That’s the point of view of this film clip the documentarian Alexandra Pelosi put together for Bill Maher’s show:

I got this via Andrew Sullivan, who defends it as representative of attitudes in Mississippi. Count me as someone who agrees the Sullivan reader who complained that this is as representative of the South as somebody finding the most deranged and flamboyant gutter-dwellers in San Francisco are of gay America. I want to point out, though, a comment one of these supposedly backwards rednecks makes in this clip:

“We would rather go broke and die hungry than to give up our moral beliefs. … I’m gonna stand up for what I believe in even if I go broke doing it.”

Isn’t that a noble sentiment? The idea that you would rather suffer materially to stand up for what you believe is right? Why is that evidence of backwardness? I think it’s heroic, actually. Now, depending on what this guy believes in, it may also be tragic. That is, if the beliefs for which he is willing to suffer are immoral. But if you ask me, this Mississippian who stands ready to endure privation for the sake of principle has more integrity than those who would mock him. If these very same words came out of the mouth of, say, a Mississippi reception hall owner who was prepared to lose business because of a principled decision to allow a gay wedding events at his place, Andrew, Alexandra Pelosi, and Bill Maher would call him an American hero.

UPDATE: Ask yourself how you would feel if Alexandra Pelosi traveled through Mississippi collecting filmed anecdotes of black hicks saying silly or repulsive things, and then HBO broadcast it for the sake of ridiculing their backwardness. How would we regard that? Poor white people, especially poor country white people, are the only people our overclass think it’s okay to make fun of.

I’ve been meaning to throw a few words into the interesting discussion going on among Ross Douthat, Yuval Levin, and others over Levin’s take on Charles Murray’s new book.  First, this excerpt from Levin’s review:

Rather, the cultural disaster Murray describes seems to be a failing of America’s moral (and therefore largely its religious) institutions. And although he does not put it this way, Coming Apart is a scathing indictment of American social conservatism.

Social conservatism serves two kinds of purposes in a liberal society: We might call them justice and order. In the cause of justice, it speaks up for the weak and the oppressed, defending them from abuse by the powerful, and vindicating basic human dignity. In the cause of order, it helps us combat our human failings and vices, and argues for self-discipline and responsibility. Think of abolition on the one hand and temperance on the other.

In our time, American social conservatism has much to be proud of as a movement for justice: Social conservatives devote themselves to the pro-life cause, to human rights, and to the plight of the poor abroad. But American social conservatism has almost entirely lost interest in the cause of order—in standing up for clean living, for self-discipline and restraint, for resisting temptation and meeting basic responsibilities. The institutions of American Christianity—some of which would actually stand a chance of being taken seriously by the emerging lower class—are falling down on the job, as their attention is directed to more exciting causes, in no small part because the welfare state has overtaken some of their key social functions.

The cultural revival essential to addressing the crisis Murray describes is barely imaginable as long as this remains the case.

At NRO, David French, a conservative Evangelical, reacts with a scathing critique of his own side. Excerpt:

During my years in the pews, I’ve witnessed a moral collapse — and a corresponding collapse in positive influence over the real lives not just of our fellow congregants but also of our fellow citizens in need.  Of course it’s difficult to present a compelling witness when our own practices and lifestyle are often indistinguishable from the larger culture, but the problems get more specific. Here are three:

1. We are more focused on meeting the material needs of the poor than their spiritual needs. Spend much time in the evangelical community, and you’ll soon learn that the old-fashioned Gospel-focused mission trip is largely a thing of the past. Now, you go build schools. Now, you go dig water wells. Now, you repair houses. These are worthy goals, all, but service projects by themselves don’t change hearts and minds, they often make (frequently) self-inflicted misery more bearable. Service must be accompanied by intentional, vocal evangelism and discipling.

His other two points are basically coming from Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. He says that the market approach to church-as-therapeutic-institution that characterizes modern Evangelicalism is devastating: “We cannot build institutions when our focus is on building the self.”

Ross Douthat has a lot to say about this. From his first post :

As it happens, this is one of the themes of my forthcoming book — the extent to which the story of religion in America over the last two generations is a story, not of outright secularization, but of institutional decline. Contemporary Americans are as religiously-minded as ever, but the rise ofchurch-switching and do-it-yourself faith and the steady weakening of the traditional churches and communions has left the country without religious institutions capable of playing the kind of social role that Levin describes above. This organizational decline has been most pronounced within what’s often described as liberal Christianity — in the churches of the Protestant Mainline, and in the “Spirit of Vatican II” wing of the Catholic Church. But among more self-consciously conservative believers, too, constant church-shopping is commonplace (just ask Marco Rubio), national political causes often excite more interest than local social engagement, and the glue of confessional and denominational traditions is much weaker than in generations past. The vitality of American Christianity today is too often a vitality of individuals rather than institutions, or else of institutions that depend too heavily on a single personality for their strength and survival. We have plenty of celebrity pastors and authors and bloggers and television hosts, but the more corporate and communal forms of faith are growing weaker every day.

In a follow-up post just published, Ross talks about how so many churches today, on both the theological left and the right, come to think of themselves in factional and political terms. He recommends the excellent book “American Grace,” the in-depth sociological portrait of American religion published a couple of years ago. As AG authors Bob Putnam and David Campbell note, it appears that American churchgoers pick their churches/parishes more by political criteria rather than having their parishes determine their politics. You can see why this would make people hive themselves off into congregations where they aren’t likely to hear the part of the full Christian message that they need to hear, but don’t want to hear.

In that latest post, Ross muses that American Christianity might benefit from having more Ivy Leaguers go into the full-time ministry (remember, this entire discussion began with Yuval Levin’s assessment of Murray’s book, which itself is focused on the cultural chasm between white elites and the white working class). I’m skeptical of this. Remember Timothy Dalrymple’s much-remarked-upon essay about the moral cesspool at Princeton Theological Seminary when he studied there? I learned later that a new administration has apparently righted the ship at PTS, and besides, one place does not necessarily speak for the entire Ivy League. Still, this might be my own prejudice talking, but I can’t help doubting that the kind of Christianity that I imagine interests Ivy Leaguers is the kind of Christianity that could participate in the kind of moral and social revival Levin and the rest of us hope for. I could, of course, be wrong, and I welcome (seriously!) information from better informed readers who can counter my skepticism. It’s my impression that this kind of statement — from a female Episcopal priest commenting on her nomination, as well as the nomination of an openly gay male priest, to fill the spot left by retiring (gay) Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson — is the kind of thing that captivates the religious and moral imagination of most Ivy League Christians:

“It is significant that the church is growing in a diocese which has led the way in radical inclusion, and we should learn from this and apply the same values across the church,” she wrote. “When our church tries to avoid conflict by shying away from the work of social justice, we lose the possibility of offering a compelling narrative, and membership declines. New Hampshire is living by example in embracing the gifts of all people; this example is to be nurtured and strengthened.”

For the record, official TEC figures show that the diocese now has fewer baptized and attending members than when Bp Robinson was named in 2003. But whatever.

Anyway, back to the original question: Is Murray’s book a “scathing indictment” of social conservatism’s failure, because, as Yuval Levin writes, “American social conservatism has almost entirely lost interest in the cause of order—in standing up for clean living, for self-discipline and restraint, for resisting temptation and meeting basic responsibilities”? My gut tells me yes, probably. But I wonder too if there are ears to hear this message, which is radically countercultural. On the Religious Right (where, broadly, I find myself), our great failing has been to assume uncritically that the free market goes hand in glove with Christianity, and, relatedly, that the whole of social conservatism consists of being pro-life and holding the correct attitudes about sex.

Anyway, the point of this long and rambling post is really just to start a conversation about Yuval Levin’s observation, not settle any arguments.

In the current issue of The Atlantic, Megan McArdle writes about the role of demographics in Europe’s financial crisis. Excerpt:

Strong growth by Europe’s troubled debtor nations would of course offer a different, and less painful, way out. After all, if you make $30,000 a year, a $10,000 credit-card balance is crippling; but if you make $300,000 a year, it’s fairly trivial. The faster Italy’s economy expands, the more manageable Italy’s debt becomes.

But that’s where the dearth of workers comes into play. Everyone agrees that rapid growth would be much nicer than higher taxes and slashed pension payments. The hitch is that over the past five years, growth in the Italian economy hasn’t averaged even 1 percent a year. Soaring growth will be tough to achieve, because more and more Italians are getting too old to work—and fewer and fewer Italians have been having the babies needed to replace them.

Italy’s fertility rate has actually been inching up from its 1995 low of 1.19 children for every woman, but it is still only about 1.4—well below the number needed to replenish its population (2.1). As a result, even with some immigration, Italy’s population growth has been very slow. It will soon stall, and eventually go into reverse. And then, one by one, the rest of Europe’s nations will follow. Not one country on the Continent has a fertility rate high enough to replace its current population. Heavy debt and a shrinking population are a very bad combination.

More:

“The problem,” says Canning, “is that aging is a new thing. We know quite well what the effects of going to low fertility are—but we’ve never seen this sort of aging before, so it’s hard to make predictions.”

One prediction is safe, however: aging will present challenges that, as of now, no nation has adequately prepared to face.

This is a familiar story to longtime readers of this blog. TMatt wonders why the story didn’t feature anything about the role of religious belief, and how it’s changing, in its report. Excerpt:

At this point, we are left with some interesting questions: Why is the birth rate so low in Italy? Might this have something to do with changing norms among Catholics? What is the birth rate for Italian Catholics, these days?

This leads to another question or two: If Italy’s birth rate has ticked up a bit in the wake of recent waves of immigration, where precisely are these immigrants coming from? Would Morocco be a likely source?

To answer either of those questions, journalists will need to ask some religious questions. The answers to those questions will lead to a final pair of questions: Is there a connection between high birth rates (or even normal, sustaining birth rates) and religious faith? What is this connection?

I don’t think it’s fair to fault this particular story for not exploring the religious element of this issue. It’s a fairly straightforward analysis of the long-term economic impact of low fertility and high aging, written by the magazine’s business editor. Still, I would love to see an Atlantic piece in the future examining the dynamic relationship among fertility, religious belief, and modernity. Fertility rates have fallen off the cliff all over the world — even in Muslim countries. True, Western nations began our demographic decline before Muslim nations did, but this is a near-universal phenomenon. Latin America, source of most of America’s illegal immigrants, has suffered a steep fertility decline, such that it’s now just about at replacement rate.

To be sure, it is interesting to consider the role religion, and religious ideas about fertility, play in this dynamic. It is quite clear that whatever the Catholic Church’s teachings about fertility and contraception are, the overwhelming majority of Catholics in the world do not live by those teachings. What interests me about this is how popular practice affects our understanding of religion, and, over time, religion itself.

Here’s what I’m talking about. I’m reading a great book now, The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography From the Revolution to the First World War. Its author, historian Graham Robb, pedaled his bicycle around the country for four years, researching this book. His argument is that our idea of France — France’s idea of France — is a fairly recent fiction concocted by Parisians, and intellectual and cultural elites who saw the entire country through a Parisian, nationalistic lens. The wild linguistic and cultural variety of France was simply not seen as important, if it was seen at all, by the modernizers. Robb is fantastic talking about la France profonde — the France that existed off the grid, in which most French people lived until basically the day before yesterday, but which wasn’t thought of as important because all eyes were on Paris. He writes about everyday life for these people in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how staggeringly difficult it was.

For me, the biggest revelation — and the one most challenging to my idea about the past — is Robb’s discussion of religion. I don’t suppose it should surprise me, but it’s made me reflect on how my idea about Christianity in the European past is distorted by the same intellectual habits, or forces, that Robb identifies as suppressing (intentionally or not) the true wild nature of life as it was actually lived in France back then. Put simply, I wrongly confuse the history of (theological) ideas with the history of the culture. Robb points out in his narrative that the Christianity these country people — Catholics, mostly — practiced was in many ways very different from the official, formal Christianity taught by the Church. In general, it was far more paganized than people today realize, paganized to a degree that would give traddie types like me conniptions if it were to be found in parishes today. For example:

The great cathedrals of France and their numberless flock of parish churches might appear to represent a more powerful common bond. Almost 98 percent of the population was Catholic. In fact, religious practice varied wildly. … Heavenly beings were no more cosmopolitan than their worshippers. The graven saint or Virgin Mary of one village was not considered to be the same as the saint or the Virgin down the road. Beliefs and practices centred on prehistoric stones and magic wells bore only the faintest resemblance to Christianity. The local priest might be useful as a literate man, but as a religious authority he had to prove his worth in competition with healers, fortune-tellers, exorcists and people who would apparently change the weather and resuscitate dead children. Morality and religious feeling were independent of Church dogma. The fact that the Church retained the right to impose taxes until the Revolution was of far greater significane to most people than its ineffectual ban on birth control.

There are plenty of detailed accounts subsequent to this, but I’m too lazy to type any of them in. Robb doesn’t appear to have any axes to grind against the Church. He appears simply to be trying to determine what the lives of ordinary people were really like — the kind of people whose experiences haven’t been thought of as historically significant by the kind of people who write histories.

Reading this book makes me question what I thought I knew about the past of my own religion. It’s made me aware that I have this idea that the past — the Christian past — is a lot neater and cleaner than it actually was. I tend to think of this period in Christian history as a golden age of faith. Everybody believed in God. Everybody went to Mass. Religious orthodoxy was pretty much a settled matter (except for that unpleasantness with the Protestants, of course). Etcetera.

Reading in Robb about how actual religious and parish life was in 18th and 19th century France, outside of the cities — and the overwhelming majority of the French lived outside the cities — makes me wonder if we really are any worse off today, in terms of heterodoxy and heteropraxy, than Christians of earlier ages. This ties back to the question about religion and fertility in that it makes me wonder if our religious ideas and practices aren’t more driven by material and cultural realities than material and cultural realities are driven by religious ideas. To be sure, I don’t think it’s an “either/or” causal path. It’s an ebbing and flowing dialectic. Still, the Robb book, aside from being wonderful on its own, is challenging the settled ways I had of thinking about our Christian past, especially in relation to the post-Christian present.

UPDATE: I’ll give you another example from the book. It’s shocking and heartbreaking to read about how the children of the poor lived, and died, in France of this era. I’m not talking about children taken by disease. I’m talking about children who lived in a time and among people who didn’t have enough to eat. Robb talks about “angelmakers,” village women whose job it was to kill newborns whose parents didn’t want them or couldn’t afford them:

In 1869, over 7 percent of births in France were illegitimate, and one-third of those children were abandoned. Each year, fifty thousand human beings started life in France without a parent. Many were sent to enterprising women known as “angel-makers” who performed what can most kindly be described as postnatal abortions. A report on the hospice at Rennes defined them as “women who have no milk and who — doubtless for a fee — feloniously take care of several children at the same time. The children perish almost immediately.”

Before 1779, the nuns who ran the foundling hospital in Paris were obliged by law to take the infant overflow from the provinces. This emergency regulation produced one of the strangest sights on the main roads of France. Long-distance donkeys carrying panniers stuffed with babies came to the capital from as far away as Brittany, Lorraine and the Auvergne. The carters set out on their 250-mile journeys with four or five babies to a basket, but in towns and villages along the route they struck deals with midwives and parents. For a small fee, they would push in a few extra babies. To make the load more tractable and easier on the ears, the babies were given wine instaed of milk. Those that died were dumped at the roadside like rotten apples. In Paris, the carters were paid by the head and evidently delievered enough to make it worth their while. But for every ten living babies that reached the capital, only one survived more than three days.

These tiny, drunken creatures made epic journeys that dwarfed the journeys of most adults.  …

I never imagined that there was a time when abortion didn’t exist. What I honestly hadn’t imagined was this sort of thing. It’s hard to take in. But it’s part of why I love reading history: it helps me understand my own time, and my judgments of it, better.

Dear People of the Pacific Northwest:

If the Sasquatches don’t get you first, the Cascadia Fault will. Run! Excerpt:

People in the United States and Canada, if they think at all about earthquake disasters, probably conjure up theSan Andreas fault in the worst-case scenario. In California, as they wait for “the Big One,” people wonder which city the San Andreas will wreck next—San Francisco or Los Angeles? But if by the Big One they mean the earthquake that will wreak havoc over the widest geographic area, that could destroy the most critical infrastructure, that could send a train of tsunamis across the Pacific causing economic mayhem that would probably last a decade or more—then the seismic demon to blame could not possibly be the San Andreas. It would have to be Cascadia’s fault.

One year after Japan’s devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, scientists are still trying to figure out how the world’s most organized and earthquake-ready nation could have been taken so much by surprise. They were hit by an earthquake roughly 
25 times more powerful than experts thought 
possible in that part of the country. How could the forecast have been so wrong? The short answer is they didn’t look far enough back in geologic time to see that quakes and tsunamis just this big had indeed occurred there before.

I’m glad I live in a part of the country where natural mega-disasters don’t happen. Oh, wait…

Seriously, my favorite part of living in eastern Pennsylvania was the relatively mild weather. Never too hot, rarely too cold. Four actual seasons. Tornadoes almost never. A really strong thunderstorm there was a below-average thunderstorm for Texas and Louisiana.

Fr. Marcel Guarnizo, the priest whose ministerial faculties were withdrawn by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, has released a long statement defending his conduct in the incident in which he refused Buddhist lesbian Barbara Johnson communion. He explains his actions, and says the Archdiocese is spinning when it says his suspension has nothing to do with the communion incident. Excerpt:

I am confident that my own view, that I did the only thing a faithful Catholic priest could do in such an awkward situation, quietly, with no intention to hurt or embarrass, will be upheld.

Otherwise any priest could-and many will-face the cruelest crisis of conscience that can be imposed. It seems to me, the lack of clarity on this most basic issue puts at risk other priests who wish to serve the Catholic Church in Washington D.C.

As to the latest allegations, I feel obliged to alleviate unnecessary suffering for the faithful at St. John Neumann and others who are following the case.

I wish to state that in conversation with Bishop Barry Knestout on the morning of March 13, he made it very clear that the whole of the case regarding the allegations of “intimidation” are circumscribed to two conversations; one with the funeral director and the other with a parish staff member present at the funeral. These conversations took place on March 7th and 8th, one day before the archdiocese’s latest decision to withdraw faculties (not suspend, since Cardinal Wuerl is not my bishop) on the 9th of March. I am fully aware of both meetings. And indeed contrary to the statement read on Sunday March 11th during all Masses at St. John Neumann, both instances have everything to do with the Eucharistic incident. There is no hidden other sin or “intimidation” allegations that they are working on, outside of these two meetings. The meetings in question, occurred in our effort to document from people at the funeral Mass in written form a few facts about the nature of the incident. We have collected more than a few testimonies and affidavits, testifying to what really took place during the funeral liturgy.

Now it gets real. If the Archdiocese has anything else on Fr. Guarnizo, it’s going to have to release it. He’s basically called the Archdiocese a pack of liars.

Today is the day Orthodox Christians observe the feast of St. Benedict of Nursia, founder of Western monasticism. Because he’s a saint of the pre-schism Church, the Orthodox recognize him as a saint, just as the Roman Catholics do. Via Matthew Milliner, I read this interesting account of a 10th-century Benedictine who left Monte Cassino and ended up on Mount Athos, living in a Western Rite monastery there. Excerpt:

John of Benevento later made his way from Jerusalem to Sinai, dwelt there for six years, then set his face towards Greece, sojourning ‘upon the mountain which is called Agionoros’ [approx. 993], where he dwelt at Amalfion, among his countrymen. And there it was that St Benedict appeared to him in sleep, ordering him to return to Monte Cassino to be elected abbot. He did return, and—Manso having died in 997—he was chosen to be John III, 29th Abbot of Monte Cassino.

I did not realize until reading this that there had been an Athonite monastery that followed the Rule of St. Benedict. The Amalfion monastery lasted from the 10th through the 13th centuries. Read about it here.

Michael Brendan Dougherty spoils all the fun by pointing out in plain English that whether we like it or not, Mitt Romney is going to be the GOP nominee. Excerpt:

Mitt Romney has won almost 1.2 million more votes than Rick Santorum overall. How much did Rick Santorum gain on him last night?

39,119 votes. 

So in Rick Santorum’s “big wins” he erased approximately 1.35 percent of Romney’s lead in votes. That’s it. And remember, four years ago Mike Huckabee won these state primaries, but no one for a second believed that he had a chance of taking the nomination away from John McCain.

Boo, Michael Brendan Dougherty! Stop making sense!

Remember the other day, when The New York Times published a full-page ad by an atheist group, calling in very vivid language for Catholics to leave their Church? I said then:

I don’t really object to the message here — I mean, the organization has a point; if you believe these things, then you really ought to think hard about whether you should remain in the Church — but the language of the ad is hysterically spiteful. I find it impossible to believe that the Times would have allowed an organization that denounced Judaism or Islam in those terms to purchase an advertisement. For The New York Times, some religions are more equal than others.

Well, that didn’t take long. Pamela Geller and her crew tried to place just such an ad. Here’s what happened:

Bob Christie, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for the New York Times, just called me to advise me that they would be accepting my ad, but considering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, now would not be a good time, as they did not want to enflame an already hot situation. They will be reconsidering it for publication in “a few months.”

So I said to Mr. Christie, “Isn’t this the very point of the ad? If you feared the Catholics were going to attack the New York Times building, would you have run that ad?”

Mr. Christie said, “I’m not here to discuss the anti-Catholic ad.”

I said, “But I am, it’s the exact same ad.”

He said, “No, it’s not.”

I said, “I can’t believe you’re bowing to this Islamic barbarity and thuggery. I can’t believe this is the narrative. You’re not accepting my ad. You’re rejecting my ad. You can’t even say it.”

You don’t have to be a supporter of Pamela Geller and her group to see quite plainly the ugly things this stunt reveals about The New York Times‘s integrity. I don’t think publishing the anti-Catholic ad is a sign of anti-Christian bigotry. One should not assume that the Times leadership agrees with advertising the paper publishes. But choosing to publish that ad, while refusing to publish a similar ad criticizing Islam, is, to my mind, a sign of anti-Christian bigotry at worst, and cowardice and hypocrisy at best.

The European magazine sits down with German public intellectual Martin Walser. This portion of their interview caught my eye:

The European: I think that we have to understand Barth in the context of existentialism. Here’s someone who does not want to give up his faith, but who struggles to make sense of it through the traditional methods and arguments of Christian theology.
Walser: The existentialism of Sartre has nothing to do with Barth. Sartre is completely within this world, not otherworldly. He can be justified through social actions. Camus, maybe. But I am interested in something else. Once you have awakened to the question of faith, you cannot simply return to your everyday agenda like a committed atheist could. You cannot retreat to the comforts of atheism. Behind us are two thousand years that have been marked by questions about God. Today’s atheistic calm, even from intellectuals, is equal to the eradication of our intellectual history.

The European: Why?
Walser: Because we would have to admit that we were crazy. You cannot spend two thousand years trying to understand God and then simply abandon the question and declare that we’re not interested in it anymore.

The European: Skepticism, atheism, existentialism – all those intellectual traditions have their own long histories that have co-existed with theology.
Walser: I believe that the most important condition for faith is sensitivity to beauty. We have the capacity to find something beautiful. Take Bach or Schubert: Their music was dedicated to God but filled and shaped their worldly lives. If you are a committed atheist, you lean back and miss all the richness of that history. As an atheist, you cannot fully make sense of the music, you have no explanation for their perennial motion and rhythm. I have been touched by that history and I am still moved by it. So I cannot simply abandon questions about the existence of God. I am touched by the works of beauty that have been brought into the world through religion, and I cannot simply embrace the everyday experience of atheism. Our history towards transcendentalism is too rich for that. You don’t need music to express that history – Barth or Kierkegaard use language. Barth’s commentary of St. Paul’s “Epistle to the Romans” are 600 pages of passionate prose. Before reading Barth, I thought that only Nietzsche could be so passionate in writing, in his “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” for example. But Nietzsche’s passion is leading nowhere, the Übermensch doesn’t exist. It is a tendency, not a subject in historical time. Since Nietzsche, nobody has questioned positivism with that much passion.