God and State

63 thoughts on “God and State”

1. I’ve never been convinced that there’s any degree of sincerity to Bush’s embrace of the Christian right. If nothing else, it would be very hard to get through four years of Yale — even as an indifferent student — without understanding that creationism is a load of bunkum. People “get religion” all the time, of course, but it’s harder to unlearn the history of science. I don’t confuse Bush with the theocrats; it wouldn’t surprise me a whit if he has no religious feelings at all. What he has is something far worse than religious fanaticism: a cynical willingness to suck up to those who are in fact true believers for the sake of his poltical ends. The theocratic threat is real though, partly because of the Republican party’s marriage of convenience with the religious right, and partly because there are a lot of very popular preachers and politicians who are openly contemptuous of the idea of separation of church and state.

2. What Chris said, with the added clarification for my POV: it doesn’t matter that Bush himself isn’t genuinely theocratic, any more than it mattered whether he was genuinely neoconservative in the Dan Darling sense. He’s willing to make common cause with the theocons, to give them a big seat at the table in exchange for their electoral support. The question of or not he’s on-board with their agenda is meaningless when the end result is the same.

3. Good post, Edward.
   I think this is a good response to the Ten Commandments-style cases, too. The God that the Founders worshipped was “nature’s God”, i.e. a vague deism founded in natural, not revealed theology.
   As soon as we switch from such fuzzy deism to the Ten Commandments, we are exactly establishing the revelation of one revealed religion to the exclusion of others.
   So, I agree: there’s a big difference between God and religion, and Phillips is doing the devil’s work by confusing them.

4. I agree that referring to the evangelicals and fundamentalists as our Taliban or jihadists is an exaggeration. For one thing, the evangelicals aren’t a totally homogeneous group. There are many political perspectives within the general religious catagory called “evangelical”. Also, in terms of values and policies derived from values, the evangelicals overlap considerably with liberal Democrats. The biggest issue difference is on abortion.
   The dangerous religious organizations are the Christian Dominion groups and the Reconstructionists because they do not support small “d” democracy and want to install a one-party government which is literally theocratic. These two groups can be more fairly compared to the Taliban, not for what they have done so far, but for the implications of their rhetoric. Their talk of global war to the end between Christianity and Islam, their promotion of hatred toward gay people, their policy of misleading people about their real intentions, and their belief that they are empowered by God to do whatever it takes to bring about their interpetation of God’s will all made them very harmful and destructive to our democracy.
   Catsy’s right. It doesn’t matter if Bush believes their crap or if he is just using them. What matters is that they are –successfully–using the Republican party.

5. On one hand you say the “Christian right” is fighting for “their version of ‘the Truth'”. A couple paragraphs later, you note that there is considerable difference between “Christian” religions.
   So which truth is the one they are fighting for, if they can’t agree on the fundamental truth of which “God” they worship?
   That’s the flaw behind the entire “The Theocrats are Coming” hysteria. These folks talk about the Christian/Evangelical right as if it is a monolithic movement that can act and move in perfect concert instead of what it really is: an group full of other groups whose members share some agreement but differ on a whole raft of others. When it comes down to brass tacks, these groups are in competition with each other in the spiritual realm and that ensures they’ll never find enough agreement to really be the colossus we’re told they form.

6. When it comes down to brass tacks, these groups are in competition with each other in the spiritual realm and that ensures they’ll never find enough agreement to really be the colossus we’re told they form.
   I disagree. These groups agree on enough common ground to be able to do far more damage to this country than I (or many other people) find acceptable.

7. Edward, it’s wrong to say that serious evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics both condemn each other to hell. It’s true of some evangelical Christians, the ones well over to the fundamentalist side, but not of all and these days it might be a minority that would assume Catholics are hell-bound unless they convert to evangelical Christianity. Some would say that some Catholics are saved and some aren’t.
   The same is true of conservative Catholics–many years ago I had a close friend who was part of Opus Dei and I know what they believed (and didn’t like a lot of it), but it was crystal clear that I wasn’t destined for hell because I was a Protestant. Now if I’d been raised a Catholic and switched, I had the impression I might be in a bit more danger (or at least be condemned to a longer stretch in Purgatory). I think the Catholic Church moved away from the doctrine that there is no salvation outside its doors quite some time ago, though I don’t know for sure when.
   I think I agree with the gist of your post–I’m just reacting to what I think is an inaccurate stereotype.

8. When it comes down to brass tacks, these groups are in competition with each other in the spiritual realm and that ensures they’ll never find enough agreement to really be the colossus we’re told they form.
   I agree with this, but I don’t think it unravels my argument.
   When I say “their Truth” isn’t universal, I mean with regards to the big-ticket items (abortion, gay rights, and to some extent creationism) being used to win elections now. These are the areas in which the Evangelicals and right-wing Catholics find enough common ground to work as a team. If they are successful in those areas, however, and it’s not at all clear to me they should be, so I resist that, they will, as you note, begin to turn on each other when they next try to legislate divorce or the division of faith-based initiative funds or whatever, but that will be too late for pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-reality factions.
   Having been raised Pentecostal, I know that what many fundamentalists really think about Catholics. They are artifical allies in this war.

9. Or, as the late evangelical/fundamentalist Francis Schaeffer usefully put it, they’re co-belligerents rather than allies. His history of philosophy was ludicrous and much of his exposition awful, but I continue to find that a handy concept for thinking about the people you share an enemy or challenge with but who aren’t your friends.

10. Presidents Bush, Clinton and Carter could all equally be described as Evangelical Christians. In general, I think it is a good thing for people, especially children, to attend church regularly even if you are a deist/atheist. From my experience and that of many other kids that I attended church with, the regular attendance has an interesting side effect in that it sort of immunizes you against some of the wilder ideas that newly converted people have. And when choosing a church, try to assess the support system that it provides its members; this is at least as important as the words in the sermons or homilies. Religion is about what you do, not what you say.
    So if you are counting Baptists and Methodists as evangelicals, I would not look at the numbers and fret that these are all wild-eyed crazy people.

11. In general, I think it is a good thing for people, especially children, to attend church regularly even if you are a deist/atheist. From my experience and that of many other kids that I attended church with, the regular attendance has an interesting side effect in that it sort of immunizes you against some of the wilder ideas that newly converted people have.
    Totally agree with this. I wouldn’t trade my education in the church I grew up in for anything, both as historical/cultural grounding AND as immunization against those who would exploit or simply misunderstand it. Knowing what Christ taught (because I studied it indepth for many years), it’s easy to see the opportunists for what they are.

12. Edward, it’s wrong to say that serious evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics both condemn each other to hell.
    Donald,
    There are degrees, surely, but I can only speak of the branch of fundmantal Chrisitianity I was raised in: there’s no doubt Pentecostals believe Catholics are hell-bound. And I believe a high-profile Vatican official was recently quoted as saying the same in reverse (can’t find the quote now).
    I’m just reacting to what I think is an inaccurate stereotype.
    I’d be interested to know who among the influential Christian right feel what.

13. Wildly off-topic: I think I can claim some vindication in re a recent religio-political argument with Edward_ about whether Sharon’s announced planned construction between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim was an empty temporary political promise.

14. rilkefan…that is a bit OT (and it’s late and my brain is near mush), but it looks like this deserves an open thread, where, if you will, you’ll explain in more detail how this supports your argument. Give me a few monments.

15. One of the arguments for access to an abortion years ago was that rich people could always find a way to get one while poor people may end up dead in any alley somewhere.
    The Bush/Religious power dichotomy is that Bush may be personally comfortable around gay folks and his wife may have a bawdy sense of humor but they run in different social circles than the religious radicals who are completely opposed.
    Unfortunately the courting of the religious radicals was consumated in the 2004 election and the republican party is now the cuckold.
    In relative terms, to go from the freedoms imagined by our founding fathers and expressed in our constitution to the circumstances imagined and sought by the religious radicals in this country may be just as far as Afghanistan travelled from pre-Taliban rule to Taliban rule.

16. Edward, I know I should have found the thread in question and posted there, but my lunch break is about to end and my code has to work with another guy’s tomorrow or we’re going to lose $180k/day if some other guys get their act together – and I/P-conflict threads tend to go south lickety-split – so an open thread about this might not be the answer. I’d recommend a thread about what the hell is happening to the Yankees instead…

17. Oops, too late. Will try to comment there later.

18. too late
    I’ll delete it if you like

19. Here’s an excerpt from the Dartmouth Review article about a speach given by an Afghani refuge:
    “What was Afghanistan like before the Taliban came to power? ‘It was like America, only different.’ The government was active, television and radio provided entertainment to the masses, and sports, music, and dance were popular as well. People were educated and worked as both professionals and unskilled laborers. ‘They would travel and take vacations.’ Contrary to many historic reports, Razmovar described pre-Taliban Afghanistan as a happy, secular nation, a partaker in some sort of global culture, and a state that was well on its way to becoming industrialized.”

20. Please dismiss the speech typo abov
    “Two key questions were asked about the Taliban: ‘Who are they?’ and ‘Why do they hate Americans?’ In trying to provide answers, Razmovar outlined what they are not. ‘The Taliban are not Muslims. They have no religion. They use religion. The Taliban is not a government. They cannot run Afghanistan, and they are not recognized by other countries.’ She asserted that their dislike of the West is not rooted in faith, as they were more than willing to massacre countless members of their own creed while subjugating Afghanistan. Instead, Razmovar implied that the Taliban and other fundamentalist Islamic groups mask an underlying political agenda with talk of God’s imperative.”

21. This Real Live Preacher writes interesting articles that helps to explain what a church-based, rather than TV preacher based, understanding of religion is. I also like his advice on how to find a church.

22. http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2002/06/09/speakers_in_review_afghan_bashes_taliban.php
    Those above quotes were from June 2002 by the way.

23. I also like his advice on how to find a church.
    That is awesome!

24. pre-Taliban Afghanistan to Taliban ruled Afghanistan = big changes in a short period of time.
    America in 1999 to America as defined by Karl Rove’s 51% strategy = ?

25. But even if they got everything they wanted, carsick, do you really believe America’s Christian right would create a country as dark and twisted as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan? A world where women could not walk the streets without a family male escort? A world where all men were ordered to grow beards? Where ancient works of art were destroyed?
    It doesn’t seem comparable to me. And don’t get me wrong, a Christian right dominated US agenda scares the bejesus out of me (I’ll certainly become an endangered species), but it’s not even close to as bad as what the Taliban had done.

26. I think the Catholic Church moved away from the doctrine that there is no salvation outside its doors quite some time ago, though I don’t know for sure when.
    Vatican II, no? Check out this later spin by Ratzinger, Dominus Iesus (like they hadn’t used that title before?). Widely seen as a backslide from V2. This is the money quote re: evangelicals:
    On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church.

27. It’s not comparable in the cultural examples you are focusing on. We, as a primarily British founded nation/state, never considered beards as an example of our devoutness. Don’t get caught up in the ‘cultural’ differences.
    My point was more utilizing simile. The similarity in the degrees of change and the forces implementing or hoping to implement that change.
    For instance, I would not have assumed a few scant years ago that a gay man in America would say, “I’ll certainly become an endangered species” and be serious when discussing our country’s potential future.

28. For instance, I would not have assumed a few scant years ago that a gay man in America would say, “I’ll certainly become an endangered species” and be serious when discussing our country’s potential future.
    But why not? I can recall when killing a gay man could be explained away as “gay panic” with a relative slap on the wrist as punishment. Things have never been better for gay Americans. I recognize that. I just meant that if the extremists had their way, I’d be in ex-gay rehab.

29. That’s my point. Ex-Gay rehab would be a dramatic change in America (especially if it were state-ordered rehab). For God’s sake, we have a show on the tv called ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ and we also have a state legislator calling for the banning of all artwork including books and films produced by gay people. Which effort has closer ties to the current administration? I’d venture the second. The administration utilized the religious radicals for power and now the religious radicals are trying to return the favor. Who’s strong enough to fight it? I don’t believe the administration is. Hence, America’s equivalent of the Taliban gains more power.

30. By the way, Ashcroft ordered artwork covered up that had been at Justice for what? eighty years or so. The initiative to destroy artwork has to start somewhere.

31. Anderson,
    What does that quote mean? This is a serious question. It sounds something like,
    “The Methodist Church (for example) is really not a church, but some sort of silly organization. On the other hand, Methodists, while less wonderful than Catholics, are basically fine.”
    Can that make sense? Sorry to be ignorant, but intra-Christianity disputes have always pretty much befuddled me.

32. Edward writes: “A world where women could not walk the streets without a family male escort? A world where all men were ordered to grow beards? Where ancient works of art were destroyed?”
    Rewrite those from specific to general. Restrictions on female behavior and freedoms. Dress codes. Religious and “moral” censorship of the arts.
    Restrictions on female behavior – check. Consider the right’s desire to withhold HPV vaccination from teen girls because it might somehow encourage them to have sex.
    (Also, the Christian right is probably more likely to include people who go for the ‘biblical’ idea that women should be subservient to men, and would like to apply that to public life, employment, voting, etc.)
    Dress codes – check. Note the incident in which a student was punished for wearing a pro-gay shirt to school, while anti-gay behavior was allowed to go on. Christian groups seem to be a major route for the spread of fallacious claims about the behavior of people who dress in certain ways, that they’re gay, or drug addicts, or satanists, or whatever.
    Religious and ‘moral’ censorship – check, in abundance. I don’t think I really need to go into this one. Let’s just say I can see a lesbian couple living across the street here in my affluent suburban Connecticut neighborhood, but that can’t be shown on a PBS show.
    In America, it’ll be more like the Puritans than the Taliban. But the Puritans weren’t all that different from the Taliban. Different fashions, similar motivation.

33. In the interest of fairness — and believe me, this is the kind of topic I love to sink my evil little atheist teeth into, so it’s hard for me to be fair — the Texas cheerleading law can’t really be attributed to “the Christian Right.” The man who wrote it has a big ol’ “D” next to his name. I realize there are Texas Democrats who are well to the right of, say, Ohio Democrats, but still. This seems more like a case where the Dworkin/MacKinnon feminists made common cause with the Meese Commission on Pornography.

34. I just meant that if the extremists had their way, I’d be in ex-gay rehab.
    I’m trying to come up with a plan for an ex-gay rehab camp, but am a little worried about how minimize the hijinks that may ensue.
    Let’s just say I can see a lesbian couple living across the street here in my affluent suburban Connecticut neighborhood, but that can’t be shown on a PBS show.
    I know that many of you have to be at work by a certain time, but Ellen Degeneres has a talk show that is kicking major ass in the mornings. A big big bonus here is that when the subject is her private life, it is about funny little mundane things that everybody can relate to. I don’t know exactly how stay at home moms watch this but I would guess about a bazillion.
    (I’ve totally messed up my he-man credentials here.)

35. how many stay at home moms
    preview before posting.

36. Edward, what capacity for darkness do you think Afghanis have that Americans don’t?
    Or are you suggesting that we are immune not because we’re inherently incapable but because our starting point is so far away from that kind of religious tyranny? To that I would argue, things change. They often change quickly. Nobody ever sees it coming.

37. There are degrees, surely, but I can only speak of the branch of fundmantal Chrisitianity I was raised in: there’s no doubt Pentecostals believe Catholics are hell-bound.
    I haven’t kept tabs on them in a while but the local televangelists (and I do mean local to Wisconsin or the southern Wisconsin area) were most insistent that a) the Catholic Church is the vehicle of the Anti-Christ — sometimes actually The Beast, sometimes the Whore of Babylon, sometimes just their vessel — b) Catholics are not Christian and c) the Pope is the voice of Satan on earth.

38. I’ll venture a guess that it is because American society was never organized in the tribal kind of way. And we are getting more heterogenous all the time, by which I emphatically do not mean multiculturalist. My take on multiculturalism is that it means multiple tribes, which I think would be bad.

39. Then again maybe there are multiple tribes, but each individual person can be a member of various different tribes. For instance, the bowling league has both Kiwanis and Rotary club members, but they are mixed together in the various teams with the result that the K’s never actually go to war with the R’s.

40. Or are you suggesting that we are immune not because we’re inherently incapable but because our starting point is so far away from that kind of religious tyranny?
    While I can easily imagine how we could set the new world standard for utter evil in the US, I expect we won’t. I believe we’re all just three nights sleep and five meals or so away from being total animals, capable of anything. Still, unless that happens, I think we are quite far from the Taliban tyranny and that distance will serve us.

41. I believe we’re all just three nights sleep and five meals or so away from being total animals, capable of anything
    Bookmark for posterity the Burke-type conservative sentiment.
    Anyway,
    There are old mainstream Protestant denominations that should be able to take advantage of all the craziness of the TV preachers, but somehow have not seized the opportunity.
    One of the more interesting posts that I ever read on the internet was when Stephen Den Beste explained how atheism is a belief system and cannot be proven or disproven. I remember he had a dialog about this with Donald Sensing, a Methodist minister. Now according to the way people label other people with political labels, both these guys are conservative (pro-war against Hussein, specifically). But I think that both these guys are liberals in the J S Mill sense.
    The most important thing that liberals can do, if they are scared of religious types is to join a church. Now, that makes me a total hypocrite, because although I occasionally go to a Unitarian Church, I am not a member, but rather a “friend of the church”. And nowadays not so friendly because the minister is so rigidly left wing that he periodically has sermons that are as offensive to me as Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson are to many of you guys. (Let’s just say that this person probably knows and gets along with Ramsey Clark – not true I must hastliy add, of all UUs).
    I think we all need to draw a lesson from what is so screwed up with Islam these days. The biggest funding of Muslim schools and Mosques comes from the extremists not only because of the big money that Saudi Arabia gives to the bad guys, but also because moderate thoughtful Muslims have somehow lost the initiative or feel powerless to steer their religion back on track. (This by the way is something Pres Bush understands that many people do not.)
    So I am telling you liberals, if you are worried that the religionists will take over America that however counter-intuitive this may seem, the best way to combat this is to join, and regularly attend, a church. And for God’s sake, don’t do like the Presbyterians (by temperament I should be one) and divest in Israeli companies just to be more-righteous-than-thou or to advance your own political preferences. Most run of the mill Presbyterians are against this by the way – well, go on and take back your church! (Maybe though, this was pre-ordained and could not be avoided 🙂
    I fully realize that I am writing stuff that is not going to reach the type people that I intended. As for all you guys on ObWi that have unmovable political beliefs, I don’t want you running a church. (Edward_ and others who know who you are, I am not talking about you.) It really is the people who are too busy to attend church and who might occasionally think “I could be wrong here” about something or other that I am addressing.
    I think the United Church of Christ was on to something with their “Everybody is Welcome” ad campaign that didn’t quite make it off the ground. Well, don’t give up. I mean for Chrissakes show me a little something.

42. DaveC, in the spirit of friendship, thanks for the uplifting link you posted.
    I’m very unlikely ever to join a church, though.

43. Thanks ral,
    I take it that this means I can make “snide and facetious innuendos”* about you in addition to Edward_ and some of the others.
    *My dad’s boss reported my dad’s workplace conversations as such on his employee review.
    On the other hand IIRC, you are one of the “nattering nabobs of negativism”.
    Man, that Spiro Agnew (or his speechwriter) sure could turn a phrase. Wistfully thinking back to the glories of the Nixon administration.

44. As I recall, it was William Safire that coined that phrase for our illustrious ex-Vice President (OK, now I have to go check … yes, the Web seems to agree.)
    Thank goodness I don’t have to face employee reviews any more (neither receiving nor writing). Much as I agree with the idea in principle, it is often wretched in practice.
    I never dreamed I would look back on Richard Nixon with nostalgia, but nowadays…

45. If one happens to be a genuine atheist or agnostic, or otherwise not keen on monotheism, there’s no point in joining a church. Doesn’t even the UU assume the existance of some kind of transcendant Something Or Other?
    I thought for a long time about joining a temple, getting back to my Jewish roots; for the community, not for the religion. But I just can’t get past that Adonai thing.

46. DaveC, as a life-long liberal atheist Jew who grew up in the Unitarian church, I find your advice welcome. I’ve actually run the idea by my liberal atheist Jewish fiancée, esp. for when we have kids, but she thinks churches are icky.
    Also wanted to note that I appreciate your voice here.

47. Wistfully thinking back to the glories of the Nixon administration.
    Ah, yes, the price controls, the 500 casualties / week, the “I am not a crook”, …
    <wipes tear from eye>

48. I was raised Presbyterian but fell away from organized religion years ago. I wanted my son to have the choice I had to make a comparative choice about his beliefs but knew he would not get it from me. He attends a religious school. A jewish religious school. According to my Catholic neighbors, I’m an idiot and obvious example of the failure of the Presbyterian church.

49. Let me join in DaveC’s endorsement of church-going, even for atheists.
    A few years ago my wife and I–both atheists, both raised Roman Catholic–put our kids into an Episcopalian school, because it was clearly the best choice around on purely educational grounds. (Not a general statement, that’s just how the choices worked out in one small town).
    We were slightly apprehensive about all of the religious trappings, e.g. Morning Chapel every morning. But it worked out very well in the long run. The kids know more about what happens in a church, and I agree that it provided some innoculation against “enthusiasm” in the long run.
    After a year or two I joined the choir (I have always loved to sing). I’ve got to tell you, a good church choir, run by a real musician, can be a feast for any music lover. The Anglican hymnal has better and worse in it–Dr. Watts wrote some goodies, and there are some lovely Victorian pieces as well, but there are also some real dirges ( beautifully parodied by Eddie Izzard).
    But each week in addition to the hymns we would also sing one anthem by e.g. Bach, Haydn, Britten, Rutter, who knows. From any century. What a treat that was!
    The church did not mind my avowed atheism as long as I hit my marks, i.e. bow when it’s time to bow, parade up and down the aisle wearing funny robes, etc. I remained officially a “non-communicant”, or as I would say ‘incommunicado”, and that was fine with them.
    Of course, this turned out to be a somewhat atypical church. After being in the choir for a year, less clueless members explained to me that the choir director was gay (worse than that–so’s his boyfriend!). And then it turned out that the Rector was gay, too. I guess I’m slow on the uptake on this stuff.
    Anyhow, I look back on those years (we moved to a different town) with great fondness. Being a quasi-member of the church did provide real community, and fabulous music, as well as a steady supply of baked-goods after the service. I had no trouble endorsing the values that were taught to my children–values of kindness, compassion, service to others, and a sense of humility and awe at the world. And now when I’m trying to get my kids dressed for school, I also look back with fondness on the uniforms….

50. I am still not sure if I really saw this, but the WGN TV morning news team seems to have gotten into a Royal Rumble with a group of gay professional wrestlers, named “La Va Voom”. There was one guy dressed in a flag motif named “GayPatriot” (where have I seen that name before?), who got tossed around and the on air comment was “now, that’s some REAL gay-bashing”.
    Oh dear me, I am speechless. The oppressive morality campaign in this country is suffering some huge setbacks.

51. Tad, in a previous rant about gays and books and children, the opera music director that I talked about as an example of gay people who have a clue vs those who don’t, well, he was a part time choir director at a Lutheran church (was not a minister). But the wildest that he told me was about having to make a decision between being a rodeo cowboy (he was in the Texas high school state rodeo championships) and pursuing music as a career. Real life and real people are totally freaking wierd.

52. Bernard said:
    
    Anderson,
    What does that quote mean? This is a serious question. It sounds something like,
    “The Methodist Church (for example) is really not a church, but some sort of silly organization. On the other hand, Methodists, while less wonderful than Catholics, are basically fine.”
    Can that make sense? Sorry to be ignorant, but intra-Christianity disputes have always pretty much befuddled me.
    
    I’m not Anderson, but to explain anyway–
    The best metaphor for this, would be to look at schools. Universities typically have to be accredited by some sort of organization. If they don’t meet the standards, they may assert they are a university, but they aren’t, really.
    But a school which fails to meet accreditation standards may, nevertheless, have professors in it who would be perfectly acceptable as professors in the light of any accredited university.
    (For example, I decided to found ‘Biles University’ and I hire 20 people with Ph.Ds to staff it. Just because I say it’s a university doesn’t mean it is, since I haven’t bothered to get it accredited, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have perfectly qualified teachers.)
    Now, to extend that metaphor into the religious realm, the Catholic Church expects religious groups to meet certain ‘accreditation requirements’ in order to be viewed as fully part of the Church founded by Christ. Anderson’s quote lists two of them as being the passing on of the Apostolic Succession through a valid Episcopate, and maintaining the idea of Communion as a sacrament and not just a symbolic rite of memorial. These are qualifications for churches (small C) to be ‘accredited’ as fully part of the Church (big C).
    However, this is not what determines personal salvation–Ratzinger says that anyone who has been baptized is a Christian, and thus part of the body of Christ. But this is not identical to saying that any group they found is automatically part of the Church. (Just like if I entirely staff my university with qualified teachers, that won’t, of itself, let me call it a university and be accepted as such.)
    IE–Ratzinger is arguing that a church has to meet certain requirements to be considered fully part of the Church, just as a school has to meet certain requirements to be counted as a University.
    The key is the difference between the generally accepted use of the word ‘church’ in English, and the technical sense to which Ratzinger uses the word.
    (So, from Ratzinger’s point of view, the Methodist Church is like a university which has lost its accreditation. It may still be a gathering of believers, but it’s not fully Church in the sense that he thinks Catholicism and Orthodoxy are.)
    You may or may not accept his argument, but I hope that clarifies what his argument is.

53. Chris said:
    I’ve never been convinced that there’s any degree of sincerity to Bush’s embrace of the Christian right. If nothing else, it would be very hard to get through four years of Yale — even as an indifferent student — without understanding that creationism is a load of bunkum. People “get religion” all the time, of course, but it’s harder to unlearn the history of science.
    You misunderestimate the ability of college students to fail to learn things.
    Looking at the Yale Curriculum, it looks to me like it would be rather easy to completely avoid any exposure to the history of Biology. A non-science/engineering major need only take two courses in any of the following areas:
    Applied Physics; Astronomy; Biomedical, Chemical, Electrical, Environmental, and Mechanical Engineering; Chemistry; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Engineering and Applied Science; Forestry & Environmental Studies; Geology and Geophysics; History of Science, History of Medicine; Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; and Physics.
    One could easily take, say, Astronomy and Chemistry and emerge with no knowledge of the history of biology.
    Given Bush was a mediocre student, I expect he hardly remembers anything he did at Yale by now. I had a 3.96 GPA, and I have to struggle to remember what I took for my general requirements, let alone the contents of them, and I took my classes a lot more recently than Bush did.
    Furthermore, if Bush is sincere in his religious beliefs, he could well simply write off that aspect of his his Yale education as bunk.
    That being said, my impression is that religion is for Bush what self-help programs are for other people.

54. I was raised Methodist, but have ended up as a atheist/agnostic/vaguely deist. However, I agree completely with everyone who feels that church going is an important part of education. Unfortunately, living in Japan, it is impossible to have the same sort of community that one has in going to church in the states, especially in southern Kyushu. In addition, my wife is typically Japanese, which is to say that we are basically at the same point, but have reached it through different paths. This isn’t a bleg for advice, but I’d be interested to know what others would do in my situation.

55. Ratzinger is arguing that a church has to meet certain requirements to be considered fully part of the Church, just as a school has to meet certain requirements to be counted as a University.
    When Bernard used Methodists as the example, that actually muddied the waters a bit because Methodists are a creedal church.
    Baptist churches and other churches that do not explicitly require members to accept the Nicene Creed are better examples of this in that they do not meet the Catholic church’s minimum requirement.
    I did not know about Anderson’s quote lists two of them as being the passing on of the Apostolic Succession through a valid Episcopate, and maintaining the idea of Communion as a sacrament and not just a symbolic rite of memorial.
    That’s interesting. Baptists and Church of Christ emphasize the Lords Supper as following Jesus’s request This do in remembrance of Me, and really downplay any sacramental aspect.

56. lj, I had the impression that Amida Buddhism was kind of akin to the Baptist type of Christianity. Am I way off base?
    I had an old girlfriend who named her cat Amida, just to cover her bases, you know.

57. Although to really understand western culture you absolutely do have to have some familiarity with the Bible.
    Heck, you can’t even understand Bruce Springsteen songs without some Bible-learning.

58. lj, I had the impression that Amida Buddhism was kind of akin to the Baptist type of Christianity. Am I way off base?
    I am definitely not the go-to guy on this, because I have rather set ideas about Baptists (having grown up in a small town in Mississippi, nothing bad, just dunkin’ versus sprinklin’, all the best softball teams, note burning ceremonies and having the 1st Baptist mistaken for city hall when foreign friends visited. You know, just… set) and my encounters with Japanese institutional Buddhism have been very superficial. My own feeling is that Soka Gakkai has a very Baptist flavor to it, but that is based on the attendance patterns, the look of those attending and the linking of the church with a political base, but these are temporal trappings rather than doctrinal ideas, which I think is what you are getting at.
    Here’s a link for Amida Buddhism that highlights what you say. Here’s a good overall link If you go to the bottom, you’ll note that Soka Gakkai is Nichiren, which argues that other Buddhists sects are illegitimate. What it doesn’t note is that Soka Gakkai was persecuted quite strongly during WWII because they refused to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor and the two founders, Toda and Makiguchi were imprisoned and tortured during the war, with only Toda surviving to be released. Here is what I think is a good link (albeit with a terrible font) and the other pages are informative, though I am not deeply versed in this.
    In regards to your girlfriend naming her cat Amida, I often clap two times (as done at a Japanese Shinto jinja) when I ask any electronic/computer equipment to do something serious (asking my ibook to link up to wireless at a conference presentation) One can never be too careful…

59. John Biles,
    Thanks for the explanation. May I ask you to go further? What is the significance of the “lack of accreditation” if the members are still OK? In the university analogy, where everything is fine except for accreditation, the issue, broadly speaking, is a reputation problem, rather than substantive educational failings.
    How can there be reputation problems in the question of salvation? Surely the claim isn’t that being a Catholic makes it easier for God to recognize your merit, thereby reducing the chance of error in evaluating your credentials.

60. lj, thanks for the links, they are very informative.
    Link 1: Kind of what I remembered, “Salvation thru Grace” kind of thing. For some reason I forgot that along with this feature came the alternative, “Tortures of Hell”. Darn.
    Link 2: What I needed in college. Actually when I took “Buddhism 101″or whatever it was called, I did OK on the quizzes. But I chose the “Invent Your Own Buddhism” route on my final paper, that led to, shall we say, a rather uncomfortable meeting with the professor. I’m over it now, thank goodness 🙂
    Link 3: Looks interesting; I will have to read later because we only have 1 dial-up connection here and my daugher is home. Plus that Font is just killing my eyes.
    One thing that I kind like from what I know of Buddhism from some SE Asians’ point of view is their attitude of, “OK everyday folks, do what you can, but don’t expect to be perfect. The monks will do the heavy lifting”.

61. Bernard asked:
    
    Thanks for the explanation. May I ask you to go further? What is the significance of the “lack of accreditation” if the members are still OK? In the university analogy, where everything is fine except for accreditation, the issue, broadly speaking, is a reputation problem, rather than substantive educational failings.
    How can there be reputation problems in the question of salvation? Surely the claim isn’t that being a Catholic makes it easier for God to recognize your merit, thereby reducing the chance of error in evaluating your credentials.
    
    The importance comes from the fact that the Church is about more than simply whether or not you are saved. Catholics believe that the Church has a legacy of teaching authority and spiritual power passed from Jesus to the apostles and then down through the ages to future generations of the Church. The authority given to the Pope in Catholic tradition and canon law derives from this, but so does the authority of the bishops and the validity of holy orders.
    This is in contradiction to, say, the Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, in which every believer essentially has as much teaching authority as anyone else, if he’s literate enough to read the Bible and try to understand it. Whereas, in a Catholic view, a Bishop has a degree of teaching authority that Joe Layman does not.
    The Church is a vehicle of salvation, but it’s also a vehicle for the sanctification of believers and for the education of believers. From a Catholic viewpoint, the Catholic church can do a better job of both of those because it is more fully Church than, say, a Baptist congregation, and thus has the teaching authority and sacramental power.

62. DaveC said:
    One thing that I kind like from what I know of Buddhism from some SE Asians’ point of view is their attitude of, “OK everyday folks, do what you can, but don’t expect to be perfect. The monks will do the heavy lifting”.
    You can be a lot more laid back when you believe in reincarnation; after all, if you screw up this time, you’re going to have a lot more chances. There’s not the ‘this is the only chance you’ve got’ pressure.
    Lots of people simply aren’t expected to have the level of sprititual readiness to escape the Wheel; if they were, they’d join a monastery.

63. John Biles–
    “thus has the teaching authority and sacramental power.”
    Right. This doctrine was given its canonical formulation in the papal encyclopedia “de Mojo et Sayso.”

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