Conversations for the Common Good

Rich and Poor, Richer and Poorer

2011-05-10T13:31:00.000-05:00

It is unfortunate that so many have taken Jesus’ words, “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me (Mt 26:11 nrsv), as an explanation for why there are poor people, as a rationalization for their permanence, and as a justification for indifference and inattention to them. They’re here – always have been and always will be – and since there is little that can be done to change the unchangeable, we should just accept it and get on with our own lives. Or so the conventional thinking goes.

In the meantime, the factors that contribute to maintaining the state of poverty and the fall of many into it go unchallenged in this wealthy country by the rulers and ruled alike. But the flip-side of rationalizing poverty turns out to be a justification of wealth; the poor have only themselves to blame for their condition, just like the wealthy have only themselves to laud for their fortunes. So, just as the factors contributing to poverty go unchecked, so, too, the factors that contribute to wealth go unchecked.

Very few are asking about why it is that so many people are getting further and further behind economically while comparatively few are leaping ahead at seemingly mach speed. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that many are unaware of what sociologists and economists refer to as “income inequality,” and for those that are aware of it, their estimation of it is considerably less than it actually is.

Needless to say, the pronounced inequality in wealth is also an inequality in socioeconomic status and power. As long as the “haves” can succeed not only in acquiring wealth but also in explaining and justifying it, the “have-nots” will continue their own struggle for subsistence and survival. For the most part, and certainly by comparison, the poor are unorganized and ill-equipped to effect change in their circumstances; they don’t have politicians and lobbyists looking out for their interests.

From an ethical perspective, religious and non-religious people, believers of good faith and non-believers of good conscience, ought to concern themselves with the issue of income inequality because it is an unjust and dehumanizing scourge on our social order. Many economists note that it is a very difficult issue to handle and public policy advocates cannot agree among themselves about the extent of the problem or the ways to ameliorate it. But when it is examined “by the numbers,” it is a problem that is growing, underlining not only expanding social and economic inequality, but also a rising tide of human suffering and polarization.

The numbers on this issue are heart-wrenching. For those who like statistics in graphs and charts, there is one excellent set gathered at Mother Jones, another at Inequality.org, and one at Working Group on Extreme Inequality.

In late 2010, this issue received modest attention in the news media when the Census Bureau released results from its periodic American Community Survey. Major media outlets that gave the report some attention noted that income inequality reached a new high in 2009. Using one of several different indices of measurement, the report notes that in 2009 the aggregate income received by the bottom fifth of all income earners was 3.4% of the total income. The top fifth of all income earners received fully half of all income, or 50.3%. The highest fifth had incomes of $100,000 or more, and the lowest fifth had incomes of $20,454 or less.

According to the Census Bureau, since 1967 when they began monitoring household income, four/fifths or 80% of U.S. households have seen a decline in their share of the national income. Over the past forty-plus years, the percentage of total income for the lowest fifth has declined from 4.0% to 3.4%; the second fifth has declined from 10.8% to 8.6%; the third fifth from 16.8% to 14.6%; and the fourth fifth from 24.2% to 23.2%.

Of special note, however, is the fact that the highest fifth alone saw an increase in their aggregate income; in 1967 they received 43.6% of all income, but in 2009 they received 50.3%, an increase of 15.3% in their share.

At the same time, the top 5% of income receivers saw their share rise from 17.2% percent to 21.7% percent of all incomes received in this country, an increase of 26.1%!

According to Emmanuel Saez, professor of economics at UC-Berkeley, the top 1% of income receivers in 2009 brought home $1.1 million. The top one-hundredth of one percent brought home $27.3 million.

Scholars of antiquity estimate that in the days of Jesus and Paul, when monarchs ruled and the masses were essentially impoverished and subsisting on very little, the distribution of surplus production and wealth was confined to a very tiny minority, principally the ruling monarch and the aristocracy who didn’t actually dirty their hands with labor. In his book, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (University of North Carolina Press, 1984), Gerhard Lenski, for example, estimates that the governing and ruling class constituted about 2% of a nation’s population, but they in turn owned and controlled 50-67% of the wealth, primarily in the form of land and government assets. (See also K. C. Hanson and Douglas E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts [Augsburg Fortress, 1998]).

On the other hand, the peasants who lived in towns and villages and provided the labor to work the land to provide the wealth for the ruling class constituted upwards of 70% of the population. These lived literally from hand-to-mouth in volatile economic circumstances and in a cultural context where one could not aspire to rise up in social mobility; rather, one could only hope not to fall further down into more destructive impoverishment.

This socioeconomic stratification evident in ancient and medieval agrarian societies is referred to by Lenski and others as “proprietary theory of the state,” a view in which “the state is a piece of property that its owners may use, within rather broad and ill-defined limits, for their personal advantages. Guided by this theory, agrarian rulers and governing classes saw nothing immoral in the use of what we (not they) would call ‘public office’ for private gain. To them, it was simply the legitimate use of what they commonly regarded as their ‘patrimony’” (Human Societies: A Macrolevel Introduction to Sociology [McGraw-Hill, 1970], p. 258).

Functionally, when one considers the “numbers” indicative of income inequality in the U.S., we have our own version of the proprietary state going on. When 73% of aggregate income is acquired by 40% of the population, that leaves precious little for the remaining citizens and residents to seek and secure the “American Dream” by any meaningful measure. And when wealth controls both the public media and the political process (including both campaigns and lobbying), there is little reason to expect justice to be done for those who, for lack of resources, cannot exercise significant socioeconomic and political power. Both our economic system and our system of government have favored the wealthy, especially since the end of Second World War. The more you have, the more you can get; the less you have, the more will be taken from you – this seems to be the way it’s going. One need look no further than the Ayn Rand-inspired budget proposal of Rep. Paul Ryan, or the proposed tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of safety-net programs for the more vulnerable among us.

True, the gap between the wealthy and the poor diminished somewhat in the first half of the century now passed. But beginning in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, the expansion of this gap has taken a slow but steady trajectory to its current level.

As to why this is so, there is very little agreement. In a series of articles in 2010 in Slate, Timothy Noah unearthed numbers and reasons why the typical explanations for inequality in income don’t hold up under scrutiny. In particular, he examined race and gender, parenthood status, immigration, computerization and technology, government programs and tax policy, organized labor, international manufacturing and trade, the decline in education, and none of these—singly or all together—can be shown to be the cause of our income inequality because offsetting conditions, circumstances and histories can be found (e.g., loss of jobs to computerization can be offset by new jobs that make the computers, or immigration may have a negative impact on non-skilled and low-wage workers, but no effect at all on middle-income earners).

So what, then, is the cause of income inequality? The jury is still out on that. Economists do not agree and policy wonks are equally divided on corrective steps.

But many except the most hard-core conservative capitalists believe that the continuation – to say nothing of the expansion – of this inequality is having harmful and undesirable effects on our society. Anger and polarization are on the increase, posing a threat to any semblance of national unity. Quality of life is diminishing for many: financial pressures put stress on marriage and family, and planning for the future is difficult if one cannot be certain of the conditions one will face. We are becoming a nation of enclaves of the very wealthy and ghettos of the impoverished. We are losing the capacity to trust and collaborate with one another, and this cannot help but severely alter the social and moral fabric of our communities. In place of the common good, we find increases in physical and mental illness and instances of violence.

This inequality has a disproportionate effect across the range of communities, rural, suburban, urban and exurban. As the recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown, there are significant health disparities that are differentially found across economic, racial/ethnic and social groups, thus underscoring the connection between low economic status and high morbidity and mortality rates.

And the poverty rate continues to climb. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2009, 14.3% of U.S. residents lived in poverty, and this represents an 8% increase over 2008. The rate of poverty in racial/ethnic communities stands at 9.4% for non-Hispanic Whites, 25.8% for Blacks, and 25.3% for Hispanics, all increased from 2008. Only Asians saw no increase in their rate, standing at 12.5%. Moreover, 20.7% of children live in poverty, as do 12.9% of those between the ages of 18 and 64. Those aged 65 and older are less likely to be in poverty since their rate fell from 9.7% to 8.9%.

A society that can find ways to explain, rationalize, and justify the inequality expressed in these numbers is a society that has abandoned even the pretense to equality, to say nothing of fairness and justice. Equality of opportunity is a fiction now. What is equal about opportunities to flourish when a CEO can make 343 times the wage of a typical American worker, or when a new college graduate can find nothing but low-skilled jobs and end up moving back home?

A religionist might well agree with the author of Proverbs 22:2, who wrote: “The rich and the poor have this in common: The Lord is the maker of them all.” But it is dissembling and disingenuous to claim that the One who made both rich and poor has determined or predestined the rich to be rich and the poor to be poor. There is simply too much criticism of the rich and too much advocacy for the poor in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to believe that the Creator has decreed, or is indifferent to, the privilege of the wealthy and the plight of the impoverished.

Perhaps the respondents to a 2004 Zogby International poll have the right idea. Commissioned by the progressive Center for American Progress, Res Publica, and Pax Christi, Zogby found that, when asked to identify the moral issues that most affected their vote in the 2004 election, 33% of the voters chose “greed and materialism,” while 31% chose “poverty and economic justice.” When one of these two “moral issues” motivates the vote of one out of every three voters, we must reassess the social, political and economic impulses that brought us to the stage where only the tiniest minority can be seen to prosper while the greatest number stagnate.

There has to be a better, more equitable way, to secure the well-being of all, and I’m very certain that it does not involve taking from the poor to give to the rich.

Finally, A Bible for Humanists

2011-04-26T08:45:00.000-05:00

Christians in the English-speaking world may be surprised to learn that a new “Bible” has appeared and has quickly rushed to be the number one seller on Amazon’s spirituality category. It is not, however, a Bible with which Christians are familiar, at least in this form. Rather, it is a “Bible” assembled for humanists, secularists, atheists, and erstwhile religionists.

The noted British scholar and philosopher at the University of London, A. C. Grayling, acknowledges that the Bible familiar to Christians has exercised an extraordinary influence on Western history and culture, but he wonders, at the same time, what the history and culture might have looked like if together with, or in place of, the Bible, a different set of seminal influential texts had been assembled and consulted for moral guidance and social development.

With this question in mind, Grayling set out to assemble such a collection of writings, and it has just been published with the eye-catching title, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible.

The book is a collection of over a thousand texts written by hundreds of authors reflecting the wisdom, values and ethical sensibilities of persons in social communities, some more distant in history and geography than our own. The texts are taken from the prose, poetry and philosophy of the Western and Eastern traditions, and are, as Grayling says in the opening epistle, “distillations of the wisdom and experience of humankind.”

Now I can think of at least four reasons why some Christians will not be happy with this new “Bible.” First, the worldviews and moral values embedded in these texts do not originate in either the Jewish or Christian religious traditions. They are rooted neither in a divine revelation nor the sacred traditions that emanate from it. They are, rather, expressive of perceptions, values, and principles that are disconnected from Judeo-Christian understandings and commitments.

According to the publishers, the writings collected here are “meditations on the origin and progress of the world and human life in it,” with “attention to the question of how life should be lived, how we relate to one another, and how vicissitudes are to be faced and joys appreciated.”

To be sure, these writings have contributed to forming the virtues needed to attain well-being in human community, virtues like integrity, compassion, justice, equality, responsibility, and magnanimity. But the writers assembled in this collection do have views of human nature different than those associated with Judaism and Christianity.

The second reason is that the structure of the book is inspired by the layout and style of the more familiar Bible. Grayling has organized his texts thematically; the sections are titled thus: Genesis, Wisdom, Parables, Concord, Lamentations, Consolations, Sages, Songs, Histories, Proverbs, The Lawgiver, Acts, Epistles, and The Good. The publishers regard it as “offering to the nonreligious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of various secular humanist traditions.”

Some will take this as a parody of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, a mockery of the collection of sacred writings that has been handed down to believers from century to century.

But rather than look at this structure and style as a parody, one can see it as an expression of the literary influence exercised by the more familiar Bible on collections of writings. The Jewish and Christian Bibles were also assembled by human hands and redacted by human minds as a collection of the literature that formed the identity of faith communities. But unlike the writers and editors of this humanist Bible who do not acknowledge a place for the divine in human life, the authors and redactors of the Judeo-Christian scriptures contend for the initiative and co-operation of God in their work. If some choose to reject the more familiar Bible as a narrative of Gods ways with humanity, perhaps they may yet consult another corpus of influential human writings that have inspired others to greater good for humanity, one like this work edited by Grayling.

The third reason for Christian objection may be the title and subtitle itself: The Good Book is a piece of vernacular that in the Western societies, especially in the U.S., is taken as a euphemism for the Bible. Some will undoubtedly object to the adjective “humanist” in qualifying the noun “Bible.”

Now no one has the copyright on the word “Bible”; in its Greek, Latin, French, and Middle English forms it refers generically to a collection of writings. Time and populist discourse have affixed the meaning of this derived word to the collection of literature also known as the Hebrew Scriptures (or Tanakh) and the Christian Scriptures (or New Testament). While it might appear pretentious to call Grayling’s edition a “Bible,” it will undoubtedly function that way for many.

This title is intended to suggest that its contents are exemplary if not authoritative, influential if not normative, for readers who seek knowledge and understanding of the course of human history and community without the encumbrance of religion. Arguably, such knowledge and understanding without religion—or without its influence—is not possible to achieve. That is a case made eloquently by Stephen Prothero in his book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't (HarperSan Francisco, 2007). It is also effectively made by Jonathan Hill in his book, What Has Christianity Ever Done For Us: How It Shaped the Modern World (InterVarsity Press, 2005).

The Christian community acknowledges that the bedrock of the normative status and function of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is twofold: their inspiration by the divine Spirit of God, and their narratives and ethical instruction regarding the ways of God with God’s creatures. Apart from these, like Grayling’s “Bible,” they may be exemplary and influential, but hardly authoritative and normative. It is this that distinguishes Grayling’s secular Bible from its religious counterpart; the writings contained in it are culturally and intellectually significant for the perspectives and values they express, but they lack the status of acknowledged authority that allows them to function in human communities as criteria, principles or standards of judgment.

On the other hand, it appears customary for one who is writing the definitive book on a particular subject, one that contains information needed by any practitioner, to attribute a degree of authority to the work by calling it a Bible of sorts. A quick search on Amazon reveals a number of such works: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises, The Vegetable Gardner’s Bible, The Flavor Bible, The VueScan Bible, The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible, The PowerScore LSAT Logic Games Bible, The Cannabis Grow Bible, The Wine Bible, The Bag Making Bible, The Triathlete’s Training Bible, The Barbecue Bible, The Chrystal Bible, The Screenwriter’s Bible, and one that certainly reflects our technological age, The Social Media Bible.

The publishers of The Good Book see it as “a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible.” But Grayling, an atheist himself, notes that this collection is “another contribution to the conversation that mankind [sic] must have with itself.” Grayling and his publishers know that this is not religiously sacred literature, but it is literature nonetheless that has shaped and influenced human societies, in many cases for better and for worse.

A fourth reason is that this collection has been assembled by one person; the literature selected reflects Grayling’s judgment of what is good and true and right. Conversely, collections of the sacred literature of many of the world’s religions have been assembled over time, and in some cases, over considerable lengths of time. Decisions regarding what to include and what to exclude did not happen while individuals sat around a conference table. Rather, over time, as various writings circulated and came to be used in religious communities for a variety of purposes (especially teaching, ethical instruction, and worship), a conventional wisdom emerged among religious communities and leaders regarding what literature was important and functioned normatively and what literature did not, or should not, so function. The authoritative collection or canon of the Hebrew Scriptures was essentially recognized in the late first century c.e., while the Christian Scriptures were recognized as fixed in the late fourth century c.e.

In short, the more familiar Bible is the product of the work of interpretive communities engaging and being engaged by these collections of writings over centuries, including the occasional work of compilers and editors whose hands are evident in the texts we now have.

The Good Book cannot be faulted simply for the fact that it is not the Bible; neither should it be rejected simply because it disavows deity and privileges humanity and humanism as normative. Rather it reflects an orientation and outlook increasingly evident in the postmodern West, one with which faith communities must engage as co-inhabitants of pluralist societies. In light of Grayling’s intent that the collection contribute to the conversation the human community is having with itself, then it behooves us, religionist and non-religionist, to prepare to participate.

The quest for meaning and purpose in personal and social life applies to all whether they are religious or not. Human rationality, which functions authoritatively for those who value and encourage the best in human beings, and the literature birthed by both social and religious traditions, can together teach us a thing or two about cultivating the common good. Christians who live in and out of the gospel narrative would do well to familiarize themselves with the non-religious narratives that continue to shape our shared worlds.

Kangaroo Justice, Real Violence

2011-04-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

Given the global attention received last fall by the Florida pastor who announced that he would burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11, I was frankly surprised to learn that he had found a way to break his promise and burn one anyway.

Pastor Terry Jones and his congregation at Dove World Outreach Center had managed to stay below the national media radar; most people probably forgot about them in places other than their community of Gainesville, Florida. But they have certainly been caught in the radar now, having done something even more daring and despicable than the demeaning act of burning a copy of the Quran.

The pastor held court with the Quran as the defendant. On March 20, 2011, he set himself up as the judge, invited a Muslim who had converted to Christianity to serve as prosecuting attorney and the president of the Islamic Center of Texas to act as defense attorney. “Expert” witnesses included other Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

What were the charges? In his video on the Stand Up America website, Pastor Jones said, “We are accusing the Quran of murder, rape, deception, being responsible for terrorist activities all around the world. We are accusing the Quran of these violent acts.”

Anticipating a “guilty” verdict, the question announced in advance on the lawn of the church’s property was whether the Quran should be burned, drowned, shredded, or shot. Apparently, an outcome like “respected” or “protected,” to say nothing of “honored” or “esteemed” was not a possibility. The outcome was determined in advance, as it is in all kangaroo courts. Following the jury’s rendering of the expected verdict, the Quran was soaked in kerosene and ignited, like charcoal in a barbeque pit.

In spite of all the absurdity and chicanery of this “mock trial” and the sophomoric behavior of its master-mind, there is nothing in this whole affair that is amusing. To the contrary, it is not only a shameful display of religious bigotry and ignorance, but also a burlesque-like mockery of our system of jurisprudence. All things considered, it is frighteningly childish act.

Violence, whether real or symbolic, has no legitimate place in the conduct of the Christian and the community of faith in the world. This is true whether the one on whom violence is inflicted is another human being whose religion is different than Christianity or a different form of Christianity, or a tangible symbol or artifact that carries the weight of divine presence and moral authority for a religious tradition other than one’s own.

Socioeconomic and cultural dominance do not confer the right to demean others by infringing on their religious liberty and freedom of conscience. Just because one believes oneself and one’s group to be in the right or the one true way, there is neither social, civil, nor religious sanction to injure or harass another.

What is alarming about this act is the extent to which Jones and his flock have gone to accomplish now what they set out to do last fall, in spite of Jones’s promise then to stand down and not burn the Quran. When he was called out on this by the Washington Post, all he had to say was “If you want to be technical, I guess we broke our word.”

But surrounding oneself with the accoutrement of justice and feigning to sit in judgment on the sacred literature of twenty-three percent of the world’s population, about whom one really—and evidently—know next to nothing, is a most disturbing demonstration of antipathy in search of a venue in order to attract attention and stoke further the fires of mind-numbing evil.

It is as though the Bible, the sacred literature of the Christian faith, does not contain a single word about living peaceably with others, or loving others as oneself, or extending hospitality to strangers, or discerning what is good, acceptable, and perfect in the will of God. On what grounds, moral or otherwise, can one defend the defamation of another? Certainly not on any grounds mined from Christian Scripture.

All the reasons given last fall for not burning a copy of the Quran still apply: inflaming the Muslim world, aiding and abetting Al-Qaeda’s recruitment, putting U.S. military personnel forces at greater risk, etc. Tragically, violence has now occurred in the Muslim world in retaliation for this despicable act by Jones’ and his followers. Afghans expressed their anger by attacking the UN headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif and killed twelve people. In Kandahar, nine persons were killed in violence and over ninety injured.

Jones refuses to take any blame for this. When asked in an interview with the BBC whether he was responsible for the violence in Afghanistan, he stated quite clearly, “We do not feel responsible, no.” This attempt to disclaim responsibility, however, cannot go unchallenged. True enough, Jones’ comments and conduct are no less the “cause” of the violence in Afghanistan than Sarah Palin’s comments and conduct are the “cause” of Jared Loughner’s gun violence in Tucson last January. The logic of “cause and effect” are irrelevant here. But only the naïve and thoughtless could believe that Jones’ unconscionable conduct did not agitate the perpetrators and contribute to the instigation of deadly violence. Indeed, only other extremists and xenophobes—religious or non-religious—can pretend there is no connection between Jones and the violence in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar.

It appears now that Jones’ mockery of Islam could be directly extended to the Prophet Mohammed himself. As reported in the Sunday Telegraph, Jones has said, “It is definitely a consideration to stage a trial on the life of Mohammed in the future.” If we consider Jones’ failure to keep a promise, his attempts to distance himself and his followers from the violence in Afghanistan and his stated objections to violence of any kind—ineffectual as those objections apparently are—the only conclusion that can be drawn from the suggestion of this new focus of contempt for Islam is this: Jones simply does not care!

Convinced of the rightness of his own cause, he does not care who may be injured or what may befall the lives of others, just so long as he may shield himself by the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech provided by the U.S. Constitution. He cares neither for truth nor faith nor the well-being of all others, in any recognizable aspect. Rather, with a pretentious façade of a pseudo-Christianity and a frightening semblance of nationalism, Jones seems determined—hellbent?—to display his insolent and distorted worldview and extend his notoriety beyond his allotted fifteen minutes.

At some point, however, his inflammatory rhetoric and conduct must be called to account. Either Americans of all demographic stripes will bring suitable public pressure to bear on Jones and his circle, in the spirit of public action undertaken by community organizers and activists, or legal action will be undertaken against him, in the spirit of Brandenburg v. Ohio in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 defined the limits of constitutionally protected speech. The Court opined that any speech that “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” is not protected.

The catalyst to invoke such legal action might very well be some act(s) of violence yet-to-be committed on U.S. soil, rather than in a Muslim country far away. Now is the time for Christians and adherents of other religious traditions as well as the non-religious with moral conscience and concern to intercede before yet another life is taken or harm endured by a human being in connection with the social, moral, and theological pathology so superbly exemplified by Jones and his group. Now is the time, not after violence here and more violence abroad, but now, here.

Think For Yourself

2011-03-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

Over the years, I’ve met some rather opinionated people. Some of them I actually liked. Some I thought were really brilliant and others were sadly out-of-touch. Most let their views be known with candor and humility, though some were arrogant and contentious. But what they all have in common is this: They have an opinion, it’s theirs, and they’re sticking by it.

We do not need opinions to survive as individuals, but I suppose it is helpful to have them. On the other hand, as Pascal Boyer points out in his book Religion Explained (Basic Books, 2001), in addition to oxygen and nutrition, what human beings need in order to survive is “information about the world around them” and “cooperation with other members of the species” (120). Unfortunately, these are two “commodities” that are in rather short supply at the moment. The quantity of information is high enough, but whether it is accurate and useful is something else. And whatever cooperation there may be, it cannot be said to extend much beyond one’s own group and its handlers. So maybe what is really unfortunate is the fact that both information and cooperation have become commodities.

There can be little doubt that the information in our social and political marketplace comes with partisan agenda, and arguably this contributes to the absence of cooperation among us. Dissensus is expected in a democracy, especially in one such as ours where there is what John Rawls has referred to in his book Political Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 1996) as “a diversity of opposing and irreconcilable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines” (3-4). Certainly the issue of toleration enters here because as Rawls observes—along with our nation’s founders—these differences of opinion are themselves the product of two things: the powers of human reason and enduring free institutions. Can a society be just and fair, marked by cooperation in the processes and systems that are put in place in order to maximize the possibility that all citizens can realize their potential, their personal, social, economic, and religious goals? Is justice possible in a society where dissensus exists but controversy and disputations are resolved by reasoned debate and decision-making? To parse the issue as Rawls has: “how is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?”

Based on the status of socioeconomic and political matters at the moment, the answer to Rawls question would have to be that it isn’t possible. The problem is not just the fact of dissensus, reasoned as it may or may not be on any given issue. Rather the problem is also exacerbated, as I noted in a previous blog, by the political cognoscenti and their partisan and ideological discourse. It is fundamentally rule by the few whose vested interests and rhetoric frame the public policy discussions regarding matters that impinge on “liberty and justice for all.” Political discussion is effectively a cacophony of ideological voices seeking to sway the public in one direction or another. Now reasoned arguments are intended to persuade; such debate is a vital form of dissemination of “information” that can foster “cooperation.” But fear mongering and appealing to xenophobia, classism, ethnocentrism, and other forms of social and economic prejudices are not reasoned arguments by any stretch of the imagination.

As the recipients of this discourse of the political elites—the politicians, bureaucrats, think-tankers, policy wonks, and media personalities who know better than the rest of us—most of the public is left to dwell in this “pseudo-environment,” this “medium of fictions,” having been told what to think, or to form an opinion on an issue out of information that is incomplete, misleading, exaggerated, concocted, or just plain false. The political elite adapt their peculiar messages to appeal to social and political instincts, knowing that people value information that conforms to and confirms their existing beliefs and biases. This is the principle of belief congruence, as articulated by Milton Rokeach in his book, Beliefs, Attitudes and Values: A Theory of Organization and Change (Jossey-Bass, 1968). We not only tend to gravitate toward ideas that proximate dispositions we already hold, but “we tend to value people in proportion to the degree to which they exhibit beliefs, subsystems, or systems of belief congruent with our own” (83). Poets refer to this as “birds of a feather flock together,” but by any description it functions as the homogeneity principle or the law of attraction: “Like attracts like.”

The principle of belief congruence, coupled with the relative absence of critical reflection and evaluation of political messaging and information, leaves us with a body politic the majority of whom are cognitively and attitudinally predisposed to accept certain beliefs and attitudes while rejecting others. And as the political elite have elevated the tone and content of partisan messaging, we ought not to be surprised that significant numbers of those in the political middle, the moderates or centrists, have in recent years gravitated to one of the two ideological extremes, leaving us with what Alan Abramowitz in a recent book has called “the disappearing center.” Writing in the Hedgehog Review, William Galston notes that there is clearly less polarization among less-informed and less-engaged citizens, but that the polarization that does exist among the well-informed and political elite may actually discourage less well-informed voters from participating altogether in the process. It would be tragic indeed if the behavior of our political leaders in our open political system was a primary culprit in reducing levels of participation on our democracy.

It would seem that responsibility for this state of affairs in partisan politics extends also to the instruments of mass communication; after all, the media is no less a part of the messaging structure and the network of cognoscenti than any other sector of the political elite. What is remarkable about the communications media at this point is that it too has functionally abandoned core principles on which this nation was founded. While there is much trumpeting of the freedom of the press, especially by the media itself, what many consumers of media messaging fail to recognize is that the media is no less captivated and constrained by ideology and no less an instrument of partisan influence on opinion formation. The media as institution contributes to the construction and maintenance of the “pseudo-environment” and the “medium of fictions”; they too are fabricating a variety of worlds and worldviews that legitimate them.

What is especially tragic about the way in which the media has been co-opted is that in the early days of our country, the media struggled to remain free of state control; the freedom of the press had to do with the right of newspapers and publishers to disseminate ideas and opinions unhindered by government repression or censorship. But as John B. Thompson has noted in his book Ideology and Modern Culture (Stanford University Press, 1990), the evolution and expansion of newspaper and publishing industries, the concentration and commercialization of media industries, and the development of new media technologies have produced a form of media monopolization: “an unprecedented degree of concentration—both of resources and of power—in the private domain” (252).

In effect, the media of mass communication now serve not the public interest but the commercial interests of private and corporate enterprises, and “the corporate concentration of resources in the media industries is not just a threat to the individual qua consumer: it is also a threat to the individual qua citizen” (262). All of the major media outlets are owned and operated as for-profit businesses by large corporations: Walt Disney (ABC, ESPN and others); General Electric/Comcast (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo and others); TimeWarner (HBO, Cinemax, TBS, TNT, CNN and others); News Corp. (Fox, Fox News, 20^th Century Fox and others); CBS (CBS Showtime, the Movie Channel and others); and Viacom (MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET and others). (Noticeably absent from this list is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit entity established by an act of Congress in 1968 to promote the development of public media across the country. Its continued funding is at risk as a result of partisan political interests, but CPB ought also to be included as a media institution playing a “communications” role in our society.)

As the now retired Columbia sociologist Herbert J. Gans noted in his book, Deciding What’s News (Northwestern University Press, 1979), “When reporters can explicitly attribute information to a source, they do not have to worry about reliability (and validity), the assumption being that once a story is ‘sourced,’ their responsibility is fulfilled, and the audiences must decide whether the source is credible” (130). This is now our information problem writ large: passing on what a spin-master or putative expert thinks now counts as “news,” when in fact, as pointed out to Gans by a magazine writer, “we don’t deal in facts but in attributed opinions.”

If we consider the extraordinary influence on opinion that the instruments of mass communication exercise, it is somewhat disheartening to learn that so many citizens and residents get their news from these commercial enterprises, disheartening but not surprising. According to survey research done by Pew Research Center and published in September 2010, 58% of respondents indicated that they had watched the news on television the previous day, and 34% said they listened to news on the radio on the previous day. Both of these numbers are largely unchanged over recent years. What has changed over the last few years is the percentage of persons getting their news online rather than on TV, radio or newspaper. From 2004, this number has risen ten percentage points to 34%, slightly higher than the number who read a hardcopy newspaper (31%). Since 1994, the amount of time spent watching and/or listening to the news or reading a newspaper had declined. Among those adults who are under age 30, slightly more than one in four (27%) get no news at all on any given day. Little wonder, then, that the American public—both voting and non-voting—are so largely misinformed and manipulated by those who believe themselves to know better.

The challenge that lies before us as citizens in this country, by comparison to the present status of political posturing and partisanship, appears to be both monumental and burdensome, especially for those who are unwilling or unable to take the time to think critically for themselves. The achievement of our Republic came not by taking the shorter, less obstructive routes, but by meeting the obstacles to human liberty and economic freedom with the full resources of personal devotion, disciplined volition, and forceful cognition. In the course of this project minds and hearts—and lives—were changed. For us to advance as a nation, with all our diversity, we too will have to gird ourselves for thinking differently, assessing old views and forming new ones, jettisoning old opinions and buttressing truer belief systems that stand a greater chance of realizing the communitarian vision of the common good, the well-being of all.

This undoubtedly will entail risk and vulnerability, and it certainly will involve being open-minded in ways that we as a nation of citizens and residents have not shown of late. But as now-retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer noted in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, “open-minded is, you may well have a point of view but you’re open to changing it.”

Should that occur, I think Madison, Jefferson, and Paine would be proud. Hamilton? He might have to change his mind!

Giving Up to Rule by the Few

2011-03-15T09:57:00.000-05:00

It is disconcerting to think that the possibilities for personal freedom and well-being intended by the founders at the birth of our republic have not been realized in the way or to the extent they envisioned. Their experiment in democracy became a work-in-progress for succeeding generations, and we still haven’t quite got it right.

In fact, the tenor of our partisan politics at the moment suggests we have neither the political nor the moral will to complete the task of securing “liberty and justice for all.” As citizens who are the ultimate source of sovereignty in this nation, we have given up and given in to a factionalism that pits interest-group over against interest-group, majority against minorities, class against class, in ways that for some amount to a form of socioeconomic and political tyranny. “We the people” have become “we the vested interest groups,” each of whom is more interested in gaining or consolidating advantage and acquiring or retaining control of the “system.”

One of the major issues debated by the founders was whether citizens were actually capable of self-government. On the one hand, Alexander Hamilton did not believe people had the requisite knowledge, sophistication or attention span to exercise responsibility in governing. In his remarks to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he said, “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born; the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second; and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they will therefore maintain good government.”

On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson also believed human beings were divided into two groups. In a letter to Henry Lee in 1824, Jefferson declared: “Men by their constitution are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.”

Unlike Hamilton, Jefferson did not think that an oligarchy of the wealthy, even in a democratic form, held out the best way to realize the vision of personal and social liberty. In a letter to Dr. Richard Price in 1789, Jefferson noted that “whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

It is disconcerting now to think that Jefferson’s confidence in the ability of the people to govern themselves has given way to Hamilton’s vision of rule by a socioeconomic elite, but we have become unstable, fickle and unruly, just what Hamilton observed about the body politic of his day. Rather than being well-informed, we are, for the most part, woefully uninformed—and easily led astray into deeper factionalism by the political elite who do our thinking for us.

In his article in a recent issue of The Hedgehog Review, Charles Taylor argues that for a democratic state in the modern world to thrive it is necessary that its people express a strong collective identity, greater solidarity, and a higher level of commitment to one another. If this be not possible or if it is diminished, the vacuum created by its absence will be filled with a variety of forms of tyranny, despotism, and authoritarianism, i.e., the forms of government the founding of our republic was intended to reject.

Perhaps one reason we have failed to realize this communitarian vision is our socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious diversity; this should be our greatest strength, the multiple strands in a braided social-civil cord. Instead, these are the fault lines that demarcate our most important boundaries as groups and the varied and divergent interests we hold. Just as importantly, another threat is our occupancy of narrow, unreflective, and partisan default positions on issues of concern affecting many, and in some cases, all of us. Making such boundaries more porous and cultivating informed engagement are certainly challenges for us at this moment in our history. Without these kinds of alterations, we have little prospect for any meaningful change.

It’s not enough to “believe in” the principles on which this nation was founded, or even to be favorably predisposed to them, or to hold them in high regard. Believing in freedom, equality, individual responsibility, to say nothing of limited government and free-market capitalism, means nothing even if these are shared and accepted by all citizens and residents. What is important is that these principles be enacted in the structures and systems of our socioeconomic order so that all can benefit and thrive. At the moment, however, that is precisely what is not happening as these principles are held hostage to the machinations of the political elite to whom we as citizens have ceded our responsibility.

In a seminal 1964 article with the title “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” Philip E. Converse undertook a study of American voters that has turned out to be a classic in the study of voting behavior. His study led him to conclude that the vast majority of people do not have a clear and comprehensive set of beliefs, attitudes, and values that inform their socioeconomic and political understanding. Rather they have an undisciplined, unreflective, and largely random collection of views and opinions that they piece together as occasion requires. Moreover, one’s “political sophistication” or ability to recognize, understand, and evaluate circumstances and information regarding specific policy areas, and to connect this knowledge with policy positions in other areas, was correlated positively with age, level of education, grass-roots participation in political activism, and the quantity of information consumed.

If the assumption is that people hold distinctive and deliberate positions on policy issues because they are knowledgeable and informed (i.e., political sophisticates), Converse’s research—and that of other social scientists—shows that this assumption is false. Rather, Converse identified five kinds of publics, each of which has remained fairly stable in size or percentage of the general public in the intervening years. First, there are those Converse called “ideologues.” These are the political sophisticates who can conceptualize, analyze, and evaluate political issues and their significance. Based on his study, Converse estimated that 4% of the public fit into this category.

Second are those who are aware of an “ideological spectrum” to political positions, but either disregard the positions taken along this spectrum or give evidence of not understanding the issues at all. This group numbered approximately 12%.

Third, there is a group that seems unaware of the ideological spectrum but whose political choices are consciously shaped by the political interests of a particular group (e.g., farmers, ethnic groups, unions, small business owners, health care workers, physicians, etc.). Parties and candidates and issues are voted on based on the expectation of favorable treatment of the group; matters not germane to the group and its interests are typically unimportant and poorly understood. This is the largest of the five groups at 45% of the public.

Fourth, about 22% make political decisions without regard to political ideology, policy issues, or group interest. In fact, these seem to have no understanding of such distinctions. Instead, their preferences are based on whether they are living in good times or bad times.

Finally, there is a group whose preferences, evaluations, and decisions have “no shred of policy significance whatever.” These respondents are “people who felt loyal to one party or the other but confessed that they had no idea what the party stood for. Others devoted their attention to personal qualities of the candidates, indicating disinterest in parties more generally. Still others confessed that they paid too little attention to either the parties or the current candidates to be able to say anything about them” (217). In Converse’s study, this group represented 17% of the public.

The work of Converse and others who study public opinion and voter knowledgeability begs the question of whether we can really be a self-governing nation if by that we mean a body politic that knows and cares and is involved in public life. If Hamilton and Jefferson pose two alternatives for us, then certainly we have to say our experiment in democracy is leaning more toward the Hamilton side at the moment: We are neither prepared for nor capable of ruling ourselves and realizing the unfettered equality envisioned by our founders.

In this continuing experiment, there can be no place for free-riders, those who accept the benefits without meeting any of the responsibilities of participatory democracy. Among other things, these responsibilities include becoming an informed citizen, one who is capable of examining and weighing alternatives in relation to goals more inclusive and communitarian than individualist- and group-centered.

It is remarked by many that one of the strengths of this country is the freedom to form an opinion without fear of reprisal by our fellows or our government. We are literally free to believe whatever we may want, to think and judge however we may chose, and to hold to whatever and whomever we ensconce in the place of greatest importance. But running through the history of this great experiment are strands of sociopolitical naïveté, gullibility, indifference and, on occasion, demagoguery. So while it is possible to hold any thought or view or opinion one may want, it is not necessarily conducive to realizing the common good—unless there is full, open, honest, thoughtful democratic debate.

Better we should foster an environment of open and frank debate where all views can be reasonably engaged than remain entrenched in partisan ideologies. Better we should take a view in which our politics is rooted in an organic sense of our community and our interdependence, committed to fostering the good and noble lives of all rather than just the few. To achieve this, it will undoubtedly be necessary to acknowledge that on occasion, the views and opinions we hold are misguided and inaccurate, and quite possibly the result of the biases and manipulations of others. Or we may find that there is a via media, a middle course that can conciliate extremes. In either case, we may discover that a change of mind is needed.

Having the right to an opinion is one thing, regardless of whether it is an informed or an ignorant opinion; being enslaved to it is something else entirely. Here, perhaps, a sentiment expressed initially by Thomas Paine in his The Age of Reason might prove helpful. In his statement to U.S. Citizens in the opening of the book, he declared: “I have always strenuously supported the Right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”

How is it that our opinions, however correct or fallacious they may be, come to be so strongly and immovably held? That is the subject of the next blog in two weeks.

Manufacturing Fictions

2011-03-01T09:59:00.000-06:00

It appears that we got what we asked for. Back in the eighteenth century, we asked for a liberal democratic government that secured and protected personal economic liberty, and that’s what we have. We wanted a government to guard everyone’s freedom to assure that minority interests and concerns would not be trammeled on by the majority. We coveted a political system that had the capacity to resolve conflicts and competing interests while maximizing freedom. We sought a government that we could form and change when it needed changing and keep when it did right by us.

And now, that’s the problem. As citizens who constitute the sovereign in this country, we have subjected ourselves to our governing authorities: ourselves! We asked for it, and we got it, though at the time, we didn’t realize that competing self-interests and group interests, disparities in economic power, economic exploitation, and safeguarding the rights of social, economic, and political minorities would produce such partisan obduracy and personal indifference to practically anything but one’s own well-being.

We could change this situation, but it’s not likely. We have become too partisan in our approach. Politics is now a zero-sum game; in order for there to be winners, there must be losers. In addition to one’s self-interests, there are also group-interests that must be pursued at the expense of other different groups, and this is true of political, social, economic and religious groups; we function as coalitions of the like-minded and similarly situated. We are not likely to have a change in our society and our political culture because partisan identification is about how people think of themselves and how they identify with particular groups. Change is not likely if this alteration is fundamentally about who people perceive themselves to be and how they think about the world around them; individuals in our society have incredible resistance to alterations of this kind.

Let’s pause here a moment and consider something that may have gone unnoticed. The social, political, economic and religious spheres (plural) we live in are human-made; they are not eternal and they have not been forever as they are at this moment—they have, in fact, undergone change. We made the world we live in; our beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviors are shaped by and oriented toward this domain, this environment. But let’s be honest: the world outside ourselves is way too big, too complex, too formidable for any one of us to know it fully and truly. In order to function in these spheres, we need to have an impression of the environment and the way it works; we need what many call a “worldview,” or at least, an orientation of some kind. This world-in-our-heads is but a miniature representation of what we know and believe, and what we think others know and believe. It is what Walter Lippman, in his book Public Opinion (Macmillan, 1922), called a “pseudo-environment” a “medium of fictions,” a “simpler model,” “interior representations of the world” that serve as “a determining element in thought, feeling, and action” (10-17).

It’s not as though this inner picture of the world is false, but rather that it truncates and distorts a more complicated social and physical reality outside ourselves. In a sense, this is necessary so we can manage it and ourselves. These “fictions,” representations, or visualizations, for Lippmann, are crafted by us on the basis of what we experience, what others report to us, and what we can imagine. He writes: “The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationships, are their public opinions. Those pictures which are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters” (17).

How we come to form our “public opinions” is described by Stuart Oskamp and Wesley Schultz, in Attitudes and Opinions (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005), as the product of “social cognition” which refers to “our thought processes about people and social situations. It includes the ways we gather social information, organize it, and interpret it. Thus social cognition processes are important in determining the way our attitudes and opinions are formed, strengthened, and changed over the course of time” (6).

But because the world out there is so expansive and complicated, we end up believing and behaving by seeing what we want to see and knowing what we want to know, and disregarding or rejecting altogether what doesn’t fit within our frame of reference. Lippmann is not the first to note this important function of the pseudo-environment—the pictures—in our social cognition, but he observes with rhetorical finesse how we tend to see what we want to see: “For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusions of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture” (54-55). It is the set of stereotypes that, more than anything else, determines what we see and what we take as facts, as well as what meaning and significance we attach to those facts.

In the final analysis, our beliefs, attitudes, and values—our opinions—are correlative to our self-interests and our group-interests, and we want to think that we ourselves, as individuals, have crafted these opinions. We want to think that we have thought through issues and weighed evidence and assessed alternative points of view before positioning ourselves on a matter of dispute. But this hope is deceptive and our social cognition is itself truncated, especially when it comes to politics and matters of public policy. Whether our particular point of view represents a minority interest or a majority interest, we are much more likely to hold on to it and advocate for it if we know that an important social, political, economic or religious reference group holds and supports that view. And the reason why is essentially because of the way we think about ourselves and identify with particular groups. We want to “fit in,” be part of “the group,” go with “the flow”; we want to identify with particular social groups whose beliefs, attitudes, and values are those we appropriate for ourselves.

The truth is that most people have a belief system that they have been socialized to embrace; they think what they have been taught to think, and to think of it as monolithically true and factual, the only correct interpretation of a given reality or reality as such. This is no less true of those beliefs and opinions held on the basis of one’s own experience. Observing or participating in an event or undergoing a particular circumstance or encountering someone or something does not necessarily assure that one’s rendition of the experience or recollection of it is true to the exclusion of all others or accurate when assessed by the judgment of co-participants. Each one brings something different, observes selectively, processes differently, and walks away with a sense that is as much created as it is creative. The singularity of our experience is, in fact, buttressed and rendered plausible by the consent of others in our reference groups whom we believe to have had similar experiences and who interpret them the same way.

How, then, are our public opinions formed? How and why do we think what we think, believe what we believe, feel what we feel, when it comes to matters of public policy and our politics? How is it that our sociopolitical—and religious—views have a fairly high degree of stability in the face of the ebb and flow of historical circumstances?

Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is not what we might expect. As citizens, we have abdicated our responsibility for the tenor and tone of our politics and the legitimate functioning of government. With diminished social cognition, the body politic has traded its civil birthright for a political mess of pottage. Neglecting to think for ourselves or unwilling to think outside the stereotypes in our minds, we have aped the sociopolitical perspectives of those who offer themselves—or are offered to us—as cognoscenti whose views ought to prevail because of who they are and the positions they occupy in public life. These are the politicians, government bureaucrats, think-tankers, policy wonks, and media personalities who are the “political elite” and who are presumed by vast numbers of our citizens to know better than the rest of us.

We would like to think that our political beliefs, attitudes and opinions are constructed by us on the basis of information we have received and experiences we’ve had, along with a smattering of what we may feel about an issue or those who are the subject of a proposed policy (e.g., taxpayers, uninsured, poor people, homeowners, soldiers, business people, polluters, etc.). And there is an element of truth in thinking this. But as Oskamp and Schultz point out in their book Attitudes and Opinions, most people do not have an attitude or opinion on a matter of public policy until they are asked about it, at which time they literally construct one “on the spot,” using existing information, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, surroundings, and socioeconomic location as the raw materials (13). Even though such an opinion is formed serendipitously, it tends to be fairly stable if it finds social support.

A somewhat different approach is taken by another social scientist who has investigated the formation of public opinion. In his book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (University of Cambridge Press, 1992), John R. Zaller shows that it is the political cognoscenti who determine the frames of reference for political issues through their “elite discourse” about matters of public moment. Such discourse is “an attempt by various types of elite actors to create a depiction of reality that is sufficiently simple and vivid that ordinary people can grasp it,” but that invariably this discourse is “unavoidably selective and unavoidably enmeshed in stereotypical frames of reference that highlight only a portion of what is going on” (13).To use Lippmann’s language, it is a “medium of fiction.” Zaller defines “political awareness” as “the extent to which an individual pays attention to politics and understands what he or she has encountered” (21). So when we consider that many citizens in the United States, by many survey measures, have a minimal to non-existent level of knowledge about political issues, vary considerably in their attention to politics, and show up to vote in small percentages, we ought not be surprised that Zaller contends that when most people do express their opinion or make their mark in the voting booth, they are parroting political discourse and channeling the political elite with whom they align by virtue of their “political predispositions” (i.e., their particular interests, values, and experiences).

What we are left with, then, is a rather discouraging picture. Either we form our political opinions and public policy views by constructing them on the basis of partial and distorted information, personal biases, misperceptions and self-interest, or we appropriate them from those we take to be knowledgeable experts and specialists whose messages we think we can trust. Either way, through “pseudo-environment” or “predispositions,” something or someone intervenes between us and the external world we inhabit, influencing beliefs, attitudes, values, and behavior. Either way, we are conditioned to filter social and political arguments and information, and disregard all that do not conform to our existing partisan frame; we accept or reject partisan political messages based on whether they are consistent with our preconceptions and biases. Either way, we begin and end with manufacturing our own sociopolitical fictions.

In the meantime, while politicos and pundits pontificate, others are suffering in a state of inequality that we can change, if we could summon the political and moral will. But that is the subject of the next post in a couple of weeks.

Subject to the Governing Authorities

2011-02-16T11:41:00.000-06:00

Christians argue with each other about the meaning and relevance of Paul’s exhortation to believers to be subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1-2). Obviously a tiny religious minority who revered a man executed as a criminal by the authorities had no leverage to secure its own benefit and liberty in an empire ruled by a pitiless emperor. As Paul saw it, the best chance for the early Christians to survive was to submit to the ruling authorities in all ways without resistance. The reason was simple: this authority had been established by God, so bucking civil authority was bucking God. The fact that civil authority was exploitive and oppressive was not important. Obedience was what was important.

Now, however, Christians in the U.S. live in a polity constituted by free democratic elections where all alike participate on equal footing in the political processes. At least, that’s what we’re told and that’s what we believe. Unlike monarchy where the economic wealth flows from the bottom to the top and the top rules autocratically, in a democracy the economic wealth is retained by those who produce it and the powers and authority of the government are only those granted to it by the people. At least, that’s what we’re told and that’s what we believe.

We like to think that our governmental system is a protection against the oppression and tyranny of our rulers. After all, we can throw the bums out every two, four or six years. On the other hand, we are not too good at brokering the different interests scattered across a wide array of racial, ethnic, religious, social and economic groups, at least, if elections in recent years are any indication. A political majority emerges, claiming a mandate or the “will of the American people” as their warrant, and soon they coalesce around agenda that is perceived by the minority as unjust, discriminatory and oppressive. Laws enacted under the political powers of one faction are targets for dismantling when another faction obtains power. Each faction accuses the other of playing the stooge for large and powerful groups with vested interests and lots of money. The consequence is that very little gets done that needs doing, and “we the people” are made to endure a different kind of oppressive political leadership.

I must say that, looking back over the last thirty years of politics in this country, I am rather amused that the Federalist writers actually believed that multiple interests and classes of citizens would actually protect individual liberty and secure the rights of a minority from the abuses of the majority. For example, James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 51 that “if a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.” The best way to secure civil rights for all was to have a free republic where interests were diverse. Madison contended: “Whilst all authority in [the republic] will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.” At least, that’s what he believed, then. Coalitions of diverse—and sometimes competing—interests would assure that the rights of the minority would be protected.

Actually, Madison went on to observe that a country where the majority ruled was equally at risk of exercising political tyranny over the minority. Something of that flavor is evident in the stew of our political juices at the moment; recent political majorities of elected officials—and voters—have tyrannized political minorities. For Madison, this scenario was clearly the absence of justice, a result that betrayed his sense of the purpose of both government and the larger society. He noted: “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign, as in a state of nature where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.” If we take Madison as a guide, it becomes plausible to suggest that our current political morass is a kind of anarchy in which the weak, the “least” among us, experience the rule of the strong and powerful as a kind of violence.

If Madison was wrong and it happens that our the diversity of interests and our system of government lend themselves to this kind of marginalizing of the minority, if rule by the majority is perceived and experienced as unjust, is it even possible to look to our system of government to correct this? Or is the problem the people elected to serve in legislative and executive capacities? Would we be better or worse off if we had elected officials who were more rather than less amenable to protecting the rights and interests of social and economic minorities?

Or, is the problem the citizens, the voters, the ones whose beliefs, attitudes and values conspire to move them to act in certain ways and make particular choices in social, economic, religious and political spheres? Are “we the people” the problem, we who are the source and authority in our civil polity, whose freedom and capacity to pursue our own needs and interests is the proper object of governmental action? We who are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, Tea Partiers, Socialists, Communists, America Firsters, or whatever, are we the problem?

I think so. And it’s not because we each adhere to a different political philosophy or agenda, though that’s part of it. And it’s not even because we each pursue our own self-interests and the economic well-being we hope will result from that pursuit, though that too is part of it. We as citizens, both voting and non-voting, are the problem because we are subject—as Paul wanted Christians to be—to the governing authorities. Or as Pogo said, “We have met the enemy … and he is us.”

Christians in Paul’s day were a “minority interest” in a political system in which they had no rights except those accorded by the emperor, and of these there was precious little. As Gerhard Lenski has pointed out in his book Human Societies, in a traditional agrarian society such as the Roman Empire, the function of government was fundamentally to maintain law and order, defend the empire against its enemies, tax its citizens, and support the established religions. The “system of government” in those days was structured in ways that assured the flow of wealth from the masses of peasants who worked the land into the coffers of the rich and powerful landowners and political authorities. Sixty to seventy percent of the wealth generated by agricultural production and taxation effectively belonged to the two percent of the population that constituted the ruling and governing class. These were the ones who levied the taxes whose amounts impoverished large numbers of citizens. This class was the one to which Paul exhorted subjection to governing authorities, including the payment of taxes (Romans 13:6-7).

Now, however, in our civil democracy, we look to government to do much more than was done in Paul’s day. Lenski notes that in addition to maintaining law and order and providing for national security and defense, government in industrial and post-industrial societies has responsibility for—or involvement in—public education, regulation of commerce and industry, health care, direction of the economy, human and social services, administering social security, housing, public services, scientific and technological research, transportation, and communication (363-64). All of these are highly contested areas for government involvement in our current polity. But as Lenski notes: “The greater activity of government is closely linked with its increasing democratization. As the masses of common people gain a voice in government, they demand services seldom provided them in agrarian societies. They want, among other things, educational opportunities, recreational facilities, assistance when they are old or sick or unemployed, protection against dishonest merchants, and many other things. As the government expands to provide these services, democratic tendencies are further strengthened. An educated and economically secure population usually participates more intelligently and effectively in the democratic process, and is much less likely to be attracted to totalitarian programs, than an illiterate and economically insecure population” (365).

We are the problem because we have demanded and established a liberal democratic government, and subjected ourselves to it. What were we thinking? We are the problem because the protection of our diverse and competing interests has resulted in interminable political conflict in which the concerns of majorities overpower the concerns of minorities. What are we doing? “We the people” are the ultimate origin and source of the sovereignty of our government, and we have both engendered and capitulated to institutionalizing the cacophony of voices in the public sphere. In short, we have only ourselves to blame because we have given in, committed more to our own sense of well-being than to the common good, to self-interest and group-interest than to public interest.

Paul and the early Christians could only submit to the governing authorities; they could not change them. We, on the other hand, can both submit to, or change, these authorities because, unlike the emperor, “we the people” are sovereign here, and the government to which we are subject is one that we assemble and supervise. Can we do this in ways that bring about a greater realization of “liberty and justice for all”?

I have my doubts, but that is the subject of the next post in a couple of weeks.

Believe It, or Not!

2011-02-01T08:42:00.000-06:00

Watching the president’s State of the Union address with the self-selected inter-party seating arrangements lowering the usual partisan hype, I found myself wondering whether the civility on display was merely ceremonially contrived for the occasion, or a genuine indication that our politicos recognize the importance of collaborative political work to achieve the common good.

What are the possibilities that with divided government we might nonetheless be entering upon a more positive and productive period of governmental activity? Is there any chance that working relationships across the aisle will improve because minds have changed?

No, I don’t think so. At least, there isn’t any evidence of it at this point. I don’t count a united front of congressional leaders and the administration on the political crisis in Egypt as evidence. That crisis will be resolved, but the matters over which there has been political rancor at home continue.

As I watched the address and the restraint exercised by those assembled, I thought of an acquaintance named Sam who has an opinion on everything, and he is not at all reluctant to express it, wherever and whenever it suits him. In all fairness, however, I should say that he generally expresses it when someone or something else brings it up; Sam won’t volunteer his opinion on, say, cruise ship travel or the advances of technology in cinematography or the inequality in public education or the factors that contributed to our economic meltdown unless the topic is first broached by someone else. Then the full force of his bluster and bravado are unleashed.

What then follows is rather predictable: He declares what he believes with a demeanor that suggests to his interlocutors that he has knowledge of the subject, and he asserts his assessment of the opposing view(s). If it happens that he is challenged or questioned by one of his interlocutors, invariably he simply reiterates his beliefs with greater strength of affect and conviction, and then disparages those who hold an alternative viewpoint with a caricature of their cognitive abilities.

In a few instances, his knowledge of the subject at hand is quite thorough, but more often than not it is inchoate, impressionistic, and stereotypical. What is important to Sam is that it is knowledge that he has, it is his knowledge, and that is reason enough for it to be persuasive to others. What he believes, why he believes it, what it means, and why it should matter, are all offered as though they are self-evidently true and should be so regarded by others.

Looking back, I can’t recall a time when Sam changed his mind in response to either a well-reasoned argument, highly-documented evidence to the contrary, or an experience he had that was germane to the subject. He simply had his opinions and he was sticking to them; they were his beliefs and his judgments, and he could not care less about different points of view—except to note how wrong-headed they were!

In more ways than one, Sam is a picture of what’s wrong with our politics.

Pondering the challenges before us as a nation and the changes in our political landscape with the new Congress, and thinking about Sam, I find myself wondering about the variety of ways we think about ourselves and public matters, the things we reckon as true and suppose as real, and the assortment of behaviors we exhibit in relation to them. With a sense of dismay I am reminded that our politics and ideologies are so contested at present in large part because our basic beliefs, attitudes, and values are contested, and if Sam is any indication, they are contested throughout the private, public and political spaces of our lives, and are likely to be that way for some time.

Cognitive and social scientists who focus on opinion research have shed considerable light on the nature and function of beliefs, attitudes, and values, and their relation to human personal and social behavior. They regard beliefs as mental acts in which something or someone is held as true, real, or valid. Thus, beliefs are cognitions, functions of the mind. More importantly, beliefs are what is held cognitively with regard to an entity; they are the connection between an object and an attribute. For example, to believe that “Jesus is Lord” is to attribute the quality or condition of lordship to the person Jesus. “China is a communist state” is a belief. “Statin drugs reduce the risk of heart attack” is a belief. “President Obama is a Muslim” is a belief. Note that a belief is something one holds cognitively as true or real, but holding it does not necessarily make it so.

Not all beliefs are created equal, but they are all created. Some beliefs are central and normative, others are derived or inferred from other beliefs, and some are inconsequential. Simply put, some beliefs are more salient than others, some more interconnected with other beliefs, and some more free-floating than others. Some beliefs are part of a subsystem or web of beliefs, and some beliefs are held that are downright contradictory or conflictive with other beliefs.

Some beliefs function as essential to one’s identity and status; they are held so strongly that they have a determinative effect on the one who holds them. Religious, social, gender, and political identities fall in this category. Abandoning a belief that is centrally correlative with one’s sense of self and one’s status effectively alters that self in profound ways. This suggests not merely that some beliefs are held more strongly than others or function more normatively than others, but that some beliefs are more resistant to change than others.

Essentially, beliefs are appropriated or acknowledged on the basis of either direct encounter with the object of belief (or, we might say, “experience”), or the testimony of another person, institution or source whose authority is favorably acknowledged and trusted, or as a reasoned inference from a belief based in one or the other of the first two bases (for example, listening to my seatmate talk on her cell phone, I infer the existence of a person on the other end). An examination of one’s beliefs will consistently reveal that they originate in one or another of these three ways.

Attitudes, on the other hand, are learned mental predispositions to respond favorably or unfavorably with a high degree of consistency to something or someone. Attitudes encompass a person’s feelings toward and evaluation of some object, person, issue, idea, place, action or situation. The most important aspects of this definition are first, that attitudes are learned—we are not born with them; second, they are affective at their root—they spring forth laden with emotions of one kind or another; third, they represent our tendency or inclination—they are our default position; and fourth, the particular character of the state of mind or feeling is consistently evoked in response to the object, either in encounter or in thought. And, we should add, attitudes are a function of beliefs.

Then we have values, understood as desired goals or conditions; they are the ends rather than means to an end. Generally stated in abstract form, they are conditions or qualities to which worth, merit, and importance are attributed, or principles or standards that are deemed laudable or desirable. Freedom and honor, hearth and home, law and order, character and conformity, and yes, even being “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent” (Boy Scout Law) are all values. An interesting thing about values is that they have been shown to be notably central to a person’s system of beliefs and attitudes, and therefore, they tend to be rather resistant to change. On the other hand, it is not unusual for a person to find oneself in a situation where one’s values collide and conflict, rather than cohere together seamlessly like swatches of fabric on a quilt. Internal conflicts of beliefs, attitudes or values produce a state of cognitive or affective dissonance which some people find intolerable.

And finally, there are behaviors. Quite simply, behaviors are overt and observable acts or conduct. They are the “doing” that reflect a “being,” an “activity” that expresses an “identity.” But let’s not kid ourselves here. Social scientists and psychologists have shown that there is a correlation between beliefs, attitudes, and values on the one hand, and intentions and behaviors on the other, but this correlation is not cause-and-effect. Knowing one’s beliefs, attitudes and values cannot lead to predicting how one will behave in any situation. Likewise, observing one’s behavior cannot lead unequivocally to an identification of one’s beliefs, attitudes, and values. Nonetheless, the correlation remains. In terms of observation, measure, and assessment, the correlation admits of varying degrees of congruence and consistency, or agreement and reliability. To contend that beliefs, attitudes and values always give rise to particular behaviors, or that they never do, is in both cases to argue a fallacy.

Nonetheless, it is also worth reiterating that there is a correlation between beliefs, attitudes, and values on the one hand, and behaviors on the other. An alteration on one side of this correlation will typically bring about an alteration on the other. Thus, it is worth noting that change in belief, attitude, or value can contribute to changed behavior, but a change in behavior can also lead to a change in belief, attitude, or value. “Conversion” is not confined to religious domains, and we do “learn from experience.”

Our politics at the moment are contested because among our politicians of all political stripes there are some strongly held beliefs, attitudes, and values that are not simply impervious to change but impermeable to reason and logic. The bonds of once-shared principles and common vision have dissolved under the pressure of partisan ideologies and the manipulation of political systems for the self-indulgence and benefit of a few.

If we are ever to get beyond the current impasse and commit ourselves as a diverse people to realizing “liberty and justice for all,” one good place to begin would be the candid inventory and critical examination of our beliefs, attitudes, and values—across the domains of politics, society, economy, and yes, religion—and a willingness to behave differently toward others. As it is, these largely unexamined and conflicted belief systems are getting us nowhere, and they are causing us lots of trouble. What some call “principles” amount, in some cases, to nothing more than expedient beliefs or values rooted in the intent to achieve and retain political, social, and economic power. Given the ambiguity and dissembling that accompanies our political discourse, it behooves us to make every effort to engage and clarify both our beliefs and those so-called principles of our democracy.

Perhaps another place to begin would be believing and doing the so-called Golden Rule, behaving toward others in ways we want others to behave toward us (Mt 7:12). There is a version of this adage in all religions of the world, so we impose no burden on the separation of church and state or freedom of/from religion by enacting it in our personal, social and political lives. On the contrary, perhaps its enactment would lead to alteration of our cognition, affect, and morality. Believe it, or not; the choice is ours.

Still a Very Long Way To Go

2011-01-18T15:02:00.000-06:00

“There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy... A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will ‘thingify’ them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Testament of Hope

There are some things so important, so vital, so essential to human flourishing that their deprivation by either society, government, or religion can only be said to be immoral and reprehensible. One of those things is justice. And of all the moral insights and convictions bequeathed to us by Dr. King, among those that ring most true today, is one he handed on to us, having acquired it from the nineteenth century British politician William Gladstone: Justice delayed, is justice denied.

The words of Dr. King in the above quotation alert us to the continuing struggle to achieve economic justice for all in this country. More than forty years have passed since he spoke these words, and during those years we have seen some extraordinary accumulations of wealth in the hands of a small but growing few. At the same time, we have witnessed the drift and decline of economic conditions which challenge the quality of life for numbers that parallel and exceed Dr. King’s “forty million poor people.” In 1967, the poverty rate in the U.S. was 10.5%, and today, the rate is 15.7%, and Dr. King’s “forty million” has become 47.8 million.

Over the last few years, the number of working-age adults now impoverished has risen, but the greatest increase in poverty is among those who are 65 and older; the number of seniors living in economic impoverishment (if you can call it living), has doubled and now stands at 16.1%. From 1966 until today, the top 5% of income earners saw their incomes increase 114%, while the lowest 20% of income earners saw an increase of only 12%. Moreover, it has been reported that today, the wealthiest 1% receive 24% of the nation’s total income; between 1980 and 2005, this 1% of the wealthiest Americans received 80% of the increase in incomes of all Americans.

This is hardly progress by any meaningful measure. Justice delayed, is justice denied. If Dr. King was here today, I am certain that he would pronounce the efforts to engineer and institutionalize economic inequality a resounding success. He would, at the same time, grieve deeply over this accomplishment, and in all probability, call for a renewed Poor People’s Campaign.

The issues of abiding concern then are with us still. The reality of unemployment, diminished purchasing power among low- and modest-income workers, the rate of foreclosures among homeowners, the rising costs and availability of quality health care, the seemingly inexorable rise in income inequality – these issues continue to confront us.

Achieving economic justice entails a commitment to work toward improving the economic conditions that prevent people from realizing their personal and family goals. It involves recognizing, as Dr. King and so many others have done, that the flourishing of individuals and communities with economic opportunity and fairness is a human social and political objective that intersects with all the larger layers of our national life. Economics isn’t everything, but what institutions in our society are untouched and unaffected by our economic system? Finance, commerce, labor, real estate, insurance, human and social services, utilities, public services, transportation, health care, education, communications, technology, law, recreation, entertainment, philanthropic, and yes, even religion are all shaped by what Dr. King referred to as our “economic system,” our “capitalist economy.” Justice delayed, is justice denied.

Dehumanizing poverty in a country of astonishing wealth and the diminished quality of life for many who observe the comfort and well-being of the well-placed, singularly privileged, and incommensurably advantaged, is a reality that deeply pained and moved Dr. King. With great rhetorical power and penetrating insight, and in ways few sociologists and economists dared to imitate, Dr. King declared that we cannot and will not achieve justice as long as the conditions which institutionalize and stabilize inequality remain unchallenged and unchanged. For him, and still, for us, that means contesting not just the powers-that-be, but the encompassing economic system that lifts up the few and exploits and oppresses the rest. In 1967, he declared:

“We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights, an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society…. We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power…. [T]his means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together…you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others…. [T]he whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”

The legacy that Dr. King left to us is one that he himself received from his forbearers, the generations of living and loving people who sought to scale the mountain to reach its top, and to bring along, with extra-ordinary effort, those whose mobility and endurance seemed to wane. Down through the years, to him, and through him to us, comes the exhortation: “Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom 12:18-18). Moreover: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3-4).

The hope for human flourishing is unwarranted and wretchedly deceptive if its nurture is not accompanied by the increasing realization of justice and the expanding signs of its inclusiveness. Where justice prevails for only a few, or some, or even many, but not for all, there exclusion and inequality remain institutionalized and subject to the self-interested caprice and decision-making of a social and economic elite.

Neither Dr. King nor I would advocate for a theocracy. History has shown us that such governments and societies neither prosper long nor remedy economic inequality. But I stand with Dr. King, and the author whose work we know as the Book of Exodus, in affirming that the strategy of “go along to get along” and the practices of economic denial and deceit are altogether and always a corruption of the means we have to assure that all may have the opportunity to thrive.

I close with some words from Exodus, one last observation by Dr. King, and a few words from Hillel, a Jewish rabbi who lived before Jesus:

“You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice;…

…

You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right” (23:1-2, 6-7).

The words of Dr. King on economic justice shown at the top here come from his Presidential Address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on August 16, 1967. The ellipsis in that quote includes this thought: “I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

And it was first the ancient Jewish Rabbi Hillel who lamented, “And if not now, when?”

Christian Nation

2011-01-04T09:19:00.000-06:00

I confess that I’m puzzled by the debate on whether this country is a “Christian nation.” Apparently, it is very important to some people that this be true, including some who are not particularly vigilant in either their religious belief or practice. To others, it is neither important nor desirable, somewhere slightly above or below the level of indifference. Then there are those who take a more logical approach, viewing the idea that the United States is a Christian nation as something of a non sequitur; the conclusion is false because it simply does not follow from either the evidence or the logic of the argument. And, of course, some roundly reject the notion without hesitation.

The sources of my puzzlement come from several different areas, but they all tend to converge at one point: I simply don’t know what the proponents and detractors mean by Christian nation. I would think that at a minimum, the phrase means that this country as a body politic is grounded or established in some explicit or evident way in Christianity as either a set of distinctive beliefs, moral values, distinguishing practices or all of the above. Somehow, that which makes this nation a “nation” has to be shown to be grounded in that which makes Christianity “Christian,” and so far, I’m not persuaded by the proponents that it is. As it happens, the meanings of Christian nation as this argument is made are much more ambiguous and malleable.

So I’m puzzled by the notion that our system of government is indicative of our status as a Christian nation. If, by some stretch of the imagination, our government as articulated in the Constitution and its amendments is actually berthed in Christian beliefs and morality, it seems most odd that the document would at the same time sever the governmental infrastructure from its own theological moorings by encoding the disestablishment of religion. The notion that our government is a Christian government is misguided. The Bible does not prescribe any particular form of government or civil authority, and the types and practices of government found narrated in the Bible are as far removed from constitutional democracy as heaven is from earth.

It is no less puzzling to me that some claim that the fact that Christianity is the predominant religion in the U.S. warrants the idea that we are a Christian nation. As Pew’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey reports, 78.4% of adults in this country identify as Christian, and this is not an insignificant number. But to press the point that this warrants the nation’s classification as Christian is specious logic. Which brand of Christianity is the United States, or what form of Christianity does or should it exemplify? The fact is that there are multiple Christianities in the U.S., each with its own peculiar history, set of beliefs, moral values, traditions, and religious practices. Indeed, there is not even agreement among those who self-identify as Christian regarding what groups should be included in the circle of Christians. And who gets to decide which Christianity is the true one, or the truer one?

Moreover, there is no generic Christianity available, no Platonic eternal form of Christianity, incarnated in multiple types in our context, to which one can appeal to warrant the view that we are a Christian nation because Christianity predominates. Rather, supposing that there is one universal Christianity, of which particular types in the United States are but misshapen approximations or plausible variations, is simply the reification of a non-historical, non-cultural Christianity, a notion that has to be abandoned when one looks at the concrete varieties of Christianity in our nation’s history. What good is a generic or transcendental Christianity if we can’t have it right here among us, seeable, touchable, hearable, tasteable, feelable?

Even if we supposed that all those who brought leadership to our nation’s founding were acting intentionally out of a recognizable Christian faith, we still face the problem of discerning clearly the connections between their faith, their political philosophy, and the actual system of government they developed. Their writings come down to us as social, political and philosophical essays rather than theological treatises. We encounter something of an enigma when we read references to the “Creator” and to “Nature’s God” in these writings; it is not self-evident whether the referents of such terms would be recognizable as identical, compatible, or contradictory with ideas of God or deity more commonly found among Christians today. Arguably, most if not all of such terms in the writings of the founders are oblique references to deity, unlike the ostensible references to be found in the theological literature. But supposing that these references and the thinking behind them establish the Christian foundation of the nation overlooks the need to elucidate the connections between faith, political philosophy, and governmental structure.

So we have a substantial number of adults in this country who self-identify as Christian. But not all of them believe that this country is a Christian nation. According to a Pew Research Center survey in 2006, two out of every three Americans believe this (67%), slightly down from the number in 2005 (71%), but certainly up from the number in 1996 (60%).

What puzzles me about this is the apparent incongruity between the substantial number of Christians who believe we are a Christian nation on the one hand, and the shifting views on whether communities of Christians should keep out of politics. If we suppose that we are a Christian nation, should we not also suppose that our Christianity warrants our political activity?

Yet interestingly enough, according to another Pew study, between 2004 and 2008, the number of Americans who believe that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics rose from 43% to 52%. Among Republicans, the increase was 14 points (37% - 51%), and for social conservatives, the increase was 20 points (30% - 50%). Among Protestant Christians, the increases ranged from 11 to 13 points. The Pew report notes: “This pattern is equally stark along ideological lines. In 2004, liberals were twice as likely as conservatives (62% vs. 30%) to say churches should keep out of political matters. Today, the ideological divide is much smaller, with 57% of liberals and 50% of conservatives holding this view.”

Our recent midterm elections were an ideal occasion for religionists who believe this country is a Christian nation to give evidence of this notion. At the very least, it was an opportunity for Christians to show the correlation between their religion and their social and political views. Sadly, this can only be said of a tiny minority. As we move from the number of people who profess to be Christians, to the number who believe this is a Christian nation, to the number who think churches should be engaged in matters of politics, to the number of people for whom their faith plays an influential role in their voting, we see the numbers get smaller and smaller.

In their analysis of their post-election survey of voters, researchers at the Public Religion Research Institute found that 73% of voters declared that their faith or religious values played an identical role in their voting in the 2010 election in comparison to previous elections, while 6% claimed that their faith played an even larger role. On the surface, these figures appear to represent a very high percentage of voters. The problem, however, is not that religion played a role, but what role religion played. In comparison to other influences on voting, religion was acknowledged as the biggest influence by only 9% of the voters. For those 73% who declared that faith played the same role this election as in previous elections, this effectively means that faith played no role.

What, then, were the biggest acknowledged influences on voters in 2010? For seven out of ten voters, the biggest influence was common sense and personal experience. Slightly more than one out of ten indicated it was what they had read or heard in the media. Apparently, the influence of friends and family is miniscule for it was acknowledged by only 4% percent of the voters, slightly less than those who acknowledged their religious beliefs.

Another anomaly in the notion that we are a Christian nation has to do with the thinking regarding the role of religious communities in our society. In a 2008 survey, Pew Research Center discovered that 75% of Americans believe that churches, synagogues and other religious organizations contribute to solving important social problems. When one thinks about “social problems,” one can identify a panoply of problems that rank as important: the economy and jobs, energy, terrorism, education, immigration, the financial system, health care, the environment, war, abortion, same-sex marriage, and budget deficits come to mind. But it is not entirely clear in what the contribution of religious communities consists or how it solves social problems.

On the other hand, the 2010 Post-Election American Values Survey, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute found that 56% of Americans believe that, whatever one may focus on in terms of social problems, they would effectively be resolved “if enough people had a personal relationship with God.” Even so, it is difficult to imagine how this alteration would achieve resolution apart from some system or structural change in our society, and that puts the matter of personal relationship with God into the public sphere (i.e., politics, which most Americans believe is not a domain for religionists, as we’ve seen).

Thus it should not come as a surprise that faith and religion play very little if any role for a significant number of self-professed Christians when it comes to voting as an exercise of their civic responsibility. Apparently, it also plays very little role in how they think and engage various issues of public moment, whether or not they are identified as “social problems.” On a range of issues identified just prior to the 2010 election, the Pew Research Center found that invariably only a small percentage of Americans indicate that religion has influenced their thinking and views on certain social and political matters (environment, 6%; immigration, 7%; government assistance to the poor, 10%; death penalty, 19%; abortion, 26%; same-sex marriage, 35%).

So I’m puzzled by all the discussion about a Christian America. I have my own ideas about other indices of Christianness in our society, but the measures so far on offer leave me more annoyed and confused than anything else. At the same time, just as I have come to doubt there ever was a Christian nation on this continent, I’m not certain I would like for there to be one, now or in the future. I would like a country where all may thrive and where equality and justice prevail, where diversity matters richly and mutual regard and respect are characteristic of every social exchange. I could do with a lot less greed and egotism, and a lot more devotion to, and compassion for, one another.

So far, though, I’m not seeing it. So the claim that we are a Christian nation rings hollow for me.

Reason and Civility in Politics

2010-12-14T09:21:00.000-06:00

Come January we will have a national government that we have to live with, at least for the next two years. And now I wonder, what have we learned from the recent mid-term elections, and what do we have to look forward to?

One thing I’ve learned is that politics haven’t changed much since 1787, the year the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia adopted the Constitution and sent it on to the thirteen states for ratification. Our political landscape now is at least as contentious and infused with partisan rancor and competing interests as it was at the time of this nation’s founding.

One problem faced by our founders that will certainly sound familiar to us is the question of motives behind political positions. It was not always possible to discern whether another’s positions and advocacy were born of integrity and mutual regard. As Alexander Hamilton noted in The Federalist No.1, “we are not always sure, that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives, not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as upon those who oppose the right side of a question.” Apparently, having the truth and an opinion on its applicability did not prevent the more unseemly side of one’s nature from taking over, particularly in a political venue where the common good was at stake. Somehow, doing the right thing for the wrong motives isn’t really doing the right thing.

Another problem was the rivalry and animus that prevailed among political factions. In The Federalist No. 10, James Madison confessed his belief that adopting the proposed Constitution would “break and control the violence of faction.” He and others were convinced that the instability of a confederation of state governments would wreak havoc on the task of governing a disparate and dispersed nation. On the other hand, having a “well constructed Union” would reduce the tendency of political differences to produce a situation in which “the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties” and “measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party; but by the superior force of an interested and over-bearing majority.” On this score, history has proven Madison wrong; rather than hold us together, the Constitution (or its interpretation) is arguably tearing us apart. Now we have factions plus special interest groups.

For Madison, factionalism and partisanship were rooted in human nature, but this did not make them “natural,” but rather inglorious and harmful. He understood “faction” to be “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions aplenty have we, and of such, no good can come.

Factions disregard or minimize the rights of some and their claims to full and free participation in civil society. Believing as he did that a unified government was essential for securing the rights of all, Madison was loath to affirm a human impulse that “divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to co-operate for their common good.”

One fairly certain result of the recent mid-term elections is that the level of acrimony in our political discourse and activity appears to be unrestrained. Partisanship has taken on an unreasoning, almost mind-numbing quality; somehow the measure of one’s political allegiance is to be found in the ardor with which one embraces a partisan cause and assails one’s opponents rather than in the ability to articulate a reasonable and informed position on the issues we face. Campaigns appealed more to fear than to principle, more to caricature than character, as they sought to gain or preserve personal as well as political advantage. Such self-serving and deceitful impulses evidently have been at work in politics for some time, and there is no sign that this is ending now.

But politics that creates demagogues and makes enemies of one’s opponents is more than a politics of incivility; it is a politics of immorality. Politics that strives mercilessly to gain or protect advantage lacks both a rational and a moral language by which it can be justified. Polarity in politics, whether it is bipolar or tripolar, ultimately makes all political institutions and structures ineffective and untrustworthy, rendering the body politic little more than an aggregation of discontents. That does not bode well for a nation that needs leaders and solutions as we do now.

Isn’t it strange how the public virtue of civility—and, one might add, the personal virtues of integrity and humility—are perceived as a weakness? Somehow we are given the impression that it is a sign of strength and commitment to disparage political opponents and distort their views in order to gain political advantage. There is no debate on the issues of the moment in any conventional sense, and most of the talking is around and past one another, and to someone whose approval and money matter. If there was a time when political leaders sought common ground to cultivate the common good, that time now escapes living memory. Even “compromise” has become a foul four-letter word.

Lost in all the din of our political discourse and campaign shenanigans was not just a set of solutions to our national problems, but a compelling and unifying vision that speaks to how individual liberty and socioeconomic prosperity are inextricably tied to a willingness to secure the well-being of all. As a nation, we have serious problems in this area, what with the rise in poverty, job stagnation, failing schools, and growing income inequality.

So it is noteworthy that a growing number of citizens in this country want a third political party as an option to the Democratic and Republican parties. According to a Gallup poll taken in September, 2010, more Americans now than in 2003 believe both major parties are inadequate and doing a poor job of representing them in government. The jump here is from 40% to 58% over that time span. Political liberals, moderates and conservatives have all seen a rise in interest in this question in their ranks, and now seven out of ten independents believe a third party is needed. But apparently, it’s not the Tea Party; clear majorities of those who oppose or are indifferent to the Tea Party Movement believe a third party is necessary at present.

Perhaps more so now then in the eighteenth century, we need voices of reason to speak out and contest the prevailing tide of our polarized political discourse. What we need is a public rationality, a way to conceive, assess, discuss, and adjudicate matters that affect us all. Such a public rationality need not be totalizing or oppressive of diverse points of view or political ideology. Rather, as John Rawls argues, public reason is manifest when those who hold various opinions and advocate the adoption of their policies are able to “explain the basis of their actions to one another in terms each could reasonably expect that others might endorse as consistent with their freedom and equality” (Political Liberalism, p. 218). Put differently, the legitimate acquisition and use of political power is correlative to the principles and ideals that all free and equal citizens of whatever political ideology would recognize as reasonable. Thus, the burden is on politicians to explain in recognizably rational ways how a policy proposal enhances the freedom and equality of all and not just a small minority of stake-holders.

Freedom and equality require that all members of a civil society regard one another with respect. This applies to opponents in the political arena as well as citizens in the everyday places of our common life. Persons whose values and commitments are rooted in the Christian tradition ought especially to bring their convictions to bear on political discourse and matters of public policy; embracing a faith tradition does not disqualify one from participating as a person of faith in political discussion and decision-making.

But neither does being a person of faith in the public sphere mean that one has extraordinary insight into one’s political opponents or exceptional knowledge about how to achieve the goal of human flourishing. A public faith is not an arrogant faith. As Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, former president of Chicago Theological Seminary, has pointed out, one of the major functions of religion in our recent spate of political elections has been to canonize fear, anxiety, and anger in our view of the world and our political situation. In the absence of an alternative political or religious narrative that evokes a sense of compassion and solidarity in the struggle for well-being, this polarizing effect is all that a religious perspective has to offer.

And of course, people of faith can disagree, and they do. The disagreements that matter are those at the intersection of faith and public life. Such disagreements are not in themselves the problem. Rather, the problem is the presumption that some think they know better how others should live their lives, and thus they seek to impose and enforce ways of life that constrict rather than enhance freedom and the prospects of flourishing. Former Senator John Danforth (R-MO), in his book Faith and Politics, notes: “The problem is not that Christians are conservative or liberal, but that some are so confident that their position is God’s position that they become dismissive and intolerant toward others and divisive forces in our national life…. The problem of American politics is not the different positions people take—disagreeing on positions is the nature of politics. The problem is the divisiveness that makes civil discourse, much less reasonable compromise, so difficult today” (10-11).

How Christians think of themselves and others, whether there is honor and respect accorded to those in and outside the faith tradition, and whether regard for different political opinions is more than sanctimonious judgment are all matters related to a profession of love for God and one’s neighbors.

I find myself increasingly unwilling to accept the tenor of our current political discourse. I don’t care much for the lack of civility in politics, and I’m convinced more now than ever that participating in public life on the basis of self-interest alone is counterproductive to the common good. There are legitimate differences of opinion and viable alternatives in strategies to secure the well-being of all.

The willingness to navigate and negotiate these differences is paramount to an ethic of civility and thus to our civil democracy. We need to call out our political representatives and leaders and demand that they conduct themselves and our business in ways that any reasonable citizen would respect.

So I think I’m going to call my representatives in Washington and Springfield and let them know how disgruntled and disappointed I am. I would not object if you did the same.

Should We Support Civil Unions?

2010-11-23T08:33:00.001-06:00

As this is written, HB2234, a bill on civil unions for gay and lesbian couples in Illinois may be called up for a vote in the House in the fall veto session of the General Assembly. If it is, and if it passes, Gov. Patrick Quinn who supports it will presumably sign it.

The Chicago Sun Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Daily Herald have all editorialized in support of civil unions. The ACLU of Illinois supports it. Patriots United, the Illinois Family Institute, and Chicago Roman Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Francis George oppose it.

Polling data both nationally and in Illinois make it evident that a clear majority support civil unions though less than half fully support same-sex marriage.

The bill now before the General Assembly in Springfield is also supported by Protestants for the Common Good, an organization with which I am happily associated. At this moment, however, I am wondering if this is a bill we should support.

If enacted, this bill would make it possible for one partner in the union to make medical decisions for the other in the event of the latter’s incapacitation. It would establish the right of one to access the other’s benefits such as workers’ compensation and pension. In the event of the wrongful death of one partner, the other would have standing and thus access to civil action. Should both parties to the union agree that it should come to an end, both parties are subject to laws that govern dissolution and disposition of property. The bill would make it possible for both partners to benefit from joint state tax returns and have standing in the disposition of wills, trusts and estates. The testimonial privilege now enjoyed by spouses would also apply to partners in a civil union, as would protections under the law against domestic violence.

There is much about this law that makes it comparable to those rights and privileges that pertain to a legal marriage. In fact, the law would make it possible for any adult couple, whether they are same-sex or different-sex, to partner in such a union. Arguably, it is a “marriage” of sorts; it just isn’t called that.

But what it’s called isn’t really the problem. It’s what it does that’s the problem. Permitting and recognizing a particular set of rights, privileges and responsibilities as applicable to two people who freely consent to enter into such a relationship, in this case, effectively creates and sanctions a second-class status.

In the United States, people who marry in one state have a legal status that is recognized and protected in all the states of the Union. Should a couple in a lawful civil union in Illinois relocate to another state, all the rights and privileges accorded to them here would end. Unless the new state of residence recognized civil unions, the Illinois union would no longer be legally valid.

None of the federal laws pertaining to rights, privileges and benefits apply to the parties in an Illinois civil union. Should one lose employment and health coverage, COBRA health benefits would not be available for the other. The provisions of the Family Medical Leave Act would not apply to the union, nor would exemptions from federal income and estate taxes. It would not be possible for one partner to receive the survivor portion of the other’s Social Security benefit. Low-income partners in an Illinois civil union are ineligible to receive the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. If one of the partners is a homeowner, and together they choose to sell their home, the principal owner will have to file a capital gains tax calculated on the basis of a single rather than a married homeowner.

There are 1,138 benefits, rights and protections codified in federal law for married couples. Wherever a married couple lives or moves, these laws privilege their status as a couple and protect their financial interests at present and in the future.

The problem with civil unions in Illinois, then, is that creating them is a continuation of the denial of those rights accorded to married couples in identical relationship circumstances.

No reasonable person can deny that with marriage comes a special, respected, privileged, and beneficial status. From a social and cultural perspective, marriage can be defined any number of ways, and these definitions can be codified into law in order to protect the institution of marriage. We practice marriage in the United States in ways and with rights, privileges and responsibilities that are different than those in Russia or Indonesia, Cambodia or Myanmar, Brazil or Germany. Our state and national governments identify and secure certain rights to the partners in a marriage because our society recognizes that the institution of marriage is extremely important. Indeed, the state has an interest in the institution of marriage because this institution is foundational to our social and economic fabric. Absent an interest in marriage, why would the state enact laws to manage it and protect those who enter into it?

In effect, this means that the state has an interest in encouraging and promoting stable and committed relationships. No married person would thrill at the prospect of having government interfere in any way in their relationship with their spouse. But those who are married most likely enjoy the fact that certain social and financial benefits accrue to them by government action. State and federal laws relative to the rights and privileges of marriage are in place because our government recognizes that a committed relationship, entered into by two persons with the intent of sharing life together and supporting one another, is a fundamental block in building a socioeconomic order; the social and economic unit established in such a relationship is foundational to establishing families, neighborhoods, and communities in which the flourishing of all is possible.

But governments at all levels also have an interest in securing equal rights in our society. The principle of equality in our nation’s history has not always been operative in our laws, but since our founding it has served as a criterion by which discriminatory laws have been overturned and more equitable laws established. And while social, economic and political debate can rage on the issue of equality of outcomes, no reasonable dissent can be offered on equal opportunity and the equal protection of the laws.

As a fundamental social and cultural institution in our society, marriage both reflects and secures this principle of equality, and it does so by affirming the freedom of choice. In its 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws, the U.S. Supreme Court contended: “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

In light of this and other decisions of the courts which have secured marriage as a fundamental human and civil right, it is both impracticable and unreasonable to deny this right to any citizen or lawful resident of the United States on the grounds of his or her sexual orientation. Regardless of one’s view of the nature and origins of homosexual orientation and behavior, there is no justification for a government or state having a legal interest in an individual’s sexual orientation; whether it is a matter of nature or nurture or both, it most assuredly is not a matter of state regulation or interference. If the state has no compelling interest in one’s sexual orientation, the state has no basis to deny, on the basis of sexual orientation, civil rights guaranteed to others.

The U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the state of Illinois have enshrined the principle of egalitarianism so that one cannot lawfully be denied his or her rights on the basis of one’s race, religion, sex or place of origin. Indeed, the principle of equality before the law entails an affirmation that all are equally subject to the law and all are equally beneficiaries of the law. But in this state, it is still possible to deny an individual the right to marry the person of his or her choice because the one chosen is of the same sex. Not every couple in Illinois who freely chooses to love each other and commit to a live together in all of life’s circumstances, who wants to form a household and raise children and contribute out of their own personal and familial well-being to the improvement of their neighbors’ lives and their community, who recognizes the social and economic importance of marriage and wishes to discharge their responsibilities and avail themselves of its benefits, not every such couple can get married in the state of Illinois. The adoption of civil unions will not change this. The one fact that prevents them from marrying is sexual orientation.

But it is not just the denial of one’s right to marry the person of one’s own choosing and benefit from the protections and privileges accorded to all married persons that renders a second-class status to civil unions. By any measure and by any definition—social, cultural, economic, emotional, spiritual—a civil union is not a marriage; it is, and by correlation always will be, a partnership that carries an inferior and disadvantaged status. In our society, it is marriage that stands as the definitive institutional expression of an intimate and committed interpersonal relationship, and civil unions do not carry the same social value and significance.

At best, civil unions are regarded by many as a pale imitation, a contrived and variable facsimile, of marriage. Granting same-sex couples the form of a sanctioned and protected relationship while different-sex couples enjoy the substance of a relationship whose reality is feigned in civil unions strikes me as both discriminatory and cruel. As the U.S. District Court noted in its opinion in Perry et al. v. Schwarzenegger: “The availability of domestic partnerships does not provide gays and lesbians with a status equivalent to marriage because the cultural meaning of marriage and its associated benefits are intentionally withheld from same-sex couples in domestic partnerships.” For all practical purposes, the difference between a civil union and a domestic partnership is insignificant; neither one is a marriage, and both are structured and legalized according to the discretion of the state legislatures that enact them.

Civil unions bring a measure of protection and benefit to same-sex couples in Illinois, and for that reason alone the bill before the General Assembly should be supported. But its enactment will not alter the fact that same-sex couples are treated differently under the law in Illinois, confined to a second-class status, and denied the equal protection of the law. For this reason, HB2234 should be seen only as a stage on the way, a milestone to mark the advance toward the full inclusion and equality of all.

On the other hand, to the extent that HB2234 is viewed as the alternative to same-sex marriage, or the final resolution of the issue of legally protected same-sex relationships, it must be opposed.

Hypocrites Among Us

2010-11-09T14:11:00.000-06:00

One thing we can take from Jesus’ censure of the scribes and Pharisees as recorded in Mt 23:23 and Luke 11:42 is that they most certainly did not consider themselves hypocrites as Jesus said, or guilty of neglecting the “weightier matters” of justice and mercy, faith and love. Their problem with Jesus was that he simply would not accept that their totalizing institutions of religion and their leadership of them were virtuous, authentic, loyal, exemplary, sincere, authoritative, and most of all, lawful.

What is interesting is that most Christians nowadays hold that, in this contestation, Jesus was correct in his assessment of his adversaries. But that means those who thought themselves right were in fact wrong, so these religious elite must have been functioning in some form of denial or false consciousness or just plain self-deception. Holding that Jesus was in the right is tantamount to acknowledging that those who regard themselves as the true custodians and protectors of a dominant religious system can simply be mistaken, that their notions of justice, mercy, faith and love are corrupt, and that the behavior they suppose is expressive of these virtues is a mockery.

Whatever the scribes and Pharisees may have believed regarding justice and mercy, the fact of the matter is that they weren’t doing them, at least not by any measure that counted to Jesus. That should give pause to those of us who claim to believe in Jesus and justice.

With some fear and trepidation, I want to suggest that there is some evidence to support the idea that Christians and their leaders in general are more like the scribes and Pharisees in the story here than we have heretofore thought.

Though it is a bit of a generalization, I nonetheless think that Christians truly want their faith to matter in their lives. Like the scribes and Pharisees, they want their journey of faith to be authentic and sincere and to love God with all their heart, mind and strength. This is admirable indeed, and with humility I count myself among them. From an ethical standpoint, Christians hold that faith ought to inform the choices made and the actions taken in all areas of life.

But it is just here that things get complicated. Christians may want their faith to relate to their decision-making and behavior, but the way from faith to decisions and actions is not as straightforward as some might like. At some point in Western history (probably, as most scholars believe, in conjunction with the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment), Christianity became less a religion of doing and more a religion of believing. By this I mean that Christianity’s focus on defining, defending and enforcing a set of beliefs became more important than performing religious duties of charity and compassion for one’s fellow citizens. Correct belief, or orthodoxy, became more important because it was thought that correct conduct could not follow from any but correct belief. There has never been anything like a single set of beliefs that were universally regarded as normative for all Christians, (theological and cultural diversity existed from the beginning, and there is indication of that in Christian scriptures), but for the last few centuries Western Christianity has been constituted by various Christianities, each of which defines and defends a particular set of beliefs. We are now provoked even to ask: Is Christianity a matter of believing or of doing? Can one do right without believing, and can one truly believe without doing?

It is an important fact that historically and culturally we have spun off believing and doing from one another; this has left us with some peculiar effects as a society and a religion in the United States. For example, we have separated religion from its public domain by privatizing faith and emphasizing the freedom of personal choice. Unlike our scribe and Pharisee friends, who functioned in an effective monopoly of religion, we live in a civil democracy that acknowledges the existence of multiple religions though it protects none from the market of religious options available. Christianity now is less a totalizing way of life in human society and more a matter of choice.

Behind this situation in our context are the Reformation’s emphasis on personal faith and salvation, and the Enlightenment’s emphasis on human beings as naturally free and rational creatures. With these forerunners, we view our society as an aggregation of free rational individuals whose autonomy cannot be infringed and whose freedom to pursue their own interests is to be protected by a legitimate government. In the view of John Locke, the English philosopher whose political ideas exercised considerable influence on our founders, religious organizations are voluntary associations of individuals. In the face of the proliferation of and conflicts between “denominations” in the seventeenth century, conflicts related less to the doing of religion and more to the different systems of belief, Locke argued in A Letter Concerning Toleration, saying, “I esteem that toleration to be the chief characteristic mark of the true Church.” Thus, religious liberty, and by extension, religious pluralism, can be seen as the fruit of personal, rational choices of individuals. Laws of religious liberty do not grant this freedom so much as acknowledge the prior “natural” existence of this freedom.

And yet, interestingly enough, as Locke surveyed the “different professions of religion,” he observed that each with its claim to antiquity and genuine discipline was merely contending for supremacy in power and rule in human society. Like Jesus with the scribes and Pharisees, Locke could pronounce a word of censure: “Let anyone have never so true a claim to all these things, yet if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself.”

One other effect of the separation of believing and doing is the distinction between “spirituality” and “religion.” Many who express disfavor with religion nonetheless acknowledge an interest in things spiritual. Such persons tend to be quite critical of “organized” or “institutional” religion because of its seeming inflexibility, authority, and power to enforce some degree of homogeneity.

Much to be preferred is the freedom to chart one’s own course in matters of the heart, mind, and spirit; this provides the impetus to a more individualized and more eclectic quest for meaning, whether or not it is transcendent in origin or nature. Spirituality thus becomes an individually-tailored belief system to guide one in the pursuit of self-realization. Cultivating one’s own spirituality and connection to ultimacy does not necessarily entail performing any social act or adopting any social ethic. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow, in his book After Heaven, calls this transition from religion to spirituality the move from “dwelling” to “seeking.’

In turn, this distinction between spirituality and religion has led to what Grace Davie, in her book The Sociology of Religion, has referred to as “believing without belonging.” Individuals who are disenchanted with more conventional forms and practices of religion continue to affirm in some sense a set of distinctive religious attitudes and beliefs, but exercise their personal choice not to be connected to or a participant in any otherwise recognizable form of religious community or organization. Unfettered by institutional authority or creed, one may consider himself or herself as an adherent, or follower, or believer whose religious social needs are self-met or fulfilled somewhat impersonally by the use of technology (TV, radio, internet, etc.). All the while such a believer exercises his or her own individual choice with regard to whether doing one’s religion is, in any way, germane to one’s believing, and if it is, what is actually done is left to the individual to determine and justify.

It is here that we meet again the problem Jesus identified in his encounter with the scribes and Pharisees. Though they were spiritual and religious, believing and belonging, they were nonetheless complicit in setting aside the “weightier matters” of justice, mercy, faith and love. Their preoccupation with less made it possible for them to disregard more. Instead of doing these things, they exercised a degree of autonomy to choose what was, and what was not morally required of them to legitimate their claim to faithfulness, and thus their claim to authority and status as leaders. Like many of our modern-day Christians, they retained the right to choose for themselves what was and what was not to be believed, and what was and what was not to be done as expressive both of that belief and of justice and mercy, faith and love.

This disconnect between beliefs and values on the one hand, and behavior expressive of these beliefs and values on the other, has been a conundrum for Christians from the very beginning. It’s part of our contribution to the notion of sin. The incongruity of beliefs and behavior is itself an ethical matter because, as the exposure of the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees illustrates, self-deception and dissembling are widespread. Indeed, in our own time, sociologist Mark Chaves has remarked that this lack of consistency between religious beliefs, attitudes, values, and behavior is so widespread that it is in fact the norm. In his recent article in the March 2010 issue of the Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, he contends that to suppose this consistency between beliefs and behavior to exist is really to commit what he calls the “religious congruence fallacy.” What is met more commonly is an inability—or unwillingness—to align one’s beliefs and behaviors. Chaves’ primary point is that sociologists of religion can no longer assume that the measured behavior is the effect of religious beliefs, or that holding certain religious beliefs will necessarily entail their expression in behavior. Remarkably, the opposite is the case; an inquirer must assume inconsistency.

The lesson of the scribes and the Pharisees, then, is deeply troublesome: religious self-assessment and regard for those who hold a similar set of beliefs and practices may actually reveal a feigning of religiosity. Thus, it should come as no surprise, for example, that a national survey taken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that only a tiny number of Americans, who claim their religion is important, are led by their religious views to their position on such matters as immigration, the death penalty, poverty, the environment, and governmental assistance to the poor. Faith matters on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, but considerably less so in these other areas.

That one’s religious sensibilities—convictions and commitments—are distinct from, and unrelated to, certain realities faced by our fellow citizens begs the question of what justice and mercy, faith and love can mean in other than our own personal spaces. The fact of incongruity raises the specter of hypocrisy, so we too must examine the ways we mitigate what might just be our personal, social, and religious responsibility to execute justice and mercy, faith and love.

Perhaps, at best, the incongruence of belief and behavior can reveal what Leon Festinger calls “cognitive dissonance,” or the psychological tension produced by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously, like believing in justice and mercy, and believing that one is not called to pursue either in a public world. But it is possible for beliefs and behaviors to change in order to relieve the inner tension.

At worst, the incongruence signifies hypocrisy, and we probably know the answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” He is undoubtedly a better model for doing justice and mercy than the scribes and Pharisees.

Weightier Matters

2010-10-26T15:23:00.000-05:00

Anyone familiar with the Christian tradition knows that the scribes and Pharisees didn’t care for Jesus. From their point of view, he was an impertinent and unruly interloper whose words and conduct were blasphemous and subversive. From his point of view, they were … well, they were phony.

Roman-occupied Palestine, in the first century of the common era, did not have a First Amendment, so there was no freedom of speech or even freedom of religion, at least not in the form of disestablishment of religion as we know it today. If one was Jewish, one had to do certain things and do them in particular ways; there was no room to allow one the choice of altering how things were done according to the dictates of conscience or personal liberty.

Likewise, speaking up and speaking out against the authorities—civil and religious—could get one in a lot of trouble, so much so that it was much better to muzzle your mouth, stew in your juices, and keep a low profile—or join up with the revolutionaries advocating violent overthrow. Doing it your way could be nettlesome to the religious elite who kept the gates and brokered the law and preserved the socioeconomic and religious establishment.

So it’s not surprising that when Jesus calls out the scribes and Pharisees, they are not too pleased. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” he says with ire, “for you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others” (Mt 23:23 NRSV. See also Lk 11:42).

Clearly, Jesus judged this crowd as deficient in executing the “weightier matters” of the law. Perhaps, in his mind, they not only did not do what they were supposed to do as the ruling elite, but they did do things they weren’t supposed to do. So maybe we could say they were engaging in acts of omission and acts of commission.

On the other hand, from the perspective of the scribes and Pharisees, I’m quite confident that they saw themselves as doing all that was required by the law and then some. In their mind, they were not neglecting anything, and no doubt they saw themselves as upholding and exacting justice and mercy and faith. For them, the law and the traditions were clear, authoritative and indisputable.

Between Jesus and these religious leaders, there was a profound disconnect, a blatant contradiction. These two squared off against one another, and the point of view of each side regarding the other couldn’t be more different. The scribes and Pharisees were keeping the law and doing justice, dispensing mercy and pronouncing judgment as required; Jesus, on the other hand, judged them to be dissemblers because they were not doing (i.e., producing, providing, performing, enacting, expressing) justice, mercy, faith and—according to Luke’s version—the love of God.

Now what is involved in this doing of justice and mercy, this faith and love, that Jesus speaks of as the “weightier matters” that have gone unpracticed? Perhaps more importantly, how is it that Jesus’ charge of hypocrisy so angers the scribes and Pharisees that they conspire to catch him in some ungodly act or irreverent speech that would confirm his blasphemy, justify the punishment of death, and acquit them of his reckless judgment against them?

Reflections on this passage have prompted me to wonder: If the scribes and Pharisees thought themselves to be loving and faithful and just and merciful when in fact they weren’t, according to Jesus, is it possible that there are followers of Jesus today who think of themselves in ways similar to that of the scribes and the Pharisees, but whose beliefs and conduct merit the same woe of judgment Jesus gave to his first-century opponents?

Just as the scribes and Pharisees insisted on obedience to the law and adherence to the rules and regulations of the tradition that governed areas like tithing, foods, sexuality, property, marriage and temple ritual, and thus prescribed and enforced a socioeconomic and religious lifestyle that actually favored their position and preserved their own power while abridging the need for justice and mercy sought by others, is it conceivable that there are followers of Jesus today whose religious sensibilities, cultural locations, and socioeconomic resources are so inextricably tied to advantages of their power and privilege that they take their values and priorities to be the presumed norm and equivalent to the way things ought to be? Is there a charge of hypocrisy that could be leveled here?

It would be indelicate to answer these questions with either an unequivocal yes or no, but I admit they have stirred me to think further about some issues unearthed here, issues related to faith and public life. I don’t think anyone wants to be a Pharisee, and no one likes having their hypocrisy exposed—least of all me! But it might nonetheless be useful—and revealing—to imagine oneself a modern Pharisee of sorts, one to whom a modern Jesus might direct just such a censure of hypocrisy.

One thing is certain about the scribes and the Pharisees: their religion and their faith were very, very important to them. We should not think that because Jesus called them hypocrites they were therefore not serious or committed religionists. Their faith and their way of life—their religion—were totalizing, encompassing every aspect of human socioeconomic and political existence. From birth to death, dawn to dusk, seller to buyer, season to season, year to year, place to place, generation to generation, life was organized around the public rhythms of faithful obedience to the laws of the covenant between the Jews and their God. Nothing, literally nothing, was outside this domain, not even the encroachment on this covenant by the ruling Roman Empire.

Likewise, there are, among us, many for whom their Christian faith is very, very important, so important that they freely acknowledge that their tradition of faith touches every aspect of their life and the choices they make. To them, it is unthinkable that their faith convictions and commitments would not guide them along life’s path, or that there is an area of their life from day to day that is outside of, and untouched by, the pattern of authority established by God, including matters of both personal virtue and public morality.

And yet, for these who confess their faith and its significance, there appears to be remarkably little evidence of doing those things that produce, provide, perform, enact, or express justice and mercy by almost any measure other than one’s own private religious sensibilities. At the same time, if there is one feature characteristic of the variety of Christianities in our context, it is that there is no consensus on what constitutes justice and mercy, or how religion could or should inform an understanding and codification of these virtues in our civil democracy.

It is unfortunate, perhaps, that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures do not offer us an unambiguous definition of “justice” and “mercy.” Across the centuries and cultures, from those times to ours, we puzzle our way through in a reading of what the scriptures offer us on the meaning of “faith” and “love.” Biblical scholarship notwithstanding, we have to make it up as we go along; it’s one thing to say “this is what the Bible teaches,” and it’s another thing entirely to say “these are the implications for us today.” These two things are not identical, and empirical, theoretical, and ideological moves are made when pronouncements of their relationship are offered.

So perhaps here lies the cutting edge of Jesus’ censure to the scribes and Pharisees: We ought not to suppose that our notions of justice, mercy, faith and love are identical to those “weightier matters” about which Jesus spoke to his fellow religionists. His poor are not our poor, though the nature of poverty then and its growth now should give us pause. They did “power and privilege” differently in the first century C.E. than we do now, though the similarities are uncanny even when our sophisticated veneers are stripped away. The distance then between the “haves” and the “have-nots” segregated a tiny but commanding elite from the weak and impoverished masses, but we appear to be much more diverse in our growing income inequality. Children in those days were embedded in a larger network of relatives whose responsibility it was to see to their socialization—differentially as male and female, to be sure—but everyone was equipped to discharge their social role and to fit in, while we have difficulty equalizing accessibility to quality education and empowering persons to embrace and express their equality and participate fully in our sociopolitical system.

There are scribes and Pharisees among us. Justice and mercy, faith and love, are at risk. Jesus says “woe!” Scribes and Pharisees say “excuse me!” On which side will you be found? More to come….

And the survey says…?

2010-10-13T10:05:00.001-05:00

It seems that most everyone is aflutter with the news that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than religionists themselves, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Let’s put that another way: We now have evidence that disbelievers and unknowers have more information about other religions than do the followers of those religions. That’s the news coming out of Washington D.C. where the Pew Research Center has just released its findings from its study of religious knowledge in the U.S.

For anyone who may be curious, the results suggest that the level of religious knowledge among adherents and non-adherents alike is not all that great. Sure, atheists/agnostics answer more survey questions correctly, but 20.9 correct out of 32 questions is still a ‘D’ on the grade sheet. And yes, on a scale where 60% is passing, only atheists/agnostics, Jews, and Mormons pass, while all types of Christians fail.

Surveys have been trumpeting for years that Americans are the most religious people on the face of the earth – an observation made on the fact that, according to polls by USA Today/Gallup poll and Pew, for example, 92% of respondents say they believe in God. But as we all know, saying “yes” to a survey researcher’s question about belief in God doesn’t really tell us much. For instance, it doesn’t tell us anything about the God who is the object of belief, and there are a lot of options out there.

On the other hand, these surveys also indicate that 5% of the respondents say they do not believe in God or a higher power or a universal spirit. That’s a very small number of disbelievers. It gets even smaller when we consider that Pew also reports in another survey that this 5% can be broken down further: Some of this 5% self-identify as atheist (24%), some as agnostic (15%), and some as “nothing in particular” (35%). The remaining nonbelievers (24%) self-identify as followers of one of the Christian traditions, the Jewish traditions, Buddhism, or some other religion. Who knows but that the person sitting next to you in worship is an atheist!

What makes these religious knowledge statistics interesting is that other indicators of religiosity in this country are not so strong on average. Other surveys show that such practices as Bible reading, praying, attending worship, and other forms of involvement in religious communities are declining. We all know about congregations bursting at the seams and congregations on life-support. Beliefs once cherished and held with great conviction now receive nodding assent by some and complete dismissal by others. The bonds of faith that gave identity and purpose to participants in religious traditions are not quite as strong as they once were.

Some Christian denominations and churches are growing faster than others in the U.S., and the numbers of followers of other religions are also on the rise. But according to the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey, the number of atheists and agnostics is hardly static. In fact, not only is the number of people who self-identify as “atheist” or “none” or “no religion” actually rising, but this group is the fastest growing group around.

So are we now to believe that atheists and agnostics know more about America’s religious traditions than the traditionally religious? We are, if we let the Pew survey be our guide.

Pew researchers asked 3,412 respondents thirty-two multiple-choice questions on religious matters (see the questions here). Only eight persons got all the answers correct; six persons didn’t get any correct (on a multiple choice questionnaire, no less); everyone else helped make a nice bell curve. On average, respondents answered half or sixteen of the questions correctly. The average for self-identified atheists or agnostics was 20.9 questions answered correctly, for Jews it was 20.5, for Mormons it was 20.3 – these are the groups that “pass the course.” Only white evangelical Protestants and white Catholics scored at or above the average of 16 correct answers (17.4 and 16, respectively). The other categories of respondents were white mainline Protestant (15.8), nothing in particular (15.2), Black Protestant (13.3) and Hispanic Catholic (11.6) – each of these get to repeat the course.

This Pew survey would have us believe that those who self-identify as atheist/agnostic know more about what they disbelieve and doubt than people of faith know about what they believe concerning their religion.

But this conclusion may be premature because it begs the question of how it happens that the atheist/agnostic respondents know the answers to some of these thirty-two questions. Are they formerly religious believers/followers, raised religious but never a practitioner, never religious but absorbent of religious culture, students of religion in secondary or higher education, actively non-religious (i.e., advocates against religion), married to a religious spouse, intellectually curious about religion, or what? Analysis of the Pew survey and the significance of their findings require that we decouple the fact that some respondents self-identify as atheist/agnostic and the relative presence of their knowledge of certain religious “facts, events, leaders,” etc.

To some extent, the Pew researchers do this with their discussion of factors that contribute to religious knowledge, but it merits exploring more deeply. For example, the data so far released by Pew does not tell us what questions were answered correctly by those who have had higher education, or attended a private religious school, or were active in youth group. Likewise, the information Pew has released does not tell us how atheists/agnostics answered all the questions, or how mainline Protestants answered all the questions, or how the questions answered correctly by evangelical Protestants compare with the answers by Jews on those questions.

At the same time, analysis must probe and assess what is offered in the questions as a baseline for determining what constitutes a bona fide religionist in a tradition. It’s the difference between what adherents know, should know, and don’t need to know, and how this difference is determined and by whom.

There is a difference, for example, between a Catholic who does not know about the church’s teaching on transubstantiation of the Eucharistic elements, and a Protestant who does not know this Catholic doctrine. Is it reasonable to suppose that a mainline Protestant religionist knows little about Judaism if he or she does not know who Maimonides was? Does it say less about religious knowledge and more about historical knowledge—or lack thereof—if a respondent chooses Charles Finney instead of Jonathan Edwards as a preacher during the First Great Awakening? The issue here has two edges to it: content, sources and opportunities to acquire religious knowledge, and the significance and function of such knowledge in the religious tradition. Put another way, who gets to decide what information constitutes “knowledgeable” in religious knowledge, and what information is meaningless in accounting the level of religious knowledge?

Pew survey researchers, in consultation with Stephen Prothero, the Boston University professor whose scholarship on religious literacy inspired the Pew survey, formulated the thirty-two questions with an eye to establishing a baseline of religious knowledge in the U.S. Out of all the possible questions that could be asked about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, researchers settled on these thirty-two as representative of “religious knowledge” in this country. That, in itself, is quite a stretch.

But it was not the researchers’ intent, nor do they claim, to suggest that there is a correlation between which questions were answered correctly and the level of respondents’ fidelity, commitment, and practice of religious faith. Just as they cannot explain how and why the atheists/agnostics know what they know, so they cannot explain—or pass judgment on—what religionists know and what significance for their lives this knowledge yields. Basically, at this point, Pew’s analysis is not concerned with these issues.

So what are we left with out of this survey? In brief, we know, among other things, that 19% of Protestants “know” that only Protestantism teaches that salvation comes by faith alone, and those 19% would be wrong.

In brief, we know that less than half of Protestant respondents associate Job with suffering, but so do less than half of Jewish respondents, and given their histories, these two groups might think quite differently about Job and suffering.

In brief, we know that one out of five Black Protestants does not know what Buddhism teaches about suffering and nirvana, but since only .7% of the U.S. adult population is Buddhist, one must wonder where and how Black Protestants who make up 6.9% of the U.S. adult population would have opportunity and interest to learn about this.

In brief, … you get the picture.

Of Mosques and Migrants

2010-09-27T16:40:00.002-05:00

Along with many others, I have become increasingly distressed over the summer by the public discourse and conduct of some of my fellow citizens. At the moment, I am not inclined to describe this simply as “politics,” even though campaigns for the mid-term Congressional elections are underway and many of the issues over which opinion is diverging are also matters that are, to some extent, the purview of government.

Nor am I willing to reduce it to differences in political “ideology,” even though one of the contested issues is precisely the role of government, its size and reach, in its management of our common socioeconomic life.

Rather, I have been wondering whether there is something else operating at a deeper level, catalyzing our abrasive politics and ideologies, some sort of vestigial sensibility that is evoked by a perfect storm of socioeconomic conditions, cultural group membership, and existential receptiveness to change.

Social and political extremism is hardly unknown in periods of economic downturn. As a nation we are now enduring a widening in income inequality, a rise in poverty, and a diminution of the middle class. Unemployment has struck all classes, but the burden is carried primarily and disproportionately by the lower and middle classes. Perhaps, in part, the public discourse and conduct of some are expressive of such extremism, indicative of a new form of consciousness rooted in altered social and economic conditions. Loss of socioeconomic power and status move people to require of their government and the larger society a level of change—or intervention—in those circumstances that precipitated the loss. At the same time, maintenance or increase in socioeconomic power and status typically evoke resistance to governmental initiatives to alter the status quo. Clearly we are seeing both, as change is encouraged by some, resisted by others, and perceived with indifference by many.

Two recent articles, one by Christopher Hitchens and the other by Will Bunch, have drawn attention to what just might be at the root of the recent manifestations of extremism. In “White Fright,” Hitchens argues that the uneasiness and anxiety evidenced by the dissent of social, economic, and religious conservatives are what I would call but a new form of tribalism. The growth of American citizens and residents who come from non-European countries, or are the progeny of earlier immigrants from such places, has become a source of great agitation for members of the dominant socioeconomic and cultural groups. Hitchens declares that “one crucial element of the American subconscious is about to become salient and explicit and highly volatile. It is the realization that white America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority.” For dominant groups, this means, at best, sharing socioeconomic and cultural power. At worst, it means being out of it, on the margins as it were.

Viewed through these lenses, our current public-political-ideological morass takes on the form of a variety of discursive and activist strategies to preserve the status, influence, power, and ultimately, hegemony of European Americans (i.e., how we talk about the issues and what kinds of rallies are held). It is tribalist in that particular social, ethnic, political, and religious identities are defined and rendered plausible in contradistinction to other identities. Whites are not-black, wealthy are not-poor, Republicans are not-Democrats, Protestants are not-Catholic, etc. You’re either one of us, or you’re not!

In “It’s Not About the Mosque – It’s America’s War on ‘The Other,’” Bunch contends that the outcry regarding what are thought to be porous borders and the brouhaha over the Islamic Community Center some blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center are fundamentally veiled forms of what I would call nativism. Like Hitchens, Bunch suggests that the transition of white Americans to a minority status is engendering outrage, anger, and fear among members of this group. Having to make way and room for the values and practices of other cultures whose points of origin are beyond our shores is perceived as destructive to American values and institutions. This is nativism in that it opposes the immigration and presence, lawful or otherwise, of ethnic and cultural groups whose ways of life are seen as strange and antagonistic to the dominant culture, and whose difference renders them ultimately inassimilable to American society.

As Hitchens and Bunch see it, the frenzy and the fear manifest over the summer and given so much attention by the media are really symptomatic of a deeper pathological condition afflicting white Americans, namely a sense of angst and impotence in the face of the loss of cultural dominance. If Hitchens and Bunch are correct—and I think they are—we find ourselves now confronting a new and virulent form of xenophobia, driven by diminished social and economic status, animus toward recent immigrants, and the rise of a religious tradition the knowledge of which—if it exists at all—is confined to stereotype. Muslims and Mexicans, mosques and migrations then become symbols of the demise of this hegemony. Matters like the immigration law in Arizona, opposition to the Islamic Community Center in Manhattan, the notion of reconsidering the 14^th Amendment, and the proposed-but-cancelled burning of the Qur’an in Florida can all be viewed as attempts to draw limits to tolerance and freedom and preserve a privileged status quo. It is possible to impose these limits once one has effectively identified, defined and demonized “the other,” as has been done to Muslims and Mexicans.

Some years ago, the General Social Survey, a longitudinal social research project of the National Opinion Research Center, asked respondents whether they thought the coming racial and ethnic changes in the country’s make-up were a good thing or a bad thing. Most said it was neither, perhaps feigning acceptance in the guise of indifference. Twenty-six percent declared this was either a good or a very good thing, while eighteen percent acknowledged that it was bad or very bad for the country. Given the fact that in 2000 when this survey question was asked, there had been no 9/11, the economy was humming along quite nicely, and there was a full third fewer illegal immigrants in the country than there are at present, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the distribution of responses to the question now would be somewhat different. Indeed, in light of the indices of tribalism and nativism, perhaps researchers might find additional quantifiable evidence of extremism, on both ends of the spectrum.

But when, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, fully fifty-six percent of Americans believe that the former site of the World Trade Center is “sacred ground,” and fifty-seven percent are opposed to building the proposed Islamic Community Center two blocks from that site, one must indeed wonder to what extent tribalism and nativism may be in play. When the Pew Research Center for People and the Press reports that fifty-nine percent of voters approve of Arizona’s new immigration law, the possibility that this reflects a certain degree of tribalism and nativism does occur to me.

At the very least, it prompts me to consider whether there is some extraordinary elasticity in the notion of “sacred ground.”

For cultural anthropologists and sociologists of religion, sacred ground—or sacred anything—requires its correlative, namely profane ground. All religions have persons, places, and things that are demarcated by the boundaries between these two statuses, and for religionists, these boundaries are not fluid; there is a clear and unassailable boundary between a sacred place and the profane place from which it is separated. That’s what makes something sacred: it’s separate from and unsullied by the mundane, the usual, the common. A sacred object is used only for special purposes, and though it might appear to be similar to other objects, it cannot be used for any but sacred acts. Typically, a piece of ground is regarded as sacred because tribal members lived and/or died there, or the god(s) appeared there, or some rite of passage occurs there.

But precisely as an effort to draw boundaries between the sacred and the profane, boundaries that effectively delimit spaces for the purpose of exclusion, the declaration of any site as “sacred ground” gives me pause. This is especially the case when such boundaries are at best buttressed by the impulses of civil religion, or at worst, by the vitriol in the national temperament. Boundaries that evoke or express a misguided sense of tribe and a mistaken presumption of national homogeneity are cause for alarm. Who gets to decide where the boundaries are? Who gets to decide who is in and who is out?

Some Americans may well regard the footprint of the former World Trade Center as sacred because 2,595 people lost their lives there on 9/11. But it is not as though God has ordained that the site be “sacred.” Nor has any public or religious official been empowered to proclaim it as sacred in the name of any religion, least of all our civil religion. Still, it is not at all self-evident that construing this or any other 9/11 site as sacred is not disassociated with demonizing “the other.” In the absence of some unequivocally divine sanction, regarding the site as sacred easily becomes justification of our exclusivism and a form of idolatry.

The inescapable question is: What kind of nation do we want to be in the global community? As a nation, we are not likely to allow others to make that decision for us, but surely we must know that the way we differentially treat people who live and work here, especially those whose religions and cultures are different than those that prevail in the U.S., is a sign to other nations of the extent to which we value and practice the liberty and diversity that we preach.

As the world around us has changed, so too has the United States. Even Thomas Paine, the stalwart eighteenth-century revolutionary and enthusiast for our independence, knew that conditions in nations change, with notable affect on government. In his celebrated Rights of Man, published in 1791, he observed: “The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as Government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living or the dead?”

With gratitude, sorrow, and humility, we memorialize those who gave their lives in the cause of our liberty. They died for our sake, whether they freely put themselves in harm’s way or harm came seeking them, as happened to those who died on 9/11. But avenging their ultimate sacrifice by excluding and demonizing the innocent “other” solely because they are non-white, non-Christian, non-legal, or just plain “different,” is no way to honor our nation’s founding and those generations of Americans who have come and lived and worked undeterred in the pursuit of the freedom and equality enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

No, I think we are, and will be, better than that.

On Turning Back to God

2010-08-31T11:12:00.002-05:00

Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally at the National Mall in our nation’s capitol has come and gone. Presumably both the litter and the loiterers have been removed. Now the event lives on only in the memory of those who experienced it or saw it on television, and in the articles and columns and blogs finding their way onto the Internet. This blog isn’t one of them, but it does grow out of a prominent theme at Beck’s rally: God and America!

More specifically, the theme is God’s role in American society. Beck is not the first, but he is the most recent, to call Americans to turn back to God and thereby emerge from a season of darkness. Any summons to return to God, especially as the antidote to misdirection and error, begs the question of God’s role in our social and political order.

Moreover, a call for America to return to God, or the assertion that even now America is turning back to God, raises the question of whether this applies to the nation as such, as a corporate entity, or to individuals as such. Is this a call for the nation as such to act, and if so, to whom or to what might we look to identify the acting agent(s) in this turn? Or is this a call to individuals to act, and if so, what is entailed in this action to make it evident? Or is this a call to the nation’s government to act, and if so, what forms of action would be required in order to accomplish this turn?

These are not dismissive questions. Rather they are relevant because nation-as-such and individuals-as-aggregation, though they are related, are not identical either in social or political terms. It is true that when the architects of our system of government spoke about the “nation,” they had in mind the people themselves, the origin and seat of sovereign authority. Government, on the other hand, was simply the mechanism the people put in place to secure their natural rights to life, liberty and property, and to provide a way to adjudicate different interests and circumstances when those individual freedoms collided. Individuals-as-aggregation were, and still are, viewed as society, the social community in toto, which, upon exercising its freedom to participate in civil affairs and select its public leaders, functioned as the political community. Thus nation-as-such is correlative both to the individuals-as-aggregation when they are construed as organized by a central government, and to that government, under which the people are organized.

However religious or irreligious the people of European descent were on this continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and there were full spectrums of both piety and impiety, belief and unbelief, conformity and dissent), the incontrovertible fact is that religion is neither encoded nor referenced in the U.S. Constitution except to prohibit religious adherence as a qualification for public office, and to provide for the disestablishment of religion and religious freedom.

It is thus reasonable to suppose that any call to return to God does not and cannot apply to government in any way that falls either within or outside the scope of its delegated powers. The same pertains to the nation-as-such, understood as the government under which our citizenry is civilly organized. What remains, then, is a call to individuals-as-aggregation (or to the nation-as-such, understood as individuals-as-aggregation). In other words, the call to return to God essentially applies to individuals who can be construed in their aggregation to be constitutive of society, our social community as a whole. Not to put too fine a point on it, it applies to individuals in their capacity as citizens and participants in a social and civil democracy.

But it is just at this point that we begin to get ourselves into some trouble. In the first place, there are some assumptions here that need to be brought to light because they are not universally shared by all who live here.

Assumption #1. Our country has been in a period of darkness (understood as a period of spiritual, moral, or religious falling away or decline). Whether one holds this assumption depends on what one looks for as evidence. Political/ideological disagreement and controversy do not qualify as evidence of religious decline. On the other hand, sociologists of religion have measured the decline in specifically Christian religious influence in American society, but the measures apply primarily to such phenomena as numbers of adherents and their level of participation in religious practices, and the level of acceptance of and agreement with traditional doctrines or belief systems. These are declining, to be sure, yet it needs to be noted that these areas are the more prominent indices of conventional Christianity. Other religious traditions, including new religious movements, are not undergoing decline. The gradual but inexorable decline of religion in the face of modernization and rationality (the theory of secularization) is no longer accepted as a given by scholars; religion world-wide is indeed alive and well. Furthermore, turning “back” to God is a reversion to an earlier period in our nation’s history judged to have been more spiritually or religiously robust, authentic and vital, usually conceived as an idyllic period of practically universal religious adherence. But in this scenario, the religion that is construed as normative is Christianity, in particular, Protestant Christianity, and adherence was far from being universal.

Assumption #2. The only or primary grid through which we can make sense of our national history is to see it as evidence of divine intent and custodial care, a history that unfolded according to some divine plan and purpose from which we have more recently been diverted. Here note should be taken of the interpretive significance of the view known as American exceptionalism, or the idea that, of all the nations in the world, the United States occupies a special place because its republican ideals expressed in its system of government assure individual liberty and economic freedom. Granted there are impulses in this direction to be found in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature on political philosophy and liberal democracy. But for the most part, these impulses are largely rhetorical devices to accentuate a more fundamental value in political thought, namely the inherent equality of human beings as brought forth by the Creator. The history of this country is remarkable for its achievements in social and political freedom, but this must not be emphasized at the expense of the unspeakable evils perpetrated by the dominant society on indigenous peoples and those forced into slavery from Africa.

Assumption #3. Change in a civil democratic society, particularly social change that results from the initiatives of those with a competing political point of view, is not a good, but rather something to be resisted and undone. However, since this country’s war of independence, we have undergone profound changes that are associated with such forces as westward migration, urbanization, industrialization, two world wars, economic collapses and recoveries, social reform, the civil rights movement, globalization, and terrorism. All of these have brought challenges and changes, a good many of them still resisted, but our primordial national vision remains to be fulfilled: securing personal liberty so all may live as they choose. Widening the net of inclusiveness and equality, and providing for the means—however minimalist they may be—for all to live a life of dignity and worth, are, by comparison to the eighteenth century, evident changes that could not have occurred without the action of government.

And second, in addition to these assumptions, there are some specific problems with the call to turn back to God.

Problem #1. Which “God” are we talking about? America is diverse with its religions. However extensively a view of God informed by the streams of Judeo-Christian heritage may have prevailed in our history, one needs to ask whether it is feasible or appropriate to privilege one religious tradition’s view at the expense of others. In terms of religious pluralism in the United States, is the call to return to God to be understood as religiously exclusive or inclusive? This is not a question of the de jure establishment of religion, but rather the de facto establishment, socially and culturally, of a construal of God that is peculiar to one religious tradition. In the end, de facto establishment of religion is just as enticing and despotic as de jure establishment.

Problem #2. Ultimately the notion of “turning back” to God implies some form of religious observance, and this entails sets of beliefs and worldviews, certain distinctive practices, certain rites or rituals, as well as certain expectations of personal and social behavior. Yet in the history of all religions, these have been subject to social and cultural influence and change. Sacred texts need to be interpreted and applied to changing circumstances. Social and cultural roles undergo alteration, especially to open greater and equal participation of those heretofore excluded. In order to turn back to God truly and fully, what particular religious adherence is to be promulgated as normative? In the final analysis, what will be the signs indicating such a turn, and are these signs primarily social, economic, political, or religious?

Problem #3. For many, the call to turn back to God can be insulting, arrogant, patronizing, judgmental, intolerant, threatening, repressive or even tyrannical. It takes some cheekiness to suppose that another’s worldview or sense of the divine or ultimacy—or just plain unbelief—merits an exhortation to reverse field, eject the faith or views of one’s own fathers and mothers, and embrace a religious sentiment heretofore alien to one’s identity. Typically this sort of appeal is known as evangelism or proselytizing, and it is customarily practiced only by Christians of a certain theological orientation. Thus, is it not somewhat disingenuous to call a nation to return to God when what is being promoted is a particular iteration of Christianity?

Problem #4. There remains some ambiguity regarding the active agent in the return, the one(s) to whom the call is extended and whose actions—so far, largely unspecified—are indicative of the return. The one thing that is certain is that it is not the role of civil government to promote or enforce a particular morality or vision of the good if by doing so it infringes on personal liberty. It is the role of government to assure that one’s—or a community’s—moral code does not injure or deprive others of their personal, civil, and religious freedom. Ultimately, given our religious and social diversity and our historical commitment to political liberalism (i.e., protection of freedom as the right to live as one chooses), will not our government have some role to play as an agent in the return to God? What is the most responsible—and lawful—way to achieve a return to God and protect the freedom of others with whom we share this civil democracy?

In my view, what is called for in our current sociopolitical situation is less a turning back to God, and more a commitment to practice the personal moral and civic virtues that make it possible for all to thrive. Treating others as one wishes oneself to be treated is a moral maxim not peculiar to Christianity; it can be found in virtually all religions of the world. But whether such conduct is grounded in commitment to a religious tradition or in the natural rights of our shared humanity, it is by far a more wholesome civic virtue than demeanor that produces discord, rancor, and hostility.

Religion certainly can promote responsible citizenship in a republican democracy. For example, Paul’s comments about the church as a social reality apply just as well to civil society: “the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body” (1 Cor. 12:12, NRSV); “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3-4); “Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:16-18). Who among us, of whatever religious tradition or political ideology, can reasonably deny that the human virtues embedded in these exhortations are applicable to our life as a nation?

Religion can contribute to the cultivation of the common good, understood as the conditions necessary for each one of us to realize our potential and to thrive as a free and equal human being in our social order. In a civil democracy such as ours, the common good does not require religion, but it does require a moral sense of shared responsibility and mutual obligation, and a willingness to act so that what is gained by one’s freedom does not deprive another of his or her freedom. Perhaps this is a turn we all can take, a re-turn we all can make.

Our Social/Political Pathology

2010-08-18T13:25:00.001-05:00

The seasons of political elections come and go, each characterized not only by a set of particular issues but a peculiar tone to the public discussions and debates. Invariably the constellation of issues and challenges facing the country and its political leadership is anchored in but a handful of extra-ordinary issues, those that seem to evoke heightened interest and inspire civic participation, but may or may not actually point our way forward as a nation. Ballots are cast, swearings-in occur, and we get on with our lives, whether we are pleased or disgruntled at the outcome. It is what it is—and we hope to see another day.

Wars and wages, rights and responsibilities, freedom and fairness, equality and ecology, safety and security: these are the provinces within which we have crystallized the issues of political elections in seasons past. With confrontation and pugnacity, we achieve a measurable degree of social and political resolution, and move on.

Now, however, it all seems to be different. True, election cycles for the last twenty years have been discordant. The Clinton and Bush years managed to draw cultural and ideological boundaries, marking out the limits of durable political power and exposing the practices of its abuse. But the environment in which the current election cycle is taking place has become thoroughly toxic, inimical to reasoned debate and adverse to lucid reflection on the issues. This is characteristic of practically all our political venues, local, state, and national. There seems to be no forward vision that draws us together, only frantic apparitions of our national ruin or pretentious assertions of our national revival. Where once there might have been respectful engagement, there is now mostly inflammatory rhetoric and appeals to depraved, vicious, and mean-spirited instincts. There seem to be only frenzied passions and crueler divide; calmer heads do not prevail.

Undoubtedly some of this is endemic to politics. Nonetheless, the politics seem to have descended to the hellish underbelly of some infernal region of corporate political life. The political posturing and pandering for position over against one’s opponents is predictable, but the caricatures across the divide are extreme and capricious, and quite frequently fictional. Candidates find it necessary, by their own narcissism, the fear of their constituents, the manipulation of the media, the machinations of pundits, or all of the above, to take a position on a controversial issue, in a way that appeals to their political base but only exacerbates the deterioration of the public discourse and further inflames the controversy. The entourages of those running for office are skilled in demonizing those who think and believe differently; nothing seems to cultivate rhetorical restraint and honorable conduct.

While municipal and state governments are failing because of fiscal limits and a worsening economy, the national government is increasingly hard-pressed to negotiate socioeconomic solutions and navigate the shoals of a public ever more ideologically and culturally divided. Little wonder, then, that many are not merely choosing to sit out this election, but giving up altogether on our social, economic and political systems and seeking relief through retreat into a form of self-isolation.

In our current political season, the issues that seem to incite great frenzy on all sides are both local in nature and yet national in scope. Apart from the state of the economy which has a more direct impact on all who live in this country, one must think of the controversy over whether to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks from the site of the twin towers in New York City; this is an issue of religious freedom, just as it is an issue of sensitivity to grieving families. The trajectory of legal appeals and decisions now unfolding in the wake of the decision in the U.S. District Court overturning Proposition 8 prohibiting gay and lesbian marriage in California quite unambiguously raises the issue of equal rights and due process, as well as what it means to be a family. The legislation passed by the State of Arizona that authorizes certain policies and procedures in enforcement of state immigration law invokes issues of both federal responsibility and states’ rights, but it also raises the economic issues of employment and social welfare.

These issues so dominate public political discussion that it is virtually impossible to distinguish fact from fancy. Indeed, perhaps a truer way to say it would be: It is profoundly difficult to distinguish one whimsical and biased interpretation from another. But having said that, it is notable, nonetheless, that through these three totalizing issues run currents of xenophobia, homophobia, racism, ethnocentrism, elitism, imperialism, and nationalism. In my measured judgment, these ideologies and practices are the far greater threat to our civil democracy because they ultimately impinge on the possibility and reality of a just and good society.

In addition, coursing through these issues are matters of religion and society and the extent to which civil society and our government recognizes, values, and promotes diversity.

The fact that the United States is a diverse nation is unarguable. What is subject to debate—and increasingly the source of animosity—is the question of the types and the limits of diversity. We are, of course, familiar with differences in gender and race. These are set by birth. To these givens some would add sexual orientation; others would not.

Beyond these particular characteristics, however, there are other personal and social markers that distinguish both similarities and differences and give expression to our diversity. Here we must think of culture, ethnicity, language, and geography; age, education, marital status, and socioeconomic class; physical and mental abilities; and finally, political and religious views and practices.

Each one of us, in our various socioeconomic and religious contexts, and in company with others whose similarity to us renders our own perspective plausible, utilizes the social structures in which we are embedded as the normative frame by which we interpret ourselves and our world and those who are, by any measure or marker, different from us. There are two things that are important here: First, it is impossible for one to extract oneself fully and completely from an interpretive frame, especially one that is unnoticed and unexamined, broadly shared, and taken as normative. And second, it is also impossible to fail to recognize the differences in social markers and the groups they characterize, but how one interprets them and what significance is attached to them are matters of one’s own choosing.

Diversity, undeniably present in our society, is not a neutral phenomenon. Differences matter, and whether we like it or not, they are a signpost to the type of future we are forging for ourselves. In my estimation, the desire to embrace a pluralist society signals a more viable future for our nation, while the impulse to resist it forecasts a continuing clash of political ideologies and unceasing struggle for politically hegemonic power. Diversity is the fact of differences in social markers as represented in the place of work or the body politic. Pluralism, on the other hand, presupposes diversity. Indeed, a pluralist society is one that recognizes, appreciates, respects, and values the uniqueness, autonomy, and contribution of diverse groups who are part of the body politic. As Harvard’s Diana L. Eck describes it, pluralism is neither mere tolerance nor relativism, but rather the “energetic engagement with diversity” and “the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference.”

The challenge we now face, as evident in the currently volatile political issues, is this: How shall we, as a diverse society, cultivate pluralism as a civic virtue without compromising freedom and justice?

In his book, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), political philosopher John Rawls argues that a well-ordered society is one in which everyone accepts the same principles of justice, the structure of the society’s main political and social institutions is known or believed to satisfy these principles, and citizens have a good sense of justice and therefore conform with these basic institutions because they are perceived to be just (35). By these measures, we cannot call the United States a “well-ordered” society. At best, these represent a vision for democracy yet to be realized.

Rawls also observes that the political culture of a democratic society is marked by three things: First, “ the diversity of reasonable comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines found in modern democratic societies is not a mere historical condition that may soon pass away; it is a permanent feature of the public culture of democracy.” Second, “a continuing shared understanding on one comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine can be maintained only by the oppressive use of state power.” And third, “an enduring and secure democratic regime, one not divided into contending doctrinal confessions and hostile social classes, must be willingly and freely supported by at least a substantial majority of its politically active citizens” (36-38).

The United States is an extraordinarily diverse nation. This diversity is manifest in all the social markers, institutions, political views, and religious traditions that constitute our society. Only oppression and tyranny can impose a uniformity on this nation, and how profoundly ironic it would be if, in a nation founded in opposition to social oppression and political tyranny, the social, political and religious forces in our society and government were mobilized to establish a cultural hegemony precisely in order to manage and control our diversity.

There is room for reasoned discussions and respectful debates in a modern pluralist democracy. The fact of differences of opinion and perspective, social status and religious observance, is not a flaw in our democracy, but rather its prerequisite. Whether we advance beyond factionalism and achieve fuller measures of freedom and equality in realizing a just and good society depends on whether we are willing to embrace our diversity as a means toward realizing the common good.

To achieve that, however, we will have to abandon the animus for “the other” who is different from us.

Home-Grown Threat to Religious Freedom

2010-08-03T18:15:00.002-05:00

Before September 11, 2001, most Americans didn’t know what to think of Muslims, if they thought about them at all. Seemingly isolated terrorist acts occurred in various parts of the world, linked to Muslims who were militant and violent in their activism against Western cultural and political institutions and symbols. The U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were bombed in 1998 and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. But for the most part, Americans were woefully ignorant of the religion of Islam. Then came 9/11.

But Americans still don’t know what to think of Muslims. They have opted to remain woefully ignorant of Islam, but to this ignorance have now been added stereotypes and caricatures of the most malicious kind. The September 11 attacks by members of al-Qaeda are unspeakably horrific and will remain so in our nation’s history. Those who lost their lives during the events of that day and those who have served—some at the price of their own lives—in the struggle of the United States to root out this entrenched violent extremism are persons who should be honored by our nation. That would be something that is noble and commendable because it is good and right and true, expressive of the deeper virtues of courage and compassion.

It is, nonetheless, profoundly regrettable that what most Americans believe about Islam is so, well, so wrong! Commenting on survey research that probes the knowledge of Islam among Americans, Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero notes that “Americans will admit to a very high level of ignorance about Islam. There have been some surveys where people are asked: What do you know about Islam? Have you ever met a Muslim? Do you know anything about it? And Americans will typically run for the side of the survey that heads towards absolutely, positively nothing -- that kind of response.”

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, was interviewed by Paul O’Donnell of Belief.net. Esposito was asked what, to some, might seem like a fairly bland question: “How do Islamic fundamentalist terrorists fit into the larger picture of Islam?” It is a reasonable question, to be sure, distinguishing as it does between the principal actors in the events of 9/11 and the larger population of followers of the religion of Islam. But to his credit, Esposito discerned the bias built into the question, so rather than respond as one might expect (“This is a fringe extremist element in Islam; they should be taken seriously as a threat, but they are not indicative of Muslims as followers or Islam as a religion.”), he answered O’Donnell’s question with other questions: “Let me ask, how do Christian fundamentalists who blow up clinics fit into a Christian context? How does someone like Baruch Goldstein, who shot Muslim worshippers inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994? How did he fit into the Jewish context?” How does it happen that the actions of some, however appalling they might be, have to be accounted for by reference to their supposed religion, as though somehow that explanation justifies or makes it otherwise reasonable?

In a Los Angeles Times article published in April, 2008, Esposito and his co-author, Dalia Mogahed, director of the Center for Muslim Studies at Gallup, noted: “How much do Americans know about the views and beliefs of Muslims around the world? According to polls, not much. Perhaps not surprising, the majority of Americans (66 per cent) admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have ‘a great deal’ of prejudice. Almost half do not believe American Muslims are ‘loyal’ to this country; and one in four does not want a Muslim as a neighbour.”

What is wrong with this bias and ignorance of Islam? According to Esposito and Mogahed, it truncates our capacity to analyze and understand the conditions that contribute to the struggle with militant and violent extremists who shield themselves with Islam; it underscores the perception of some global Muslims that this struggle is in fact a war on Islam; and it mitigates the ability of American voters to choose well-informed candidates for public office, leaving us subject to demagoguery and susceptible to manipulation out of fear.

To believe that all Muslims are terrorists, or supporters of terrorists, or sympathetic of terrorists, is to display one’s lack of knowledge. To act or argue on the basis of this ignorance is to give evidence of one’s ethnocentrism, xenophobia, or bigotry, or all of the above. As a civil society, we have chosen not to condone these vices when it comes to diversity in age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability. But apparently, we have not given them up when it comes to country of origin and religion.

According to the Pew Research Center, there are 1.57 billion Muslims in the world, or one out of every four persons on the globe. They live in such widely diverse nations and cultures as Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt on the African continent; Turkey, Syria, Jordan in the Mediterranean region; Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia on the Arabian Peninsula; Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan in the Middle East; Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh on the Indian subcontinent; and Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines in Southeast Asia. Like other religions, Islam extends along a spectrum of piety and practice, from strict orthodoxy to moderate adherence to secularism; there is “fundamentalist” Islam and “cultural” Islam, as is true of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity.

While estimates for Muslims in the U.S. vary widely (between 2 million and 7 million), 65 percent of Muslim Americans are first-generation immigrants and 77 percent are U.S. citizens, according to America.gov. This means that somewhere between 1.5 million and 5.3 million Muslims are “no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens” (Eph 2:19) of the United States, having sworn to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic” (Naturalization Oath of Allegiance). Coming as they do from all over the world, these Muslim immigrants are an “extraordinary mosaic of ethnic, linguistic, ideological, social, economic, and religious groups” (Muslims in America – A Statistical Portrait).

The first-ever nation-wide survey research done on Muslim Americans by Pew Research Center has shown that, for the most part, Muslim Americans have adapted to life in the U.S., are reasonably happy here, and see themselves as moderates on issues that continue to be contentious between foreign Muslims and Westerners. They enjoy the communities where they live, believe in hard work, and do not think there is a conflict between being Muslim and living in this society. They reject Islamic extremism, and many agree that it is harder to live as a Muslim in the U.S. since 9/11. The waves of Muslim immigrants who began coming in the 1990s came for the same reasons other immigrants have: educational and economic opportunities and family reasons.

It is unfortunate that a proposal to build an Islamic Center and mosque a few blocks from 9/11’s ground zero has generated such public clamor of resistance and opposition. Those who oppose this project have repeatedly stated that the reason is the seeming insensitivity to the families of those who lost their lives at ground zero. Public figures have decried the project for emotional reasons (Sarah Palin), while others have harbored theories of a Muslim conspiracy (Newt Gingrich). At least one, Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey of Tennessee, has contended that Muslims do not have the legal right to practice their religion because, after all, Islam isn’t a religion!

Without diminishing the honor and commemoration due to those who lost their lives on September 11, there remains yet another issue, one whose weight ought to lie heavily upon our national conscience in addition to our woeful lack of knowledge of the religion of Islam. Beyond mere “tolerance,” the issue is upholding the freedom of conscience and the right to worship according to the dictates of one’s conscience. With all due respect to the families of the 9/11 victims, we cannot, as individuals or as a nation, abandon or subvert the freedom of conscience and religion provided for by the First Amendment to our Constitution. As uncomfortable and challenging as it may be, we must nevertheless uphold the right of all who live here to exercise their religious beliefs and commitments in the same spirit that first gave rise to codification of that freedom in the Bill of Rights.

This challenge to protect our freedoms and to guarantee that they are applicable to those whose religion is different than others is all the more complicated in an atmosphere where such ignorance of a religion is widespread. When paired with activism, lack of knowledge can be extraordinarily dangerous, moving whole communities of varying sizes to undertake activities that belie the cherished freedoms guaranteed by our founding documents. The rights of a majority are not protected when the rights of a minority are undermined or denied. Religious freedom for all is imperiled if the religious freedom of others is infringed.

It is both ironic and tragic that the religious and cultural bigotry born of ignorance is actually posing a threat to religious liberty in the United States. As evident in locales from coast to coast, opposition to Muslims is rising, sometimes taking virulent and scandalous forms, as in a local church proposing to hold a Koran-burning event on September 11, 2010, because, in the pastor’s words, “Islam is of the Devil.” Whether one considers oneself a person of faith or a non-observant former religionist or a seeker of one kind or another, one ought to be concerned about this threat. Citizens mindful of their freedom to be or not to be religious would do well to exercise some civic virtue and act to defend the constitutional rights of all. The freedom of all may just depend on it.

"I'm Not Sure God Really Cares!"

2010-07-19T15:48:00.000-05:00

Ultimately, it is inexpedient to faith and injurious to religion for one to claim to know the will or plan of God in partisan politics. As it always seems to turn out, it’s not all that good for politics either.

I will confess that I am uneasy when I hear someone talking about an event they participated in or an experience they had or a circumstance that has occurred in their life, and then somewhere in the remarks, they say something like “this is God’s will for my life” or “this is part of God’s plan for me.”

I don’t use that kind of language to describe either my own spirituality or my experience in life, and maybe that’s the reason why I’m uneasy when I hear it from others. It seems somehow pretentious, a bit gnostic, to lay claim to knowing even a fragment of the divine purpose that is not otherwise disclosed to others of like religious faith. It also seems too individualistic for my comfort, and I imagine what others might think or feel when they hear the certitude of one so confident in their role in the divine plan.

This brings us to Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Nevada. During the weekend of July 10-11, 2010, she was interviewed by Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, and now founder and chairman of Faith and Freedom Coalition. When asked by Reed how she might explain her sudden political rise on the national stage, she answered, “I believe that God has been in this from the beginning and because of that when he has a plan and a purpose for your life and you fit into that, what he calls you to, he always equipped you for.”

Earlier in June, Angle was interviewed by Bill Manders, a radio talk-show host on KOH in Reno, Nevada. He pressed Angle, who opposes abortion in any circumstance, to say whether there was any reason for abortion, including the circumstance of rape or incest. Angle replied by saying, “You know, I'm a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.”

Some days following this, Angle was interviewed by radio news host Alan Stock of KXNT in Las Vegas. When Stock asked her to clarify her position as she expressed it earlier in her interview with Manders, Angle said, “There is a plan and a purpose, a value to every life no matter what its location, age, gender or disability.” When pressed further on whether she would hold on to her stated view, even in the case where a young girl was raped by her father and found to be pregnant by him, Angle declared, “I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.”

Now this is not the place to take up a critical discussion on the strengths and liabilities of the varying theological views of divine predestination, though there seems to be some forms of determinism lurking here. Nor do I want to argue against the idea that there is a place for religious faith and moral conviction in the public sphere and in public debate.

Rather, as persons of faith in the public sphere, we need to remind ourselves that no society, culture, nation or political party or system can legitimately claim to be closer or truer to God than another, or more reflective of, or imbued with, God’s truth. The attempt to mix, separate, or identify religious values and cultural-political values is one fraught with peril.

Consider Angle’s statement about God’s role in her candicacy. When a statement like this is put in a particular social and political context, it begs questions like these: If it was God’s plan that Angle win the Republican nomination, does that also mean that it was God’s plan that her competitors lose? If her political rise is God’s plan, does that not also require that the political fall of her rivals be equally included in the divine plan?

The problem with this individualistic talk about God’s plan is that it leaves out the unspoken but nonetheless present implications or effects of this divine will for others. In themselves, such statements may seem to be innocuous, innocent expressions of personal piety or even inadvertent vocalizations of civil religion. But they are also readings and interpretations of circumstances that extend beyond the immediate and involve the lives of others.

When the sole survivor of a fatal auto crash remarks that it was God’s will that he survive, the implication is that the survival of the deceased was not, or that their death was God’s will. When a young girl is pregnant as a result of incestuous rape, bringing the fetus to term as part of the divine plan also entails that the intercourse itself was part of the same plan. Advocating from such access to God’s purpose and plan, in the final analysis, reveals a rather arbitrary and capricious deity.

Was it God's will that Barack Obama win the presidential election in 2008? If so, how can that be known and why are so many religious conservatives decrying his election, effectively contesting the divine plan? If it was not God's will, how can this be known, and doesn't his election signify the possibility that God's plan can be successfully thwarted? On what basis can one claim that a particular political outcome is in the purpose of God, for good or ill? More importantly, how can one person (or many persons) justify the claim that a candidacy is God's plan and purpose, and do so with credibility, without the appearance of pandering or idolatrous self-promotion?

What people of faith want to know is that God is sovereign, in control, with a purpose and a plan. Theistic religions of many types seek generally to affirm this, and it does merit full and frank discussion. But as the politicization of God’s will shows, this is profoundly problematic when such religious sensibility and interpretation are brought into the larger mundane arena of our social and political circumstances. When diverse moral communities encounter or collide with each other in the public sphere, both the civic order and the religious worlds are needlessly impaled on indefensible rhetoric, regardless of the political ideology from which it comes.

Rather than co-opt God into our partisan politics, it would be better that we let Lincoln be our guide, as he remarked in his second inaugural address in 1865: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right” … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations” (emphasis mine).

Will There Be No End to the Violence?

2010-07-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

I understand that slightly more than half of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court believe that the Second Amendment right to own a firearm in this country is inviolable. They have now made that clear in their 5-4 decision on McDonald v. City of Chicago, striking down the Chicago’s 30-year old handgun ban and extending to all the states the protections of the amendment. Okay, I get that.

What I don’t understand is why that unassailable right to “keep and bear arms” trumps the right to public safety. And I really can’t grasp how expanding the number of guns and the people who have them will reduce the volume of gun violence in this country. Is this an individualized version of the policy of mutually-assured destruction (MAD)? Is there any evidence to suggest that this court decision will not result in the increase in the sale of firearms? It appears that one result of the court’s decision is a way of life in society where deterrence is the desired effect, rather than the promotion of the common good.

I don’t know what the odds are that my home will be invaded, or that I will be mugged on the street. My guess is that neither of these is likely to happen, or at least I hope not. What is interesting to me, however, is that many of the commentators happy about the court’s decision are now saying that there will be less crime because criminals will be mindful that their intended victims are more likely to be packing heat. Instances of breaking-and-entering, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault will decline because perpetrators can no longer assume that their targets will be unarmed. Indeed, the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action is quick to point out that there is less violent crime in those states where it is lawful to carry a gun.

So we are launching out into a brave new world. The near-universal right to own a firearm is not yet exceeded by the number of venues where it can be permissibly carried, but we can be fairly certain that gun enthusiasts and their lobbyists will continue to contest every effort to reign in the proliferation of firearms. For the moment, the court has made it very clear that the right to own firearms for the purpose of providing a militia is no longer in play. What we have, now, as a reason to guard the right to own a gun is self-defense in one’s home.

It would seem to me, however, that the number and type of circumstances where a firearm could be used as a means of self-defense are much more likely to occur outside the home, so one way or another, we are looking at further relaxation of state laws that guarantee the right to bear one’s arm in public. According to the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, currently 40 of the 50 states grant right-to-carry permits to persons who meet state-established standards. A handful of others have minimal restrictions (Connecticut and Alabama), or no restrictions (Alaska, Arizona, and Vermont). Another handful have very high restrictions and two, (Illinois and Wisconsin) do not allow persons to carry firearms, or, as the NRA-ILA says, this “right” to carry a weapon in these two states is “infringed.”

Now I’m all for self-defense, and I certainly see the logic of the idea that one can more effectively defend oneself if one has lethal force at one’s disposal. Does anyone really doubt that if one is carrying a weapon and suddenly finds oneself threatened with bodily harm, that one would chose not to use it in self-defense? Of course not. Brandish it, but not fire it? Hardly. In fact, what has happened in this scenario is that the likelihood of gun violence has only increased.

Police officers in Chicago, whose handgun ban has now been overturned, told reporters for the Chicago Tribune that “crime rates are lower in the city than they were in the 1990s,” and that “most murders involving handguns take place on the street. At least half are gang-related, and the majority of both victims and offenders have criminal records.” With only a modicum of despair, one office noted, “Half of our day is spent protecting criminals from other criminals.” Precisely the ones who (a) cannot lawfully own a firearm let alone carry one or use one, and thus (b) are not affected by the court’s decision.

The people at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, using data provided by the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, report that in one year, 30,896 people died from gun violence and 78,622 people survived gun injuries. By comparison, during all the Vietnam War, 58,226 military personnel lost their lives and 153,303 were wounded. Each year, by comparison, approximately 43,000 are killed in automobile accidents. So far, as of June 27, 2010, the number of persons who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stands at 5,521.

Again, according to the Brady Campaign, gun death rates are higher in those states where there are higher rates of household gun ownership. When states with the highest levels of ownership are compared to states with the lowest, the highest states have 114% higher gun-related homicide rates. Indeed, according to one study by researchers at the Center for Injury Control at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, “guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.” So much for the court’s argument on self-defense.

What is missing in the court’s decision and all the glee among its supporters is recognition that this ruling accentuates and legitimizes and further establishes our violent character as a nation. Its premise is that violence is best met with and countered by violence, that the best way to fend off a violent attack is to practice violence in turn, including lethal violence. It clearly supposes that the way to reduce violence is to increase the capacity and means to inflict it. Moreover, it authorizes the privatization of state-sanctioned violence; each can now be given the requisite permission to own and carry—and in certain circumstances, use—a firearm to injure or take the life of another.

It might be unreasonable to expect the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the principles of non-violence and the sacredness of all life in struggling to find a way to validate the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, these were not enshrined in the Constitution. Nonetheless, it certainly isn’t reasonable—or moral—to put at risk the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and natural law and biblical ethics, by the vagaries of a court majority that believes everyone has the right to pull the trigger.

God and Christopher Hitchens

2010-06-17T10:01:00.003-05:00

God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens. New York: Twelve/Hachette Book Group, 2007. 317 pp. $14.99. ISBN 978-0-446-69796-5.

I am really disappointed with this book. Christopher Hitchens, the irrepressible, irreverent, irascible, and irreligious journalist has emerged as one of the "new atheists," and I had supposed that I would find reasoned arguments in this book. Not so.

I do not spent a lot of time reading in the literature written by atheists, old or new. At various times I have needed to engage an author=s thought because of my interest in the matters about which he or she was writing (philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, etc.), and those became the entré to my encounter with atheist sensibilities or positions.

On the other hand, popular writers on science and religion, or culture and religion, or media and religion, or whatever and religion, bemoan or celebrate the fact that a new crop of intellectuals has not only laid claim to being atheists and proud of it, but has also taken up a self-imposed charge to expose the lunacy of religion and thus liberate those who adhere to it in any of its forms from their dark night.

Hitchens is among this crop of new atheists. He is quick to point out in this book that there are Afour irreducible objections to religious faith@: namely, Athat it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking@ (4). In other words, the irreducible objections are related to science and cosmology, the inculturation of dominance and oppression, sexuality and abusive sexual practices, and, well … fantasy!

I would summarize his view as articulated in these pages this way: The violence and oppression committed in the name of religion down through history confirm that religion is human‑made and God does not exist. It isn’t necessary to read the entire book to get this point. I could be a bit more generous by saying that another, more positive spin might be this: The existence of unbelievers among the sociocultural and intellectual elite through history confirms that God is unnecessary at least, and non‑existent at best. Hitchens doesn’t say this in these words, but he does say it in other word, with great flourish.

There is no question about the fact that all religions have committed horrific acts against others in defense or imposition of their views. Moreover, from one perspective or another, all religions can be shown to be oppressive in ways that are reprehensible. This should not be denied or dismissed. And there is no "but" that follows here. Rather, it is left to religionists to explain and justify themselves and their conduct in relation to others; the burden is on those who have trafficked in violence and abuse to submit their conduct to the judgment of others, and respond to the criticism that they have manipulated the heritage and teachings of their religion in order to legitimate their conduct.

Hitchens cannot advance a reasoned argument by constructing caricatures of the various religions. It is neither journalism nor scholarship to construct your opponent yourself in order to weigh in with the pre‑selected "evidence." In argumentation, this is known as building a “straw man,” and Hitchens does it quite well. I have no problem with privileging reason and science in the pursuit and articulation of knowledge about our world. But I think it is absurd to characterize your opponent as irrational, primitive, and obscurantist in order to demonstrate your more “enlightened” point. Apparently, he does not suppose that “religion” in any of its historic forms has undergone any development other than devolution since the origins of humanity because he likes to locate the phenomenon of religion in the “infancy of our species” (10, 64) and confine it there even in its contemporary expressions.

In vain did I look for one social or theological issue to be explored in substance with any degree of rigor. Instead, what I found over and over again was the misrepresentation of the central teachings and practices of the various religions that come under his scrutiny. Understandably, the greater portion of Hitchens= critique is directed toward Christianity and Judaism, the two dominant religions in the Western cultural history that have shaped the world in which he lives and thinks. I am sorry that he didn't take the time to "get inside" any one of the religions to a degree that would give his view credibility. He ends up doing what he accuses religionists of doing: speaking from ignorance and caricature about matters in the opposing domain.

The more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that there is another story being told in this book. This is the story of the intellectuals through history who dismissed religion as childish, naive, magical superstition. There=s a major thinker for everyone here, from Plato to Dawkins, but special attention is given to Hume, Darwin, Marx, and Freud. It makes me wonder: What exactly does Hitchens have to contribute to the a‑theist or anti‑theist cause? It has already been said by many others, and–humor excepted–said much better.

One whose thinking and writing as a secular humanist has exercised considerable influence in philosophy, science and humanism is Paul Kurtz, founder and (now former) president and CEO of The Center for Inquiry. Unlike Hitchens, Kurtz has held a genuine respect and appreciation for religion at the same time that his vocation as a scholar has been focused in the advancement of secular humanism and the skepticism of religion. Kurtz shared his thinking on the practice of disparaging religion in a recent interview with David Gibson, religion reporter at Politics Daily. Noting that his current fall-out with the new leadership at the Center for Inquiry is, in part, over just this sort of practice, Kurtz declared, “"Although we [secular humanists] are skeptical of religion, we nonetheless have a positive statement to make. We want to work with religious people solving our planetary problems.” Lest he be unclear on where he stands on the issue of the salience of religion, he went to say that “I don't believe we should ridicule religion. To focus on that is degrading.”

What Hitchens fails to realize is that his paradigm of religion and culture in civil society is antiquated. Oh, to be sure, there is plenty that is wrong and evil about religion in its multitudinous forms. But two indisputable facts should give writers like Hitchens some pause. First, religion is not declining but rather growing across the world, and globalization and modernization are bringing particular challenges to religious traditions old and new throughout the world. In many places in the world, religious communities and groups are exercising increasing influence in all areas of society. The fastest growing global religions are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, and this growth is occurring outside the historic West. Hitchens appears to hold out expectations that secularization will finally succeed in eliminating religion, but he ought to know that even the formulators of the secularization theory in the sociology of religion have now declared that they were just plain wrong.

Second, it is precisely religion, rather than states or governments, that has catalyzed and mobilized populations and communities to achieve higher levels of human social freedoms and political rights, especially in the capacity to serve the needs of the poor and marginalized. Moreover, while it is true that religion has contributed to inter- and intra-cultural conflict, violence and war in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe, it is also true that religious communities and organizations have contributed to promoting peace and reconciliation in these very places through programs of economic development, relief, education, human services, and advocacy. (See, for example, AEngaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy,@ a report published by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.)

Hitchens is a superb writer with a terrific vocabulary. I enjoy reading him regardless of the subject matter. He has a lot of attitude and a very healthy ego, so his work is not for the faint of heart or mind, sort of a mixture of William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal.

Unfortunately, this book is simply a diatribe filled with hyperbole. In the Acknowledgments, he notes that he has been writing this book all his life. I take that to mean he has been struggling against religion (notably Christianity) all his life. He also says that he plans to keep on writing it. I take that to mean he still has issues that need resolution. I wish him well.

Peace,

Douglas Sharp

We Are Guilty Too!

2010-05-24T18:02:00.000-05:00

The Roman Catholics have nothing on us. We Protestants can sin with the best of them! Indeed, it may very well be a by-product of the child sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that a keen eye is now being increasingly focused on the Protestant churches.

Make no mistake about it: The sexual abuse of children is a sin, unequivocally and indefensibly. And it is a social, sexual, and religious problem affecting the larger society and the religious communities and institutions that are embedded in it.

It is a social problem. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, “the sexual victimization of children is overwhelming in magnitude yet largely unrecognized and underreported.” The Center quantifies this magnitude by pointing out that one out of every five girls, and one out of every ten boys, will be sexually abused before they are adults. If you know any adolescent or pre-adolescent children, chances are high that one of them has been or will be sexually victimized. The number of instances of child sexual abuse reported by the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggests that a child is sexually abused in this country every four minutes. That figure is actually down from 1993 when it was every two and a half minutes.

It is a sexual problem. While there may be legitimate debate among psychologists on what types of sexual activity may be considered “normal” and what types are “deviant” among adults, there is no basis on which an adult’s sexual activity with a minor can be defended. Whether it is exploitation in the form of abuse, assault, or abduction; or child prostitution or pornography; or an attempt to gain sexual gratification or exercise dominating power over a child, sexually oriented expressiveness with a child is sexual deviance and thus morally reprehensible.

It is a religious problem. There should be no surprise that a social problem of this magnitude is present in the churches, Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox. The near-universal repudiation of sexual child exploitation in church and society, to say nothing of its illegality in civil and criminal law, makes the burden of its detection and removal all the more onerous in faith communities where adults and children mix freely in a variety of church-related activities and locations. Relations between and within families in religious communities as well as the presumption of trust and respect for their leaders portend higher levels of social intimacy, and thus greater opportunities for sexual deviance and vulnerability.

Back in 2002, just as the wave of disclosures about clergy sexual abuse in the U.S. Catholic church rose higher and higher, Mark Clayton at the Christian Science Monitor wrote an article reporting on the results of a longitudinal survey conducted by Christian Ministry Resources (CMR), a research and publishing house focusing on tax, legal and risk management issues for churches and religious organizations. Among other findings, CMR reports that the rate of sexual abuse instances across all denominations is virtually the same, and that the perpetrators are more likely to be volunteers than clergy. According to the 1999 survey data, forty-two percent of those accused of child sexual abuse were volunteers and twenty-five percent were paid staff (some of whom were not necessarily clergy).

A 2007 article in the New York Times indicated that the Roman Catholic Church had recorded 13,000 “credible accusations against Catholic clergymen” over the last fifty-seven years, an average of 228 accusations a year. In contrast, three companies insuring churches, religious schools, camps and other religious organizations (Church Mutual, GuideOne, and Brotherhood Mutual) reported in 2007 that among them, they had been receiving on average more than 330 reported sexual abuse cases a year involving a child for the last 10-15 years. While the insurance companies did not provide supporting documentation for their summaries, and they insure less than half the number of Protestant churches in the United States, two things are suggested by their release of figures: first, there is some reason to believe that the “magnitude” of the problem of child sexual abuse includes the non-Catholic churches in our society, and second, there is clearly no efficient way to gather reliable statistics on the pervasiveness of the problem in faith communities, given the range of differences in church polity.

So it is all the more important to note that since the late 1990s, denominational judicatories in the mainline Protestant traditions have taken formal structural, educational, ethical and policy steps to prevent and report all forms of sexual abuse in their churches. Whether the words are used or not, these efforts are indicative of attempts to cultivate “safe” and “hospitable” churches for all, but especially for children. (See for example, American Baptist Churches, USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church, USA, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church and Episcopal Church.)

What remains to be seen, however, is whether these programmatic initiatives will bring their desired result. But make no mistake about it: the sexual abuse of children is going on in Protestant churches, and it is social, sexual, and religious irresponsibility to ignore it, camouflage it, minimize it, or think one’s faith community is immune from it.

Aliens and Citizens

2010-05-10T20:30:00.000-05:00

I remember the day, many years ago, when I stumbled across a passage in Leviticus. I was rooting around in chapter 19, looking for the verse that said, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” the Part B section of The Great Commandment that Christians embrace as taught by Jesus (Mk 10:29-31; Mt 22:37-39; Lk 10:27). It turns out to be in verse 18, but before I found it that day, my eyes stopped when they scanned across the “you shall love…” in verse 34, thinking that was it. But much to my surprise, it was not the verse I was looking for, and I was taken aback when I began reading from the beginning of the paragraph. The Leviticus 19:33-34 passage I read that day from the Revised Standard Version said: “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

What caught my attention was the fact that here was a commandment that not only paralleled the love-your-neighbor commandment, but somehow seemed to put the “stranger” in the same category as a fellow citizen. Try as I may, I just couldn’t see that playing out all that well in biblical or modern history. On the other hand, perhaps it was because the Law-Giver had some experience with humanity’s basic ethnocentrism and inclinations toward nativism that the commandment was given in the first place. Apparently the Hebrews, as they stood on the threshold of conquering a land belonging to someone else, needed orientation and training in the need to love their fellow citizens with whom they would be living in their new homeland, and the strangers who might come someday to live with them or who remained in the land after its conquest by the Hebrews. Either way, those that would become the occupants of the land of Israel had to love each other and regard and treat each other and the strangers as fellow citizens.

I grew up at the headwaters of the Rio Grande River that flows southward and now stands as the border between Texas and Mexico. When I was growing up, one out of every four residents in my part of the country was a descendent of Mexican ancestors. The ground beneath my feet had been Mexico until the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 when the Mexican government ceded the entire southwestern region to the United States, from Texas to California, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Looking back on my youth, I can’t say that Leviticus 19:33-34 played much of a role in shaping my consciousness, probably because it was never mentioned, and also because it would not have been all that clear who was the stranger and who was the native. Was I an Israelite whose ancestors forcefully conquered the Land of Canaan, and now lived with a tolerably small minority of Canaanite foreigners? Or was I a Canaanite whose land was at risk of being overrun by a small but growing number of Israelites who had thoughts of taking over? One thing is for certain: whether I was the native or the interloper, there was supposed to be a relationship of mutuality and love if one took Leviticus 19:33-34 seriously. But as I say, I don’t remember anyone interpreting this passage to me as I was growing up.

Like many, I have been paying attention to what has been happening in Arizona with the adoption of its new immigration law. I’ve read the initial law and the revised law that was enacted to calm fears about racial profiling in the enforcement of the law. This legislation is deeply disturbing to many, and to some it is seen as way to take control of a wave of undocumented immigrants pouring into the United States through the border between Arizona and Mexico. Gallup, Zogby, Angus Reid, Fox News, and the New York Times/CBS News all report that most Americans favor the Arizona law, but given the ways in which both the mainstream and fringe media have portrayed the issue, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that most Americans do not have any more than a cursory knowledge of the law and the situation in Arizona. There certainly is no evidence that those who responded to the pollsters’ questions had any actual knowledge of the law and its provisions—other than self-reporting.

In January 2010, the Office of Immigration Statistics in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a report indicating that, as of January 2009, approximately 10.8 million “unauthorized immigrants” were residing in the United States. This number is actually 800,000 less than in January of 2008. The number had grown every year since 2000, but beginning in 2007, the number declined from one year to the next. Of the unauthorized immigrant population currently in place, 63% had entered the U.S. before 2000, and roughly six out of ten of these came from Mexico.

According to this same report, there are five states that have an undocumented immigrant population of 500,000 or more, and Arizona is not among them. In fact, while there are roughly 460,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona as of January 2009, the states where the number of such persons is higher are California (2,600,000), Texas (1,680,000), Florida (720,000), New York (550,000), Illinois (540,000), and Georgia (480,000).

Those who support the Arizona law, like opponents to immigration generally, argue that illegal immigrants take jobs from native workers, depress wages, and drive up public costs in education, public assistance, health care, and incarceration. The argument is simplistic, but it is made with great passion: Illegal immigrants are costing tax payers billions of dollars every year and destroying our quality of life as a nation. This is the basic message of such anti-immigration groups as Federation for American Immigration Reform (or FAIR) and the organizations it has spawned to do its policy and political work, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Immigration Reform Law Institute who were instrumental in drafting the legislation recently signed into law in Arizona.

But there is another perspective on undocumented immigrants, one that gives a somewhat different picture of the significance of their presence in our economy. Indeed, there is a growing body of research to suggest that what undocumented immigrants take out of the economy is offset by what they put into it. In terms of “cost,” it’s pretty much a wash.

In a study published in December 2009 by the Migration Policy Institute, Gordon H. Hanson of the University of California-San Diego notes that “the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants work in low-skilled occupations, owing both to their immigration status and their low levels of schooling” (5). Undocumented immigrants are in these jobs because these jobs are low-skilled, plentiful, and do not require a level of education beyond high school. The workers who hold these jobs are “unauthorized” because there isn’t a legal way for them to be here; current immigration policy has very few slots for low-skilled labor (approximately 100,000 per year), giving preference for visas to skilled workers.

If one considers the persons who characterize this niche in the labor supply, then clearly the only competition for jobs comes from U.S. citizens who are themselves low-skilled and low-educated. Most citizens in this country are not competing for these jobs. Even though undocumented immigrants have for decades constituted a vital source of low-skilled labor to the U.S. economy, “were the United States to restrict or eliminate illegal immigration through greater enforcement, the clear losers would be business owners in labor-intensive industries, including agriculture, construction, lodging, restaurants, food processing, and building maintenance and cleaning services.” Hanson notes: “Not surprisingly, these are the industries that fight hardest against restrictions on low-skilled immigration” (6).

So far as politicians and law enforcement are concerned, unauthorized immigrants live in the shadows, isolated from the larger communities, aggregating among themselves in neighborhoods that can conceal their presence. But the fact is that, economically, they are major players. They earn an income and spend it, pay mortgages or rent, contribute to charitable causes and support religious organizations. They have payroll and social security tax deductions taken from their checks and they even pay federal income tax. Granted, not every worker pays these taxes, but because payment of taxes is prerequisite for residency or naturalization, and employers do withhold payroll and social security taxes, immigrants are inclined to pay like native workers. Indeed, as noted in the 2005 Economic Report of the President, “millions of Mexicans have worked in the United States and returned home, but only 37,000 non-U.S. citizens residing in Mexico received Social Security benefits in 2004. Undocumented immigrants without a valid Social Security number cannot receive Social Security benefits, but as long as the employer reports their earnings to the Social Security Administration (SSA), their earnings are subject to withholding of Social Security taxes” (108).

Most of the media attention directed toward the passage of the Arizona law has focused on the politics and whether or not the new law is racist and discriminatory. I think it is, but that is not what this blog post is about. Furthermore, the issue at the moment is not whether Arizona has arrogated to itself the enforcement of federal law (it has) or whether the United States needs to reform its immigration policy (we do). Rather the point is that we are, and have been, a nation of immigrants—documented and undocumented—who have built a powerful country using natural resources that did not belong to us and human resources that are not indigenous to this land. Arizona is not the only state with undocumented immigrants, not even the state with the most undocumented immigrants, but it is the first state to pass a law that cuts off its nose to spite its face.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Arizona had a population of 6.6 million in 2009. Approximately 30% (1.9 million) of this population is of Hispanic or Latino origin. As noted above, roughly 460,000 undocumented immigrants live in Arizona, representing 9.8% of the state’s workforce. In summarizing a report on the impact of undocumented immigrants on U.S. business activity prepared by The Perryman Group for Americans for Immigration Reform, the Immigration Policy Center at the American Immigration Council notes that if all undocumented immigrants in Arizona were removed, the Arizona economy would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, $7.3 billion in personal income, and approximately 140,324 jobs. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce put the total economic output for Arizona in 2008 at $248 billion.

By comparison, Illinois in 2009 had a population of 12.9 million, of whom 15.2% (1.9 million) were of Hispanic or Latino origin. The Department of Homeland Security reckons that 540,000 undocumented immigrants were living at that time in the state. The summary of the Perryman Group research by the Immigration Policy Center indicates that Illinois would lose $25.6 billion in expenditures, $11.4 billion in economic output, $7.1 billion in personal income, and approximately 119,214 jobs if all unauthorized immigrants were removed. The BEA reports that the total economic output of Illinois in 2008 was $633 billion.

There are millions of people in the United States without legal status, but it is completely false to suppose that they are only a drain on our nation’s economy. Yes, undocumented immigrants commit crimes, but they do so at a rate lower than the native population. Even in Arizona, where the crime rate has been falling, less crime is committed by immigrants—lawful and unlawful—than by citizens.

The United States is a nation of immigrants. My ancestors were immigrants, and so were yours (that is, unless your ancestors lived here before the continent was “discovered” by European explorers). Immigrants—both voluntary and forced—literally built the social, economic, political and religious worlds we now inhabit, and the truth is that without the continuing migrations historically of peoples to the U.S. from outside its borders, we could neither sustain nor advance our way of life.

I think there was extraordinary wisdom expressed in the edict God gave to Moses as recorded in Leviticus 19:33-34. To my ears, it’s as though God was saying, “You know, you ought to love the foreigner in your midst, because—if you remember—you were once a foreigner too.” I also think it’s propitious that the translators of the New Revised Standard Version chose new words to render the Hebrew in these verses: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

Emphasis mine—Aliens and neighbors and citizens.

Peace,

Douglas

Occupying the Middle Ground

2010-04-07T15:36:00.001-05:00

I have problems of my own. You have problems of your own. In the final analysis, the only things you and I have in common are (1) we each have problems and (2) we each have to find their solutions on our own.

Personal troubles are a nettlesome thing, if you ask me. I had to replace an automobile recently, and I found the time spent on the internet and traveling to and from dealers and test driving vehicles to be frustrating. I’m facing a visit to my heart doctor in the next week and he’ll report the results of my latest echo stress test. I expect a favorable result, but you never know. The wireless router in our house died and our local-area network with it. Buying its replacement required me to learn more about wireless technology than I wanted to – which was just enough to know I had to get someone technologically competent into my house to set it up.

I find myself quite exercised over the escalating volatility in our politics. I’m troubled by what is said and how it’s said. I’m even more disturbed by what is done and the threats of what may be done. I rue the rhetoric and covet civility. What I don’t do is take this as my personal problem – it belongs to all of us.

It was C. Wright Mills who first made the distinction between “personal troubles” and “public issues” in his 1959 book, The Sociological Imagination. He does so by noting that troubles are private matters in which an individual’s values or habits are threatened, while issues are public matters in which shared values and practices are put at risk.

I think of it a little differently. A problem or trouble that is unique to me is a personal problem. If I can’t solve it or overcome it on my own initiative or with my own resources, then that’s just tough. With pity aplenty, I just have to live with it. On the other hand, if a problem or a trouble is more broadly shared with others and more commonly found, such that I am not the only one with it, then it is a public or social problem, whether I can solve it on my own or not. In fact, solving it on my own does little to rectify the situation as it besets others. A social problem begs for a social solution, whether or not the social problem is universal or more limited in scope. If I lose my job and I’m the only one, pity me. If I am one of millions who have lost their jobs, pity us! If I’m the only one, there’s probably something wrong with me. If I’m but one of many, there’s a very good chance the problem is located somewhere else. At the very least, that is worth considering.

I think the condition of our politics at the moment is a public issue, a social issue in the sense in which Mills speaks. As such, its resolution requires more than a personal response (though expressing displeasure to our elected officials is an appropriate action). I recently noted in a foreword I wrote for a friend’s upcoming book that the place for passive non-participation is a movie theater and the place for active non-participation is a sports arena. The place for neither is the public venue where our policies and legislative initiatives are debated and decided upon. Perhaps the fact that the legislative proposals of late have been so contentious has contributed to the volatility in the political sphere. Or maybe the volatility in the political atmosphere has contributed to the contentiousness. It could be a bit of both, but one thing is certain: No one is well-served and no one’s inclusion in a host of social problems is mitigated by political leaders whose best arguments are ad hominum and whose intent is to inflame their political base with appeals to thoughtless emotion and demagoguery.

In their book, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970, Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab note that extremist movements on the political right generally arise as a result of the real or perceived loss of power and status that accompanies social and economic change. On the other hand, extremist movements on the political left arise when there is the real or perceived opportunity to force social change and displace those groups who heretofore enjoyed power and status. That being said, it is noteworthy that a bit of extremism is evident on both sides of the political aisle in this country over the last twenty-five years, and especially over the last ten years. At the very least, one must wonder whether those who intend to occupy a middle ground politically and socially can aspire to an environment where reasoned discussion is possible, equally plausible alternatives are identified, and more egalitarian solutions to our social problems are achieved.

What we need from ourselves and our politicians, as well as our social and economic leaders, is the cultivation of a set of virtues that dislodges the vices presently in control. I am reminded that for Aristotle, becoming the best person one could possibly become entailed practicing the virtues known as the excellences of character; we cultivate the virtues by the simple act of engaging habitually in those behaviors. For him, these virtues were courage, self-discipline, generosity, friendship, fairness, and justice. And for him, these excellences, these dispositions of habit, these virtues, were the midpoint between extremes. So, for example, courage fell between the extremes of aggression and cowardice; generosity fell between extravagance and thrift; and friendship fell between domination and capitulation, and so on. What we need from ourselves and our politicians is the middle ground between extremes, and however we may describe those extremes, they will undoubtedly be moderated by the virtues of civility, magnanimity, honesty, modesty, liberality and compassion.

And yes, it would be a good thing to contact your elected officials at all levels and alert them to this call for occupying the Aristotelian mean between excess and deficiency. Tell them, please, there’s room for improvement in their demeanor, and assure them, please, that you’re making the effort in yourself.

Peace,

Douglas

Matthew, Marx, and Luke

2010-03-23T10:42:00.002-05:00

Some of my friends may now think I am the enemy. I have heard from them, and I am now to understand that the causes to which I am committed are viewed as Marxist. What causes are those, you ask? Apparently it’s any cause that smacks of “social justice.” If I am an enemy, I sure hope my friends will love me like Jesus instructed in Matthew 5:43-48!

Fortunately, saying that social justice is Marxism doesn’t make it so.

On the other hand, it does give evidence of a somewhat naive view of Marxism.

The part I really like is where my advocacy for health care reform in a capitalist economy where health care is controlled by the health insurance industry puts me in league with Marxists of all historic stripes. It is easy to dismiss me as a Marxist or pro-big government or subversive of our free-market economy when I say that I believe everyone in this country deserves to have access to quality affordable health care.

First of all, unlike Marx, I do not view human history as the history of class struggle. Second, I do not believe that all aspects of human society have their epicenter in the relations of production and labor. Third, as far as I can remember, I have never said or written anything that could remotely suggest that I am opposed to ownership of private property or desire public or government ownership of the means of production. Fourth, though I was a bit radical in the 60s and 70s, I have not advocated for a revolutionary overthrow of our government and the dismantling of our political economy. And fifth, I have a firm and abiding belief in the love and grace of God, our Creator and Redeemer, whose interest in justice for the poor and marginalized is pronounced over and over again in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

But I have learned some things in the public debate on health care reform. Actually, I think I already knew them, but the continuing abusive denunciations and dismissive characterizations by political opponents from all sides only confirmed them. There has been no excess of civility in these harangues, and I am coming to believe that political discourse in our society will forever be oppositional and simplistic.

While I think it is a complete misreading of philosophy and history to label as “Marxist” the advocacy of social justice in our country, I do understand that those who make this charge have simply chosen to frame the issue in terms of their stereotypical and truncated view of Marxism. There is a certain kind of (il)logic here, and while I can’t put all the pieces together, a certain picture does emerge.

In order to demonize your political opponent, the one who thinks differently than you and who advocates for a different policy position than you, it is important, first, to establish that your opponent is deviant. This can be done simply by labeling your opponent’s view with a term that in the public consciousness is regarded as deviant, negative, dreaded, and frightening—like “Marxist.”

Second, you have to establish that your opponent has taken a position that is wide of the field of generally accepted viewpoints. To accomplish this, it is necessary to appeal to analogies or metaphors that will convey in concise form to others the perceived essence of your opponent’s view, but in your terms, not your opponent’s terms. So, for example, the call for reform of fiscal policy affecting the wealthy is “stealing” or “robbing” or “seizing” the rightful property of someone (a view, I might add, I have never heard to describe the taxation of the poor). Or, as another example, the idea that greater regulation of the financial industry amounts to wanting “big government” or a “government take-over” will work because (a) government is construed primarily or exclusively in negative terms, and (b) hardly anyone wants more of something negative mucking around in their lives (but we want safe and well-paved streets and secure airports and a military second to none).

It’s all in how you frame the issue. I just happen to choose to frame the issue of health care and income supports and public education in terms of the pursuit of “social justice” in order to achieve a greater level of equality and fairness for all in our society. That’s my frame, and I’m sticking to it. My frame draws some bits and pieces from the sociology of advanced agrarian societies (social structure and distribution of wealth in ancient societies) and some cultural anthropology (meanings and significance of social practices, symbols, rituals, etc.). It also draws from the history of Christian faith, biblical scholarship, and theological construction.

My frame of social justice puts me in company not with Karl Marx, but with such Christian luminaries as Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch, two early twentieth-century activists in the social gospel movement. This movement was centered in churches and took as its cause the alleviation of poverty and the conditions that contribute to its intransigence. I’m more akin to Reinhold Niebuhr who argued that addressing the fact of human sinfulness (greed, pride, immorality) was insufficient if attention was not also drawn to the social conditions that make such sinful expressions plausible and acceptable in human society. Tragically, the historic voices of these theologians and pastors are muted by the rancorous rhetoric of those who would have us believe that the inspiration for social justice is Karl Marx rather than the Law of Moses, or the prophets of Israel, or Jesus of Nazareth, or even the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Perhaps more than anyone else, the one political thinker who influenced the Founders of this country the most was the eighteenth-century English philosopher John Locke. In his book, Two Treatises of Government, Locke argued that absolute and unlimited property rights were contrary to natural law and that an individual does not have an absolute right to use and dispose of one’s property as one sees fit. He declared:

But we know God hath not left one Man so to the Mercy of another, that he may starve him if he please: God the Lord and Father of all, has given no one of his Children such a Property, in his peculiar Portion of the things of this World, but that he has given his needy Brother a Right to the Surplusage of his Goods; so that it cannot justly be denyed [sic] him, when his pressing Wants call for it. And therefore no Man could ever have a just Power over the Life of another, by Right of property in Land or Possessions; since ‘twould always be a Sin in any Man of Estate, to let his Brother perish for want of affording him Relief out his Plenty. As Justice gives every Man a Title to the product of his honest Industry, and that fair Acquisitions of his Ancestors descended to him; so Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s Plenty, as will keep him from extream [sic] want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise; and a Man can no more justly make use of another’s necessity, to force him to become his Vassal, by with-holding that relief, God requires him to afford to the wants of his Brother, than he that has more strength can seize upon a weaker, master him to his Obedience, and with a Dagger at his Throat offer him Death or Slavery (1.IV.42).

Thomas Jefferson, himself a person of no small intellect, argued as Locke that a certain natural law had been crafted into the structure of creation by the Creator, instilling both a common and a moral sense of interest in the welfare of others. In a letter to Miles King in 1814, Jefferson stated, “God... has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own” (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 14:197).

Jefferson did not believe this moral agency was restricted to individuals alone. Indeed, in a letter to George Hammond in 1792, he declared, “A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society” (Writings, ME 16:263). In similar vein, in his second inaugural address he stated, “We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties” (Writings, ME 3:375).

Concerned as he was about protecting individual liberty and the rights provided by the Creator and protected by civil government, Jefferson was equally concerned that those who enjoy those rights not restrain or obstruct them in their fellow citizens. In a letter to Francis Gilmer in 1816, he declared, “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him” (Writings, ME 15:24).

The debate about the role of civil government in assuring and maintaining fairness and equality is a legitimate debate. And so is the debate about individual responsibility and social-structural inequality. Jefferson reminds us that limiting these debates to the terms of personal liberty and individual moral agency truncates the issues and serves no good purpose. Individual agency must be correlated with social-structural agency, and ultimately—in the public and political arena—with national agency. Jefferson also reminds us that there are occasions when these moral agencies conflict, as when individuals and social systems denigrate, dismiss or deny the inalienable rights of others. It is at this point that civil government has the right—no, the obligation—to intervene. This Jefferson called the moral duty of the nation. We call it social justice.

At some point, in the face of suffering, debates about the role of government and personal rights must give way to compassion and justice that moves us out of our inactivity as passive bystanders. Doing nothing in the face of injustice or absolving ourselves of moral agency is tantamount to acquiescence to injustice and, worse, identification with its perpetrators. Social justice, oriented either by religious conviction, natural law, or humanism, is a commitment to identify with those whose lives are diminished by the moral offenses of individuals and social-structural forces enlivened by individual moral agency.

It’s all in how you frame the issue. If a political, economic, philosophical or theological position is composed of a coherent and interrelated set of ideas and convictions, it is ludicrous to dismiss the position simply because one or more of its ideas or convictions is also embraced by an alternative position, particularly one that has been largely discredited. Attributing social justice to Marxism is nothing more than simplism. It is nothing more than an attempt to discredit the rationality of a view by linking the position or a person who holds it with one more broadly rejected as deviant in the public mind. The logic is syllogistic but flawed: Marxism sides with the oppressed; social justice sides with the oppressed; ergo social justice is Marxist. It’s like this argument: KKK members are bigots; Henry is a bigot; ergo, Henry is a KKK member.

I frame the issue differently. Our nation was founded on the principles of equality and fairness, freedom and responsibility. No one has a greater right to property and wealth, opportunity and achievement than anyone else. But each and every one of us as moral agents has the obligation neither to restrain nor obstruct the rights of others (negative), and to seek and promote those social and economic conditions that maximize the possibility of the flourishing of all (positive).

If I am the enemy and my Christian views on social justice are reprehensible because they are viewed as Marxist, then I sure hope my friends take note of what Jesus said in Luke 6:27-36!

Peace,

Douglas

Glenn Beck and the Common Good

2010-03-10T09:14:00.001-06:00

I suppose that if Glenn Beck had his way, any religious organization that cared about the quality of human life in our society, and did something to improve it, should be castigated as un-American and politically seditious. Last week the Fox News commentator exhorted all Christians to flee from their faith community as fast as possible if there was anything about it that smacked of “social justice” or “economic justice.” And what does Mr. Beck have in mind with the notions of social and economic justice? Apparently, he views them as code words for “Communism” and “Nazism.” Let’s step back from this for a moment and think through the idea of Christians and social justice.

As Christians, we live in two worlds, two spheres, each with its own values and mores, beliefs and attitudes, rules and roles, publics and practices, heroes and villains. On the one hand, we inhabit a religious world, the world of the church where we do the things that are characteristic of ecclesial life: worship, pray, listen, speak, study, sing, serve, occasionally fight, etc. Here we are challenged, nurtured and formed into disciples who seek to live out the gospel and the One whose mission it proclaims. Here we are formed into a community, an ongoing nexus of interactions and relationships and purposes.

On the other hand, we also inhabit a secular world, a public sphere that increasingly shows disinterest and even hostility to the expressions of religious faith. In this world we live and work and play in places where we try to affirm the values and practices of our faith, but often we find that we need to be incognito Christians—present, but hidden! What we have discovered is that our religious world is largely privatized, a matter of our own individual subjectivity of belief and conduct, largely unaccountable to anyone but ourselves. At the same time, we discern our secular or social world is increasingly fragmented and stratified, characterized by parochial interests, extremism, polarization, social distance and isolation. Bridging and being in both worlds is difficult.

Justice, in practically any form, touches both of these spheres. It is important to Americans to believe that our system of justice does not see racial, gender or class differences between people, but that all are treated the same. Achieving justice is making sure that everyone gets what is due according to the law. Most believe that it is just an anomaly when it turns out otherwise. For the most part, justice is rendered whenever its dispensers succeed in mediating the competing claims between individuals or groups. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights establish our rights as citizens and provide equal protection under the law. From a popular point of view, the principles of justice, liberty and equality are provided for and upheld by these founding documents.

But while these documents guarantee legal equality by establishing rights and protections, they do not guarantee social equality or economic equality (equal opportunity, yes; equal results, no). In fact, the law is an arbitrary social contract establishing and guaranteeing certain rights in rather limited socioeconomic and political spheres. From this perspective, justice is a legal principle that seeks and assures fairness; it seeks and assures what people deserve based on merit.

But from God’s perspective, as recounted in Scripture, justice is a moral principle that seeks and assures what people need. God is not impartial. God does see the differences between people. The God in whose image we are created notes the difference between the rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless, the privileged and deprived, the included and excluded, the exploiters and exploited. God’s justice gives people not what they deserve, but what they need. God’s justice gives rights to those who have no rights, whose rights are ignored or denied. God’s justice does not guarantee the right to own and accumulate and hoard wealth or property. Rather it guarantees the right to eat. As the Psalmist says, God is the one “who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry” (Psa 146:7).

In the biblical perspective, God’s justice is an intervention for those on the social and economic edge, those who are oppressed by those whose concern is maintaining order and power (Psa 146). When our religion is privatized and the shared socioeconomic world is fragmented and stratified, it turns out that our religion is actually perverted. Practitioners of a religion that does not see or care about the oppressed, the “orphans and widows,” those who occupy the margins of the socioeconomic world, are, according to Isaiah, really practitioners in consort with evil in that they neither seek nor live in justice (Isa 1:11-17; Mic 6:6-8).

The pursuit of God’s justice is the link between the two spheres, religious and secular. The machinations of demagogues notwithstanding, the place for Christians to be is in public, and the goal for Christians to pursue is justice, social justice, economic justice, for these are the forms of justice that are denied “widows and orphans,” the “least of these” among us. The place to flee for support, encouragement, compassion and advocacy is the church where those in the tradition of Progressive Christianity have committed themselves to advancing the realization of the Beloved Community.

So the Christian community would do well to think through the ways its presence is manifest in the second, public sphere. Christians would do well to see poverty, inequality, and discrimination, not only as social and economic evils that diminish and dehumanize, but also as a form of what Carter Heyward calls “systemic political violence” (Saving Jesus From Those Who Are Right [Fortress Press, 1999] p. 8). Indeed, the Christian community would strengthen its own mission and witness if it embraced its cause more fully as a matter of justice from God’s point of view.

Some of us Christians, however, may be reluctant to embrace God’s justice. We may be ready to show a little compassion toward those less fortunate, but our compassion is more likely to be limited by our detachment from them. Truth to tell, the comfortable are made uncomfortable by the suffering of others, and to keep ourselves from being overwhelmed with their suffering, we distance ourselves from them, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and socially. We are moved by what philosopher Charles Taylor calls “impersonal benevolence.” We may very well have a sense of interest in or even benevolence toward humanity in general, but as Taylor notes, we express it “within the limits of the reasonable and possible” because we are “capable of facing the facts of unavoidable suffering and evil, and writing them off inwardly” (A Secular Age [Belnap Press, 2007] p. 682).

What, then, moves and motivates us to seek social and economic justice and the well-being of others? For some, it is simply the “in thing” to do! There’s a bit of self-affirmation that comes from knowing that one is doing something for others. Even within the limits of the “reasonable and possible,” one gains a sense of satisfaction and perhaps even a sense of superiority and immunity by aiding others.

But this motivation is rather fragile because, as Taylor points out, “it makes our philanthropy vulnerable to the shifting fashion of media attention,... We throw ourselves into the cause of the month, raise funds for this famine, petition the government to intervene in this grisly civil war; and then forget all about it next month, when it drops off the CNN screen” (p. 696).

For others, the motivation to seek the well-being of others comes from a sense of dissonance that some among us are being denied something that is inherently theirs while others enjoy it in large measure: freedom, opportunity, health, shelter, family, community, leisure, dignity, worth, respect, honor. The dissonance comes not just from the fact that these are “the least of these” as Jesus referred to them in Matthew 25, but that they are confined to their quarters by the beliefs, values, attitudes, and practices of those whom our society regards as the “greatest of these,” those with social and economic power and privilege.

What can the community of faith do to advance the cause of social justice in our civil democracy? To begin with, we can continue to do what the church has always done, and done reasonably well: provide food for the hungry and shelter for the poor, minister to the sick and dying and visit the imprisoned and their families. We can collaborate with other faith communities and groups to meet these needs, and we can train and deploy volunteers. Certainly we can allocate financial resources and distribute them to agencies whose work reflects integrity and compassion. And having done all this, we will have aided in some small ways the movement toward a more just and equitable socioeconomic order. We will have realized something of the reign of God in this place.

But we must do more. We must also engage those “violent political systems” that create conditions that make it impossible to achieve the well-being and flourishing of all. We must live, and act, and advocate in the public sphere precisely as people of faith. We must not only ask, but press beyond the superficial answers to deeper questions such as why are people hungry and homeless? How does it happen that young people cannot read or write? What are the social and moral forces at work in substance abuse and addiction? What is the explanation for the fact that certain illnesses and health conditions are vastly more evident in certain social and racial groups? What are all the reasons why there are disproportionately more African Americans in our prisons? Communities of faith need to recognize that the answer to these questions is not just personal choice and individual behavior.

Christians who affirm their faith in the God of all-embracing love and who follow after Jesus Christ as one who loved his neighbor more fully than we can ever hope have a duty to seek social and economic justice in our public worlds. Sociologist Robert Jones has underscored the duality of the world we live in and reminds us that we have a choice: “Authentic Religious consciousness,” he declares, “must involve an awareness both of our presence in a web of interdependence with others and of our participation in structures that exploit other human beings. This awareness is the seed of responsibility that forces the question: Do I really want to live that way?” (Progressive and Religious, [Rowman & Littlefield, 2008] p. 163). This task, this advocacy that Christ places in our hands, is in fact the possibility of our own transformation into Christ-likeness, but this transformation requires our initiative, our resolve, and our endurance. “Being ‘ready, willing, and able’ to change oneself,” Jones notes, “is often more difficult, more necessary, and more effective than making a commitment to change the world in the absence of a transformed self” (p. 166)

From the perspective of the Judeo-Christian tradition, there is biblical warrant to regard justice as the integration and interpenetration of the worlds in which we live, both private and public, religious and secular. So, we would do well to seek the Beloved Community by seeing to it that others are not impoverished or excluded. In this way, we would be doing justice, God’s justice.

Neither - Nor

2010-02-10T09:58:00.001-06:00

Homosexuals seem to be getting a lot of attention these days. It’s almost as if everywhere you turn, somebody is letting out a screech for or against homosexuals. The way some say it, persons with homosexual orientation are human beings who deserve recognition for their basic human rights and equal standing in our diverse society. The way others describe them, you would think they are aliens from another universe, posing an intolerable threat to an established and ordained way of life.

Some of the major Christian denominations are racked with conflict and schism over whether it is possible for gays and lesbians to be members of the church, enjoy the blessings of a religious service of union, live openly in relationship with a significant-other, become church leaders as clergy, and become eligible for elevation to the office of bishop or other extra-congregational ecclesiastic office. Some churches stop at points different than others along this scale, but none have been immune to the conflict that ensues.

Violence committed against gays and lesbians because of their sexual orientation has been classified as a hate crime following debate and passage in Congress and signature by the president. Those who opposed this law declared that there were already laws against such violence and that the inclusion of homosexual persons as a protected category amounted to an infringement on free speech. Supporters endeavored to communicate a very fine point in rebuttal, namely that sexual orientation is an identity factor, and violence against one is violence perpetrated with the intent to terrorize a whole group.

Now, in the wake of his State of the Union address, President Obama’s call for the repeal of the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military has resulted in expressions of support no less strong and expressions of opposition no less strident. When Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before a congressional committee that repeal of the law was the right thing to do, he was met with comments by Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council to the effect that not only should the law not be repealed, but that homosexual behavior ought to be criminalized.

Sprigg’s view notwithstanding, the attitudes of citizens in the U.S. regarding the service of gays and lesbians in the military is shifting. According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a growing majority of people favor allowing homosexual persons to serve openly in the military. The only categories where a clear majority opposes such service are Republicans, Evangelicals, and persons over the age of 65. Overall, men, women, black, white, Democrat, Independent, under 65, Protestant, Catholic, unaffiliated all support open service with substantial majorities.

While a federal trial in California on the legality of homosexual marriage is now in the hands of Chief Judge Vaughn R.Walker and the litigants await his decision on whether to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage, gay and lesbian couples are saying their nuptials in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Iowa, with the only question being whether those marriages will be recognized as a matter of law or litigation in the other states. The implications of the court’s decision in California for gay and lesbian equality there and throughout the United States are far-reaching.

There are legal issues and matters of civil rights clearly at stake in the California case. But there is also a human social and religious frame at stake, one which may portend how we as a nation go forward in our experiment in democracy. As an indication of the mix-up in thinking going on in relation to this issue, political and social conservative lawyer Theodore B. Olson, a litigator in the California Case on behalf of those seeking to invalidate the ban on homosexual marriage, has argued forcefully a conservative position in support of such marriages.

It has never been a better time to be a supporter of gay and lesbian rights in our civil democracy. And yes, there has never been a better time to be in opposition to those rights and their increase.

But ultimately, it is freedom and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that will prevail.

All things considered, there should be confidence in this end because our society is undergoing a metamorphosis, less by accident and more by design. Liberty is not something that one has so much as it is a condition that one realizes through the pursuit of well-being and relationships with others. We understand the “common good” to be just those conditions that make it possible for persons and their communities to flourish, so whenever any threat or barrier to a person’s well being is contested, there the common good is becoming tangible.

Lovers of democracy know full well that exclusion of some and the suffering of many diminish human freedom. The fact that personal attitudes and socioeconomic forces discount and marginalize some poses a risk to the flourishing of others; if one is bound, all are bound.

But the democracy in this country, so youthful and promising two centuries ago, has been in a constant process of change, adaptation, maturing, if you will, and this not because there is something inexorable about the advance of democracy, but because those who have lived—and now still live—in freedom have recognized over the centuries the need to include and embrace all within its community.

Those who believe the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ believe that the wide-ranging sweep of the divine love extends to all of creation, to every nook-and-cranny that bears the potential or realization of human community in a hospitable place. The nurture and power of this divine love has incredible capacity to contest, withstand, and ultimately prevail over those forces that would harm or diminish the goodness of God’s creatures—all of them! To be sure, the power that is this divine love is not always recognized, but wherever truth prevails over falsehood, compassion over antipathy, honor over shame, inclusion over exclusion, there one can be confident that the incredible and unmerited love of God is at work.

How are we to understand this metamorphosis? As in so many areas of social, political and religious change, we are no longer what we were as a nation, but there is, at best, a mist of uncertainty that shrouds the vision of the future. We have seen in just over half a century a most remarkable alteration of our social and economic fabric as a consequence of the movements to advance equality and civil rights for minorities and women. And yet there remains racial and gender inequality. Over that same period, we have observed the rise and fall of an economically-secure middle class, the further fall of growing numbers of persons and families caught in the web of poverty, and the catastrophic increase of income inequality. Clearly the economic future we envisioned for ourselves just a few years ago is not going to materialize. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer, and more of those in the middle are falling down rather than rising up.

But the measure of our commitment to democracy and its principles of freedom, diversity and equality will be found in the degree to which we all work to realize these principles for those to whom they have been denied. It is we, both as individuals and as a nation, who need to press on and pass through this transition to full inclusion of all God’s human creatures in our society. The God whose love knows no bounds, and whose compassion leaves no one behind, is pressing us to realize the full measure of the conditions for well-being and equality for those who remain outside.

I think our society is in what Victor Turner called “liminality” in his book The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1969). Liminality is the state of being in-between. One is in a liminal situation if one is no longer where or what one was, but is not yet where or what one will be. Being engaged to be married is a liminal situation: one is no longer single, but one is also not yet married.

Our society is in a liminal period with respect to many of the areas where inequality remains. And most certainly, the right of gays and lesbians to serve in the military with honor and distinction, to marry their chosen one as an expression of their loving commitment and to enjoy the rights and privileges of marriage in our civil society, to live and work and play free of the fear of bodily harm and destruction of property, and to serve our God in response to the divine call to serve in any ecclesiastical capacity are among those rights that need to be fully secured.

We are not there yet. We are no longer where we were, and we have lovers of freedom and democracy to thank for that. But we are not yet where we can and should be, and we have these same lovers of freedom and democracy—and ourselves as people who follow a fully-embracing and deeply-loving God—to appeal to for continuing this way forward to the realization of the common good for all.

For some, this is the best of times; for others, this is the worst of times. In this period of liminality, it all depends on whether one is looking backward or forward. Justice will not happen automatically, but as a nation we will emerge from our liminality having been changed for the better—if we step up to secure the rights of all.

Peace,

Douglas Sharp

The Rule of the (Wealthy) Few

2010-01-26T15:12:00.001-06:00

By now you have probably heard that five of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court cannot think of any reason why corporations doing business in this country should be prevented from spending as much money as they want to defeat a political candidate or policy that is not to their liking, or to elect one that is.

For more than sixty years there have been campaign finance rules in place that prohibit corporations from spending their own money on the production and distribution of campaign ads. However, on January 21, 2010, the Court ruled in a five-to-four decision that if it’s their money, a corporation can spend as much as it wants to produce and run campaign ads.

In other words, Corporation X cannot give a dime to Candidate Smith, but a handful of executives who call the shots can pony up millions of dollars of the corporation’s assets to promote her campaign. Or suppose those same corporate executives don’t like Smith’s opponent, Candidate Jones. Too bad for Jones, because Corporation X has deep pockets, and those executives can spend as much of it as they want to campaign against him.

Oh yes, and if it spends more than $10,000, the corporation has to file a report with the Federal Election Commission.

The Court decision also applies to labor unions. They too can now spend as much of their union assets as they want on ads for or against candidates. By comparison, however, unions tend to have considerably fewer assets, certainly fewer of the kind that can be spent on campaign ads at the discretion of union leadership.

No sooner had the decision been announced than the partisan posturing began. On one side, there were voices decrying the unleashing of special interests and their influence in politics. On the other side, voices sang the praises of this decision as a defense of the right of free speech and association. Regardless, we should expect in the future a tsunami of ads paid for and put out by big oil, big banks, big insurance, big car makers, etc.

In writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy noted that so far as political speech is concerned, corporations are no different than individuals in their freedom to exercise that right. But by any stretch of the imagination, a corporation is not an individual, though it may be constituted by any number of persons. Corporations do pay taxes, but they don’t vote or go to school or care for aging parents. They don’t pray in the house of worship of their choice or have drivers’ licenses. They don’t have the right to bear arms, seek medical attention in an emergency room, or serve on a jury. But individuals do.

Justice Kennedy seemed to be concerned that denying a corporation the right to spend as much of its own money as it wants on political ads could be seen as infringement on my right to think for myself. Apparently he’s also concerned about government deciding what people can and cannot hear or read or see. In his opinion on behalf of the majority, he wrote, “When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.” Well, yes it does, now doesn’t it!

If it’s true that denying that right of “free speech” to corporations is limiting my right to think, then correspondingly, granting that right should remove all limits to my right to think. So what would I think? Probably whatever the corporation wants me to think, since they are spending so much money to get their point across, and nothing creates a perception of the true better than spin, money and technology. George Lakoff is a cognitive scientist at UC Berkeley, and in his new book, The Political Mind, he shows that repetition has a way of working knowledge and certainty into the cranial synapses. If the message is fair and balanced, all to the good. But more likely, instead of information and perspective that is fair and balanced, what we would hear from the corporations is propaganda, the rhetoric of provincial corporate interests, the veiled justification for corporate culture and business practice that if otherwise subjected to scrutiny in a candid examination would horrify most U.S. citizens. Politics, as usual: manipulation, vested interests, absence of transparency, shading the truth, and on it goes.

But more important, for me at least, is what the absence of corporate spending limits means for our system of government. Corporations are few in number in comparison to the individuals in the United States. And yet they control trillions of dollars in assets. The number of individuals who control anywhere near that wealth can be counted on two hands, and their wealth is not even close. It is not inconceivable, given the Supreme Court’s decision and pending any legislative remedy to it, that the corporate elite, the small bands that control extraordinary assets available for molding political opinion and influencing action, are emerging as a political aristocracy with the capacity to control legislators to their bidding and shape policy to their liking. They are becoming a shadow oligarchy for whom government is an instrument bent to serve their particular global business and financial interests.

It is difficult to imagine any greater threat to civil liberty and social justice. Plato wrote at length about the three forms of government, monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. He wasn’t too keen on democracy, what with the rabble and the rousing and the cacophony of voices. He much preferred monarchy, but would settle for a good oligarchy if they were known and trusted individuals. Still, it’s safer and saner to go with a monarch. On the other hand, those to whom we credit the founding of the United States were as distrustful of monarchy as Plato was of democracy. The reason? Tyranny – bad king! Democracy is supposed to mitigate and remove tyranny of the one – or the few.

If the well-being and rights of all are to be protected, all have to be capacitated to contribute to and receive from the common good. No one’s interests supersede any one else’s interests in a democracy. Establishing the conditions necessary for achieving the common good requires that no one’s privileges trump those of others. We are a society where all are equal, where all individuals are equal, and have the right to participate fully and freely in our civil democracy.

The Supreme Court decision shifts the ground by granting a status to corporations that gives them an incredible advantage and set of protections in political discourse and influence. With their resources, compared to other individuals and groups, it can hardly be said to be a level playing field. Writing in his January 25, 2010 Washington Post column, D. J. Dionne declared that “the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision … giving American corporations the right to unlimited political spending was an astonishing display of judicial arrogance, overreach and unjustified activism.” I agree with this assessment of the Court’s decision, and with Dionne, I believe this is a propitious moment for us to initiate a populist revolt, pressing our legislative representatives in Congress and the president to pass campaign finance reform that corrects this mistake, levels the playing field in political activity, and keeps the aristocratic oligarchy at bay.

At the moment, your voice is being diminished. Unless you are favorably disposed toward oligarchy and political tyranny, I would think it’s time to get your dander up.

Peace,

Douglas Sharp

Churches and Social Justice - Type One

2010-01-05T15:59:00.001-06:00

The last few weeks have seen a lot of media attention directed toward religious organizations, their representatives, and the positions they are taking on various public issues, from climate change to marriage equality for homosexuals, from health care reform to hate crime laws, from rising poverty rates and income disparity to the decline of religion in the U.S., based on the number of U.S. citizens who claim “no religion” in answer to survey questions.

With the possible exception of this last item, all these are issues of some moment. Indeed, they are issues of public policy that are highly contested not just among citizens and lawmakers but also Christians themselves. For a good many people – religious or not – these are also issues of social justice, matters that affect the well-being, the common good of all.

We’ve spent a little time in previous blogs finding our way into the questions: What type of congregation takes up organizing and mobilizing itself on behalf of social justice? What are the characteristic features and theological commitments that coalesce to move a faith community to stand up or give in to the prevailing order of things social and economic?

By way of quick review, we’ve noted the distinction between high-tension and low-tension churches, the former being those religious groups that are at odds with the prevailing social and economic conditions and are in conflict with the social beliefs, attitudes, and values that are dominant in society, and the latter being those communities that are comfortable with and accepting of existing conditions and whose peculiar constellation of religious and social beliefs, attitudes, and values serve to bring legitimacy and stability to social and economic structures.

We have also seen that churches can take one of two general orientations toward the world or context in which they are located. There are those whose concern for and interest in the world is limited to seeing it as the place to go to preach the gospel so others might come to faith. And there are churches whose concern and interest moves them to work actively for social change and a more just and equitable socioeconomic order. The former we are calling “preaching churches” that take their cue from passages like Mark 16:15-16 (“go into all the world and preach the gospel”). The latter we are calling “enacting churches” that are motivated by passages like Matthew 25:31-45 (feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned).

Others who have probed these questions include David Roozen, William McKinney and Jackson Carroll. Their work in Varieties of Religious Presence: Mission in Public Life (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984) is particularly helpful and adapted here. Significant research on these questions is also done regularly by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, including many of their surveys that focus on religion, politics, and particular policy issues. These studies, along with the research done by Public Religion Research, are also suggestive for our attempts to articulate the various types of churches in relation to social justice.

Crisscrossing these two continua reveals four general types of churches, each characterized by a particular orientation to its surrounding context and a sense of its fundamental purpose in relation to it. We will now look more closely at these types, beginning in this blog with a high-tension preaching type that we will call a religious enclave.

As a type of church, religious enclaves are at odds with the world; they don’t know what to make of it, so they don’t – attempt to make something of it, that is. On the contrary, what they behold and experience of the world strikes them as an antithesis, a distortion, or even a perversion of what is true and good and right. Whether it is cultural values exhibited in cinema or legal principles guaranteeing personal freedom or sexual mores cut loose from the bonds of heterosexual matrimony or insufferable poverty endured by slothful ne’r-do-wells, these conditions of the world are judged as both a regrettable parody of God’s intent and a morose demonstration of humanity’s sinfulness.

Religious enclaves are an escape from this world, a retreat and retrenchment to a place where the beliefs, values, and practices of the true and good and right prevail, a venue where one can escape the travails of the world and find solace and encouragement to stay the correct course. Interestingly enough, by seeking to keep the things of this world at bay, the religious enclave is acquiescent to the world’s status quo. Turning from the world is tantamount to acceding to the world; in a strange sort of way it is an acknowledgment that the world is as it is, a tacit capitulation to “let it be.” The ways of the world are criticized, to be sure, but they are not actively challenged. This view of the world can be held because the world as such is believed to be essentially lost in sin and immorality and subject to the divine judgment. There is little that is redeemable in this world, and typically the world as such is not on the list.

In a religious enclave, morality is personal, but it is also communally enforceable. There is a moral code that shapes behavior as well as beliefs and attitudes, and it is remarkably stable over time. It is not so much a list of moral rules, but rather an unspoken acknowledgment of a generally understood moral code, a version of a religious common sense of what is appropriate and what is not. This morality is thought to be rooted in the Bible and the traditional ways of life that have characterized the community. As a consequence, there is a hedge against alternative values and styles of personal and social living that are present in the larger society.

Not surprisingly, a religious enclave is rather homogeneous. In addition to the commonly shared moral values that touch on matters such as social roles, family life, child-rearing practices, sexuality, personal responsibility and a disciplined work ethic, there is a fairly uniform understanding of religious teachings and practices. Religious enclaves tend to be interested in teaching and maintaining correct doctrine and religious observance. Indeed, the unity of the body results in part precisely because of doctrinal uniformity and their shared sense of what is right and true. Differences of opinion, especially on matters of religious truth and biblical interpretation, are not typically encouraged or even tolerated; there is generally an authority figure whose presence and leadership is highly valued.

This concern to be in line with the recognized authority figure explains in some ways the tendency of religious enclaves to respect civil authority in practically all its forms. Paul’s exhortation in Romans 13 about submitting to governmental authorities because these are established by God is viewed as the basis for responsible and obedient citizenship in our civil democracy. There is great respect for law and order, exercising as they do a degree of restraint on humans and our misdeeds. There is also genuine appreciation for personal liberty; patriotism, strong support for the U.S. military, and respect for free enterprise are both symbolic and real measures of love for country.

It is this freedom and deference to authority that creates an environment of attraction and repulsion in religious enclaves. On the one hand, living and working and playing in the larger social and economic world are necessary; individuals must grow into responsible adulthood and make something of themselves. At the same time, however, they must guard against giving in to the social and economic forces that put their relationship to God at risk. A religious enclave’s social and religious views of the world do not make it feasible to advance the shared morality into the larger society with an expectation of affecting social change. Thus there is an atmosphere of disinterest or even discouragement when it comes to the prospect of altering the fallen world. Rather than going into the world to effect change, members will recruit others from the world to enter the religious enclave as co-inhabitants.

Religious enclaves are fairly good at self-care; there is much that is good in their service to one another, especially in the relief of suffering and sorrow, poverty and want. Individuals can remove themselves temporarily from the larger society to enjoy the love and nurture and support of like-minded people. Where programs of religious education take place, members are usually edified and strengthened in their understanding of their faith and their situation in the world; they are established more firmly in their belief that they are distinctively different from other religionists and have an obligation to care for their own in ways the world knows not. When there is a measure of service to others outside the religious enclave, it is undertaken as an act of love and compassion for others who are lost in a fallen world, suffering in circumstances over which they have no control. These are charitable acts intending to alleviate hardship for those less fortunate.

These are preaching churches, rather than enacting churches, because of the conviction that true religion is separation from the world’s values and mores and distance from the forces that contest the truth of religious belief and practice. Understanding and embracing this truth, and a willingness to attest to it when called upon, are cultivated by the attention given to the spoken word and shared faith; true religion is a matter of correct belief and living according to the group’s acknowledged moral code. Thus personal morality and conduct figure heavily and are normatively tracked on the radar screen by others in the religious enclave. A sense of profound dissonance with the world exists, but this dissonance lacks the accompanying conviction that something must be done to rectify it. As stated earlier, in an odd sense this is giving in to the world. Social justice, by any measure, is not on the agenda.

Up next: low-tension preaching churches, or spiritual bridges.

Peace,

Douglas R. Sharp

Religion as a Product of Evolution?

2009-12-07T12:56:00.000-06:00

A new book exploring religious behavior has appeared, with a most interesting approach to its explanation. The book is The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009) and it is edited by Jay R. Feierman, M.D., a retired Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico.

The volume is a collection of essays addressing various dimensions of religious behavior examined from the perspective of evolutionary biology. The various contributions are held together by a basic contention: religious behavior, i.e., “behavior associated with the communicated acceptance of a supernatural claim,” (244) is the product of biological evolution by natural selection in which the structural features of religious behavior either evolved directly by conferring benefit to individuals, or were adapted from something other than religion.

A major premise of the work here is that since religious behaviors are observable and therefore subject to scientific study, they also provide a way into examining “nonbehavioral aspects of religious experience” such as “beliefs, values, moods, and feelings” (xvi). To put it another way, what one thinks, believes, and feels as a practitioner of a particular religion can be discerned by observing one’s behavior and the collective behaviors of like-minded religionists. This is, in all likelihood, a very plausible thesis that can be tested by even a casual observation of the behavior of another, religious or otherwise.

But if it is true, as some like Milton Rokeach, Irwin Deutscher, and Martin Fishbein have argued, that observable behavior is rooted in beliefs, attitudes, and values, then what Feierman and his colleagues are proposing is that these nonbehavioral aspects of religious experience are themselves ultimately grounded in the forces of biological evolution. And that is an interesting thesis!

The authors undertook this collaborative work following a 2008 international symposium in Italy on the biology of religious behavior. They attempt to lay out some representative ways in which religious behavior can be shown to be the product of Darwinian evolution by natural selection. The team of scholars assembled for these essays include physicians, evolutionary and cultural anthropologists, psychobiologists, psychologists, sociologists, diplomats and a theologian. They endeavor to make their case by supposing that there is at least one structural feature to religious behavior that is universal, spanning all religions irrespective of their particular belief system, values, morality and institutionalization. That feature is submission to one who is more powerful as exemplified in prayer. Unfortunately, that totalizing feature has not been shown to be quite as universal across “religions” as supposed by these scholars.

The book is organized into five parts and a conclusion. Following the four chapters in Part One that address definitions and issues related to religious behavior and the notion of its biological evolution, parts two through five each address a basic issue on this approach to religious behavior. Inspired by the ethological work of Niko Tinbergen, these four parts address, first, the evolutionary history of a behavior, followed by, second, an inquiry into when and how the behavior develops in the life of an individual. This leads, third, to an attempt to describe the immediate causes of a religious behavior, and, finally, to an articulation of the behavior’s adaptive value for survival.

While arguing that religion and religious behavior are the product of evolution, the authors are nonetheless mindful that both are affected by the sociocultural environment in which they have appeared during the long course of evolution. Thus both religion as such and the behaviors associated with it are also the product of social evolution, or if you like, exemplary of social Darwinism in which the religion and religious behaviors that endure are those that are selected because they improve the prospects of survivability.

If one reads this book looking for evidence that religious behavior is the product of biological evolution, there will be disappointment. These essays are exercises in the application of several theoretical approaches to biological evolution as the determinant of behavior, and thus they are interpretive attempts to explain the possible origins of various religious behaviors. Likewise, if one is looking for indications that the biological evolution of religious behavior is but one among other more or less plausible explanations for behavior, one will be disappointed with this collection of essays. In short, the authors presuppose biological evolution by natural selection as the explanation, and bring this perspective to bear on the analysis of behaviors regarded as “religious” by some measure of presence in particular, though not all religions. While they tend to hint at it, they do not succeed in suggesting that evolutionary biology is the only explanation for religious behavior, though considerable weight is laid on this scale.

Peace,
Douglas R. Sharp
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A Threatening Letter from my Heart Doctor!

2009-10-12T13:39:00.000-05:00

The news at the top of the day today is that the health insurance industry, after coddling along with the Obama administration reform efforts, is about to launch a major offensive against healthcare reform – all stops to be pulled out!!!

And now, my own heart doctor is threatening me with reductions in service and quality of care. (For those who want to know, there’s nothing wrong with my heart, its arteries and valves. That’s why I have a heart doc – treat me so I don’t have heart problems even though there are “risk factors” in my family tree.)

Apparently, along with the health insurance industry, my heart doc and his colleagues (and their professional lobbying organization) are gearing up for a massive effort to oppose healthcare reform, and they’ve asked me as one of their patients to join them.

Now I admit, I’m pro-reform in healthcare. So when my cardiologist asks me to lobby the federal government, I’m there! “Quality and accessible healthcare for all,” I say. But my cardiologist is not asking me to lobby on behalf of reform. He and his forty-nine physician colleagues in their group cardiovascular practice are asking me to lobby against the proposed 2010 Medicare cuts in physician reimbursements.

Their letter requesting my involvement says these cuts “will negatively affect our practice if allowed to pass. We face reimbursement cuts of 25 percent, which may force us to make difficult business decisions such as eliminating some services.”

Okay. Let’s all step back. The federal agency that manages Medicare is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), nestled comfortably within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In developing the Medicare budget and reimbursements for 2010, the CMS drew on a physician survey conducted by the American Medical Association (AMA). With data collected through the AMA’s Physician Practice Information Survey, the CMS determined that the actual costs of running a cardiology practice had decreased over the last few years. Thus the reason for reimbursement cuts.

Now I suppose one can understand that board-certified cardiologists would not be too happy with these reimbursement cuts. Nobody likes being paid less tomorrow than they were today for the same work. Health insurers (whether profit or non-profit) as well as the federal government through its CMS have historically negotiated reimbursement rates to healthcare providers. These people agree to take as payment what the insurers are willing to pay, and the healthcare recipient lives with co-payments and unreimbursed medical fees that, in the case of many, strain the family budget and push many into bankruptcy. But as we know, the healthcare consumer has no leverage to negotiate third-party payments to providers, so the consumer pays both the going rate and what’s left over.

The glitch in this giddy-up is that my heart doc is now telling me that the CMS used “flawed data.” (Rule of thumb in research: If you don’t like the conclusions or results, challenge the data and its interpretation.) Now let me get this straight: Doctors provide information on what it costs to run their practice to their national body. CMS uses this information to calculate reimbursement rates for services. Calculation results in a decrease in reimbursement payments because cost of practice is decreasing. Doctors object to reductions saying the data is flawed. What’s wrong with this picture?

But it only gets better. My cardiologist’s group is threatening that, if these proposed Medicare reimbursement cuts are implemented, “we will all be dramatically impacted.” In what ways, specifically, will “we all” be impacted? Their letter goes on to answer:

• Access to medical services and physician visits will be limited

• Wait time for appointments, tests, and results will increase. This means more frustration and anxiety for you

• The level of quality physicians and other healthcare providers strive so hard to deliver will be jeopardized.

Well by golly, I’m so perturbed by this that I’m ready to do just about anything. Limited access, longer wait times, and jeopardized quality of care, I think not! This isn’t a threat. It’s a call to action. Who’s my Congressman? Where are my Senators’ phone numbers? I’ll not have this!!

Whoa there! Wait just a minute! My cardiologist and his colleagues are asking me to lobby on their behalf, but they’re not giving me all the information I need. I really don’t know how or why these reimbursement cuts will result in limited access, longer wait times, and jeopardized quality. By their own word, they may be forced to make difficult business decisions, including the elimination of some services.

Now as a “business,” how they handle the Medicare cuts is clearly their decision. But I am now wondering about their options and business philosophy. I don’t know what it costs to run their large and multi-county cardiology practice – I’m at a disadvantage here. I don’t know what the physicians’ incomes are, but I have no reason to believe that they have considered reducing the salaries for all employees, including the physicians. I am reasonably certain that some of their patients have lost their jobs (and perhaps their health insurance as well), or have taken reductions in their incomes because of the recession. So I wonder, how are “we all” impacted? Is this physicians’ group including salary reductions in their list of things they will do to make up for the loss of income when the Medicare cuts are implemented?

On further reflection, their letter reads to me as though their concern about my health goes no further than their desire to maintain their income and profitability by passing their financial losses on to me by way of limited access, increased wait times, and reduced quality of care. Frankly, their solicitation of my lobbying activity on their behalf strikes me as manipulative.

Strange, but I note, with some sense of the ironic, that their website blurb on their history as a practice says that their commitment to providing unsurpassed care is still as strong as it was when they first opened their doors decades ago. Their “mission” is quite basic: provide the best cardiovascular care. Their “values”? Only four, the first of which is: the patient comes first, so the conduct of the practice is guided by providing the best possible medical care to serve the needs of their patients.

If they are so concerned about my health, why aren’t they writing to say that there will be no affect on medical services, wait times, and quality of care because they are committed to finding other ways to offset the loss of income, including reductions in salaries for the very highly paid physicians? According to the Allied Physicians Salary Survey, a cardiologist working three or more years on average is paid $400,000 or more.

I want healthcare reform, now! I want systemic healthcare reform now! That includes all healthcare providers and insurers. And I want this reform to occur in the way individual doctors and their group practices conduct their business (their word, not mine). The system is all out of whack, indeed. There is no sustainable growth rate (SGR) that is achievable in the current healthcare system. Only massive reform can fix this, and it will affect everyone, to be sure. But it strikes me as completely disingenuous to claim to be concerned about patients while passing off the reductions in overall practice income to them in the form of reduced access and quality. Everyone needs to feel the hurt; no one’s income can be immune from this surgery.

So, I will not be writing and lobbying my elected officials, at least not on behalf of my heart doctor! I don’t have enough information for that. But I do have enough information to write a letter to my cardiologist and his colleagues.

Peace,

Douglas Sharp