Against the Stream

Religious Radicalism and Social Context

Ryan Cooper makes an interesting point today at The Washington Monthly:

The case for jihad as some kind of special radicalizing force is rooted in the fact of Islamist terrorism and analysis of the more violent parts of the Koran. I don’t buy this. From my nonbeliever point of view, the major religious traditions have very many potential interpretations, and which ones are dominant depend greatly on the social conditions of the age. Indeed, Razib Khan makes a persuasive case that the content of religious texts is essentially irrelevant: “The key insight of cognitive scientists is that for the vast majority of human beings religion is about psychological intuition and social identification, and not theology.”

That may be too strong. But it is surely the case that the social context of a particular religion is enormously influential over which doctrines are expressed in mainstream religious circles and which are forgotten. Who today bothers with Leviticus 19:19, which forbids planting two kinds of seed in the same plot?

The answer to that last question is, of course, some people. But it is hardly viewed as being a central religious teaching, even among Jews. There are other aspects of the tradition that are far more central to Jewish self-identification.

And this has always been the case with Christianity as well. The internal tensions among the texts of the Christian tradition have produced multiple interpretations that are often mutually incompatible. What creates a particular dominant tradition has far more to do with the social context in which the interpretation takes place than with any objective assessment of what the core elements of Christian identity are. When, in 1oo years, opposition to homosexuality seems as backward and antiquated as support of slavery seems today, it will not be because Christian discovered that they had always been objectively wrong on the question, but because they will be asking questions of Christian responsibility in a changed context.

And of course this pertains to Islam as well, as the quote above indicates. As a scholar of religion, this strikes me as so self-evident that I'm often surprised it needs stating, but we keep coming back around to the same questions again and again, buffetted by loudmouths on both the left and the right, and so periodically, it does need restatement.

The Gospel According to Doctor Who

This weekend I spoke at a symposium in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the BBC's Doctor Who. It was a great time, and it made me think about a few themes related to Doctor Who and religion that I've been thinking about for some time.

A few months ago I came across this short feature on the idea of Doctor Who itself as a religion:

 

Now, that's an interesting question, and the video explores it well, but it's not really the question that interests me. I'm more interested in the way that the narratives and characters on Doctor Who illuminate themes within the Christian theological tradition.

And, perhaps surprisingly, the linkages are often quite explicit, and nowhere more-so than in the climax to the three-part episode that ends Series Three -- "Utopia," "The Sound of Drums," and "Last of the Time-lords." NB. Spoilers for Doctor Who Series Three follow.

In this series of episodes The Master returns to Earth and, masquerading as the British Prime Minister, develops a plan to destroy the human race and colonize the earth with the Toclafane, a race that is revealed ultimately to be humanity's own future state of existence. Ultimately, the Doctor is captured and reduced by the Master to an ancient, wizened state. Martha escapes with a mission from the Doctor, and spends a year travelling the earth attempting to fulfill the mission.

At the climax of the episode, Martha is captured and brought to the Master, who is holding the Doctor in a cage. She then reveals that her time travelling the earth has been spent telling people about the Doctor, and urging them to concentrates their thoughts on him, so that at a single moment they will all be calling out his name at once, all around the world. Via a bit of technological hand waving (which is known, no doubt intentionally, as the "Archangel" network on the show), this combined thought allows the Doctor to renew himself and escape from captivity. In defeat, instead of destroying or humiliating the Master, the Doctor instead says "I forgive you."

The Master is ultimately killed, though not by the Doctor, who actually encourages him instead to join him on the TARDIS as a sort of prisoner/companion. Refusing to regenerate, the Master truly dies (well, sort of ), and is genuinely mourned by the Doctor.

It's hard to miss the rather overt Christian overtones in this episode. First and foremost is the idea of Martha as a sort of "evangelist" for the Doctor. Although the Master believes she's travelling the world seeking a weapon, she's actually spreading the message of the Doctor, of his care for humanity and the length's he's gone to save it. It is not hard at all to translate this to the message that Christian evangelists give as they spread the Gospel.

Then there is the fact that Martha's act is itself an act of self-sacrificial martyrdom. She travels the world, at great risk to herself, to spread the Doctor's Gospel. When she is finally recaptured, she is willing to die rather than renounce the Doctor.

And of course, then there is the content of her message, specifically the idea that, if they desire salvation, it is essential that humanity, for all intents and purposes, pray to the Doctor, and doing so actually does empower the Doctor to effect their salvation. Furthermore, this is an act that people undertake solely as an act of faith. There is no guarantee, and really no reason that people should focus their minds on the Doctor, but they do, and in doing so, they receive salvation.

And, finally and most powerfully, there is the Doctor's decision to meet the Master's evil, not with his own wrath and judgment, but rather with forgiveness. One could argue very persuasively that this is wholly due to the fact that they are the last two Time Lords. But it doesn't change the reality that the Doctor's first imperative regarding the Master is to offer forgiveness.

More could be said, and I'm hoping that I can expand these ideas into something of greater length in the future. It should be noted that Russell T. Davies is not himself religious, but in this episode in particular the religious overtones are so overt as to be (for me at least) wholly inescapable.

If You Behave As If There's No Such Thing As Society, In the End There Isn't

 

Russell Brand, not generally one of my favorite commentators, gives Margaret Thatcher a sort of eulogy:

The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn't sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she's all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and "follow the bear". What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate.

For my part, I've always thought Sinead O'Connor's "Black Boys on Mopeds" summarizes my feelings about the Thatcher era quite well.

Gun Control Studies

One of the perennial arguments that I've seen made by gun control opponants in my arguments about guns these past months is that gun control legislation won't, apparently a priori and by definition, work. Of course, there's actually a lot of data out there to the contrary, but how do you publicize it?

Well, that leads me to this post, and however many subsequent posts I can manage on this topic. Whenever possible, I will list one or more studies on the topic of firearms control that demonstrates, to a greater or lesser degree, the ways in which gun control is effective. I'll provide links to full texts whenever possible, but in a lot of cases I may only be able to provide links to abstracts. Either way, I invite readers to go and read the studies for themselves. Feel free to leave (civil!) responses in the comments.

First up then:

"The Effectiveness of Gun Control: Multivariate Statistical Analysis"

The purpose of this study is to statistically and empirically evaluate the effectiveness of the gun control laws that have been adopted by states and municipalities. States are divided into two groups: states with no restrictions as to gun use and states with restrictions (e.g., waiting periods, license, etc.). Multiple linear regression models are used to evaluate the relationship between the number of gun related deaths in 1990 and sets of determinants which include state laws and regulations governing the use of firearms. The study results indicate that gun control laws have a very mild effect on the number of gun related deaths while socioeconomic variables such as a state's poverty level, unemployment rate and alcohol consumption, have significant impact on firearm related deaths. These findings suggest that any reduction in resources spent on social programs tied to the Crime Bill may be counter-productive.

"The Effectiveness of Legislation Controling Gun Usage: A Holistic Measure of Gun Control Legislation"

Results from past research on the effectiveness of gun control legislation have been mixed. This study posits that one of the reasons for these conflicting results is the use of individual laws as the major variable. Instead, this study uses a holistic and comprehensive measure of state gun control laws, grouping states into extreme and lax gun control states. A multivariate linear regression analysis is used to investigate the relationship between a set of determinants, including the holistic gun control measure, and firearm deaths per 100,000 inhabitants of each state. The results show that comprehensive gun control legislation indeed lowers the number of gun-related deaths anywhere between one to almost six per 100,000 individuals in those states that have the most extreme gun-related legislation. Our study also reveals that socioeconomic and law enforcement factors play equally important roles in containing gun-related fatalities. These findings suggest that gun-related deaths have a variety of causes and that attempts to legislate a solution to this problem will need to be correspondingly complex and multifaceted.

Comment:

These are the first two peer-reviewed studies I was able to find on a quick search of the issue. I intend to continue digging and post what I find here. But what these studies indicate is that a) gun control legislation is effective, but it is clearly not a panacea. Other social factors enter into the equation and must be dealt with alongside reasonable gun-control legislation.

Far from supporting the contention that gun control laws are ineffective then, then evidence seems to suggest that they do exactly what they are intended to do: Reduce firearm injuries and deaths. But by themselves, they won't result in massive overall improvements. That leads me to conclude that legislation is necessary, but is only part of the larger puzzle of solving the problem of gun-related violence.

As I find peer-reviewed studies that pertain to the issue, I'll post them here, along with any studies that offer a dissenting point of view. Again, feel free to offer civil commentary, including links to peer reviewed studies that offer the other side of the argument.

Just What Is Up With Pussy Riot and Religion, Anyway?

Apart from the headlines, I haven't been following the whole Pussy Riot case in Russia particularly closely. I've know the broad outlines of the case, and I was aware that several of the members of the "punk feminist collective" had been tried and imprisoned for allegedly disrupting a church service to protest Vladimir Putin. But beyond that, most of the content of their protest had escaped me.

I was fascinated, then, to read Betsy Philips' post at ThinkProgress about a recent Vanderbilt University panel exploring the deep religious roots of Pussy Riot's protest, and its connection to the larger currents of Russian politics and history:

What Spektor explained was that the new church stands on a site of monumental rhetorical significance, a site that is always seen as meaningful by the people who have power at the time. So, it’s not just a church, not even just a cathedral, but a monument to who controls Russia. And the Church Patriarch has been incredibly supportive of Putin, seeing him as a man who is erasing the mistakes of history—in other words, erasing the erasure of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Pussy Riot, as Tim Beale later pointed out, is trying to disrupt this marriage of church and state, since the state uses religious leaders and religious symbolism to further the state’s agenda. Beale further went on to quote some from Pussy Riot about how they imagine religion as a “pool of creative wisdom” from which everyone is free to draw out what is meaningful and useful to them, whereas they see their opponents as using it as a political cudgel, which they think corrupts the Church.

The members of Pussy Riot drew from that pool of "creative wisdom" in formulating a prayer to the Virgin Mary, calling on her to side with them against the power of repression in contemporary Russia, particularly the repression of women:

Pussy Riot  in the You Tube translation says, “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist,” “Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!” and “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away.” But Critical Mass Choir’s website has a translation from Carol Rumens that maybe gets at the spirit of the song better than a literal translation (It does for me, anyway, but my Russian is terrible) — ” Join our protest, Holy Virgin, please” and then “Virgin Mary, Mother of God/ Holy feminist, we pray thee/ Virgin Mary, Mother of God/ Be a fucking feminist, set Mother Russia free.”

For Philips, this prayer evokes memories of Liz Phair and the Riot Grrrl era of '90s rock. But for me, it evokes nothing less than Mary's own Magnificat:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;

he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed;

the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.

He has mercy on those who fear him,

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm

and has scattered the proud in their conceit,

Casting down the mighty from their thrones

and lifting up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things

and sent the rich away empty.

He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,

to remember his promise of mercy,

The promise made to our ancestors,

to Abraham and his children for ever.

 

Marcus Mumford and "Spiritual But Not Religious"

 

Returning briefly to the "Spiritual But Not Religious" question, I notice that there's been some recent stir about Marcus Mumford's reluctance to own the label "Christian" in describing himself, despite a) coming from a strongly Christian background, b) clearly still believing in God and having some form of reverence for Jesus Christ and c) suffusing his music with strongly Christian themes, symbols and tropes.

His reticence seems clearly related to what I mentioned last week: The failure of Christianity to make itself attractive and credible in the contemporary context. As he says to Rolling Stone magazine, in answer to the question of whether he's a Christian: 

“I don’t really like that word. It comes with so much baggage. So, no, I wouldn’t call myself a Christian. I think the word just conjures up all these religious images that I don’t really like. I have my personal views about the person of Jesus and who he was. … I’ve kind of separated myself from the culture of Christianity.”

Clearly what's being said here is not that he's separated himself from Christ, but that he's separated himself from a particular kind of cultural expression of Christianity, presumably one that is rooted in the kind of evangelical baggage that I've mentioned, which often trades in  sexism, homophobia, and intolerant narrowness.

Refusal to be boxed into a definition of Christianity that is associated in the minds of many Rolling Stone readers with authoritarian ecclesial structures is understandable, and I give Mumford the credit he deserves for wanting to dissociate himself from that. At the same time, it's worth noting how he continues:

His spiritual journey is a “work in progress,” Mumford said, adding that he’s never doubted the existence of God and that his parents are unbothered by his ambivalence toward the Christian label.

There is something salutary in refusing to be rushed into a commitment to a particular way of expressing one's understanding of spiritual truth. To those who want to label him a Christian in order to dismiss him as well as those who want to label him so in order to claim him, Mumford refuses to accept the label.

Lillian Daniel, for whom I have exceptionally high regard, comments on this line of thought:

People will explain to me that without the Church, they are traveling light, without all that Christian baggage. But what exactly is this baggage? It’s people—who might actually be some of the best road companions there are.

Certainly, Marcus Mumford got one thing right—the Church is something you enter at your own risk.

Because you might actually bump into humanity there. You might hit up against something you disagree with. You might have to listen to music you don’t like. You might get asked to share your stuff. You might learn from a tradition far older than you, and realize how small you are standing before such a legacy. You might even be asked to worship something other than yourself.

As I've mentioned before, I get exactly what Lillian is talking about, and largely agree with her on the merits. At the same time, I think that this is a conversation taking place within the Christian fold. It's not that Mumford has genuinely placed himself outside of it. Rather, as I read it, he is unhappy with what the word "Christian" has come to mean, and so refuses the label in order to be free to embrace what the label implies.  He doesn't want to be a Christian because that makes it more difficult to embody Christ.

Cathleen Falsani says it very well:

I didn’t hear Mumford’s remarks as a wishy-washy equivocation about the precepts of Christianity or a capitalist concern about alienating non-Christian fans. Rather what I took away from his answer was a keen wariness about other Christians and our too-often brutal judgmentalism.

Growing up as a pastor’s kid, undoubtedly Mumford knows this all too well. And as someone who is newly accustomed to standing in the unforgiving glare of celebrity’s spotlight, he surely also understands our cultural obsession with putting people on pedestals and knocking them off with great glee and heaping doses of schadenfreude.

What I heard in his reticence to label himself a Christian was not a denial of faith, but instead something that falls between Dorothy Day’s famous “Don’t call me a saint — I don’t want to be dismissed so easily,” and Soren Kierkegaard’s, “Once you label me you negate me.”

I don't think one can listen to the lyrics of a Mumford & Sons song and not take very seriously Marcus Mumford's attempt to seriously interrogate what the elements of the faith he was raised in mean for him today. Doing that, for him, quite understandably means refusing to wear the uniform, but he still talks the talk through his music. As important as it is to understand the role that the Christian community plays in creating the possibility of following Christ in an authentic way, it is equally important to recognize how difficult the church can make that task as well. What's more, it is also crucial to recognize the authenticity of the honest search, after all, that's how this Grace thing works, too.

Miroslav Volf on the Cross and Resurrection

I am a great admirer of Volf's writing, and this reflection is both theologically powerful and deeply moving.

The Psychology of Moral Agency

Via Andrew Sullivan, a conversation between cognitive scientist Joshua Knobe and psychologist Kurt Grey, on the subject of how our perception of another's moral agency affects our interpretation of their moral action: In particular, the idea that we tend to judge moral agents more harshly than moral victims. In other words, if we know others to be capable of goodness, we are more likely to condemn them when the fail to be so.

 

Anti-War Hatred

Conor Friedersdorf draws our attention back to the days before the beginning of the Iraq war, when there was a massive, global anti-war movement that was essentially over-ridden and ignored by the administration in the rush toward war. Indeed, I can recall President Bush arguing that the protests were irrelevant because he couldn't "govern by opinion polls."

But what's often forgotten retrospectively is how viciously the anti-war movement was mocked and made the target of irrational hatred. I remember it vividly, but Conor performs a valuable service by collecting some of the classic expressions of anti-war hatred from the beginning of the war. Here are a few of the gems he recalls:

Glen Reynolds: "the 'anti-war' movement is objectively on [Saddm's] side, and not neutral ... When your movement is the key tool of a nasty dictator it should give you pause, shouldn't it?"

Andrew Sullivan (who also referred to the anti-war movement as "objectively pro-terrorist"): "Almost the whole academic class, the media elites, the college-educated urbanites, the entertainment industry and so on are now reflexively anti-war. Worse in fact: there is very little argument or debate going on in these sub-populations, simply an assumption that war against Saddam is wrong, and that all right-thinking people agree about this."

Jonah Goldberg: "what's so damning about the knee-jerk opposition of so many anti-war liberals -- it's based in animus, not logic. Almost every week I have to debate some opponent of the war on CNN or radio, and most of the time, I get the sense that their reasons for opposing Bush are echoed in McGrory's sentiments. They don't like war for vague, emotional reasons." As Conor notes: as though being emotionally averse to war was a character flaw.

Brenden O'Neill: "Most of the new antiwar groups express an entirely personal opposition to war, one based more on moral revulsion than effective political opposition ... Protesters voice a personal distaste for violent conflict, rather than organizing a collective stand against it. And when opposing war is about making pompous moral statements about me, myself, and I, you can count me out." Again, as Conor notes, the strange accusation that taking a moral stand against war is some kind of personal failing.

Conor goes on to note several more examples, and remarks that he could easily multiply examples exponentially. But the point is clear: It wasn't enough for those in favor of the war to believe that the anti-war movement was wrong. They went out of their way to vilify the movement as being pro-Saddam, pro-terrorist, pro-American capitulation, anti-Israel, spineless, effete, and cowardly.

And please bear in mind: After all was said and done, the backers of the war were proved to be totally wrong. The anti-war movement was shown to have been completely right, and yet ... as Chris Hayes noted the other night, the rewards have continued to flow for the past decade toward those who backed the war, and the opponents of the war are still treated like patchouli aroma-ed, hackeysacking, drum-circling hippies, despite having had the better arguments at the time, and despite having been vindicated by history.

Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Max Boot, and even the liberal Hawks like Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein who were all in favor of the war have either maintained their standing or gone on to more and more prominent platforms. And in many cases, I don't begrudge them that. But it remains worth asking: Is there any price to be paid for having been so totally wrong? And will an apology ever be forthcoming from many of those -- apart from Andrew Sullivan --  who were wrong at the time and engaged in this kind of vituperation? Doubtful. Being pro-war means never having to say you're sorry.

But for the rest of us, I hope that the lesson of the past decade has been that it is always better to begin from a place of deep skepticism about war in general, and about the necessity for any particular war. While it should be possible to overcome that skepticism in the rarest of circumstances, it should never be easy to do so. And while refusing to support war as a matter of principle in the vast majority of cases may mean that there are places and times where we could fight and perhaps should fight but don't, it is, I think, better than fighting in places and at times when would should not and must not, as was the case in Iraq.

Settlements and the Prospects of Peace

At Politial Animal, Samuel Knight makes a good argument a propos of Secretary of State John Kerry's renewed push for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Obama might be right that “there’s no point to negotiations if the expectation is that everything must be figured out in advance,” as the AP reported. But it’s hard for one party to negotiate when its counterpart refuses to stop — even temporarily — actively encroaching on its territory. Unless President Obama was able to privately convince Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a settlement freeze — recent criticism Obama offered in public has been very mild, that he doesn’t consider the settlements to be “constructive” — and was able to convey that to Abbas, it doesn’t seem likely that the talks will go anywhere. In other words, Kerry is wasting his time.

This is right, I think. And it needs to be said more frequently in the United States, particularly with regard to the situation on the West Bank. Gaza is it's own, mostly separate, issue. But in the West Bank the key problem with the peace process is the contining construction and expansion of the settlements. Knight goes on to quote an Amnesty International official:

The villagers say that the expanding Israeli settlement of Halamish has blocked their access to a nearby source of water, a spring. For holding weekly protests against this settlement, they have suffered greatly at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Israeli military law imposed in the occupied West Bank places sweeping and arbitrary restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly. This makes any unauthorized peaceful protest by Palestinians a criminal offence. Palestinians engaging in such protests face arrest and excessive force from the Israeli military on a regular basis.

Authorities keep wanting to treat the settlements as though they are extraneous to peace. They're not; they're essential. Until they are removed, no peace is possible.