Religion

by hilzoy

Glenn Greenwald has a piece up today about Bush and the neocons. I want to highlight and expand on one part of what he writes:

“To do this, they have convinced the President that he has tapped into a much higher authority than the American people — namely, God-mandated, objective morality — and as long as he adheres to that (which is achieved by continuing his militaristic policies in the Middle East, whereby he is fighting Evil and defending Good), God and history will vindicate him:

On one subject the president needed no lessons from Roberts or anyone else in the room: how to handle pressure. “I just don’t feel any,” he says with the calm conviction of a man who believes the constituency to which he must ultimately answer is the Divine Presence. Don’t misunderstand: God didn’t tell him to put troops in harm’s way in Iraq; belief in Him only goes so far as to inform the president that there is good and evil. It is then his job to figure out how to promote the former and destroy the latter. And he is confident that his policies are doing just that.

Or, as luncheon attendee Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute recalled (also in The Weekly Standard) the President saying: “I want to have my conscience clear with Him. Then it doesn’t matter so much what others think.” (…)

Nothing matters — not the disapproval of the American people of the President’s actions nor rising anti-Americanism around the world. He should simply ignore all of that and continue to obey the mandates of neoconservatism because that is what is Good and his God will be pleased.” (emphasis in original.)

Glenn seems to suggest that there’s a problem with thinking that what really matters is not what other people think of one’s actions, but what God thinks. This would of course be true if one worshipped a malevolent God, who commanded that we do dreadful things. (Similarly, if you cared about what other people thought, but all those other people were sadists, you’d be in trouble.)

But if the person under discussion accepts any one of the major religions, whose Gods are (basically) good, then I don’t think it’s a problem to care more about what God thinks than what other people think. In fact, God being God, it would be odd if a religious person didn’t think this. In particular, it isn’t a problem to have a President who is Christian and believes this. Christianity, after all, is a religion whose God commands compassion, and is deeply concerned about justice.

What is a problem is to have someone in office who claims to care only about what God thinks and how God will judge him, but who doesn’t actually take this idea seriously. Someone like that will use the thought that only God’s opinion matters simply to dismiss human criticism, without actually worrying about God. He will regard God as a convenient excuse, someone he can assume agrees with him. But to believe in a God who is, in fact, you, or who is so unreal to you that you don’t need to bother taking His views seriously, is not faith; it is the opposite of faith.

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by hilzoy

I’ve just been reading (via Pandagon) the oddest article. It’s from Rolling Stone, and it’s about twenty-something Christians who have embraced chastity. And “embraced chastity” is, I think, the right way to put it: they don’t just not have sex, they seem to have made it the organizing principle of their lives in a way that strikes me as very sexualized, and certainly very strange.

“After church one day, Dunbar, Power and I sit on a bench and lean back in the sun and watch Sunday morning stroll by. “Cleavage everywhere,” notes Dunbar, not disapprovingly. Power holds up his right hand. Wrapped around his wrist, in a figure eight, is a black plastic bracelet. “This,” he says, “is a ‘masturband.’ ” One of their friends at college — Pepperdine University — came up with the idea. As long as you stay pure — resist jerking off — you can wear your masturband. Give in, and off it goes, a scarlet letter in reverse. No masturband? No one wants to shake your hand. “It started with just four of us,” says Dunbar. “Then there were, like, twenty guys wearing them. And girls too. The more people that wore them, the more people knew, the more reason you had to refrain.” Dunbar even told his mother. He lasted the longest. “Eight and a half months,” he says. I notice he’s not wearing one now. He’s not embarrassed. Sexuality, he believes, is not a private matter.”

I guess not.

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I grew up in one of the nation’s most ambitious evangelical churches, and I spent years hearing the message: anyone who is not one of us will surely burn in hell. That certainty fits in quite nicely with the church’s ambitions. More converts equals more souls in heaven. And, let’s be frank, it also means more money.

Whether the ultimate motivation to proselytize (we called it "witnessing") is money or souls depends on the individual, but the culture of the church is such that one is encouraged to witness tirelessly. My church stops short of knocking on doors regularly, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they also had no sincere respect for the non-born-agains’ desire to be left alone. Oh, they’d take a hint and back away if someone in their daily lives told them to drop it, but they were convinced (and I mean, that…totally and unshakably convinced) that your being born again was imperative to saving your mortal soul, and so they would never totally give up. I don’t know how conscious it was (in fact, it’s really unfair of me not to strongly suggest it’s not), but any tragedy in the un-born-again’s life could be seized upon as an opportunity to help them see how being born again was a blessing.

The thing is that they were earnest in believing they had to keep after you until you too were born again. All of which is fine (I guess) so long as you have the right to tell them to shove off. When that urge to save your soul becomes dangerous though is when the person proselytizing has authority over those who are not believers. Combined with zealousness, that situation often leads to religious intolerance. Consider what’s been happening at the Air Force Academy:

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by Edward

Former NYTimes reporter and self-declared "born again" Christian John McCandlish Phillips offers a well-considered rebuke to the columnists in the Washington Post and New York Times who lately have been insisting the US is on the verge of becoming a theocracy. I’ve never quite been comfortable with terms like "the American Taliban" or any of its variations because, as McCandlish Phillips notes:

If [NYTimes columnist Frank] Rich were to have the misfortune to live for one week in a genuine jihad, and the unlikely fortune to survive it, he would temper his categorization of the perceived President Bush-driven jihad by a minimum of 77 percent.

In fact, I actually believe the Bushes are nowhere near as puritanical as they’re often depicted. Laura Bush’s now infamous performance at White House Correspondents’ Association dinner suggests they’re as down to earth in terms of attitudes toward sex and lifestyle as your average American. And although I think Bush the politician is fully willing to exploit the perception among the extreme right that he’s one of them, Bush the person—the former Yalie cheerleader who enjoyed partying and a good laugh—probably isn’t consumed by how to convince school teachers to never mention "evolution" in their biology lessons.

Of course, there’s no doubt that the Christian right is seeing an accession in power, and some of the evidence of their willingness to use it (blackmailing science museums to not show certain movies, pressuring textbook publishers to promote their point of view, the beyond-silly cheerleader law now being considered in Texas) should not be ignored, because let’s face it, it’s their version of "the Truth" they’re fighting for, not a universal one.

And this is where I feel, despite some good points, McCandlish Phillips is either confused or trying to pull a fast one. He notes:

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I grew up in a family where "X-mas" was considered blasphemous,* so all these folks suddenly up in arms about how secular Christmas has become seem like "Johnny’s and Jane’s come lately" to me. Folks like Julie West of Edmonds, Washington:

Julie West is tired of being wished "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." She’s annoyed with department stores that use "Season’s Greetings" banners, and with public schools that teach about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa but won’t touch the Nativity story.

So last week, she sent a baked protest to a holiday party at her first-grade son’s school: a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and red icing that spelled out "Happy Birthday Jesus."

"Christmas keeps getting downgraded, to the point that you’re almost made to feel weird if you even mention it," says West…who describes herself as a non-denominational Christian. "What’s the matter with recognizing the reason behind the whole holiday?"

That sentiment is quaintly nostalgic for me, so many times did I hear it as a child.

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I’ve had a rollercoaster relationship with God my whole life. At times I’ve been what one would call a "devout" fundamentalist; at other times I’ve been downright agnostic. Watching an episode of "Nip/Tuck" the other day (a truly godless show if ever there was one), I found myself thinking I would have to consider atheism in order to reconcile what appeared to be contradictions in what I understand/believe about the universe.

Two recent commentaries have helped me regain my comfort with my faith, however. Both express the idea that belief systems are there to help you deal, not hurt you. That embracing your belief system can improve your life, not limit it, even intellectually.

One of the commentaries was by Harvey Fierstein on the PBS program "In the Life" :

I operate under a complicated belief system pretty much of my own device which I base on scientific laws and humanistic principles. And, all in all, it works for me. I tell you this not to seek converts or to invite any discussion of any specific religion. I just want you to know that my beliefs might seem just as silly to you as yours do to me. And that’s cool. (pdf file)

Harvey is a true Mensch in every sense of the word. If you don’t know him, I’d highly recommend any of those commentaries.

The second commentary appears in today’s New York Times. The fabulous Irshad Manji expresses dismay at how when travelling across Europe she was repeatedly asked "Why does an independent-minded woman care about God? Why do you need religion at all?" She explains in a very thoughtful way, incorporating what she sees as a hypocrisy in those questions. In a nutshell, she feels that widespread secularism is Europe’s response to the abuses of religion over the centuries. It’s primarily a defensive position. She highlights how this defensive position is feeding much of the resistence to bringing Turkey into the EU, and in doing so she rather cleverly brings us back to an eye-opening conclusion:

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I’m not comfortable with all the God talk taking place this election. Fearing the consequences of seeming too secular, all kinds of pols are increasingly wearing their religion on their sleeves. As The Nation reported recently, it’s become important to acknowledge that God is now a integral part of our election process, if only because Democrats are alarmed at how the Republicans are winning by doing so:

At last month’s Democratic convention, few words were uttered more frequently than the one that seems to roll most easily off the tongue of George W. Bush: faith. “Let me say it plainly,” announced John Kerry in his acceptance speech. “In this campaign, we welcome people of faith.” John Edwards thanked his parents, Wallace and Bobbie, for instilling in him an appreciation of “faith” from an early age. Barack Obama declared that Kerry “understands the ideals of community, faith and service,” and added, to those who think only Republicans turn to religion for inspiration, “We worship an awesome God in the blue states.”

That Democrats are eager to propagate this message is not surprising. The United States is, after all, an astoundingly religious country. And in recent decades, Americans who take their religion seriously have been flocking to the GOP in numbers that have left Democratic strategists alarmed. Back in 1992, voters who told exit pollsters they attend prayer services on a frequent basis supported George H.W. Bush over Bill Clinton by a margin of 14 percent. Eight years later, in 2000, those same voters backed George W. Bush over Al Gore by 20 percent. In the 2002 Congressional elections, the religiously devout also favored Republicans by 20 percent, prompting Trinity College religion professor Mark Silk to observe, “Never before in American history have churches been tied so directly to one political party.”

I guess most of my personal discomfort with this comes from my own very strict religious upbringing. God knows what’s in your heart, I was taught, and there are few things more sure to enrage Him than false prophecy. Exploiting His name in any context is extremely dangerous. So much so, that it’s best never to even approach it. Hence our reticence to wear our religion on our sleeve in my family. It’s respect and fear that causes us to believe God’s will shouldn’t be reduced to slogans for bumper stickers, T-shirts, or campaign speeches (as if one understood God’s will well enough to boil it down into a sound bite). It’s also tacky, but that’s another thread.

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I’d like this to be an open thread on generosity and selflessness, two character traits I personally really need to work to better develop and which my partner is helping me with.

My partner observes Ramadan each year. Otherwise he’s not that religious, but he feels the way about Ramadan that I do about Christmas. It’s something to look forward to…a joyous time full of hope and remembrance.

I’m still learning about this holiest of holidays in Islam, but on the surface of it, there are some impressive aspects of it. Clearly it’s very demanding. For the entire month there’s no eating or drinking during daylight. There’s also no smoking, alcohol, or sexual relations during the fasting. There are incredibly detailed rules about the fasting as well.

My partner gets up at 4:00am to have some breakfast and then goes back to bed…by the end of the month this no longer wakes me up…fortunately for us, the days are currently getting shorter (my partner tends to get a wee bit grouchy when he’s hungry…I’m learning to be “busy at the gallery” until after nightfall…although the joy in his face when night finally falls during Ramadan, and the peace in his heart, is beautiful and inspiring).

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