A good analysis and collection of links from Matthew Yglesias.
What I find so astounding is that many of the very same people who argued that Iraq posed an imminent threat to our security and that we must invade immediately are now arguing with straight faces that Iran … poses an imminent threat to our security and we must invade immediately! Forgive me if I seem a bit skeptical.
This article argues that conservative evangelicals are unlikely to desert the GOP because of the hostility of the Democrats toward religious believers:
The Democratic party elites cheer when regulators force Catholic charities to fund things the church considers immoral. They vote to curtail the freedom of conscience of pro-life pharmacists. They filibuster judicial appointees who do not hold to the interpretation of Ted Kennedy, senator, of the constitution-as-rubber-stamp for liberal causes. Worse, they compare religious rightists to Muslim terrorists (“Christianists”) and warn that we have entered a new Dark Age. Garry Wills, the popular historian, called the 2004 election the end of the Enlightenment on American soil, and meant it.
The good folks who make up the religious right may not love the Republican party, but they know a threat when they see one. The modern Democratic party is hostile to their very existence. An embarrassment for the Deanified Democrats in the November mid-term elections would be a victory not for theocracy, but for enlightened self-interest.
I think this is right to a ceratin extent. I wrote quite a bit about the great liberal flip out in the aftermath of the 2004 election (see the November and December 2004 archives if you’re interested). And yet, while I certainly have my differences with the Democratic Party, I think there are good reasons to hope for Democrats to make gains this fall.
One problem is that so many people vote based on what the parties say they’re going to do or, even worse, what the voter thinks the parties would really like to do in their heart of hearts if they got the chance. What’s needed instead is a sense of what the parties will actually be able to do in office given the political constraints they face.
For me, a vote for Democrats this fall (and possibly in 2008) would be, more than anything else, a vote for a check on the policies of the Bush Administration. The last six years have shown us what this administration will choose to do when virtually unconstrained by Congress. “Preventitive” war, highly questionable detainee policies, domestic spying of dubious constitutional provenance, and a more statist and authoritarian policy generally have been the result. In 2006 we’re talking at most about the Democrats increasing their ability to act as some kind of check on the administration, not the ability to implement some alleged secular humanist dream platform.
Apparently, though, many conservative Christian supporters of the Bush Administration don’t share my evaluation of its policies, which is fair enough. But, if we’re going to appeal to “enlightened self-interest” maybe they should consider that, sooner or later, the Democrats are bound to regain power. And if they are as implacably hostile to faith as they’re made out to be, would you, as a conservative Christian, want them to be wielding the expansive powers that have been claimed by the Bush administration?
Slate has an interesting article about the faltering of Conservative Judaism. As neither ultra-conservative like the Orthodox, nor ultra-liberal like the Reform branch, Conservative Judaism has, according to this piece, had a hard time negotiating the tensions between tradition and modernity from a principled position:
Take the issue of the ordination of gay rabbis. It’s a no-brainer for Reform Jews, who allow it because they place precedence on personal choice above biblical mandates, and for the Orthodox, who bar it because they believe that the Torah strictly prohibits gay sex. But for Conservatives, it’s a crisis, because the movement lacks a clear theology to navigate between the poles of tradition and change, even as the gap between them becomes ever wider. As a result, the decision to admit openly gay rabbinical students to JTS [New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary] has been bitterly contested, tabled, avoided, and fought over for the last half-dozen or so years. [Outgoing chancellor Ismar] Schorsch has said in previous interviews that advocates for the ordination of gay rabbis are bending and manipulating Halakha rather than looking at it honestly. His despair over this issue surely motivated some of the ferocity of his speech.
But Conservative Judaism has never adequately explained how its rabbis or congregants should decide which aspects of modern times are worth adjusting the law to, and which aren’t. The decision in 1972 to ordain women rabbis at JTS wasn’t advocated by the institutions’ Talmudic scholars but by a committee of lay people. They made many strong moral and ethical arguments for ordaining women, but they couldn’t ground their stance coherently in Jewish law.
Still earlier, in 1961, the Conservative movement issued a ruling permitting driving on Shabbat—but only to synagogue. Orthodox Jews, by contrast, observe the prohibition against driving and build their neighborhoods around their synagogues and each other’s homes. There is something powerful about this decision: The foundation of the community is a countercultural value that requires some sacrifice in the name of a higher purpose. While it might be possible to read Jewish law to permit driving on Shabbat or ordaining a woman rabbi, both of those choices seem motivated by a reluctant acquiescence to the demands of the time rather than by a deep and reverent reading of the texts. Orthodox Jews also change the law—you won’t find any of them following the Torah’s injunction to forgive all loans every seven years, or to stone a rebellious child—but they do so in a way that has internal coherence.
Though there are obvious differences, this strikes me as the same kind of dilemma that Christians of what could broadly be called “the center” are facing. A more liberal revisionist brand of Christianity sees no problem throwing over much of the tradition if it seems to serve the cause of inclusion, justice, or compassion. Meanwhile, traditionalists reject innovations like women’s ordination and birth control (much less the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of noncelibate gay people) on the grounds of continuity with and fidelity to the tradition. Christians of the center, meanwhile, have difficulty providing a satisfying and principled account of why they accept some innovations and reject others (for instance, retaining traditional language for God, a high Christology, and doctrine of Scripture’s inspiration while affirming women’s ordination or other “revisionist” moral positions). They can end up looking unprincipled and lukewarm to both their liberal and traditionalist coreligionists.
The article concludes:
Liberal denominations of any faith tend to make a religion out of tolerance and humanistic values. But this misses some of the point of faith. There is a sweetness, intensity, and pleasure that comes from religious practice that isn’t wholly rational.
Earlier in this century, the common wisdom was that Orthodox Judaism would die out in America, outmoded and irrelevant. Instead, it’s the American Jewish center that’s eroding. Conservative Judaism, once the most popular Jewish denomination in the United States, has recently taken second place to the more clearheaded Reform movement. About 33 percent of American Jews affiliate with Conservative Judaism, down from 38 percent 10 years ago. And interestingly, as the Reform movement swells, to a lesser degree, so do the numbers of Orthodox. And as sociologist Samuel Heilman shows in his recent book, Sliding to the Right, the form of Orthodoxy that’s on the rise is the more extremist and isolationist sort—the congregations and movements that are deliberately at odds with American norms.
The project of looking squarely at the demands of our time and Jewish texts is both true to Jewish tradition and badly needed at this particular historical moment, and I wish it didn’t seem to be faltering. People of all faiths who are trying to hold the middle ground need to get up a little more “nerve,” as Schorsch put it—some oomph, confidence, joyfulness. Although I don’t think he said it in the right way or at the right time, I hope some of Schorsch’s zeal makes it way to staid suburban synagogues.
Andrew Bacevich has a slightly different version of his “Islamic Way of War” article in the newest American Conservative. This merits being highlighted:
What are the implications of this new Islamic Way of War? While substantial, they fall well short of being apocalyptic. As Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has correctly—if perhaps a trifle defensively—observed, “Our enemy knows they cannot defeat us in battle.” Neither the Muslim world nor certainly the Arab world poses what some like to refer to as “an existential threat” to the United States. Despite overheated claims that the so-called Islamic fascists pose a danger greater than Hitler ever did, the United States is not going to be overrun, even should the forces of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi insurgents, and Shi’ite militias along with Syria and Iran all combine into a unified anti-Crusader coalition. Although Israelis for historical reasons are inclined to believe otherwise, the proximate threat to Israel itself is only marginally greater. Although neither Israel nor the United States can guarantee its citizens “perfect security”—what nation can?—both enjoy ample capabilities for self-defense.
What the Islamic Way of War does mean to both Israel and to the United States is this: the Arabs now possess—and know that they possess—the capacity to deny us victory, especially in any altercation that occurs on their own turf and among their own people. To put it another way, neither Israel nor the United States today possesses anything like the military muscle needed to impose its will on the various governments, nation-states, factions, and political movements that comprise our list of enemies. For politicians in Jerusalem or Washington to persist in pretending otherwise is the sheerest folly.
It’s time for Americans to recognize that the enterprise that some neoconservatives refer to as World War IV is unwinnable in a strictly military sense. Indeed, it’s past time to re-examine the post-Cold War assumption that military power provides the preferred antidote to any and all complaints that we have with the world beyond our borders.
In the Middle East and more broadly in our relations with the Islamic world, we face difficult and dangerous problems, more than a few of them problems to which we ourselves have contributed. Those problems will become more daunting still, for us and for Israel, should a nation like Iran succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons. But as events in Iraq and now in southern Lebanon make clear, reliance on the sword alone will not provide a solution to those problems. We must be strong and we must be vigilant. But we also need to be smart, and getting smart means ending our infatuation with war and rediscovering the possibilities of politics.
The mid-20th century anti-war journalist Garret Garrett once referred to American foreign policy as a “complex of fear and vaunting.” That is, alternately cowering in fear of a supposedly omnipotent foe and blustering about our own power to kick his ass. I think we’ve seen a fair amount of this in the last five years. You see this in the occassional call for desperate and extreme measures – also known as war crimes – as the only way to forestall the imminent victory of the “Islamofascists.” Only if the enemy is on the verge of wiping us out would such measures seem at all reasonable to most people. So the rhetoric describing the threat posed is ratcheted up to “existential.” A more sober evaluation of the threat, on the other hand, would demand a far differnt set of responses.
I can’t recite the Nicene Creed from memory. At our Lutheran church in Philly we usually recited the Apostle’s Creed and I pretty much have that down (praying the Rosary helps with this too). But the liturgy at the church we’ve been attending in Boston uses the Nicene Creed and I always have to refer to the Prayer Book to get it right.
This week’s project: memorize the Nicene Creed!
We subscribe to the Sunday Boston Globe since it’s the only day we really have time to read the paper. I used to read the Philadelphia Inquirer every morning when we lived there, but a longer commute here in Boston means that’s not really an option.
Anyway, there were several items in yesterday’s paper I found noteworthy:
A story about ex-Red Guardsmen in China trying to come to terms with things they did during the Cultural Revolution.
A piece on government support for – and suppression of – artistic expression in Venezuela. From the sounds of this article Chavez may be interested in a cultural revolution of his own. As a general rule I distrust any leader who feels the need to put giant pictures of his mug all over the country.
Andrew Bacevich argues that the conventional military superiority the West has relied on to impress its will on the Middle East is being outflanked by the “Islamist way of war.” He offers a five-point alternative to the current strategy.
And finally, an interview with British philosopher A.C. Grayling, who’s written recently on the morality of the Allied bombing campaigns during World War II.
Up until this point, Keith Ward has been arguing that the findings of modern science can point to, even if not demonstrably prove, the existince of an infinite mind that underlies and upholds the physical world in existence. But this is a far cry from what most of us mean when we talk about God. At least, the heart of many religious believers’ understanding of God has more to do with God’s relation to and purposes for people than with the kind of metaphysical and cosmological speculations Ward has been examining thus far.
In part three Ward seeks to bridge the gap somewhat between what he calls, echoing Pascal, the “God of the scientists” and the “God of religion.” He discusses what a scientifically-informed theistic worldview might say about such topics as God’s action in the universe, interactions between finite minds and God, and whether miracles are possible. This last one has never seemed to me a very vexing question. I’ve always thought it obvious that whatever we say about the “laws of nature,” surely the creator of the universe could override them if he wished. Or that the laws of nature hold other things being equal. “Miracles as not totally inexplicable; they are just not eplicable by known scientific laws. They are not irreproducible, but since only God can reproduce them, they are beyond the powers of science to reproduce” (p. 224). Ward also has a helpful discussion of David Hume’s argument against the rationality of ever believing the report of a miraculous event (see pp. 228-230).
In chapter 16 Ward surveys some recent speculations from physicists on a kind of immortal life that might be possible in this physical universe. These range from a subjective eternity experienced by finite minds as the universe grinds to a slow halt, to the existence of vast information-processing “clouds” of photons and gravitons. None of these speculations, Ward admits, come close to reflecting what many religious believers mean by eternal life. But, he says, if sciece has enabled us to imagine multiple universes existing parallel to one another, it may not be such a stretch to imagine that God could, if he wished, translate the consciousnesses and personalities of humans into to some other universe at death. Or perhaps “resurrect” us by creating new beings who share our memories, personality traits, etc. I have my doubts about whether such duplication would actually be the resurrection of the very same people, though.
In any event, if the Newtonian cosmology demolished the old “three storey” universe with heaven above us and hell below, more recent cosmology at least allows us to imagine how a “new heaven and a new earth” might be brought into existence. But, as Ward points out, endless personal existence does not exhaust, nor is it even the most important feature, of what many faiths mean by “eteral life.” Rather, it has always meant living in the presence of God himself, or the “beatific vision” as Catholic theology has traditionally referred to it.
Ward offers the speculation that, instead of trying to find immortality within this cosmos (or the “nearest convenient parallel dimension” to quote Dr. Ray Stantz) we might see the purpose of the cosmos to be giving rise to finite minds who are able to reflect and ultimately share in the divine life. This would entail transcending the physical cosmos and being translated to an entirely different kind of existence.
It seems quite possible that, just as some scientists think that a future intelligence could replicate human persons to live again within the far future cosmos, so the eternal intelligence of God could bring persons to live again in other realms beyond the physical confines of this cosmos. We might expect that a perfect eternal intelligence would be as concerned for every sentient being throughout the history of the cosmos as for any life-form that exists at its end. It may then seem fitting that all such sentient beings that have a sense of their own continuous existence can share in the mind of God, and find there an appropriate sort of fulfillment for what remained incomplete, and a transformation of experience of all that caused pain and suffering, in their cosmic lives. (p. 257)
I suspect some readers may have grown impatient with Ward at this point. Why resort to such far-flung speculations rather than drawing on religious revelaton? It’s common in these postmodern days to see each tradition as having its own internal logic and rationale and to cast aspersions on those who would seek to employ a deracinated reason to search the mysteries of God.
First of all, Ward does have positive things to say about revelation. He acknowledges that science and philosophy can only take us so far, and that if we are to enter into some kind of personal relationship with God, or if God is to reveal his purposes to us, it will be through the medium of some kind of revelation or religious tradition. He also notes that our decision to commit ourselves to a religious tradition will not be definitively determined by publicly observable evidence, but will also draw on personal experience, value judgments, and other more “subjective” factors. That is to say, different people with different life experiences may be justified in adhereing to different religious traditions, even if they both can’t be right.
Secondly, even though I don’t agree with everything Ward says, I think the task of examining our faith in the light of science is an important one. It’s ture that theology shouldn’t hitch its wagon to the latest scientific finding, which may be overturned tomorrow. But it’s also important to show how the tenets of faith are consistent with what modern science, at least in broad outlines, has told us about the universe. Augustine made a similar point in his Literal Commentary on Genesis:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men…. Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. (Source)
Theologians often seem hesitant to engage directly with science, partly, no doubt, because of the daunting task of familiarizing theselves with the latest findings in biology, cosmology, and physics and trying to speak intelligently about it. But it seems to me an indispensible task for the church, certainly as important as grappling with the latest trendy philosopher or social theorist. In that spirit, I think Ward has made a valuable contribution.
(I should also note that Ward has interesting things to say on a variety of subjects that I haven’t covered, including the mind-body problem, God’s relation to time, and whether human culture can be given a purely naturalistic explanation. I’d recommend the book to anyone looking for an accessible introduction to these issues.)
There’s been no shortage of people willing and eager to argue that any move by the Democrats toward an anti-war position will be an electoral kiss of death in 2006 and beyond. The victory of Ned Lamont in the Connecticut primary over incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman has been hysterically denounced by friend and foe alike as evidence that the Dems are being taken over by fanatically anti-war hippies. Inevitably McGovern’s 1972 campaign is dredged up as indisputable proof of the folly of taking an anti-war stance.
But historian Lawrence S. Wittner argues here that running as a “peace candidate” has in fact frequently been successful in American politics. Unfortunately, perhaps, some of the candidates he mentions were in fact crypto-“war candidates” (Wilson, Johnson), but the point stands. Naturally historical analogies are of limited usefulness, but I know I would be more likely to vote for someone who was running on some kind of anti-war platform. Then again I may well be an outlier.
I’m very happy to find out that friend of this blog Marvin Lindsay, formerly of Ivy Bush fame, has returned to the world of blogging!
Marvin also recently published a really good op-ed in his local paper on Christians in politics.
Chip Frontz tipped me off to the news that the Alabama chapter of the Christian Coalition is disassociating itself from the national body on account of the latter’s “leftward drift.” The Alabama chapter is the third to do so.
[Alabama chapter president John] Giles said the relationship between the state affiliate and national organization began to deteriorate in 2003 when Combs appeared in Alabama, without Giles’ knowledge, to endorse Gov. Bob Riley’s $1.2 billion tax plan after the Christian Coalition of Alabama had come out against it.
Giles said the relationship worsened as the national organization drifted from its original tenets to address environmental and economic issues, like raising the minimum wage.
I remember when Gov. Riley’s tax plan was being touted as an application of biblical principles to tax policy. It was designed in part by Susan Pace Hamill, a Law professor at the University of Alabama who published a law review article, “An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics” [PDF]. While the national Christian Coalition supported the tax plan, the Alabama chapter strongly opposed it, and their efforts are credited with helping to send it down to defeat.
The national Christian Coalition seems to be following the recent trend of conservative evangelicals straying from the traditional conservative party line. Global warming, poverty and other issues traditionally associated with liberalism have been taken up by groups like the National Association of Evangelicals. It’ll be interesting to see how this affects the electoral prospects of the GOP in the next two elections.
A Thinking Reed 