Blaming Religion
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Daniel is right:
Mr. Bush espoused a horrifyingly heterodox religious vision, one far more akin to the messianic Americanism that forms part of what Bacevich has called national security ideology than it is to anything that could fairly be called orthodoxy. To the extent that Linker’s favorite targets, the so-called “theocons,” were more or less entirely on board with what Mr. Bush was doing, even if they felt compelled to use their own teachings in distorted form to do it, they were not championing orthodoxy at all. One might go so far to say that as they became stronger supporters of Mr. Bush, the less orthodox they tended to become, because the arguments they had to employ to defend Mr. Bush’s outrageous actions and gnostic impulses necessarily ate away at orthodox teachings.
It helps to think of what Daniel is exposing here as a variant on the Unicornism Fallacy: that all of history’s greatest villains lacked a belief in unicorns is no reason at all to think that failure to believe in unicorns leads to evil deeds; and in the same way, that Bush and many of his advisers and supporters were Christians is in itself no ground to blame Christianity for what they did. It was the contents of their beliefs that motivated them, and those contents included a host of radical and decidedly unChristian views concerning the permissibility of wanton killing, the inherent goodness of democracy, the possibility of remaking foreign peoples in our own image, and so on. That they were Christians clearly shows that such faith is no sure bulwark against even very serious sins, but then again we already knew that; to move from there to the claim that Christianity needs to be abandoned altogether is, however, not only to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but to insist on drowning it in the ensuing puddle as well.
P.S. In the same vein, tarring opponents of same-sex marriage as “the successors of those who defended slavery and segregation on Biblical grounds” (no, really) is obvious slander, unless by this one means to call attention to the fact that we are all the inheritors of a great tradition of human wickedness; and once again we already knew that, too. If slippery-slope arguments and the insinuation of guilt by association are out of place (as they are!) when used against SSM advocates, then according to what principle may the very same tactics appropriately be used by them?
Filed under: marriage, politics, religion, war
I have no argument with the general point, but when did Bush or his advisers defend the permissibility of wanton killing?
Also, while it might be true that those who believe in the inherent goodness of democracy are mistakenly baptizing as Christian a view that is in fact unChristian, I don’t think that’s obviously the case. Democracy may be no cure for original sin, but surely there are theologically knowledgeable people who hold that of the possible forms of government it is the one that is most in keeping with Christian teaching about the dignity of human beings. I won’t defend that claim here, but surely it’s not one that deserves to be so quickly dismissed?
Larison’s quote suggests to me the danger to religion by becoming involved in politics. If we are not to question the type of co-opting of religion that Rove employed, and which still seems to emanate from the Catholic church, what lessons should we take from the Bush administration and its supporters?
I second Peter’s point about democracy. Perhaps you meant to pick out views not only about the “inherent goodness” of democracy, but on democracy as an inherent movement in history? As in, the idea that one need only set up a few popular votes and the inevitable historical movement towards history will take care of everything from that point onward. Or perhaps you meant the view that democracy is so good that even giving a society a small chance at it is worth all sorts of collateral damage, up to and including death and chaos on a grand scale? I invite you to clarify.
So these are obviously very helpful comments.
- Peter: When I say that Bush et al defended wanton killing I mean that (at least) in roughly the sense that I might say Lois Lane was in love with Superman, or a defense attorney defended a murderer; perhaps they didn’t recognize what was at stake, but in this case (unlike, perhaps those two others) I don’t think that was excusable.
- Cascadian: Shouldn’t we distinguish the co-opting of religion by politics and the co-opting of politics by religion? The Catholic Church, fwiw, was strongly opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning, and if its stance had triumphed we’d be much better off right now. In itself that’s not sufficient reason to think that religion should always be able to co-opt politics, but it seems a clear reason to reject the idea that that was what went wrong in this particular instance.
- And Peter/Joe: I certainly mean at least all the things that Joe says, but I mean a bit more than that, too. I do think there’s a plausible case to be made for democracy as, on average, the least worst form of government. I don’t, however, think that it’s always the least worst, or that it’s a “human right”, or that all societies are ready for it (note that this could be false even if it’s universally inevitable in the long wrong), or that it keeps nations from fighting with one another, or that it is something we should export, or … and it seems clear to me that it’s these sorts of things, as opposed to a mere belief in least-worstness, that formed the heart of the ideology of democracy as it motivated the Bush administration.
Distinguishing might be helpful but my perspective is similar to both. I think it’s always unhealthy for the church to be co-opted, and politically, even in a justified instance with a positive outcome, the procedural damage of blending politics and religion outweighs any good.
Democracy is only as good as the customs and laws that form its foundation; otherwise one gets Gaza and Hamas, or simply a temporary democracy. This is one of the major flaws in democracy promotion.
Linker is a nice guy, but the theocon stuff and Andrew’s Christianist stuff are way overblown. They have lost all their power because neither of them has taken the time to find nuance in their arguments. Sure, there are Christianists and theocons, but lumping so many into that group is silly and makes what could be a sharp edge into a bludgeoning stick.
And certainly grouping all opponents of SSM into the same category is appallingly near-sighted. As an advocate of SSM personally, I believe that there are both good faith and bad faith arguments against it – and I think it is absolutely vital to remain open to any and all good faith arguments.
But again, I agree that it’s never good for the church to be co-opted; the real question is whether involvement of politics and religion must always take this course, and the obvious answer is no.
So what was the wanton killing that was defended unrecognized and under a different description?
I wasn’t trying to get into a discussion about what the proper attitude of Christians towards democracy should be. It’s an interesting and important discussion, but not one that we can do justice to here. I was just saying that your “decidedly unChristian” comment seemed to me to assume that some issues were decided (at least amongst informed, right-thinking people) which are anything but.
Adding to the list of contestable claims is the assertion that if the Church’s opposition to the war in Iraq had triumphed we’d be better off right now. Again, I’m not going to argue against the claim – it may be true, but it’s far from obvious. Besides the “right now” test is the wrong one anyway, the situation now as compared to a counterfactual present doesn’t seem to me as important as the question of whether the invasion was in our (and the world’s) interests. Like Zhou Enlai’s assessment of the French Revolution, it’s too early to say.
Hmm…as a staunch proponent of SSM and the moral neutrality (or maybe even goodness) of homosexuality, I have often used the “slavery/segregation/women, etc. argument” when talking with Christians. It’s very important to be careful with that argument (and what exactly “that argument” means would need to be cashed out), but it serves an important role with many Christians. I come from an evangelical background and went to an evangelical college, so I speak from experience when I say that what “the Bible says” tends to rule the day on any discussion.
Unfortunately, what “the Bible says” is not so clear as it so often seems. I think it’s important to realize that things that often seem so clearly “in the text” end up being us baptizing a deeply held (perhaps tacit or unrealized) cultural belief. There *are* good arguments from the Bible for slavery. These arguments were very convincing to a great many people for a great many centuries. It’s important for Christians not to demonize the people who bought into these “the Bible says” arguments for slavery. Most of them were just trying to recognize the authority of Scripture, and most of them thought it was just *clearly* in the text. These pro-slavery arguments were not stupid or insane (when our criteria is the historical-critical method of Biblical interpretation).
So, the usefulness of analogies to justification of slavery or segregation from Scripture lies in the ability to plant seeds of doubt about what often seems so clear and obvious. When we own up to the fact that we would today dismiss these pro-slavery arguments from Scripture out of hand, and would consider it sinful to abuse Scripture by supporting slavery, but that for centuries people thought they were just being faithful to Scripture’s authority, then we have a pretty good analogy on hand. It has the ability to inspire the belief that we must take responsibility for our theological method, instead of baptizing our own beliefs behind what “the Bible says”.
J. Searle, it sounds as if the point that you are making in drawing an analogy between opposition to SSM and the defense of the institution of slavery is very different, indeed almost diametrically opposed, to the point that John describes as a slander.
I think the rhetorical force of the analogy as it’s more usually deployed is premised on the denial of your claim that it was once possible for reasonable people who were neither stupid nor insane to regard the institution of slavery as justifiable and even legitimized by scripture.
That helps, Peter, but I was going to draw a somewhat different distinction. In fact I sympathize quite a lot with the observation that the eventual rejection of what was once “traditional” (and even, though in a rather narrow sense, “orthodox”) should lead us to be humble (i.e., “plant seeds of doubt”, as JS puts it) in our appeals to tradition. But the problem is that remarks like the one I quoted paint with far too broad a brush: for all of us share some beliefs and forms of argument in common with some people who believed things that we now deem atrocious, and the notion that this in itself is enough to show us up as apologists for falsehood or injustice is simply ludicrous. It’s exactly that, by the way, that’s at the heart of the remarks of MLK that Linker got all after Dreher for quoting; to King, the idea that professedly orthodox and “traditionalist” Christian apologists for discrimination was evidence that we should do away with orthodoxy or tradition had very little to be said for it, and there’s certainly nothing disingenuous in Rod’s having pointed that out.
Well it seems pretty clear to me that a war that was launched on flimsy (at best) premises and led to the death of tens of thousands of civilians involved a fair amount of wanton (in the sense of unjust, unprovoked, and insufficiently controlled or disciplined) killing. Perhaps I should have used a different word; the same goes for “decidedly”, by which I just meant “definitely” and not “agreed up on by all (or: all reasonable, etc. persons)”.
As to the long run and the short, it seems very hard to me to work out the counterfactuals, let alone assign causal significance to a particular event, when it’s this kind of situation and we’re talking decades or more down the line. But then again my philosophical imagination is rather famously impoverished …
(this comment is tangential to your actual post. Sorry!)
Peter, yes. I should have made clear that my way of using the slavery analogy is quite different than the one John suggested. I don’t deem my use as slanderous, and it’s only weakly “guilt by association”.
I don’t think the analogy is a slam-dunk argument, by any means. At best, it helps to weaken intuitions. It’s also not appropriate or effective with everyone. I think it’s a sort of prolegomena that helps to make more effective further theological (and other) arguments for the morality of homosexuality.
I sympathize with John that we shouldn’t throw out tradition, and I just think that Christian arguments for homosexuality will emphasize other elements in Christian tradition and theology (that’s what MLK did). For example, we might emphasize marriage as most importantly “covenantal”, and we can still draw metaphors between gay marriage and God’s relationship to the church. We might emphasize Gal. 3:28 where Paul says that in Christ there is neither “Slave nor free…Jew or Greek…man and woman”, and support an interpretation that serves to weaken the idea of complementarity inscribed in nature or strong notions of gender roles. This verse has been used to support abolition and it is used to support women in ministry.
I think the points you raise here are definitely worth considering. But the appeal to tradition that I make in this post and other things I’ve written about SSM is meant to be largely orthogonal to the question of whether homosexual sex is licit; I suppose I do think that the conviction that homosexuals ought to be chaste makes it even more difficult to think that their relationships can be called marriages, but that’s really a further point, since you can very well think that homosexuals can and should be sexually active and that society (and the Church) should recognize their relationships as on a par with heterosexual ones while still thinking that homosexual and heterosexual love are different enough to warrant regarding them as the basis of different sorts of relationships, or at least that bringing them together under the same title would make it harder for our society to hold on to the particular goods that the traditional (i.e., heteronormatively understood) institution of marriage affords us. And it’s these latter ideas that are at the heart of what I’ve been arguing.
By the way, on the general topic of homosexuality and Scripture, Eve Tushnet’s half of this dialogue with Luke Timothy Johnson is quite worth reading: http://commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1957.
That’s not so obvious to me. I’d argue that both the church and the state are damaged each time they intermingle, regardless the outcome. They may share values and work toward common goals, but should never do so together. I imagine we’ll have to agree to disagree here.
We’ve just come off a long period in America with the culture wars and the religious right dominating Republican discourse. If you and Daniel would like to argue that these people aren’t true blue christians, or at least failed to act accordingly, that’s all well and good. You, Daniel, and a few others can play Lott this time around.
That separates you personally from the problem but fails to address what I think are glaring problems. What do you think went wrong and what should we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Discourse? Yes, though “dominating” seems to strong. But what about politics or – more crucially – policies? Hardly.
LOTS of things have gone wrong, and what Daniel and I are saying is that one way to keep that from happening again is to be – i.e., act like – better Christians.