A Modern Secular Religion

Though there is a great deal of sanctioned smiting in the OT.

(Damn it, now I can't stay on topic.)

The Muslim religion as a whole did not promise 70 virgins to begin with -- you're barking up a tree that is likely to fall on you at any moment.

You gotta be kidding -- or extremely naive.




Oh yes they did!






Ahhhh...you almost got me there -- and would have if you had not included the words "for molestation."


Moderation in everything, Steissd, even your bigotry.

Ditto, Frank...

patio dog

Unfortunately, this wonderful piece by Joan Didion from the NY Review of Books is no longer free http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=13857 because that is what you want to read for background on the personalities and ideas driving this faith-based enterprise. But you really should have a membership with the NY Review anyway.

Is the attempt to keep church and state separate in some way a displacement of traditional religion? Or as McGentrix said, "why must something be proven to exist or not exist in order to be believed? Isn't that really what belief is? Some believe God exists, others don't. Why force your own beliefs on others?" Is the separation of church and state an attempt to force one religious view over another? This repetitious claim that it is seems irrational. It is exactly the opposite. How is an attempt to keep publically funded schools from teaching religious doctrine or religious theories which are unproven and unscientific an attempt to devalue religion? Actually, McGentrix has hit it on the head when he points to the fact that religious beliefs are simply beliefs, strongly held and fervently believed by some, but still beliefs accepted on the basis of faith. Schools should be in the business of teaching theories and formulations that are based in the scientific method and to leave matters of belief to the churches. Every person in this country is free to choose which church they attend and which religious creed they prefer, or to reject all religion. No school or governmental agency can tell any citizen what they have to believe.

The only way I've ever been able to understand the debate about prayer in schools, etc. is that Christians (not all, but many, and especially the fanatical fundy ones) have become accustomed to assuming that everyone either is or should be a Christian. So when it was pointed out to them that not everyone believes in Jesus Christ as their own personal savior and that it was not only offensive and rude to behave as if they do or that they at least should, but it was also a violation of the Constitution, and the civil rights of children, these folks were very unhappy about giving up what they considered to be their right to teach religious doctrine in our schools. They had considered it a right to indoctrinate, proselytize or otherwise make children whose families did not conform feel unwelcome and even worried and anxious about their parents' souls. I have often asked the question, "why are these folks so upset? Why do they feel they have to practice their religion in a public place of learning?"

I have a lot of experience with fundamentalist Christians and I know that they believe it is their Christian duty to save souls. They believe their children must be indoctrinated early and given no chance to know about other religions or to make up their own minds about their person beliefs. So when the schools their children attend do not contribute to this indoctrination, when they publically acknowledge that there are other religions and other ways of viewing the world besides Christianity, these same entitled Christians are threatened. I know a prominent fundamentalist Christian educator who has repeated to me over and over again that if you don't get the children early and teach them without critique the fundamentalist beliefs, they will be "lost to the faith." Now he said this without the least realization that what he was calling "belief" was actually an induced conformity and a violation of a child's right to make his/her own choices as h/she grows. I believe it is for this reason that so many christians object when they are not allowed to force their religious rituals on the children of those who do not share their convictions, but rather have beliefs of their own.

This has always struck me as odd, since if their doctrine has merit and has survived throughout history as they claim, because of its obvious, basic truth, what are they worried will happen if their children become aware that the religion of their family is not necessarily the religion of all people? It seems fair that public schools and public institutions be non religious and to avoid affiliation with any religion. And it seems obvious that this is not an attack on any one religion, but rather a protection of all religious people to practice and teach their children about their own faith.

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling ! ! !"

-- C. Little

For the "faithful," the sky is falling. Because of the challenge to the enthronement of Protestant christianity in our public life, those with deep conviction, but little understanding are easily lead to believe that their way of life is threatened by the increasingly secular aspect of the society in which they live. This secular aspect is viewed with alarm by those for whom truth is revealed in scripture. Such people are easily mislead by those to whom they look for an interpretation of scripture. Those who provide that leadership may be, by and large, decent and well-meaning people. However, just as the majority of lawyers are honest, and the majority of politicians have at least a modicum of dedication to public service, so it is with the various ministies, but it only takes a few venal people to do great harm. Controlling what people believe is the ultimate expression of power in a democratic republic in which the historically traditional methods of direct control are denied to those with a will to power over others. The removal of a primarily Protestant christian world-view from the polity poses a very real threat to the power which the religious demagogue may exercise, and the numbers over which such a person can weild that influence. It is very rare that anyone who is essentially unintelligent can grasp the reins of power; when it has happened, such as in the case of William Wallace or Wat Tyler, that individual has used charisma (often without an understanding of that fact), has acted "the man on horseback" to a popular movement which simply needed focus. And these have been a very few exceptions to prove the rule that charismatic leadership can only be sustained through an intellectual application of manipulative techniques to achieve an end through the agency of mass control. Therefore, it behooves people such as Falwell or Robertson to frame all issues of public policy in terms of a threat to traditional christian values to maintain a fever pitch of enthusiasm among the faithful which will give them the political leverage to enact their agenda. This is a recurrant theme in political history, and is nothing new in our nation's political history. What is known as "the pledge of allegiance" was adopted for just such a purpose, and those who promoted its use, while largely sincere, were being manipulated by those who understood very well the appeal they could give their agenda by blending "one nation under god" with what largely seemed a straightforward statement of patriotic sentiment. Once again, in a secular state, god must be smuggled in by the service entrance.

(On a side note, it is chilling to me to watch Falwell raise his chin with a faint smile when he's got the crowd worked up. That is because it always evokes for me the image of Moussolini at a Facist rally. He had exactly the same gesture.)

Such demagogues need a patina of intellectual content and an appeal to legality to disguise their will to personal power as a movement to "purify" public institutions. Therefore you get errant nonsense such as Scrat's completely specious, unsubstantiated and unsupportable contention that the intent of the "no establishment" clause is that all religions have access to government (read here, to the budget). Although that is a particularly lame argument, the accomplished demagogues use more subtle, more polished arguments, and avoid direct appeals to legality because of the dangerous nature of such appeals--they are quickly and easily refuted by those with an equivalent intellectual attainment and a specific knowledge of law and the constitution. Therefore, you will get a basic argument from allegations about "natural law," a term which thinly veils the concept of "god's law" in a manner which makes it suitable for application to a secular system of judicial review.

In summation, two specific techniques are used to frame the ongoing debate of the direction of the development of the polity: the first is the "natural law," the morality technique, which purports that the fundamental principles which underlie civic order must be maintained, and, if necessary, applied as a remedy to correct evils which currently exist in the system. The second is the allegation of a proximate threat to those principles from an insidious attempt by a group, such as secular humanists, to undermine society by a radical departure from the principles. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century, when the pledge of allegiance was introduced, and the Ku Klux Klan was reborn in Georgia, the threat was framed in very simple and direct terms. An allegation was made that waves of Jewish and Catholic immigration from southern and eastern Europe was about to wash away the good christian values which had made the nation strong. The effect of a successful campaign such as that can be widespread--the "Lily Whites," i.e., white Protestant christians, enjoyed a great electoral success at all levels of government; Carrie Catt, the political heritor of Susan Anthony, appealed to the male power structure for a ratification of women's suffrage with the contention that the majority of women voters would be white and Protestant, and thereby negate the effect of votes by blacks, Jews and Catholics. The influence of the Ku Klux Klan spread with incredible rapidity, and spread to the northern states as well as those in the south. The Urban League was formed after the lynching of a black man in Springfield, Illinois (in about 1908 or 1909). A novel idealizing the patriotic night rider was published, The Clansman, and D. W. Griffith used this as the text for his motion picture The Birth of a Nation.

But the eventual triumph of women's suffrage, and, much later, the successful efforts of the civil rights movement have removed the power of such blatant appeals to racism, religious bigotry and misogyny. Therefore, the new straw man is secular humanism. The strife is now whipped up over the issues of school prayer or other public religious practice, abortion, and a phoney argument about separation of church and state. A hoary old tradition dating back at least to the Know Nothings of the 1850's still rears its ugly head, and reveals much about the state of human understanding in the undercurrent of hatred for Muslims which was present and well developed before September 11th. Racism now comes disguised in screeds such as Pat Buchanan puts out about the dangers of immigration. It can be disheartening to those who wish to live in a truly free and just society in which they will not be obliged to participate in or even simply to unwillingly underwrite such attempts at control through their tax dollars. It is scant consolation, but it is a fight as old as the nation itself. The slurs cast at those who try to speak sensitively of others as being the dupes of "political correctness" are part and parcel with the neverending attempt of right-wing demagogues to win the debate by framing the question. In fact, the right has itself created its own vocabulary of political rectitude, which is evident in such locutions as "right to life" for opposition to abortion, "unfunded initiatives" for opposition to social welfare programs, "family values" for opposition to ramification of civil rights to newly acknowledged categories such as homosexuals.

I would enjoin those who wish to continue the good fight not to yield to discouragement. Assaults on the first, fourth and fourteenth amendments to the constitution will not abate, and the best remedy is a thorough understanding of the meaning of these amendments, and their oringins. Rearguard skirmishes will continue to attempt to protect the special status which had previously been accorded to western European Protestantism, and those who wish to protect our freedom, and to perfect it by its extension to all people without regard to color, race, religion or origin must not yield in the struggle. One will assuredly grow weary of it all--i know i'm sickened by the specious contentions of the reactionary right which are thinly veiled attempts to advance an exclusionary agenda. It is a fight well worth joining, however.

Ok, Setanta, you've convinced me. I'm signing up.............or should I say, I decided to rededicate myself to the cause. I have been inspried.......

Fine little essay, Setanta -- there will be those who will turn a blind eye towards how religion works in our society. Of course, it does some good, but it has its drawbacks. I've worked closely with the Methodist church on some lighting projects and came out with no scars, although I didn't make much money (I thought God deserved a discount). I did find the bureaucracy just as bad if not worse than working with other business clients.

Brilliant piece Set. As fine a bit of writing as I've seen here. Lola's preceding post too speaks cogently of the threat to liberty from the evangelical quarter.

I earlier posted that repugnant quotation from Bork (and earlier, from Scalia) to point to a particular species of thought about humans in community, which is evident in those examples which set and lola speak of. For those of you who haven't bumped into Isaiah Berlin's essay "Two Concepts of Liberty", there is likely no better analysis of the monstrous impersonations of liberty which arise from the notion that moral truth is the province of some few who 'understand' not just what is best for the rest of us, but who it is we really are...

"It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good which I am too blind to see; this may, on occasion, be for my benefit; indeed it may enlarge the scope of my liberty; it is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am free - or 'truly' free - even while my poor earthly body and foolish mind bitterly reject it, and struggle against those who seek however benevolently to impose it, with greatest desperation."

In his last screed Setanta has employed the whole inventory of demagogic rhetorical devices with which to attack what he describes as a conspiracy of "those with deep conviction, but little understanding", the "essentially unintelligent", and their manipulative charismatic leaders who would doom America to the hell of "Protestant christian"(sic) morality and what he sees as the attendant persecution of blacks, Muslims, other alien groups, and even "those who try to speak sensitively of others". Further he raises the specter of "... the never ending attempt of right wing demagogues to win the debate by framing the question", even as he bases his whole piece on such an attempt himself.

Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanon, William Wallace, the Ku Klux Klan, and the 'Know Nothings' of the 1850s are all rather easy targets in such an enterprise, and Setanta has faithfully struck at them all. Indeed, he has even compared Jerry Falwell's facial gestures to those of Mussolini! (faint drumrolls, portents of hidden evil)

Charismatic evangelical Protestantism is widely seen as the principal fomenter of the resistance to all that Setanta evidently holds dear, but it is by no means either the only or the defining source - it is merely the convenient target of reprisal, the straw man easily beaten upon. It is also one of the principal traditions involved in the creation of this country. While it no doubt has many faults and a history of association with many social and political evils, such as slavery, it has also proved to be remarkably adaptable to sustaining an open society (in the sense that Popper coined), one able to adapt and evolve while maintaining critical economic and political freedoms. With this in mind it is hardly fair or accurate to accuse its current manifestations of historic evils which it itself helped overcome. I come from a very different background than this one - first generation Irish Catholic, but I can appreciate the distinctions I am making here.

Setanta goes on to accuse his critics of themselves creating a vocabulary of "political rectitude". He cites 'right to life', 'unfunded initiatives', and 'family values' as code phrases and euphemisms for bad thought. In fact 'right to life' was an after-the-fact response to a far worse euphemism, 'right to choose'; 'unfunded initiatives' is no euphemism at all - it refers to Federal requirements, imposed on state government programs with no funding for their costs, a very direct & descriptive term; 'family values' is likewise a self-evident reference to the nuclear families that produce and rear the children of the next generation. Nice try Setanta, but that was a stretch too far.

Good,but florid prose. More passion than thought and balanced logic.

Ah, you crack me up, Boss . . .

I've much to do today, and had to go hunting for this thread, but i'll be back.

Fighting perceived demagogic rhetorical devices (that's a mouthful)
with what could be called demagogic rhetorical devices but I wouldn't be so sophomoric as to use that point of criticism.

I always wear my demagoggles when I need to swim through crap-infested waters.

heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .

Ah, yer a bad man, so . . .

I think a better way to word this is that it recognizes the religious freedom these groups are guaranteed by our constitution and so does not force them to hire outside their faith.

Patio - Good point. I'm one of those, so let me respond.

I am quite sure the feds shouldn't be playing in the charitable arena, and as such, would welcome any efforts to move them out of such work and wean people from these programs. BUT, I'm also something of a pragmatist, so I have to also look at what is the best way of doing what we are doing since it is very unlikely that we will stop.

Then the question for me becomes, IF the feds are going to make money available for organizations to implement charitable programs, should the feds discriminate against organizations that are affiliated with a religious group? For me, that answer is NO.

The sticky question of whether the feds should allow religious organizations to use religion as a factor in their hiring decisions when taking government money is a thorny issue that wouldn't be an issue at all if not for the government's unfortunate intrusion into this field in the first place.

Setanta - I finally had time to read through your excellent collection of quotes. I find not one with which I disagree, so I suspect that either I have not done a good job of explaining my point, or you have mistaken it for some other reason.

I agree that government and religion should be separate. But I do not believe that the separation thereof should so prejudice the government against anything religious that the government ends up infringing on religious freedom. The best example of this that I can come up with right now is the notion that the government should be able to tell a religious group that they must hire outside of their religion, or that the government should (as some suggest) be able to discriminate against an organization based on it having a religious affiliation (as it did in fact do prior to the recent faith-based initiatives). I believe that it is perfectly legitimate for the government to allow religious groups to compete for federal dollars just as they allow religious individuals to do, and that just as we would not accept the government refusing to hire a Jewish person to work in a charitable program so too we should not accept the government refusing to hire (give a contract to) a charitable organization associated with and run out of a Synagogue.

I hope this clarifies my position for you. I found so much with which I agreed in the quotes you offered, that I came away suspecting that we might not be as far apart on this as we seem. (But even if we are, thanks for the enjoyable exchange.)

Can't see any logic in that. The government applies a standard of equal opportunity in employment practice to all contractors. Giving funds to a religious organization flies in the face of that because they are exempted from that requirement.

Contractors get exemptions for various things all the time. In this case, the exemption is pretty specific, and the impact is small. If the government is going to play in this space, I think they have to make that exception, or they are discriminating against these organizations based on religion.

But I recognize that mine is just one way to look at it, and yours is another. I do see where this could cause problems, and understand your concern. I suspect that we will have to agree to disagree here, but I can honestly say you've given me some things to think about in the process.

Regards,
Scrat