Compartmentalization

by Kieran Healy on June 8, 2004

For a few years in graduate school I wrote a regular column for the “Daily Princetonian”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com, Princeton’s main student newspaper. I got into a bit of trouble once or twice over it, notably for a “piece I wrote”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/columns/crusade.html out of irritation with the local chapter of the “Campus Crusade for Christ”:http://www.ccci.org/.

I was reminded of this when I learned, via “Billmon”:http://billmon.org, of the “strong Christian beliefs”:http://billmon.org/archives/001518.html of “General Counsel Mary Walker”:http://www.pwfsd.org/article.php?sid=238. She led the legal team that wrote the “recently leaked memo”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/politics/08ABUS.html?hp arguing that there were no legal considerations, domestic or foreign, that prevented the President from authorizing torture. She is also a co-founded of the “Professional Women’s Fellowship”:http://www.pwfsd.org/, an offshoot of the CCC. Philip Carter at “Intel Dump”:http://www.intel-dump.com has described the memo as “‘a cookbook approach for illegal government conduct'”:http://www.intel-dump.com/archives/archive_2004_06_07.shtml#1086610719. Here is Walker in an “interview”:http://www.pwfsd.org/article.php?sid=238 about her beliefs, followed by a snippet of her report:

bq. *Walker*: “Making moral decisions in the workplace where it is easy to go along and get along takes courage. It takes moral strength and courage to say, ‘I’m not going to do this because I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.'”
*The report*: Officials could escape torture convictions by arguing that they were following superior orders, since such orders “may be inferred to be lawful” and are “disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate.”

With just a little more effort here, we could push through to the world of “Jack Lint”:http://www.trond.com/brazil/images/brazil48.jpg, the character played by Michael Palin in “Brazil”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/.

*Update*: The Walker interview was yanked from the Professional Women’s Fellowship website, in a Christian act of covering up embarrassing stuff. But “Billmon”:http://billmon.org/archives/001524.html has a copy.

{ 19 comments }

1

Walt Pohl 06.08.04 at 7:59 am

Ow… Head hurts… Make it stop…

2

DJW 06.08.04 at 8:37 am

Gawd, I wish I’d written that CCC column when I was in college. I’m sure whatever trouble was caused was worth it.

3

belle 06.08.04 at 11:08 am

All Hail the Great Kitty! Mysterious are His ways! Quail, false pet-owners, before His righteous feline wrath!

4

Fred Vincy 06.08.04 at 11:11 am

Excellent column — motivated by irritation or otherwise. I assume that you did not get “in trouble” with anyone who was actually thoughtful about the subject?

5

drapeto 06.08.04 at 3:52 pm

Kitty loves me this I know, because his thump into my lap tells me so.

6

matt 06.08.04 at 4:49 pm

What makes you think that Walker doesn’t just think that toruring darkie non-christians is the “right thing to do”? That would smooth it all out to her, wouldn’t it?

(The old news column is quite funny, too.)

7

matt 06.08.04 at 4:54 pm

Save us from the true believers

8

Matt Weiner 06.08.04 at 5:38 pm

Really didn’t see how the Campus Crusade for Cats was supposed to be a reductio until I got to the part about women and…. brrr…. Andrew Lloyd Webber. I’m starting a splinter movement that says it’s heretical to set Scripture to music, at least crap music.

9

Nat Whilk 06.08.04 at 6:39 pm

Your description of the ad doesn’t make it sound like CCC is calling Moslems liars. Do Moslems claim that “all roads lead to God”?

10

anand sarwate 06.08.04 at 7:05 pm

Actually, at MIT there is a group called the Campus Crusade for Cthulu that used to throw some pretty OK parties. There are chapters at other schools too.

11

Ophelia Benson 06.08.04 at 8:30 pm

Questions about bare minimum to get into Heaven and what’s the door policy very very good indeed. Well done (thou good and faithful etc).

So – communion with Meow Mix? Genuflection replaced by the rubbing of cheeks against pews? Singing of hymns replaced by discreet spraying?

12

Chris 06.08.04 at 8:39 pm

Not quite sure what the point here is supposed to be. One thing about Christianity is that it actually predicts that even its most ardent practitioners will fail to live up to its moral demands. So what’s the surprise?

It’s quite sound to criticize Mary Walker for writing a report legitimizing torture. But your post reads as if you think it’s some sort of sound criticism of Christianity. Yet Christianity, rightly understood, forbids torture: one cannot do evil so that good may result. So again, I’m not quite sure what your point is.

13

Nat Whilk 06.08.04 at 9:23 pm

Ophelia Benson wrote:

Questions about bare minimum to get into Heaven and what’s the door policy very very good indeed.

Unlike those in CCC, I’m not an Evangelical Christian, but I’m surprised that they didn’t reply to Kieran’s query by citing something like Romans 10:9. (That’s typically the response I got from my Evangelical friends when I was in college.) Maybe the students at this “different university” were exceptionally dim. Or maybe they didn’t feel like responding to someone who only seemed intent on ridiculing them.

14

Lance Boyle 06.08.04 at 10:09 pm

Tacit commonality: dedication to truth.
And the goal of that would be: survival.
Of: us.
Only it’s becoming uncomfortably clear that “us” is no longer a whole-system term. “Us” is now a group-subjective local definition.
So we have the long-term goal being survival of a particular group to which “we”(meaning me and you) may or may not belong; in this case – CCC and Mary Whozis – not.
But everyone’s still clinging to the tacit assumption that the truth is the final arbiter. Conferring, as it once did in the completely artificial landscape of the educational system that shaped most of our world-views, an implicit superiority, once it can be demonstrated. But sadly, no.
Survival itself is the final arbiter, kids, not the truth.
Lying to survive is very common in the natural world, from whence cometh the very divisory “Darwinian” amoralities so disturbing to the fundamentalist religious groups in question.
What difference does it make if you can prove they’re wrong intellectually, if they don’t care?
Because they don’t, at all. They care not one whit if they’re wrong about this or that, if not caring means they survive.
And that’s the real goal. For all of us.
Banding together around a core of nonsensical gibberish has just as much evolutionary validity as selfless dedication to the-truth-at-all-costs, more if it provides a leg up in the clinch. Fangs and claws, guns and ammo, bombs and electrodes; or inspirational rhetoric concerning human rights… You decide.
So the question then becomes, who gets the evolutionary advantage: self-hypnotizing zealots with bomb-proof delusional beliefs, or snarky pragmatists with no fundamental social cohesion?

E pluribus unum, baby.

15

djw 06.08.04 at 10:10 pm

In case anyone’s wondering about n.w.’s verse:

Romans 10
9That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

This makes the whole aggressive attempt to convert seem rather misplaced. Heaven requires no action, just an accurate statement of sincere belief. Of course, some blowhard calling Muslims liars seems pretty unlikely to change anyone’s sincere, heartfelt beliefs.

16

Nat Whilk 06.08.04 at 11:23 pm

djw wrote:

Heaven requires no action, just an accurate statement of sincere belief.

According to Romans 10:9, that sincere belief needs to be that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.

Of course, some blowhard calling Muslims liars seems pretty unlikely to change anyone’s sincere, heartfelt beliefs.

Sorry to be repetitious, but it sounds to me like the CCC’ers were calling those who say “all roads lead to God” liars. Do Moslems believe that all roads lead to God?

17

Kieran Healy 06.09.04 at 12:29 am

Yeah the line about Moslems should really be about ecumenical types.

18

Kieran Healy 06.09.04 at 12:30 am

Though the point still holds that it’s obnoxious to call them liars.

19

djw 06.09.04 at 7:46 am

n.w.,

According to Romans 10:9, that sincere belief needs to be that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.

Well, yes, I can read. I didn’t say any sincere belief.

Sorry to be repetitious, but it sounds to me like the CCC’ers were calling those who say “all roads lead to God” liars. Do Moslems believe that all roads lead to God?

I don’t know, you’ll have to ask them. Many of them probably not. Look, that wasn’t my point. If we assume that Romans 10:9 is absolutely correct, that leaves open the question, how do we get the heathens on board? My suggestion is simple–give ’em the good stuff first. The stuff about God’s unconditional love, a community in Christ, etc. Then, once they’re hooked, you can slip it to them that they have to be intolerant blowhards w/r/t other religious traditions. It just seems like it would work better that way.

Normally I don’t go to lengths to mock religion like this, but the CCC always brought that urge out in me. Not the other Christian groups on campuses, btw. The CCC were so committed to social martyrdom and publicity stunts designed to offend (at least on my campus, and perhaps Princeton) that it’s hard to imagine they didn’t drive more people away from Christianity than they brought to it. But boy, did they get to feel superior.

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