Against the Stream

"Religion and Politics": For Polite Company

You know the old saw, about how you never talk about religion or politics in polite company. Since that's my field, if I listened to that advice, I'd be rendered mute at any social function the moment anyone asked what I do.

Fortunately, there are others who want to be able to talk about these topics as well, even "in polite company," and among them is John Danforth, former Missouri Senator and Episcopal Priest. The Danforth Center at Washington University was founded in 2010 and sponsored a number of events on the intersection of religion and politics:

Now the center is unveiling its most visible and far-reaching endeavor, with the release of its new online journal, "Religion & Politics." Officials at the center are calling "Religion & Politics" a journal, in the tradition of academic publications, but it's ambitions are more akin to magazines with a mix of narrative journalism, feature news reporting and informed commentary — Harper's, the New Yorker or the Atlantic.

Scholarly research and classroom teaching make up one prong of the Danforth Center's mission, said its director, Marie Griffith, who is also the editor of "Religion & Politics." The other is to engage the public, and the confluence of academia and journalism is a key feature of the journal. Through its content, the center will be introduced to the wider world beyond Washington University's campus.

"We're very much writing to a broad, educated audience, as diverse an audience as we can reach," said Griffith. "So we wanted high quality writing, not a bunch of academics talking amongst ourselves."

The journal's motto — "Fit for polite company" — fits Danforth's original motivation for founding the center: a belief, laid out in his 2006 book, "Faith and Politics: How the 'Moral Values' Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together," that religion had become a political wedge.

This is a project that sounds like it has a lot of potential. I'm looking forward to seeing what develops.

Ryan Runs from Rand on Religion

Paul Ryan has, on more than one occasion, praised the work of atheist libertarian whack-job Ayn Rand. Apparently, he's realized that might play so well at Georgetown:

"I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them," Ryan says. "They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman," a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. "But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist."

"I reject her philosophy," Ryan says firmly. "It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas," who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. "Don’t give me Ayn Rand," he says.

As Sarah Posner points out, Ryan's shift may have to do with the argument that he and some of his conservative Catholic kindred are attempting to make that liberal economic policies are contrary to Catholic social teaching and that their pro-rich, pro-ginormous corporations, pro-unfettered and uncontrolled capitalist policies are more authentically Catholic.

At the heart of their argument is a debate on the meaning of the Catholic term "subsidiarity," which means, as Dan Maguire explains, "that nothing should be done by a higher authority that can be done by active participation at lower levels." In other words, Catholic teaching has a preference for policies that originate and are controlled as close to the local level as possible. Conservative Catholics like Ryan believe that means that Catholic social teaching is "anti-statist" and thus opposed to the "statist" policies of the Obama administration. As Maguire notes, this is garbage and demonstrates a deep and abiding ignorance of Catholic thought.

Yet here is Ryan, throwing Rand under the bus and pledging alligience to Thomas Aquinas. Of course, he still buys Rand's economics, he just thinks Aquinas would too. Unfortunately for Ryan, Thomas Aquinas's position is very clear: Private property is necessary for the creation and maintainance of a good society, but only if it is used for the sake of the common good:

Two things are competent to man in respect of exterior things. One is the power to procure and dispense them, and in this regard it is lawful for man to possess property. Moreover this is necessary to human life for three reasons. First because every man is more careful to procure what is for himself alone than that which is common to many or to all: since each one would shirk the labor and leave to another that which concerns the community, as happens where there is a great number of servants. Secondly, because human affairs are conducted in more orderly fashion if each man is charged with taking care of some particular thing himself, whereas there would be confusion if everyone had to look after any one thing indeterminately. Thirdly, because a more peaceful state is ensured to man if each one is contented with his own. Hence it is to be observed that quarrels arise more frequently where there is no division of the things possessed.

The second thing that is competent to man with regard to external things is their use. On this respect man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate them to others in their need.

Notice that last clause. It's important. We posses things, not as our own but as common, and are prepared to give them to others in their need. I invite you to consider whether this bears any resemblance at all to Republican attitudes on matters of economics and taxation. I don't believe it does.

Needless to say, the theological faculty at Georgetown were unimpressed:

In terms of understanding the Catholic Church’s doctrine on social issues, “we’d give that speech an F,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center. “Catholics believe that problems should be dealt with at the lowest levels. But if families could take care of themselves, and the local government could, we wouldn’t have the crisis that we’re facing right now.”

How Reinhold Niebuhr Dropped the Ball on Racism

In James Cone's new book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree he offers a sustained critique of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguing that Niebuhr, despite the principled radicalism of much of the rest of his writing, was notably mild when it came to the ugliness of racism in the United States. As John Blake writes:

Today, Niebuhr’s importance is acknowledged by both liberal and conservative Christian leaders. President Obama once called him one of his favorite philosophers. Niebuhr, the author of classics such as “The Irony of American History,” died in 1971 after a lifetime of political activism.

Cone, however, said neither Niebuhr nor any other famous white pastor at the time spoke out against the most brutal manifestation of white racism in the 20th century America: lynching.

Between 1880 and 1940, Cone says, an estimated 5,000 black men and women were lynched. Their murders were often treated as festive affairs. Women and children cut off the ears of lynching victims as souvenirs. People mailed postcards of lynchings. One postcard of a charred lynching victim read, “This is the barbeque we had last night.”

But Niebuhr said nothing about lynching, little about segregation, and once turned down King’s request to sign a petition calling on the president to protect black children integrating Southern schools, Cone said.

For Cone, this is a crucial omission because, he argues, "Niebuhr’s decision not to speak out against lynching encouraged other white theologians and ministers to follow suit" due to Niebuhr's prominance and status.

While I'm somewhat dubious of that last claim (I suspect many white pastors would have come up with plenty of reasons not to speak out irrespective of what Niebuhr did), the central point is no doubt right. Niebuhr was willing to go out on a limb for the things that mattered most to him -- In favor of economic justice, for defending England against Germany, against the Soviet Union -- but he stayed very close to the center when it came to race.

He certainly spoke out on behalf of racial equality, sometimes forcefully, but he took no risks for it, Cone argues. And any honest attempt to grapple with Niebuhr's legacy needs to take account of this reality. Even admirers of Niebuhr need to recognize where he fell short, and ask how he could have or should have done things differently.

Theology of Freedom

Karl Barth on the freedom of God and human freedom:

 

God and the Problem of Evil

As I'm getting caught up on some of my procrastination this Sunday, I came across this very interesting debate between William Lane Craig and A. C. Greyling. It is well worth checking out for getting the overall tenor of the debate:

Punk Professors

Matt Yglesias makes an intriguing point about the intersection of punk rock and academia:

I think the punk scene and the humanistic branches of the academy have some important things in common. They both involve a kind of deep rejection of the logic of market exchange.

I sort of see Matt's point. Academia does serve as a refuge for a great many people who aren't really eager to submit to the demands of ordinary life in capitalist society. Academics don't keep the same schedules that people with "real jobs" typically do. We often produce work that is of little to no inherent commercial value, and we often speak meaningfully and forcefully about the need to "keep our integrity, man!"

On the other hand, as some of Matt's commentors point out, Academia, like punk rock, depends for its rejection of a capitalist ethos on the tolerance and largesse of precisely the capitalist system that, either implicitly or explicitly, we are engaged in the process of rejecting.

On the other, other hand, the liklihood that I'll have a chance to compare myself to Joe Strummer again any time in the foreseeable future is exceedingly unlikely (except in the sense of "Joe Strummer was a really good guitarist, as opposed to Scott Paeth, who isn't"), so I'll take my opportunities as they come!

New Article: The Need for An Augustinian Left

My article, "The Need for an Augustinian Left" was just published in the online academic journal, Politics and Culture. Check it out!

John Rawls' Religion

 

While grappling with the relationship between liberalism and religion in my dissertation, I found myself returning again and again to the John Rawls, not only becauase he was a formational figure in my own thought, but because, in Political Liberalism he elaborated what to me seemed to be a very clear set of limits on what religion was permitted to advocate (on religious grounds) in the public sphere.

I found this troubling, not because I didn't agree with the basic conception of creating an "overlapping consensus" within the public square, but because I was not convinced that such a consensus required us to abandon the partiuclarities of the grounds on which we defended them in order to engage in public debate. In other words, it matters to me that I am a liberal because I am a Christian, and that forms part of the substance of my position on any topic of public importance.

I once shared this with Max Stackhouse, my dissertation advisor, who told me that, on the basis of his personal experiences with Rawls, that Rawls was in fact a believer, but his expereinces of conservative Christianity turned him off of the idea that it could form a public worldview for a liberal society.

In light of that, I was interested to come across this article in the Times Literary Supplement (via Andrew Sullivan):

Those who have studied Rawls’s work, and even more, those who knew him personally, are aware of a deeply religious temperament that informed his life and writings, whatever may have been his beliefs. He says, for example, that political philosophy aims at a defence of reasonable faith, in particular reasonable faith in the possibility of a just constitutional democracy; he says that the recognition of this possibility shapes our attitude “toward the world as a whole”; he suggests that if a reasonably just society is not possible, one might appropriately wonder whether “it is worthwhile for human beings to live on earth”; and he concludes A Theory of Justice with powerfully moving remarks about how the original position enables us to see the social world and our place in it sub specie aeternitatis. Religion and religious conviction are also important as themes within Rawls’s political philosophy. For example, his case for the first principle of justice – that of equal basic liberties – aims to “generalize the principle of religious toleration”. More broadly, his theory of justice is in part a response to the problem of how political legitimacy can be achieved despite religious conflict, and how, among citizens holding distinct religious views, political justification can proceed without reference to religious conviction.

These concerns lie at the heart of Rawls’s later account of political liberalism. Rawls’s own attitudes towards religion and their development over time are thus of extraordinary interest, both personally and for the understanding of his thought. The undergraduate thesis and the later reflections are relevant to such understanding in two different ways. First, they display the profound engagement with and knowledge of religion that form the background of Rawls’s later views on the importance of separating religion and politics. Unlike many liberals, Rawls was not the product of a secular culture. Though his Episcopalian upbringing was, as he says, only conventionally religious, everything changed during his last two years at Princeton. He developed the religious convictions so vividly expressed in the thesis, which conveys a strong sense of the reality of sin, faith, and the divine presence, and which has as its first “fundamental presupposition” that “there is a being whom Christians call God and who has revealed Himself in Christ Jesus”. Rawls’s emphasis throughout his mature work on the importance in the lives of the faithful of religious convictions – he describes them as “non-negotiable” and as “binding absolutely” – and the need for a theory of justice to take them seriously drew on his personal experience of religious faith.

The problem, as I see it, is that Rawls' theory of justice takes the binding character of these religious beliefs seriously in a way that simultaneously excludes them -- qua beliefs -- from a meaningful role in public discourse. The "thin" conception of public good that he advocates needs, somehow to make way, not merely for the "thick" moralities of religion, but for a realm of "thicker" conceptions of the good, that is, thicker than the minimalist Rawlsian conception, but not the full-blown impositional worldview of absolutist religious faith.

My position is that religious belief can be deeply held without being absolutist, and without being non-negotiable with regard to conceptions of the public good. This would, however, seem to cut against both those brands of religious conservatism that consider any deviation from their conception of the good to be a moral travesty, and Rawls' conception, which excludes them entirely.

Another take on "Islamo-Fascism"

Matt Yglesias offers another analysis of "Islamo-Fascism" (which, like the griffon and the unicorn, doesn't exist per se, but is cobbled together from the parts of other beasts):

I briefly considered responding to Christopher Hitchens' defense of "Islamofascism" (the term not the doctrine) via a roundabout discussion of Orwell fetishism, but suffice it to say that I identify with the pragmatist tradition and the thing to ask about a term like this is what does "Islamofascism" do.

And it's pretty clear what it does, namely provide a spurious patina of unity and sameness to diverse phenomena involving Muslims Behaving Badly so that al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Assad, Saddam, Iraqi insurgents, Somali Islamists, plus sundry oppressive folk practices common in portions of the Islamic world like female genital mutilation in parts of Africa, "honor killings" in parts of South Asia, etc. The question to ask ourselves is what, if anything, is accomplished by devising and deploying a term that unites all those phenomena. If you want to use emotional outrage at 9/11 to leverage political support for an invasion of Iraq, then the answer is obviously "yes." Similarly, if you want to leverage outrage at 9/11 into political support for a bombing campaign in Iran then the answer is "yes."

But I don't want to do either of those things, and, indeed, I think the people who do like to do those things are having an immensely detrimental impact on our ability to understand events in the contemporary world and pull the United States out of the foreign policy tailspin we've been in recently. Which is a long way of saying, I'm not buying.

Leaving aside for a moment that I'm pretty sure you can't answer "yes" to "what is accomplished by devising and deploying a term that unites all those phenomena," I'm pretty sure I get Matt's point, and agree with it. This is what happens when you couple the off-the-cuff style of blogging with the desire to offer a serious analysis of a very un-serious term.

"Islamo-Fascism" "Awareness" "Week"

Well, it's that time of year again. And as usual it crept up on me. That's right! Get out the decorations! It's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"!

Whuh?

Yup. From the fevered mind of David Horowitz, comes another howler. A nation-wide, week-long (or so) celebration of "Islamo-Fascism Awareness." Of course, when the right-wing in this country becomes "aware" of anything, it's always a cause for celebration, provided of course that what they are aware of is an actual, you know, thing.

And of course, even my beloved adversaries at the DePaul Conservative Alliance* are in on the act, though they are renaming it "Terrorism Awarness Week" (yet interestingly, no reflection on nationalist terrorism in the IRA  vein). Sponsoring several events this week around campus. If I didn't have enough reasons to be glad I'm on sabbatical, I can now add the sense of freedom I have to not attend any of this.

However, in recognition of this auspicious occasion, I thought I'd link to a passage from Juan Cole's blog (Juan of course, knows something about Islam, unlike David Horowitz, who doesn't):

There can be Muslim fascists, just as there can be Christian fascists (and were, in Spain, Italy and Germany, and parts of Central and South America; the Spanish fascists and the Argentinian ones, e.g., were adopted by the United States government as close allies.)

But there cannot be "Islamic" fascists, because the Islamic religion enshrines values that are incompatible with fascism. 

Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state. Fascism exalts youth and a master race above the old and the "inferior" races. Muslim fundamentalists would never speak this way. Fascism glorifies "war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness." Muslim fundamentalists view holy war as a ritual with precise conditions and laws governing its conduct. It is not considered an end in itself.

I know Andrew Sullivan and others have made careers out of touting the dangers of "Islamo-Fascism," and in Sullivan's case it's no doubt an attempt to associate himself with his hero George Orwell. No doubt also, it's an attempt to equate the current "War on Terror," a war that's badly directed, poorly conceived, and intellectually and morally incoherent, with the war against fascism, in which the enemy was clear, the cause was just and the goal was evident.** Alas, life provides  few such easy moral and political targets, and just because we'd like Osama bin Laden to be Hitler doesn't make him so. It was more accurate to compare Iraq to Nazi Germany, but then, prior to the invasion, Iraq's politics could not be said to be "Islamo-" anything, even though it was largely run by Muslims.

*When I say "beloved adversaries," I'm not being ironic. My experiences with the DCA have been uniformly positive, and my experience of them has been, to an individual, that of sincere, highly intelligent, motivated, and woefully misguided young women and men. One reason I enjoy interacting with them is that it's much more fun to have arguments with people who don't agree with you than with people who do, for what I imagine are obvious reasons.

** However, despite the current passion that conservatives have for fighting fascism, let us not forget that the founding publication of modern conservatism, The National Review, referred to Spain's Fransisco Franco as a "National Hero" or that Republican adminstrations from Nixon through Bush the Elder gave aid and comfort to actual fascist governments in Chile, Peru, Guatamala, and El Salvador, as well as supporting neo-Fascist movements such as the Contras in Nicaragua. So, please forgive me if the current "anti-fascist" brand of conservatism strikes me as somewhat insincere.