A Thinking Reed

Month: September 2015

  • Papal hot takes are missing the point

    Pope Francis’s visit to the Western Hemisphere has occasioned a whole new round of papal #takes. Conservatives are conservasplaining that Francis, with all this talk of economic inequality and environmental doom-and-gloom, doesn’t understand the gospel, or hates science and modernity. Liberals are warning that Francis isn’t really progressive, but a theocrat in progressive clothing. Rinse, repeat.

    This cross-ideological freak out seems to me to miss the genuine source of Francis’s appeal. Rev. Amy Butler of New York City’s historic Riverside Church puts her finger on it here, I think, when she writes that many of the “radical” things Francis is doing–reaching out to the poor and marginalized, emphasizing our responsibility to care for creation, trying to live modestly and with humility–are things all Christians are supposed to be doing.

    We’re so used to religious leaders who look nothing like this-slick, rich megachurch pastors or angry, apocalyptic cranks–that when someone shows up who’s living what is basically just Christianity 101, it’s startling and refreshing.

    That doesn’t mean everything Francis does or says is (ahem) infallible. I for one disagree with the Catholic Church on the usual matters where liberal Protestants tend to disagree with it. And it does seem that the pope may understate some of the virtues of market economics and modern political arrangements. But I can still appreciate the genuinely Christ-like spirit animating his ministry. If more of our leaders (and lay people!) exhibited a similar spirit, Christianity–and the world–might look very different.

  • Not quite feeling the #Bern

    Many of my friends, both online and in “real life,” are enthusiastically supporting Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ run for the presidency. His straight-talking critique of economic inequality and his unapologetically left-wing proposals for addressing it have undeniably tapped into frustrations with the political and economic status quo. He presents a sharp contrast with the cautious centrism of Hillary Clinton, and his candidacy provides, perhaps, a shot at redemption for liberals who have been disappointed with President Obama.

    I can see, and to some extent I feel, the appeal of the Bern. His critique of economic inequality is important, and I’d support many of his proposed solutions. And when politics is swimming in big money, his grass-roots approach to fundraising is inspiring.

    So why aren’t I, as my title suggests, feeling the Bern?

    First, I’m less left-wing than Sanders. That is, I’m not as pessimistic about our political and economic system, and I’m a bit more skeptical about the kind of sweeping programs he’s proposing. I’m still firmly on the left, or at least the center-left, but probably closer to the mainstream of the Democratic Party. (Though I’m persuadable here, and often find value in the critique of those on the further-left.)

    Second, I’m not convinced Sanders has the temperament or experience to be president. He often comes across as dogmatic and impatient, and he evinces little interest in the things that actually form the core of the president’s job: running the executive branch and conducting foreign policy. Sanders’ passion is clearly domestic, specifically economic, policy, but in our system of government the president has a very limited ability to enact the kinds of sweeping changes he’s calling for.

    Third, and probably most important to my mind, Sanders can’t win. Or at least I’m highly skeptical that he could. Much has been made of his recent surge in the polls: depending on which one you look at, he’s either neck-and-neck with or actually beating Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and Iowa. But his inroads in other states, ones that are more representative of the electorate, remain stubbornly limited. He seems to have trouble appealing beyond his core base of white, relatively affluent progressives, and these folks don’t constitute a majority of Democratic primary voters, not to mention the electorate as a whole.

    Hard-core Sandersnistas will insist that he can win, and that his surge in Iowa and New Hampshire can be replicated in other states. And I’ve had friends tell me that, if presented in an unbiased way to the American public, Sanders’ proposals will handily win a majority in the general election.

    Color me skeptical. Barack Obama, despite being a pragmatic, center-left liberal, has been routinely pilloried as a “socialist” for his entire presidency. What do people think will happen if someone who actually identifies as a democratic socialist wins the nomination? The red-baiting will be something to behold.

    Essentially, I regard a Sanders nomination as a high-risk/low-reward proposition. The risk is losing the election—probably not in a 1972- or 1984-style blow-out, but decisively—and ushering a Republican into the White House, along with Republican control of Congress. (And have you seen the Republican Party lately?) And the potential upside isn’t as big as some people seem to think. Even if President Sanders is sworn into office in January 2017, he will still in all likelihood be dealing with a Congress, or at least a House, that’s overwhelmingly Republican. This would drastically limit his ability to enact his ambitious proposals, if not put the kibosh on them entirely. The constraints on a President Sanders would be essentially the same (barring some major upsets in congressional races) as they would on a President Clinton, or President Biden, or whoever. And so I’m not convinced the results would be that different.

    This doesn’t mean that I think the Sanders candidacy has been a bad idea. I think a robust left wing helps keep liberalism honest and prevents it from drifting too far to the right. Sanders has expanded the range of acceptable policy options and is keeping the issue of economic fairness front-and-center in the campaign. I think this leftward pressure will be good for the Democratic Party in the long run, even if I’m not on board with Sanders as president.

    This is my current thinking, at least. I could probably be persuaded otherwise. Heck, by the time the Maryland primary rolls around next April my vote may not matter that much anyway. And if Sanders does actually win the nomination, I’ll vote for him and hope for the best.

  • God loves Homo naledi too

    Reading this fascinating account of the recent discovery of Homo naledi–“a baffling new branch to the [human] family tree”–I couldn’t help thinking that Christianity hasn’t really come to terms with the history of human (and proto-human) existence as it’s increasingly being revealed to us.

    When evolution first began to be debated in Christian circles it was possible to accept evolutionary theory but still draw a bright line between humans and the rest of creation. Sure we may have developed from “lower” forms of life, but we possessed unique capacities that set us apart. We had a “soul”–perhaps divinely infused at conception or some other point during our prenatal development; we had “free will”; we could reason about abstract concepts; we could respond to God’s will and commune with the divine, etc. Other animals, particularly higher primates, might appear to possess some of these abilities in rudimentary form, but it wasn’t much of  stretch to still see humans as standing on one side of a great divide, with the rest of animal creation on the other.

    However, as paleontologists have started to fill in the blanks in the evolutionary record, a murkier–and stranger–picture has emerged. Various kinds of proto-humans existed–most of them for much longer than Homo sapiens has so far. Some of them–Neanderthals and now possibly H. naledi–coexisted (and interbred) with us. Some of them seem to have possessed at least some of the capacities we have traditionally identified as uniquely human. For example, the discovery of the remains of over a dozen H. naledi in a deep cavern in South Africa may indicate a ritualized burial.

    The upshot is that modern humans are increasingly shown to be deeply woven into the fabric of nature–more so than most traditional theology has admitted. And in geological time (never mind cosmic time) the duration of our existence and prominence on Earth is less than a blink. Nonetheless, it’s still hard for us not to see ourselves as the pinnacle of life and the center of history.

    But if, as Christians are supposed to affirm, God loves and cares for all of creation, what role do proto- or other-humans play in God’s economy? Are we so sure that God’s most important dealings with human-like creatures occurred during the handful of millennia covered by the Bible? (As a thought experiment, one can extend this in the other direction: our far-distant descendants may differ radically from us in any number of ways and may, for all we know, be spread out through the galaxy, interbreeding with other species to create previously undreamt of forms of life. Are we sure nothing of equal religious significance will occur during that time and under such radically different circumstances?)

    In principle, adjusting to the idea that we aren’t at the center of human (or quasi-human) history isn’t that different from absorbing the notion that the Earth isn’t at the center (spatially or temporally) of the cosmos, or that other creatures have value independent of us. But I don’t know that Christianity (or maybe any of the world’s religions) has really incorporated the implications of this in its theology, not to mention its piety, liturgy, and ethics. Our worldview–at least the one that’s presupposed by much of the church’s teaching and practice–still seems to put all the big events in the past, and it assumes that things will continue in essentially the same manner till the end of time. But given how briefly humanity as we know it has existed, what reason is there to think it represents the “normal” state of affairs?

    I certainly don’t know what changes in our thinking and practice (if any) are called for. But it may be that the radical contingency of human existence as we know it has implications we’ve barely begun to consider.