Why Would Academics Have Problems With Mormons and Evangelicals?

I seriously doubt Ilya Somin when he says that academic disapproval of Mormonism and Evangelical Christianity is merely a function of academics being generally liberal and Mormons and Evangelicals being generally conservative:

The study Todd cites shows that 53% of academics have an “unfavorable” view of Evangelical Christians and 33% say the same of Mormons. By contrast, only 13% have an unfavorable view of Catholics and 3% towards Jews. As Todd points out, Evangelical Christians and and Mormons are generally seen as politically conservative, while Jews tend to be liberal, and Catholics somewhere in between. Todd may well be right that academics’ views of Evangelicals and Mormons are based on stereotypes rather than personal experience. However, the stereotype that these groups tend to be politically conservative is actually correct. For example, a recent survey found that 47% of evangelicals describe themselves as “conservative,” while only 14% call themselves “liberal.” A Pew survey found that 72% of white Evangelicals voted for the Republicans in the 2006 congressional elections. The numbers for Mormons are similar (majority-Mormon Utah is perhaps the most reliably Republican state in the country).

This strikes me as obviously wrongheaded. Sean Carroll points out that Evangelicals and Mormons are, generally, some of the most agressive anti-intellectuals out there. Both have, at the heart of their creed, certain propositions that very few intellectuals or academics could ever agree with. The story of Joseph Smith, though no less credible than other founding-faith stories, only happened in the 19th century, meaning that there is written documentation of him being totally full of it. Also, Mormons steadfastly believe silliness like Native Americans being the lost tribes of Israel and a whole host of simple empirical facts that are just wrong. Evangelicals, on the other hand, have been incredibly hostile towards academia, and have viewed it with contempt for the entirety of the 20th century, so it makes sense that academics have returned the favor.

Catholicism and Judaism, which academics don’t disapprove of (or do in very low numbers), have incredibly illustrious intellectual traditions, and even though they too have some basic problems with empiricism, those problems are an order of magnitude less glaring than those afflicting Evangelicals and Mormons.

Also, Catholics and Jews are perhaps the two most intellectually minded religious groups in the history of the Western world. I hardly have to list off famous institutions of higher learning or intellectuals to prove this point, but suffice to say, Georgetown beats out BYU and Oral Roberts, de Chardin is better than Kurt Wise, and that Heschel, Maimonides, Arendt and Berlin could beat out anyone that Evangelicals and Mormons have to offer.

Brideshead Revisited Revisited

Alex Massie makes a somewhat compelling case that snobby purists like myself shouldn’t get apoplectic about this adaption massacre that’s soon to hit the screens:

And in any case, if we’re honest, Brideshead is ripe for a Dynasty style makeover. Brideshead is a soap opera after all and, frequently, a contrived, over-written, nonsensical drama to boot. That’s part of its charm of course - itself, natch, the novel’s fatal flaw…

Matt Zeitlin, on the other hand, suggests one should weep over this trailer. Now there’s something to the argument that given the great success - indeed brilliance - of John Mortimer’s Granada adaptation there’s no need for a new film. But then again, what damage can there really be? Anyone who loves Brideshead - and it’s one of those novels that despite its brilliance attracts too many too passionate defenders - has no monopoly or veto on how the book must be interpreted. In fact some of them need winding up…

Massie is right - us loyal Brideshead defenders are a small bunch (outside of my household, I don’t know where to find such utter fanatics) but that doesn’t mean I have to sit and cooly contemplate the ruining of a masterwork. After all, once this tripe hits the big screen, how am I supposed to explain that when I say Brideshead Revisited is the best thing on film ever, that I mean the miniseries, not this melodramatic crapwerk? And even if I can patiently explain which Brideshead I love so dearly, it would still be a pain.

But I sound like a old fogey complaining that they’re just making a rather staid, langrouous book/tv series into something more exciting. It also turns out that they’re totally mangling the plot:

The television version was faithful to the plot, but Davies warns he is writing a “darker, more heterosexual” approach. Instead of Charles Ryder’s relationship with Sebastian Flyte, he seeks to concentrate on the doomed affair between Charles and Julia Flyte. He also intends to ignore Charles Ryder’s conversion to Catholicism, and to reveal how the faith destroys the relationship. “If God can be said to exist in my version,” he said, “he would be the villain.”

This, if really true, is horrendous on so many levels. At first, it’s just weird. So often, it’s the remakes and modern interpretations that try to elevate the homosexual subtext to the forefront. With the original Bridesheads, it was just kind of there, and not really that big of a deal. But even ignoring whether or nor Charles and Sebastian are “gay” (a pointless question), it’s impossible to ignore that it’s their relationship, not Charles’ with Julia, that’s at the center of the book.

Also, do we really need another romantic drama where the strictures of religion are unambiguously evil? One of the many things that makes Brideshead so distinctive is that it takes an incredibly complex subject - being Catholic in England - and treats it with extreme sympathy. How many other great 20th century novels have an urbane, educated agnostic end up believing in God because of the faith of boorish, Catholic aristocrats? Although the ornate language, or in the movie, the great clothes and sumptuous settings are nice and all, Catholicism really lies at the heart of the work.

The adaptor, Jeremy Brock, claims that it’s not belief in God, per se, that he’s after, but instead “man-made theology; the emotional and moral contortions forced on to individuals by their adherence to a particular set of codes and practices.” I’m afraid that when it comes to Catholicism, and especially the faith of the Flytes, this is a distinction without a difference. When Charles Ryder whispers the catechism, or when Lord Marchmain comes home to have the last rites administered, when Sebastian ends up in a monastery or most importantly, when Julia leaves Charles, is that just unimpeachable personal faith, or instead that bugagboo of “man made theology”?

This is not too say that Waugh’s perspective is necessarily correct, I surely wouldn’t want to live my life like the Flytes, but it’s an important perspective nonetheless, and one that deserved exposition in serious literary and cinematic form. At a certain point, adaptation turns into artistic misuse, and I’m afraid this is one of those times.

Via Ross Douthat.

Nice Universal Commitment to Human Dignity Ya Got There

When I first criticized Michael Gerson for trying to hold up the Catholic Church’s spiritual, absolutist approach to human dignity as better than his strawman of relativistic, secularist materialism, I focused mostly on the logical and philosophical problems with his comparison. I made a passing reference to the Church’s not-exactly-fantastic-history when it comes to actually promoting human dignity universally, but I made no reference to the Church’s current policies. But as Dana Goldstein points out, the Church exercises a whole lot of influence over its adherents in the developing world, so that means it’s strictures against condom use and generally reactionary approach to family and reproductive health is doing real damage to the lives of its parishioners:

In practice, the Vatican’s rejection of both contraception and divorce can act as a death sentence for young women in the developing world. Writing in Commonweal magazine, an opinion journal edited by lay American Catholics, Dr. Marcella Alsan described her experience tending to AIDS patients in Swaziland:

…

This is the reality: A married woman living in Southern Africa is at higher risk of becoming infected with HIV than an unmarried woman. Extolling abstinence and fidelity, as the Catholic Church does, will not protect her; in all likelihood she is already monogamous. It is her husband who is likely to have HIV. Yet refusing a husband’s sexual overtures risks ostracism, violence, and destitution for herself and her children.

In poverty-stricken societies where prostitution is commonplace, women have few recourses to protect themselves sexually. By clinging to a contraception ban at odds with the realities of modern life, the Catholic Church bolsters misogynistic cultural norms that say women don’t have the right to refuse sex or insist upon having it safely…

Catholic organizations provide about 25 percent of the HIV/AIDS relief available worldwide. For that, the Church should be commended. But until Pope Benedict XVI and the entire Catholic hierarchy embrace the role of condoms in fighting AIDS, Catholic compassion will be limited by ideology. Faith leaders working on the ground have accepted that contraception saves lives. Isn’t it time for a brave American politician to ask the pope why he won’t do the same? To do so would not be disrespectful to either Benedict or American Catholics. Rather, it would recognize the Vatican’s unique power to influence the lives of its followers around the world.

So yeah, nice universal commitment to human dignity ya got going there Benedict XVI…

Gerson, Gerson, Gerson

Michael Gerson, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit, once again chastises us for failing to remember that to recognize human dignity and universal human rights, one needs to reject a material conception of humanity, and secularism while you’re at it:

Secularism has traditionally taught that human beings will eventually outgrow religious conviction and moral absolutism — that skepticism is evidence of maturity. Benedict contends that modern men and women, unguided by reasoned moral beliefs, turn toward adolescent self-involvement. Their intellectual growth is stunted. In a world where all moral claims are seen as equally true and equally false — the world, for example, of the modern university — human conscience is reduced to biology or prejudice. Moral behavior may continue to ride in grooves of socialization or genetics, but moral assertions are fundamentally arbitrary — always trumped by a two-word response: “Says you.”

Ok, Gerson is jumping all over the place. There’s the false connection between secularism and relativism. The idea that a secular philosophy can’t capture “reasoned moral beliefs” is just false. Just look at the last 200 or so years of moral philosophy. There have been plenty of deontologists who derived universal, absolute human rights in a totally secular fashion. There’s also the historical trend that the belief in universal human rights has traditionally recognized by explicitly secular institutions, like the French Revolutionary government or the UN (yes yes, the French weren’t exactly the best protectors of these rights, but they sure got around to recognizing the Rights of Man quicker than the Church). Not to mention that the Church, which has always held a spritual conception of humanity, hasn’t been above massive human rights violations.

Gerson also implies that secularism inevitably means relativism. That if we don’t adhere to a belief in God and that humanity is more than physical, then we’ll be “In a world where all moral claims are seen as equally true and equally false.” This again, is a horrible misrepresentation and simplification of the state of secular moral philosophy. Utilitarians, who Gerson no doubt despises, don’t believe that all moral claims are equally true and equally false. Please, call Peter Singer a relativist and see what happens.

Sure, moral non-cognitivists think that the truth of moral claims is debatable, but Gerson is attacking the entire secular ethical tradition, not just a small subset of it. If you want moral absolutism, or deontology, or non relativistic ethics (three different things, despite Gerson’s muddling the issue) you don’t need to believe in god! Just go to a philosophy class!

Gerson claims that us secular materialists, who see humans as “the meat and bones of materiality” make oppression and exploitation easier. Well, Gerson, I recognize universal human rights, and I’m a secular materialist, so what now? Even Peter Singer, who surely gives Gerson nightmeres, supports an angelic ethics, whereby the rich devote themselves to the betterment of the poor. How does this square with Gerson’s impugning of secular morality?

Gerson also refuses to mention the War in Iraq. Of course, the Church opposed it and Gerson supported it. How did Gerson respect the dignity of the approximately 100,000 dead Iraqis, the millions internally displaced and hundreds of thousands maimed? Could Gerson say to the families of those dead Iraqis that “every apparently worthless life is not really worthless at all.”? Sure, he feigned at supporting it purely in the name of humanitarianism and human rights, but considering his inside view of the Bush administration, he should have known that the intention was not to secure the dignity of the Iraqi people or to remove a horrible dictator. He also should have known, or at least by now admitted, that unjust, imperialist wars do little to advance the cause of human rights.

What’s Worse, Prejudice or Craziness?

Sarah Posner captures what’s really been bothering me about the entire John Haggee controversy, namely that his objectively crazy views about the Middle East and his desire for a war with some Russo-Arab alliance in the Holy Land is much more worrying, and got much less attention, than his supposed anti-Catholicism:

While the viral, Bill Donohue-inspired campaign to spread the idea that Hagee is anti-Catholic got mention in the Yoffie speech, it certainly was not the focus. But Hagee — making the same mistake as his critics — is wrong to focus on Yoffie’s mention of his alleged anti-Catholicism. I’ve heard Hagee speak — in person or on television — countless times, and I’ve read more of his books than I care to admit. And, while I’ve reported that anti-Catholicism is common in Pentecostal circles and more than one person I met at Hagee’s church gave me an eye-roll when talking about his or her own ventures into the Catholic Church, I’ve never found anti-Catholicism to be the focal point of Hagee’s own ideology…

Hagee’s views are not just dangerous because they convey anti-religious bigotry but because they represent a powerful movement that has had a catastrophic affect on our foreign policy. He fosters credulity in the rank and file who are loath to open any book aside from their Bibles in order to understand current events in the Middle East. Isn’t that more alarming than unhinging Bill Donohue?

There are a few things going on here. One, is that in the last 40 years, we’ve become very well attuned
to detecting offensive comments about a sub-group and condemning them. So when Hagee calls the Catholic Church the “great whore” and stuff like that, we essentially go into auto-condemn mode. The second bit is that we’ve become, as a culture, less able to talk about religion in a meaningful way.

While Hagee is certainly more gruff than many protestants in his condemnations of Catholicism, it’s worth remember that Catholics and Protestants have some very serious disagreements that, if taken on their own terms, are disagreements on the how to achieve mankind’s eternal well being. It’s pretty serious stuff. Now, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad that we’ve largely taken religious conflict out the public sphere; I certainly prefer Mitt Romney’s insistence on being a “man of faith” to the horrors of the 30 Years War, but it sure makes it harder to understand people who haven’t accepted the Great Separation (like John Hagee or Al Qaeda).

Another problem with this bracketing off of religious disagreement from the public sphere is that we care more when the lines are crossed (like with Hagee) than when those same pastors make downright crazy statements about, say, American foreign policy in the Middle East. This was especially distressing in the case of McCain because we all focused on the anti-Catholicism, which was really immaterial to Hagee’s endorsement, and ignored the large amount of overlap in Hagee and McCain’s preferred foreign policy.

Here we had an influential pastor who supports hawkish Middle East policies as a means to bring about Armageddon, endorsing the most hawkish presidential candidate in recent memory, and all we could talk about were comments about Catholicism that you could hear in many Evangelical churches. This is not to excuse anti-Catholicism, but the days of Republicans ranting about “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” are very much in the past, while the days of crusading military interventions in the Middle East are very much upon us.

Posted Without Comment

Choprarific

While I don’t condone calling people who criticize Christianity or certain interpretations of it the “antichrist”, I still find it odd that Deepak Chopra, yes Deepak Chopra, is so offended that his trying to turn Jesus into some sort of New Age guru who spouts nonsense about universal consciousness  that sounds an awful lot like Chopra’s standard fare isn’t being received to well by actual believing Christians.   And while Chopra and I probably agree that fundamentalist Christianity is probably a bad thing, his actual claims in “Why We Need a New Jesus” are pretty lame.  For instance, his central claim is that the current interpretation of Jesus - which he never really explains (in a faith of 1 billion and 20,000 sects, there are plenty of interpretations of Jesus) is not satisfactory for people who want to see Jesus as someone who peddles books like “Be Your Own Guru.”

Many believers are satisfied with one or the other Jesus, and yet millions are not. They have witnessed their faith being hijacked by rigid fundamentalism. A teaching of love and peace has been perverted to justify war and bigotry. These deeply disturbing trends speak of a single radical need: the need for a new Jesus. In particular, there’s a hunger that has existed as long as the Church itself, which is a hunger to relate to Jesus personally. Although not raised as a Christian, I went to a Catholic-run missionary school in India and fell under the romantic spell of a universal Savior. I wanted to know, as anyone would, how to fulfill Jesus’s promise that the Kingdom of Heaven is within.

I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, but the complaint that “a teaching of love and peace has been perverted to justify war an bigotry” has been around for as long as there have been Christianity.  And what makes his argument even weaker, besides how boringly generic it is, is that it’s the fundamentalist strains of Christianity that are gaining the most followers.  Look at mainline protestantism descent into irrelevance in America, or Pope Benedict’s turn towards traditionalism, or Pentecostalism gaining a foothold in Latin America and Africa.  It’s these strains of faith, especially the evangelical ones, that emphasize a personal relation to Christ.  So it’s not exactly clear what Chopra is protesting, besides the fact that Christians haven’t come around to the true meaning of Christ, namely, that Chopra is He.

Evangelicals and Democrats

Nick Kristof echoes a point I made in the early days of this blog: evangelicals are  enthusiastic about foreign social justice issues, making them perfect partners for Democrats in legislating on matters that get too little attention — namely disease and development. While it’s certainly true that Rick Warren getting the Saddleback Church to devote itself to AIDS in Africa is impressive, I don’t really see how and why Democrats should try to court Evangelicals on anything besides this narrow band of social policies. Not only are evangelicals incredibly conservative on basic liberal tenets, they’re also amazingly fickle voters who are perfectly willing to essentially vote for whatever candidate best apes their religious beliefs. Republicans are always going to be able to produce more Mike Huckabees and George Bushes than Democrats, so it’s probably not worth sacrificing anything on the oft chance that evangelicals will move to the “D” column because we get together to increase our foreign aid budget.

What we can do, however, is try to get legislators like Sam Brownback and leaders like Rick Warren to rally support, or at least depress dissent, for foreign aid bills. But even this is a perilous path, if Brownback were to condition support for an Obama foreign aid bill on maintaining the global gag rule, or on funding abstinence education in Africa, then pursuing his support would not be worth it.

Another large problem for a potential evangelical-Democrat alliance is that while Evangelicals are exceptionally charitable towards the poor — both at home and abroad — it’s unclear if that will translate to consistent support for government initiatives and spending. Sure, Michael Gerson is willing to throw around government money, but it’s unclear how big his following is in the Evangelical community. I guess I’ll support the Demogelical Social Justice Super Fusion when I see it, until then, we should probably just elect Democrats.

Richard Cohen’s Mandatory Maoist Repudiation

Mandatory Maoist Repudiation is a tactic used against liberals who are skeptical of the benefits of markets whereby their critics say things like ” but Mao was evil, and if you don’t think Mao is evil, please explain why.”  Of course, Mao was a total dick, but that wasn’t what we were talking about was it?

A variant of Mandatory Maoist Repudiation is Forced Farrakhan Redupdiation.  And Richard Cohen is doing it to Obama.  He reports that the Pastor at Obama’s church, Jeremiah Wright, publishes a magazine that gave Louis Farrakhan the “Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award.”  Cohen is correct to point out that Farrakhan is an anti-Semite, conspiracy theorist, paranoid and just all around weirdo.  And as those who read my posts about the Chauncey Bailey slaying this past summer, you all know that I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the Nation of Islam; but Cohen is making a mountain out of a molehill.

He even admits that Obama is clearly not an anti-Semite, or even a Farrakhan apologist; in fact, he disagrees with his minister on the Farrakhan issue.  So, why can’t we just leave it at that?  Obama is under no obligation to publicly criticize his church or its pastor, or to really talk about Farrakhan.  At this point, Farrakhan is just a minor pest whose only real purpose is use as a bludgeon by neoliberal and conservative Jews to try to imply that blacks and liberals are soft on antisemitism. And sure, it may worry Cohen that Obama’s pastor is supportive of Farrakhan, but have we any inclination that Obama is an anti-semite, that Reverend Wright will advise Obama on policy matters or really any reason to be worried that Wright’s support for Farrakhan will affect Obama’s campaign or administration?

Cohen makes his column worse by trying to imply that Obama’s non-repudiation of Farrakhan makes him suspect as a presidential candidate, and that this is yet another example of him waffling on an important issue.  His second example: “The New York Times recently reported on Obama’s penchant while serving in the Illinois legislature for merely voting “present” when faced with some tough issues.”   Cohen must be referring to Obama’s “present” votes on abortion bills in the Illinois State Senate — a total non-issue. The head of Illinois Planned Parenthood approved the “present” voting strategy.  Maybe when we hear more about Reverend “bomb Iran because God wants to to” Hagee, we can talk about Farrakhan.  But until then, it’s just not very relevant.

Irrational Belief and Irrational Practice

While I, like many secular-minded people, think it’s kinda weird that Catholics gather every Sunday to eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, I really don’t care that much because I see little evidence that this practice necessarily results in any irrational or damaging behavior.  And so when Bill Maher criticizes the Eucharist as being obviously insane, but then has totally wacko beliefs on alternative medicine and health, I’m not particularly impressed with his secularism or his rationalism.

It’s frustrating when people like PZ Meyers commend Maher for going after religion, and yet ignore his more irrational and deleterious beliefs.  Now, one can say that religion is institutionalized irrationality and encourages other irrational behavior, but let us compare the Eucharist to thinking vaccines are ineffectual and poisonous(which Maher does).  As far as evidence that the bread and wine consumed in Church is the blood and body of Christ, I’d say that it’s scant, but if you don’t assume a purely materialistic worldview, then it’s at least plausible.  And considering the phenomena of Catholic faith-as-experience, which to us rationalists seems ridiculous, the “reality” of the Eucharist is actually a perfectly  reasonable belief for Catholics.  And even if you don’t buy that, there really isn’t any downside to the Eucharist itself. Hell, red wine is good for your heart anyway, so it comes out as a wash.

Vaccine paranoia on the other hand is incredibly dangerous to both individuals and other people.   Because when people don’t get vaccines, they free-ride off everyone else who does.  While this is OK for a while, when a critical mass of people think like Bill Maher, diseases like smallpox and polio will come back. What’s even worse is that for contagious diseases, it’s not the dumbasses who are the victims, but also other people who catch the disease that’s been able to mutate inside the host-body of vaccinophobes.

But if you want to look at things more broadly, does anyone really think that Maher has actually studied virology, molecular biology, epidemiology or even has reviewed the relevant medical research to come up with his anti-medicine/vaccine conclusion?  Is his attachment to those beliefs really anymore irrational than belief in the Eucharist?  John Cain explains what’s wrong with Maher best:

Maher rightly views the evidence-free assertions of Christian supernaturalism as bullshit, yet amazingly can’t bring this skepticism to bear on non-Christian supernaturalism. This is because his views arise from mindless contrarianism, not critical examination of the evidence. He’s an atheist because everyone else is Christian, not because the evidence of a deity is lacking. Similarly, he’s an altie because most people use scientific medicine, not because he’s actually looked into the scientific validity of what he’s saying.

So when Bill Maher is offering me his traditional remedy for measles, pass the wine and the wafer.

Gerson Evolves

Yes, Minipundit already said this, but otherwise educated people shouldn’t be able to get away with Michael Gerson’s BS “ignorance.”

I have little knowledge of, or interest in, the science behind this debate. Can gradual evolutionary changes account for the complex structures of cells and the eye? Why is the fossil record so weak when it comes to major mutations? I have no idea. There are unsolved mysteries in Darwinian evolution. There is also no credible scientific alternative.

Gerson clearly has very little interest in the science of the debate, because he simply could have typed “evolution of the eye” into Wikipedia’s search bar, and come up with this. Of course, he follows up with some typical concerns about Naturalism, which aren’t as scientifically incoherent as his short list of problems with Darwin that aren’t actually problems. Gerson comes in to inform us that a naturalistic world view implies that we can just kill people because…well, because they’re meat:

And so, in a purely material universe, human beings are reduced to what one writer calls “temporarily animated meat” — even our consciousness a byproduct of our chemistry. This view, by necessity, has disturbing moral and political implications. Those who believe that men are meat are more likely to treat men as meat. “If I had to burn a man alive,” concludes Lewis, “I think I should find this doctrine comfortable.”

This makes some superficial sense, but how many murders have been prevented by “I would kill you, but I believe that your consciousness isn’t an emergent property of your mental processes”? If Gerson can’t offer up a convincing argument why consciousness isn’t an emergent property of overlapping mental processes, than he shouldn’t be making a vague appeal to consequences to justify his sketchy belief. Gerson concludes thusly:

“Let us assume that creation is evolution,” argues Leon Kass, “and proceeds solely by natural processes. What is responsible for this natural process? . . . Can a dumb process, ruled by strict necessity and chance mutation, having no rhyme or reason, ultimately answer sufficiently for life, for man, for the whole? . . . And when we finally allow ourselves to come face-to-face with the mystery that there is anything at all rather than nothing, can we evolutionists confidently reject the first claim of the Bible — ‘In [the] beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’?”

I shouldn’t be criticizing these attempts at reconciling Genesis and Darwin so harshly, frankly we evolution-believers need all the help we can get. But I’m compelled to point that Kass’ questioning here is silly. First, the mechanisms of evolution, if you believe that’s how life emerged, which Kass does, clearly did create “life” and “man.” Secondly, unless you’re trying to ask a “what came before the big bang” type of question, the evolutionary account of life provides a fairly solid logical reason to reject a “creating” deity. When life evolves, it subsequently gets more intelligent and complex. Since God is the most complex and intelligent being/life-form in the universe, it doesn’t make sense that, in an evolutionary world view, that God would come before the most basic lifeforms. If one is looking for God in evolution, Robert Wright’s ideas about increasing cooperation or de Chardin’s Omega Point and noosphere.

Well, In This Case, the Hijab Is Oppressive

Tracy Clark Flory’s video, defending her recent post taking a “maybe it’s oppressive, maybe it isn’t” line on the alleged hijab-inspired honor killing in Canada is fairly weak.  Her argument is, on some level, almost obviously true.  The hijab can be oppressive, and it could not be oppressive, and she would rather not make a judgment in this particular case because she’s a “shades of gray” type of girl.

But let’s take it as a given that this 16 year old was killed because she refused to wear a hijab, and more generally, refused to follow her families cultural strictures on proper dress and behavior for a young woman.  Then, we could perfectly confident in making the argument that the hijab is oppressive, as is the whole host of cultural mores that deem women to be the property of their family, and that their sexuality is dangerous.  I don’t really see why we need to recognize any shades of gray or why we need to hold out the possibility that the hijab could be empowering in some instances.  In instances where not wearing it leads to murder at the hands of one’s own father, it’s pretty unambiguous that, indeed, clothing mandates with the purpose of expressing ownership over women’s sexuality are, in fact, horribly oppressive.

Reaping, Sowing and the Devil

Mike Huckabee not-so-innocently asked, in the course of an interview with Zev Chafets, whether Mormonism holds that the Devil is the brother of Christ.  While I think that the more eccentric Mormon beliefs are immaterial as far as Romney’s qualifications go, he opened himself up to this line of questioning when he said that specific theological questions aren’t germane to political debate, but then declared that “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind.”  David Frum anticipated this line of questioning when he asked:

It is legitimate to ask a candidate, “Is Jesus the son of God?”

But it is illegitimate to ask a candidate, “Is Jesus the brother of Lucifer?”

It is hard for me to see a principled difference between these two questions

While I’m not sure how important a part of Mormon doctrine this brother of Lucifer business is, but it, contra Sarah Posner, what the Church believes.  And if Romney wants to say that a person of faith should be president and exclude the non-believing from his vision of America, he should expect to be held accountable for the weird bits of Mormon theology.  I certainly don’t feel bad for him.

A Methodist Is a Baptist Who Can Read

Thomas Schaller, in an otherwise good piece about the fall of moderate Republicans, makes a rather striking sociological error:

Danforth is no RINO — the derogatory acronym the right applies to insufficiently conservative “Republicans in Name Only.” He’s an ordained Episcopal minister.

While it should have been obvious in 2004 that every political journalist worth his or her salt should have taken a crash course in the sociology/theology of Protestant and Evangelical America, it’s clear that Schaller is reaching for straws to prove that Danforth wasn’t a fairly moderate Republican. What’s even weirder about this reference is that Schaller starts out the piece by looking at the “mainline Protestant” George HW Bush, who is the archetypal moderate Republican who has since been savaged by movement conservatives. HW isn’t just a “mainline Protestant,” but an Episocopalian, which in many contexts (especially in articles like this) is bandied about as a semi-covert code signifying that said Episcopalian is more moderate in temperament and theology than your average Evangelical.

Should Romney Talk About Pre-1978 Mormonism?

I’m more inclined than most to shrug off aspects of Romney’s Mormonism, specifically the are absurd but trivial bits — such as Native Americans being the lost tribe of Israel and the whole variety of historical events Joseph Smith made up — but there is a much stronger case for Romney addressing one of the more disturbing aspects of Mormonism, it’s policy towards African-Americans before 1978. Hitch, despite his overheated recitation of the sillier aspects of the Mormon faith, sums up their policy and subsequent “revelation”

It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership of the mad cult invented by the convicted fraud Joseph Smith. It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978…Until 1978, no black American was permitted to hold even the lowly position of deacon in the Mormon Church, and nor were any (not that there were many applicants) admitted to the sacred rites of the temple. The Mormon elders then had a “revelation” and changed the rules, thus more or less belatedly coming into compliance with the dominant civil rights statutes

In so much as you’re going to interrogate a candidate about his religion, this seems to be one of the more relevant and appropriate lines of questioning. But it really isn’t. What Hitchens fails to understand is that in many cases, one does not “choose” to become a Mormon (or a Catholic, Jew etc). Romney was born a Mormon, and as a pious individual, would have had to find a justification not to be a Mormon. It’s pretty rare for religiously-oriented people to abandon the faith of their childhood, so looking for an explicit act of Romney endorsing this policy is a fool’s errand. People ignore the more unseemly aspects of their faith all the time, and for your average Mormon pre-1978, the policy on blacks wasn’t that large a part of their lives or their faith-experience. Moreover, the Mormon community really has come around on issues of race. Of its roughly 13 million members, 4.5 million are from Latin America and 500,000 are black.

Unless there’s any reason to believe that Mitt Romney has any religiously based animus towards blacks — if he were to start spouting off about the murder of Abel, pre-existence and Ham — it would be pointless to attempt to tie the LDS Church’s pre-1978 policy on race to Romney or pretend that it’s consequential.

Things I Find Strange - Guy Fawkes Edition

One of the oddest cultural moments was when teens all over the country — who would probably all describe themselves as atheistic, nonconformist, freethinking etc — started posting gibberish about how awesome Guy Fawkes was.  Facebook status messages, AIM away messages and all sorts of public space in which teenagers communicate their feelings were polluted by inane tributes of a figure they barely understood.

“Remember, remember the fifth of November” I saw written everywhere.  Of course, I can blame V for Vendetta, which while arguing against religious fascism, decided to glorify Guy f***ing Fawkes. For those who don’t know, Guy Fawkes, was a Catholic extremist and wannabe terrorist who, in 1605, thought it would be swell to blow up the Houses of Parliament on its opening day - killing King James I and a good portion of the Protestant aristocracy.  He was arrested, however, and the bombing never happened.

And yet, V for Vendetta tried to paint Fawkes as some kind of brave freedom fighter, when he instead he was a forerunner of trash like Yigal Amir or Muhammad Atta. In England, on the other hand, they’ve always had it right in regards to commerating this scoundrel: massive bonfires and tons of fireworks.

Quickening Canard

Minipundit points to a Gary Wills Op-Ed where he makes the (good) argument that Jesus didn’t have much to say about abortion or homosexuals and the (bad) argument that because Thomas Aquinas didn’t really know anything about human development, he was relatively open to abortion:

Lacking scriptural guidance, St. Thomas Aquinas worked from Aristotle’s view of the different kinds of animation — the nutritive (vegetable) soul, the sensing (animal) soul and the intellectual soul. Some people used Aristotle to say that humans therefore have three souls. Others said that the intellectual soul is created by human semen.
Aquinas denied both positions. He said that a material cause (semen) cannot cause a spiritual product. The intellectual soul (personhood) is directly created by God “at the end of human generation.” This intellectual soul supplants what had preceded it (nutritive and sensory animation). So Aquinas denied that personhood arose at fertilization by the semen. God directly infuses the soul at the completion of human formation.

This is all well and good for pro-choicers to be able to say “hah! Thomas Aquinas is on our side.” But it’s also pretty intellectually dishonest. Aquinas argument is one made in ignorance of modern medical science, he did not know that a genetically unique individual (not a person, if you ask me) is created at conception. Aquinas was essentially grasping at straws to create a rubric for understanding a process of which he was totally ignorant. What Wills is doing is the functional equivalent of citing Aristotle’s metaphysics, which are rooted in his false physics. If Aquinas were to know medical science now, I’m pretty sure he would take the standard pro-life line of genetically unique individual at conception = person. Peter Singer, in Rethinking Life and Death, has the best explanation of why the Aquinian position on abortion is rather nonsensical:

It is true that the condemnation of abortion form the time of conception as mortal sin is a relatively new doctrine for the church. But the reason for the church’s change in view on the stage of pregnancy at which abortion becomes the killing of a human was surely…a sound one. Once modern biology had shown the actual nature of early human development, the church had little choice but to abandon its support for the unscientific Aristotelian embryology of Thomas Aquinas…After quickening was rejected as the point from which human life was sacrosanct, to embrace any other point in the development of the fetus would have given rise to awkward questions about where to draw the line…Thus the prohibition on abortion at any stage of pregnancy became a necessary part of the church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life.

There are many better arguments for the pro-choice position than the gimmick of trying to convince the world that the most important Catholic theologian in history is one of us.

Jeremiah vs Rudy

I have that feeling that among most liberal bloggers, I’m a tad more conciliatory and open towards orthodox (little o) believers than most. But holding that aside, David Klinghoffer’s National Review piece on Rudy Giuliani reinforces how odd looking at policy decisions through a biblical lens is:

He taught that purifying the culture was the real priority, of which the defense against Babylon was merely a secondary expression. Writes Podhoretz: “It is idolatry, and nothing else, that to [Jeremiah] is the cause of the catastrophe looming ahead.”

The prophet admonished in God’s name: “And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.” Why did the Lord propose to do this?
Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein; but have walked after their imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them. (9:11-14)
If you are not a believer, it should still be possible to appreciate the accumulated wisdom of three thousand years as found in the pages of Scripture; men who faced outside enemies far more dangerous than Islamic terror, concluded that the real peril came from within.

I don’t think I’m being insensitive to believers when I say that the prophet Jeremiah may not be the best guide for contemporary foreign policy. For one thing, he had a direct line from God, which is something none of our current leaders can claim. And besides, Klinghoffer is just making D’Souza’s argument in Old Testament garb. While I agree that the threat of “Islamic terror” is terribly inflated by the likes of Giuliani, I don’t think we need to fight the “real peril” at home and all become mini Jeremiahs. It would help if Klinghoffer could be more specific. What’s a greater “threat” to America - terrorism or secularism? Suitcase nukes or abortion? Is it worth pointing out that Israel, in Jeremiah’s time, had a special mandate to follow God — the entire chosen people thing — a mandate that America does not share.

Not Quite Perfect

So Ann Coulter ran off her mouth and said…well, she said something that every serious Christian believes:

COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.

DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean –

COULTER: We have the fast-track program.

DEUTSCH: Why don’t I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can’t believe that.

COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.

DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, “Let’s wipe Israel” –

COULTER: I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention.

DEUTSCH: “Let’s wipe Israel off the earth.” I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners —

As a full time member of the tribe of the imperfect, allow me to say how unoffended I am. Last time I checked, being a believing Christian meant believing that you’re similiar to the Jews, except better. And somehow, with millions of people believing this, we get along OK. Even among believing Christians who all think they’re perfected Jews, you have Catholics who think Protestantism is a lame wannabe Christianity, not part of the “one true church.” Protestants think Catholics are a bunch of Magic Cracker eating idol worshipers. They all think Mormons are positively wacky. Oh yeah, us Jews think all of you silly Christians are worshiping a false messiah.

What makes this especially strange is Andrew Sullivan’s renunciation of these remarks. Andrew says that he is a believing Catholic, does he not believe that Jesus superseded the Old Testament and the Torah? It’s perfectly understandable - and preferable - for believing Christians to not talk about their views regarding the Old Testament and Judaism in the public sphere, but they shouldn’t then denounce people who hold those views that they (probably, I don’t know in Sullivan’s case, but he says that he’s a believing Catholic…) too hold. How else to interpret Luke 22:20 when Jesus makes a new Covenant, or multiple other times in the New Testament where Jesus claims to supersede the Torah. What about Protestants? Does Sullivan think Protestants are members of the one true Church? I don’t like asking these questions, but Sullivan is kinda begging for it with this shtick of being a believing Christian on one side, but then denouncing those who profess to have the views that most Christians have.

In the history of the Jewish Diaspora, whenever blond haired Aryans like Coulter said something like this, it was usually followed by a harsh bout of repression. Shouldn’t we Jews be celebrating that someone can say this, and there are no negative consequences for American Jewry? Of course, the perpetual outrage machines like the National Jewish Democratic Council are just horrified, but if they couldn’t get outraged about trivialities, why would they exist?

As Yglesias says, one of the great things about liberal society is that it encourages people to bracket off these eschatological or metaphysical commitments when they enter the public sphere, so we can have political debates without devolving into arguments about who is going to hell faster. While this is certainly a good thing, it doesn’t mean we should freak out whenever some hack like Coulter gleefully breaks the taboo. I wouldn’t be the first to point out that liberalism has some issues accommodating those who insist on bringing their prior metaphysical commitments into the public sphere, and Slavoj Zizek isn’t either, but you should definitely read his Times Op-Ed concerning religion and the public sphere.

Playing Halo Alone?

The Times has a fascinating article covering the debate in the Evangelical community on whether it’s appropriate for churches to sponsor Halo nights and tournaments despite the game’s direct contravention of “thou shalt not kill.”  The larger point, however, is that conservative institutions like Evangelical churches are the ones having this debate.  As Ezra Klein has argued, “[Evangelical churches] offer community, guidance, advice, charity, social capital, entertainment, and even the occasional shot at transcendence. And in return, their member’s trust their politics.”

Liberals have very few equivalent institutions.  Even while there are a large number of more liberal religious institutions (reform jews, liberal/mainline protestants) it’s hard to build a cohesive community around watered down transcendent principles.  Put simple, evangelical teens come for the Halo, but they stay for the salvation.  Liberals, because of their disavowal of transcendence and pursuance of essentially rational, veil of ignorance defined politics and ideas, do not have a coherent core to build any of these social capital maximizing institutions around.  Jonathan Haidt’s identification of liberals as those who value maximizing reciprocity and minimizing harm in their moral calculus — and do not consider purity, in group identification or hierarchy — gets at the core at why liberals are having difficulty building or maintaining any institutions comparable to the megachurch.  You can’t get a bunch of 15 year olds to play Halo, or adults to form relationships with strangers through their church, around abstract ideals like reciprocity or harm minimization.

It wasn’t always like this — when labor was a larger force in American society, there was a consideration of in group identification that was roughly on par with minimizing harm and maintaining reciprocity as well as the corresponding provision of social services around which to build cohesive bonds and solidarity.  Chris Hayes, social democrat extraordinaire, has been searching for a revival of this spirit in a resurgent labor movement, but as Andy Stern and his service workers are the most important union in the country, and since service workers are a more transitory and diverse workforce than the industrial workers of generations past, the labor movement will not be the locus of liberal community.   In Europe and parts of America, communism, which provided a near-religious eschatology as well as a distinct in-group to identify with, was able to build similar institutions — too bad they all had the hots for Stalin.

This state of affairs is ultimately quite unfortunate, but does it bring up an interesting question.  Are we liberals fated to play Halo alone?

PS - Henry Farrel outlines the fascinating cohesive, small communities in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria that were maintained and encouraged by social democratic governance. Also Reihan Salam on Christian Democracy and “soulcraft” in post-war Germany.