or even statewide levels. So maybe, in the end, this was just another example of Bushian ineffectuality.
Apart from the details, what's striking is how the Initiative came to define the Bush administration as religion--besotted. It proved a boon for secularist groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which saw their membership rolls swell during the Bush years. Probably nothing did more to strengthen the Democratic Party's hand with non-religious voters.
Congrariwise, the Obama administration has hung its own faith-based shingle from the White House to assure the religious that it feels their faith. And it has studiously avoided taking sides in the single most contentious aspect of the Initiative: allowing FBOs to hire only their own religious kind if they so choose. This tangled question now lies buried deep within the bowels of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, awaiting resolution even as the Initiative rolls on, with different rules applying to different federal programs depending on how the relevant provisions of particular laws and executive orders were written.
For example, the Workforce Investment Act, which comes up for reauthorization this year, was only temporarily extended last time because Congress refused to go along with providing the FBO hiring discrimination exemption that the Bush administration wanted. Perhaps the Obama adminstration will dodge the issue by just plumping for the status quo ante. That won't be so easy next year, however, when Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the major federal program for the poor, itself comes up for renewal. TANF was where the country started down the current faith-based road, and it comes with the FBO hiring exemption. There will be major Democratic opposition to continuing the exemptions. WWOD--What Will Obama Do?
According to John Hodgman, the framers of the Constitution "believed that God was a distant, uncaring dungeonmaster."
Props to Missouri for deciding to rename the stretch of highway cleaned up for adoption purposes by neo-Nazis after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish theologian who famously marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. Heschel, who had a nice feel for divine irony, would have been amused. The renaming is to take place this summer, after the governor signs the big transportation bill of which it is a part. I suggest that, to mark the occasion, an invitation be extended to Heschel's daughter Susannah (Trinity '73), who teaches Jewish studies at Dartmouth. Last year she published a magnum opus, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, which deals with a group of German Protestant theologians who in 1939 established an Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life. She has also edited a book of her father's essays, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. She'd do that highway proud.
The constant shouting of "Alahu Akhbar" ("God is Great") by the protesters in Iran has got to be exquisitely annoying to the powers-that-be-shaking there. Known as the Takbir, the phrase is uttered at moments of strong emotion throughout the Muslim world. Along with the wearing of the green (the universal color of Islam), it signifies that this is as Islamic a movement as 1979, when it was also the cry in the street. No counter-revolution here: The Takbir is written 22 times along the border of the central white stripe of the current Iranian flag--the one that supplanted the Shah's imperial ensign with the sword-wielding lion in the center.
Pastordan, whom book-writing has driven over to Religion Dispatches for the nonce, picks up on a post of mine to again sound the clarion against common ground-ism. Meanwhile, over at Focus on the Family, new top dog Jim Daly is barking a new tune:
"When those who are right, left and center all say, 'Let's make abortion rare,' let's meet at that starting point," Daly said. "Let's shove off the rhetoric and get together on practical matters."I predict a W.H. invitation in his future.
It's all over the Las Vegas Sun this morning. Sen. Ensign's decision to fess up had to do with "blackmail" in the sense that he had gotten word that his inamorata's husband, an old Promisekeepers pal, had sent a letter to Fox News' Megyn Kelly asking that she report on Ensign's nefarious pursuit of his wife. So the senator was just getting ahead of the story.
Ironically, there was no story to get ahead of. Doug Hampton's letter is a sad thing, motivated by the desire to expose the cad for all the country to see. But God forbid that some disreputable news outfit like MSNBC do the exposure:
They didn't report, so we didn't (until now) get to decide.
Ironically, there was no story to get ahead of. Doug Hampton's letter is a sad thing, motivated by the desire to expose the cad for all the country to see. But God forbid that some disreputable news outfit like MSNBC do the exposure:
I am bringing this to you and Fox News to address this professionally and correctly. I could have sought the most liberal, Republican hating media to expose this story, but there are people's lives at stake and justice is about proper process as well as outcome.Assuming that the letter reached Kelly, what evidently happened was that Fox contacted Ensign, told him about the letter, let him make his confession, and never made a peep. You kind of wonder what Fox would have done had the senator had been a Democrat.
They didn't report, so we didn't (until now) get to decide.
Because American public life sometimes seems awash in a sea of religion, from time to time it's worth casting one's gaze on parts of the world where the spiritual politics is, like, really real. Take, for example, Burma (or, as the ruling generals have managed to convince the world to call it, Myanmar).
According to report in the Burma Digest, last year Supreme General Than Shwe sent a bunch of his men to steal the mortal remains of a holy monk who, according to the general's occult teacher, was a zawgyi--"an alchemist who has become immortal and attained magical powers through his Art." Than Shwe and his gang proceeded to feast on the corpse, in order to obtain the monk's spiritual powers.
Now comes Seth Mydans' story in today's NYT about the collapse of the 2,300-year-old golden domed Dogan pagoda in Yangon on May 30, just three weeks after it was adorned with a diamond orb and blessed "in the presence of Daw Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of the country's supreme leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, along with an A-list of junta society." The pagoda's sacred umbrella crashed to the ground--not a good omen for the senior gen.
According to report in the Burma Digest, last year Supreme General Than Shwe sent a bunch of his men to steal the mortal remains of a holy monk who, according to the general's occult teacher, was a zawgyi--"an alchemist who has become immortal and attained magical powers through his Art." Than Shwe and his gang proceeded to feast on the corpse, in order to obtain the monk's spiritual powers.
Now comes Seth Mydans' story in today's NYT about the collapse of the 2,300-year-old golden domed Dogan pagoda in Yangon on May 30, just three weeks after it was adorned with a diamond orb and blessed "in the presence of Daw Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of the country's supreme leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, along with an A-list of junta society." The pagoda's sacred umbrella crashed to the ground--not a good omen for the senior gen.
"The fact that the umbrella did not stay was a sign that more bad things are to come, according to astrologers," said Ingreid Jordt, a professor of anthropology at the Unviersity of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and a specialist in Burmese Buddhism.
"It is also a sign that Than Shwe does not have the spiritual power any longer to be able to undertake or reap the benefit from good acts such as this," Professor Jordt said in an e-mail message.
"In a sense, the pagoda repudiated Than Shwe's right to remain ruler."
Eighty-three years ago, Aimee Semple McPherson, the founder of the Church of the Foursquare Gospel, went for a dip in the ocean in L.A., only to emerge a month later in the Mexican desert, looking the worse for wear, with a story about having been abducted. No corroboration of the story ever emerged. It was widely believed that she was covering up a love tryst with the engineer at her church's radio station. The mystery has never been resolved.Now Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), an adherent of McPherson's denomination and pillar of the Far West division of Social Conservatism, has chosen to own up to a year-old affair with his former treasurer, for reasons that are no less mysterious. Yes, there has been a report that the mistress' husband, also a sometime staffer, was seeking to blackmail him for hush money; but that has become less plausible with disclosure that the wayward senator has not asked either the local cops or the feds to investigate. The Las Vegas Sun, which splashes the mystery all over its front page today, reports that--stop the presses--Republican operatives believe Ensign may have a problem with "hypocrisy." Sadly for them, what happens in the GOP stays not in the GOP.
Meanwhile, WaPo's Dana Milbank goes to town with a religion-inflected account of his futile efforts to elicit comment on the story from Ensign's peers in the world's most august deliberative body. GOP senators have the Ensigns in their prayers; they are loving the sinner but not saying much about the sin. As for their Democratic counterparts, they have piously chosen not to comment on the speck in their neighbor's eye.
The object of all the attention himself was on retreat and unavailable for no comment. Confession, of course, is good for the soul, but even the most rectitudinous politicians don't make a habit of doing it in public for no apparent reason. As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters, "I have plenty of sins, and I'm not going to tell you about them."
There's something here that doesn't meet the eye. The size of a log.
Explaining White House opposition to a Truth Commission in her article on Leon Panetta in the current New Yorker, Jane Mayer states:
Obama's political advisers dread any issue that could trigger a culture war and diminish his support among independent voters.This strikes me as the critical lens for viewing the administration's approach to abortion, don't ask/don't tell, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, faith-based hiring rules, immigration, Guantanamo, you name it...
How about a moratorium on punditry about U.S. Iran policy until the situation clarifies?
CPUSA establishes Religion Commission.
Once upon a time, the Episcopal Church was known as the Republican Party at prayer. Oh, OK, it was originally the Anglican Church and it was the Tory Party at prayer. But pretty much same diff. The point is that of late the Republican Party at prayer has been the Southern Baptist Convention, and like the GOP, the SBC has fallen on hard times. Membership is down, ideological squabbling has broken out, the odd firebrand is calling on God to strike down Barack Obama. The gang will be in Louisville next week for their annual love feast, and on the menu will be a resolution from one of their few black pastors congratulating Obama on his election as the nation's first African-American president and calling on Southern Baptists to pray for him and seek God's blessings on his administration. Break out the Bourbon!
Massachusetts. Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire...and (in a few weeks) D.C. Black clergy notwithstanding. Bets on whether the president or his Attorney General (or his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships) will make a statement?
Now Ayatollah Khamenei says he's ordering an investigation in election fraud. I'd say, contrary to Rubin, that the "Obama effect" has been to excite hopes for a new day in Iran; stimulate a wave of anti-regime street demonstrations; reveal the iron fist of the Iranian regime for all to see; split the ayatollahs; and force the supreme leader, who had previously declared Ahmadinejad victorious, into a public turnaround. This is a defeat for current American policy?
What they will say:
If Ahmadinejad wins, it will prove the failure of Obama's outreach strategy and the irredeemability of Iran.
If he loses, it will prove nothing, because in Iran presidents don't matter, and anyway the guy who was elected isn't real reformer.
Still, it's better if Ahmadinejad wins.
Updatum: Ah, this just in from Dan Pipes:
Further Updatum: Michael Rubin in the New York Daily News:
If Ahmadinejad wins, it will prove the failure of Obama's outreach strategy and the irredeemability of Iran.
If he loses, it will prove nothing, because in Iran presidents don't matter, and anyway the guy who was elected isn't real reformer.
Still, it's better if Ahmadinejad wins.
Updatum: Ah, this just in from Dan Pipes:
And so, despite myself, I am rooting for Ahmadinejad.
Further Updatum: Michael Rubin in the New York Daily News:
The Obama Effect?
Iran's election result proves the US formula in the Middle East is not working
Dan Gilgoff's Q&A with Grover Norquist is worth reading all the way through, but I'd call particular attention to his somewhat tendentious reading of religious right history--and its implications for the present. Norquist alleges:
What's altogether clear is that Norquist wants the fight against same-sex marriage to be abandoned. Ideologically, it's on the liberatarian grounds that the government should get out of the marriage business and simply be in the contract enforcement business. But he doubtless sees SSM as a political loser for his side, though he can't quite bring himself to say so. Asked by Dan whether he "personally" supports a ban on SSM, he says, incredibly, "I just haven't focused on it. I'm in D.C. so I don't even get to vote on that stuff." Yah, right.
The new strategy of SSM opponents to obtain via legislation "conscience protections" not to participate in such nuptials is Norquistian self-defense pure and simple. The retreat on abortion, however, will be much harder to arrange.
The religious right did not get started in 1962 with prayer in school. And it didn't get started in '73 with Roe v. Wade. It started in '77 or '78 with the Carter administration's attack on Christian schools and Christian radio stations [pressing for allegedly segregated Christian organizations to lose their tax-exempt status]. That's where all of the organization flowed out of. It was complete self-defense.Now that's the line Randolph Balmer takes in Thy Kingdom Come--at least as far as the Bob Jones case et al. are concerned--but it's not quite right. Yes, abortion was a late arrival on the family values agenda. But the protest that Anita Bryant led (on which Jerry Falwell cut his political) against a Miami gay rights ordinance took place in 1977 too. It did not fit Norquist's "self-defense" model for how the social conservatives should behave, but rather involved a refusal to grant others' rights.
What's altogether clear is that Norquist wants the fight against same-sex marriage to be abandoned. Ideologically, it's on the liberatarian grounds that the government should get out of the marriage business and simply be in the contract enforcement business. But he doubtless sees SSM as a political loser for his side, though he can't quite bring himself to say so. Asked by Dan whether he "personally" supports a ban on SSM, he says, incredibly, "I just haven't focused on it. I'm in D.C. so I don't even get to vote on that stuff." Yah, right.
The new strategy of SSM opponents to obtain via legislation "conscience protections" not to participate in such nuptials is Norquistian self-defense pure and simple. The retreat on abortion, however, will be much harder to arrange.
Thank God for the Haskell County (Ok.) commissioners. Five years ago, at the time of the erection of a Ten Commandments monument in front of the county courthouse, one of them declared,That's what we're trying to live by, that right there....The good Lord died for me. I can stand for him, and I'm going to....I'm a Christian and I believe in this. I think it's a benefit to the community."And so, the three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals had good reason to suspect that, in voting to permit the erection, the government (i.e. the Haskell County Commission) intended an endorsement of religion. And so, in an opinion written by a judge appointed by George W. Bush, the panel unanimously found the monument to be in violation of the First Amendment ban on laws respecting an establishment of religion.
These days, those eager to adorn public spaces with what Moses brought down from Mount Sinai are usually canny enough to say something like what Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow (or one of his legal advisers) put out in justifying the recently passed law he introduced allowing him to pay for a 10 Commandments monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol.
"The monument will simply re-emphasize the history and heritage of our country's legal system," Ritze said in a statement.
Well, if they honored all the roots--including that great Saxon lawgiver Wotan, I'd be happy to go along. But who's kidding whom?"Our laws spring from English law, which is ultimately rooted in Mosaic law. The history of many of our current laws can be traced to the Ten Commandments and this monument will simply acknowledge that heritage," said Ritze, an osteopath by profession.
At least, since the Haskell County decision, neighboring Flores County has backed off following suit--but not because its governing authorities have awoken to the knowledge that to do so would violate an important national principle.
Former Poteau Mayor Don Barnes, who was spearheading the effort for the monument, said after consulting with his legal adviser, it was decided to abandon the local project.
"I hate it. Everybody hates it. No one likes it," Barnes said of the court decision. "But we don't have any choice. We don't want the county to be sued."
Small mercies.
Scott Roeder (the alleged assassin of George Tiller) and James von Brunner (the apparent murderer of a Holocaust Museum security guard yesterday) are similar characters--older white men who have long nutured antipathy to the federal government, fixated on people who threaten their visions of social purity, be they abortion providers or Jews or blacks. Stephen P. Morgan, the much younger white man charged with murdering a Wesleyan University student last month, was likewise fixated on Jews. It is possible, even likely, that reports of Roeder inpelled von Brunner to go and do likewise. But it's also plausible that these luckless, hate-filled, obsessed men have been pushed over the edge by the realization that they are living in Barack Obama's America. Observers have jokingly identified a disease that afflicts Obama's political opponents---Obama Derangement Syndrome. These guys suggest it may be a real condition--and that there are any number of others out there suffering from it. Updatum: From von Brunn charging documents, a note found in his car:
You want my weapons -- this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America's money. Jews control the mass media.
Last week, the Weekly Standard took note of the fact that the Republican party has lately been having a heap of trouble with the least religious segment of the electorate. Naturally, being the Weekly Standard, this fact was not to be attributed to any behavior on the part of the GOP itself, such as its embrace of a conservative religious agenda to appeal to white evangelicals. Author Gary Andres pops the question:
Has the constant drumbeat in the media talking about "culture wars" and GOP links to conservative Christians since the early 1990s moved less-religious voters away from Republicans?But of course it has. The fault, dear readers, lies not with ourselves, but with the Democrat-lovin' media. Should the GOP do something about disabusing irreligious Americans of this woeful misconception? And if so, what? Andres does not presume to say.
OMG: Barack Obama invokes
the name of Jesus in public more the George W. Bush did! That must
mean...what? Politico's Eamon Javers offers a range of non-mutually
exclusive explanations, including Obama's need to demonstrate that he
is a Christian, his desire to appeal to religious conservatives, an
interest in reanimating a Christian Left. It's worth adding that
Obama's secularist base so readily puts up with this because, in
American culture, black folks are assumed to be religious and to give
voice to their spiritual commitments.
What really counts, however, is the extent to which politicians associated with the religious right hide their light under a bushel on the national stage. During last year's campaign, Sarah Palin's clammed up almost completely when asked about her faith. Mike Huckabee, too, dialed his Baptist ministerial past down to zero, and made sure that no one was able to get hold of his old sermons. And George W. hissef never gave his testimony to a general audience after acknowledging Jesus as his personal philosopher and savior at that Iowa candidates' debate in December 1999. For all the chatter about how the Democrats are trying to shout God out of the public square, it's the Republicans who keep their tongues zipped. Newt Gingrich's recent religious effusions are striking for their rarity.
More important than public invocations is how politicians' religious convictions may actually affect their public acts. And here, the story of how President Bush sought to enlist French support for the war in Iraq by invoking Gog and Magog is instructive (not to say terrifying).
It
seems that French President Jacques Chirac was puzzled by Bush's
mentioning this prophesied war against Israel (cf. Ezechiel) that he
instructed his people to find out what the hell Bush was talking about.
Rather than have the thing get into Parisian salon circles, they
contacted a professor in Lausanne, who explained the Biblical
references. He later disclosed the conversation in an article in the school newspaper a couple of years ago. Now comes confirmation from Chirac himself. (See Clive Hamilton's post on
the subject.)
Not to belabor the point, but it does seem as if Bush took us to war with visions of an End Times scenario playing in his head. I'm generally resistant to the liberal nightmare of hordes of American premillennialists waiting on the Rapture, but when they write the history of our time, George Bush's religious imagination has got to be in there, however often he mentioned Jesus.
What really counts, however, is the extent to which politicians associated with the religious right hide their light under a bushel on the national stage. During last year's campaign, Sarah Palin's clammed up almost completely when asked about her faith. Mike Huckabee, too, dialed his Baptist ministerial past down to zero, and made sure that no one was able to get hold of his old sermons. And George W. hissef never gave his testimony to a general audience after acknowledging Jesus as his personal philosopher and savior at that Iowa candidates' debate in December 1999. For all the chatter about how the Democrats are trying to shout God out of the public square, it's the Republicans who keep their tongues zipped. Newt Gingrich's recent religious effusions are striking for their rarity.
More important than public invocations is how politicians' religious convictions may actually affect their public acts. And here, the story of how President Bush sought to enlist French support for the war in Iraq by invoking Gog and Magog is instructive (not to say terrifying).
It
seems that French President Jacques Chirac was puzzled by Bush's
mentioning this prophesied war against Israel (cf. Ezechiel) that he
instructed his people to find out what the hell Bush was talking about.
Rather than have the thing get into Parisian salon circles, they
contacted a professor in Lausanne, who explained the Biblical
references. He later disclosed the conversation in an article in the school newspaper a couple of years ago. Now comes confirmation from Chirac himself. (See Clive Hamilton's post on
the subject.) Not to belabor the point, but it does seem as if Bush took us to war with visions of an End Times scenario playing in his head. I'm generally resistant to the liberal nightmare of hordes of American premillennialists waiting on the Rapture, but when they write the history of our time, George Bush's religious imagination has got to be in there, however often he mentioned Jesus.
Continue reading Naming Jesus.
Once upon a time, when the Contract with America beguiled a people tired of a Democratic-run Congress, Newt Gingrich and Grover were allies, bomb-throwing peas in a pod ready to achieve congressional power by any means necessary. They made common cause with religious conservatives because they needed 'em in their low-tax, small- government coalition. Norquist is still pretty much where he's always been, but as one of the shrewdest of conservative heads has come to the conclusion that religious conservatives are dragging the cause down. As Jacqui Salmon reports over on Ging:
Norquist said conservative Christian leaders are basically too aggressive. They should be playing more defense and less offense, he says, because they're scaring the bejeezuz out of everyone who's not in their corner.
Newt, by contrast, has traveled the Damascus road, not merely converting the Roman Catholicism but taking up vintage 1980s religious right rhetoric and cranking it up a notch. Indeed, he went so far as to say the other day,The Christian right should adopt more of the attitude of "leave me alone and let me raise my kids" and not "everybody agrees with me, therefore you have to do what I say," according to Norquist.
"The first job we have as Americans is to reach out to everybody in the country who is not yet saved and to help them understand the spiritual basis of a creator-endowed society."
I'm not entirely sure that most of the people who usually talk this way would regard Newt, the Baptist-turned-Catholic, as among the saved, but never mind. The question is what he thinks he's accomplishing with this kind of talk. I don't underestimate Newt's astuteness as a political agitator, but Norquist's assessment does seem more grounded in current realities. If it's the presidential bug that's bitten Gingrich, then perhaps his idea is to make himself so thoroughly acceptable to religious conservatives that when it comes time to pivot toward his long-held economic convictions, he'll have them, if not in his pocket, at least at his beck and call.
Say what you like about, George W. Bush's Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives had a real public policy commitment; to wit: "Our Vision is to educate and assist new and
existing Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to apply and
qualify for competitive Federal Funding." Before his administration was run over by the events of 9/11, George Bush's most notable--only notable?--policy commitment was to enable religious organizations to put their faith-based shoulders to the public wheel with the help of government funds. He hired the country's most distinguished academic advocate of faith-based social service provision, John DiIulio, to run the office, and though DiIulio soon departed in anger, federal legislation hit a wall, and the operation became mired in partisan political finagling (see David Kuo's Tempting Faith), the animating vision of the thing remained in place.
So it was natural that, when Barack Obama announced that he would continue the office under new management, the assumption was that it would have basically the purpose in mind, only in a Democratic way. (For example, on the bitterly contested issue of whether FBOs could discriminate in hiring for publicly funded positions, candidate Obama said no way.) After all, the Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships sounds like just another name for the same thing.
But now, in the sixth month of the new administration's existence, it is becoming clear that it bears only a passing a resemblance to its predecessor. For starters, a large amount of its energy has been spent on creating and managing a 25-person Advisory Board whose mission (according to William Wan's GinG account of its conference call last week) is "to find ways faith groups and government can work together on issues ranging from climate change to fatherless families to abortion rates."
In fact, there's nary a mention of faith-based social service provision as such, the Bush office's raison d'etre. The hiring issue has been off-loaded onto the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The bottom line is that Obama has turned the office into a broad-gauged exercise in religious outreach, including on the international front. "Neighborhood" is pretty much a dodge. What we've really got is, simply, an Office of Faith-Based Partnerships.
So it was natural that, when Barack Obama announced that he would continue the office under new management, the assumption was that it would have basically the purpose in mind, only in a Democratic way. (For example, on the bitterly contested issue of whether FBOs could discriminate in hiring for publicly funded positions, candidate Obama said no way.) After all, the Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships sounds like just another name for the same thing.
But now, in the sixth month of the new administration's existence, it is becoming clear that it bears only a passing a resemblance to its predecessor. For starters, a large amount of its energy has been spent on creating and managing a 25-person Advisory Board whose mission (according to William Wan's GinG account of its conference call last week) is "to find ways faith groups and government can work together on issues ranging from climate change to fatherless families to abortion rates."
In fact, there's nary a mention of faith-based social service provision as such, the Bush office's raison d'etre. The hiring issue has been off-loaded onto the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The bottom line is that Obama has turned the office into a broad-gauged exercise in religious outreach, including on the international front. "Neighborhood" is pretty much a dodge. What we've really got is, simply, an Office of Faith-Based Partnerships.
Former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor now considers himself a Jew. At least he also still considers himself a Christian.
The 1st Biennial Religion and American Culture Conference went off nicely in Indianapolis, marking as it did the 20th anniversary of IUPUI's Center for the study of the same. A formal proclamation, complete with numerous whereases and signed by the governor and the mayor declared a statewide Day in celebration, and there was as much jollity at the banquet as one is likely to get from a hundred or so religion scholars gathered in one place where there's an open bar.The focus of the conference was "meta"--concerned with the contemplation of the difference between humanistic and social scientific study of American religion. The historians far outnumbered the sociologists, but the latter held their own and everyone was polite. While interdisciplinarity came in for a good deal of hopeful praise, there were enough recusants to keep things interesting. By and large, the sociologists expressed no doubts about what they're about; the main challenge for them is finding the funding to enable them to do it. They're pretty marginal figures in what remains a secularist discipline--tolerated and even occasionally hired provided that they also work in some other area, like gender or class or family.
As for the historians, they seemed pretty confident about their place in the world. Most of them work in eras--e.g. antebellum America--where few would challenge the usefulness of knowing something about religion. The Big Question that has disturbed the field of Ameican religious history over the past generation has been whether or not it's OK to do a Grand Narrative. Grand narratives, especially ones centering on Puritans and pan-Protestantism have been seen as hegemonic, belittling of all the minority and "subaltern" religious groups that, allegedly, had nothing to do with all that. But judging by the nearly unanimous show of hands, the Grand Narratives is back, even among highly theory-conscious younger scholars.
Why? In part, if you're teaching a survey course, it's hard not to provide students with some kind of narrative coherence, especially if you're an historian. Plus a story that's only mixed pickles gets tiresome. But I'd suggest something else. A grand narrative that culminates with Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and the religious right is not an especially appealing one to the community of American religious historians that I know. On the other hand, one that culminates in Barack Obama--well that one suggests (to say nothing else) that all those minority and subaltern groups may now be climbing into the saddle. Whig history is born again!
Three years ago, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then archbishop of Washington, gave Wolf Blitzer to understand that he was OK with same-sex civil unions (though he quickly issued a "clarification" making it clear that he did not actually support them). Are the Dolan-led New York bishops, in their notably mild statement against New York's SSM bill, sending the same signal?
If there are injustices against those in relationships other than marriage, those injustices can certainly be reformed and corrected in a way other than by drastically redefining marriage.I's say so.
Sixty percent of weekly churchgoers favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. And 58 percent of conservatives. And 57 percent of Southerners. Bets on when the deal is done? I predict by Thanksgiving.
I actually intended to tell you how impressed I am with
your President. Everything sounded perfect to me .Only one question: will he be
able to deliver, i.e. to twist arms strongly enough?
Not, it seems, an outlier.
Not, it seems, an outlier.
The commentary on Obama's speech is so voluminous that I'm not inclined at this point to add much to it. Except to note just how much attention the president gave to religion itself. No American leader, of course, has ever been able to come close to Obama's personal experience of Islam. But neither has one, so far as I know, has ever spoken so directly and at such length about the place of religion in human society. (And I wouldn't make an exception for Jimmy Carter.) Put the Cairo speech together with Obama's address on religion at the 2006 Call to Renewal conference, and you've got something that goes well beyond the usual anodyne public remarks that politicians make when they address the subject in public.
Note: I'm in Indianapolis for a two-day conference on American religious studies hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI. No twittering or live blogging (God forbid), but I expect there will be some worthwhile things to report.
Note: I'm in Indianapolis for a two-day conference on American religious studies hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI. No twittering or live blogging (God forbid), but I expect there will be some worthwhile things to report.
In his much awaited speech today, Obama said:
Actually, it's between one and two million Muslims in America, in all but the most self-serving estimates by Muslim organizations. The Trinity American Religious Identification Survey--54,000 respondents surveyed in 2008--has Muslims at .6 percent of the adult population, equal to 1,349,000 souls.
Much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President. But my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores - that includes nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today who enjoy incomes and education that are higher than average.
With New England now five-sixths on board with same-sex marriage, you figure those planning for campaigns in other states would be embracing what worked up here by way of devising their own strategies. But judging by a new report from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's National Religious Leadership Roundtable, I'm not so sure. The report, by Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, argues at great length for the need to include religious partners in future pro-SSM efforts in California. (Same goes for another new report, on Michigan.) Fine.
But what's clear from the New England experience is that it was not having pro-SMM religious folks around that made the difference. It was providing assurances that religious institutions opposed to SSM would not be forced to act against their convictions. In short, "marriage equality" wins when coupled with "religious liberty." If I were organizing an SSM campaign, I'd be looking especially for people who oppose SSM on religious grounds but back it on equality grounds, provided there are religious protections.
Update: At a conference call held by the Center for American Progress to discuss the reports today, Gene Robinson (the gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire) independently brought up the importance of religious reassurances in the New Hampshire campaign. From the discussion among the reports' authors, it seemed clear that this was 1) too new for the reports to have taken account of; and 2) likely to be part of future efforts.
But what's clear from the New England experience is that it was not having pro-SMM religious folks around that made the difference. It was providing assurances that religious institutions opposed to SSM would not be forced to act against their convictions. In short, "marriage equality" wins when coupled with "religious liberty." If I were organizing an SSM campaign, I'd be looking especially for people who oppose SSM on religious grounds but back it on equality grounds, provided there are religious protections.
Update: At a conference call held by the Center for American Progress to discuss the reports today, Gene Robinson (the gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire) independently brought up the importance of religious reassurances in the New Hampshire campaign. From the discussion among the reports' authors, it seemed clear that this was 1) too new for the reports to have taken account of; and 2) likely to be part of future efforts.
Final piece of same-sex marriage legislation passes both houses of New Hampshire legislature and gov. says he'll sign today--making New England five for six on the marriage equality front. "Let's vote this one last time. Church and state should be separate," said Rep. Anthony DiFruscia, R-Windham, who helped craft the final compromise language.
In the Senate, Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Deborah Reynolds, D-Plymouth, said the language in the amendment strikes a balance that provides "equal rights for all and the right to religious freedom."
That's New England separationism for you.Yo, Rhode Island! What would Roger Williams do?
H/T to Gilgoff for good reporting on a White House conference call with religious leaders last month to prepare for the president's speech in Cairo tomorrow. OFANP aides were on the phone--in their international interfaith relations capacity. So how will Obama do the Abrahamic Tango?
Back to the Moral Values debate. A recent Pew survey shows that between November 2004 and now Moral Values has slipped from 27 percent to 10 percent as the issue that "would matter most in your presidential vote." Lo and behold, the economy has gone from 21 percent to 50 percent. Is this surprising? Hardly.
So what's the debate? Well, Gilgoff and Dionne are taking the decline in Moral Values as culturally and politically significant, while over at Bold Faith Type, Beth Dahlman rehearses the liberal critique of 2004 as the "Moral Values Election"--i.e. Moral Values was a bad category, and the fact that a plurality of voters selected it created a lot of sound and fury but signified nothing.
But actually, Moral Values did mean something. What it pointed to was the evangelical vote, as John Green and I showed here. Way disproportionately, evangelical voters selected Moral Values as their most important issues, with the result that Bush won those regions of the country where Moral Values came in first, and lost those regions where it didn't. The lesson of this Pew Survey, then, is this: Since 2004, evangelicals have moved away from choosing Moral Values as their most important issue. Politicians would be wise to take note, especially Republican ones.
So what's the debate? Well, Gilgoff and Dionne are taking the decline in Moral Values as culturally and politically significant, while over at Bold Faith Type, Beth Dahlman rehearses the liberal critique of 2004 as the "Moral Values Election"--i.e. Moral Values was a bad category, and the fact that a plurality of voters selected it created a lot of sound and fury but signified nothing.
But actually, Moral Values did mean something. What it pointed to was the evangelical vote, as John Green and I showed here. Way disproportionately, evangelical voters selected Moral Values as their most important issues, with the result that Bush won those regions of the country where Moral Values came in first, and lost those regions where it didn't. The lesson of this Pew Survey, then, is this: Since 2004, evangelicals have moved away from choosing Moral Values as their most important issue. Politicians would be wise to take note, especially Republican ones.
A second Lenexa regular, Vince Milum, has checked in as follows:
Hi Mark, You must have good Lenexa outreach as I am also a "regular reader in Lenexa." Each month, we host "Philosophy Parties" here in Lenexa except (unfortunately) for the month of June which we utilize to take vacation time. So a better reading of the community pulse won't be readily ascertained for us until the third week in July when we next meet. -VinceWith bated breath, we await the Lenexa philosophers' report.
As President Obama heads off for Araby, the evangelical drums are beating out a pro-Israel tattoo. The Jerusalem Post is promoting a new poll by the Joshua Project showing lots of American Christian--especially evangelicals--prepared to agree that they have a "biblical and moral obligation" to support the Jewish state. This, saith Brody, means that the president is "playing with evangelical fire" if he seems to be pushing Israel too hard by, say, supporting a division of Jerusalem or demanding an end to settlement-building. Would that be the fire next time?
So while we're waiting
So while we're waiting
Our regular reader from Lenexa--Stephen Suh by name, Cogitamus blogger by fame--sends in this report from Kansas:
I'd be interested in hearing from the regular reader in Lenexa, KS about local reaction to Roeder's arrest. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure that's me, so I'll give it a shot. Take all this with a grain of salt, of course. It's the big story, of course, but it's surprisingly not something that everyone is talking about - again, this is in my experience. Johnson County, KS, which contains Lenexa, Merriam (Scott Roeder's home) and several other cities, has changed quite a bit over the last few decades. One of the main ways is to move away from Operation Rescue/Phill Kline politics toward the center. In the 2006 AG election, Morrison - who won - was from Johnson County, but so was Kline, and we led the way in securing that election's outcome. When the county GOP pulled a swifty and installed Kline as DA as retribution, the local election office reported a surge in party switchers. And of course the county GOP sent Kline packing last year to much rejoicing. We were sick of how much time Kline spent in Wichita conspiring with Operation Rescue against Tiller even after he became the Johnson County DA. We weren't happy when he went after Planned Parenthood - and when his conduct when prosecuting Edwin Hall, a man who murdered a local high school student was rather less than stellar. So I believe that while there are many far-right conservatives in this area, most people are in a mushy middle, and they're sick of right-wing extremists. I think people are embarrassed, that even those who oppose abortion rights and have generally felt strongly negative feelings toward Dr. Tiller are uncomfortable with their compatriots, even if they won't admit it publicly.Thanks for the fill, Stephen.
Sean Michael Winters offers a smart response (you can ignore the kind words about me) to my post about the Tiller murder, Bishop Finn, and the moral consequences of inflammatory rhetoric. Winters' suggestion is that the rhetoric of war used by Finn amounts to a confession of impotence.I fear that the reason for the warfare language, and for the Holocaust comparisons, is not that it gets people worked up. My guess is that the attendees at a Gospel of Life Convention were already worked up....No, I suspect the warfare language stems, in part, from a different desire, a desire to be listened to and obeyed. A general is obeyed, no questions asked. Some of our bishops, alas, know that their own flocks are no longer listening to them and instead of analyzing why, they lash out and use inappropriate metaphors that cast themselves in the role of a man to be listened to and obeyed.
Unlike his Kansas sidekicks (Archbishop Naumann & co.), Finn has not yet managed to issue a statement on the Tiller murder. On the bully pulpit front, he seems too busy with Missouri's recent revival of executions. Yesterday, for example, he issued a clemency plea on behalf of Reginald Clemons, who is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on June 17. But what about the fact that his "We are at war" speech was delivered just 10 miles from Scott Roeder's house, 6 weeks ago?
Request: I'd be interested in hearing from the regular reader in Lenexa, KS about local reaction to Roeder's arrest.
According to a new Gallup poll, nearly half of all Republicans are non-Hispanic whites who say they attend worship once a week or more. Only one-fifth of Democrats fall into this category and--note this--only a quarter of Independents do. By contrast, 48 percent of Independents, 44 percent of Dems, and 40 percent of Republicans are non-Hispanic whites who attend worship less frequently.
Now, if you're trying to figure out a successful future for the GOP, the best target is those less religious, non-Hispanic white Independents. Independents are swing voters, and that's the biggest bloc of them. They also happen to look like nine-tenths of your existing members. But you're not going to appeal to them by pushing your pro-life, anti-gay marriage agenda. You've got to dial back on the social conservatism.
Now, if you're trying to figure out a successful future for the GOP, the best target is those less religious, non-Hispanic white Independents. Independents are swing voters, and that's the biggest bloc of them. They also happen to look like nine-tenths of your existing members. But you're not going to appeal to them by pushing your pro-life, anti-gay marriage agenda. You've got to dial back on the social conservatism.
Judy Thomas of the Kansas City Star has put together a good, quick profile. He is a long-timer on the anti-abortion fringe, and as part of the Freemen movement has been off the grid in other ways as well. He subscribes to an anti-abortion magazine called Prayer and Action News, which seems to be linked to the radical anti-abortion Army of God. The magazine once printed the AOG Manual, which makes the case for killing abortion providers. At the top of its website is this reaction to the killing of George Tiller:
A great day for unborn children scheduled to be murdered by Babykilling Abortionist George Tiller.Further down, the website lionizes Paul Hill as "American Hero." Hill was executed in Florida in 2003 for the murder of two abortion providers in Pensacola in 1994.
Now those children lives are spared from the Kansas BabyButcher, George Tiller.
George Tiller reaped what he sowed and is now in eternal hell.
Psalm 55:15 Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.
