Religion and Politics

Brad’s point is flawed because he fails to mention that the Bible (in its entirety, i.e. including the Old Testament) contains so many different opinions about so many different things that you can pick and choose to justify anything that you want. (I’m sure Islam is the same). It’s meaningless to say Christianity ‘is’ a religion of peace (or Islam ‘is’ a religion of peace) or a religion of war or whatever. Either way you can always find quotes to back up what you say.

An interesting question is: does Australia have a ‘state’ church (like the C of E) or is there a seperation of church and state thing going on there, too?

Many American churches function politically about as Brian described Australian churches doing — the so-called “main-line” churches (Lutheran, Catholic, etc.) .

When people here talk about religion in politics, however, they almost exclusively talk about the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-evolution churches because of their greater fervor and more effective political mobilization. They are theologically of dfferent traditions (Pentacostal, Baptist, etc.) and often consist of newly-formed congregations made of people fallen away or split from other denominations, and an anger at modern life is often constitutive of the new churches — the politics was there at the beginning.

The demographics of these churches is different than people think — many are neither poor, rural, nor Southern. In Minnesota here they seem to be especially found in the prosperous “ring suburbs”, whereas the small towns are more likely to be Lutheran of Catholic.

I suspect, without anything but anecdotal evidence, that many of these new churches are rather indulgent of the actual sins of their members, and that the vehement rejection of homosexuality allows parishioners to feel moral at no personal cost. I have known several guys who dated Christian girls by preference, because they are inexperienced, curious, enthusiastic, etc. Pentacostal fervor slopping over into sex is a common story.

I don’t think the asymmetry is as significant as you suggest. The pro-labor Australian churches have made an unprovable (or unfalsifiable) value judgment, based on their understanding of their faith, that workers possess a certain body of rights, and they are opposing changes to the IR system because they see those changes as impinging upon the rights that their faith causes them to believe in. The anti-abortion American churches have made an unprovable (or unfalsifiable) value judgment, based on their understanding of their faith, that fetuses possess a certain body of rights, and they oppose Roe v. Wade because they see that line of law as impinging upon the rights that their faith causes them to believe in. The fact that the American churches are more explicit in stating the religious bases of their views strikes me as a question of tactics and effectiveness, not authority to speak.

I don’t think that saying “workers have rights” is any more or less “public” than saying “fetuses have rights.” As you point out, people can arrive at the same conclusion supporting workers’ rights, even if they are approaching the issue from a secular perspective. The same is true as to abortion; one can reason from secular value judgments and still arrive at a conclusion similar to that of the anti-American churches, that fetuses have rights that are not protected by current law. (Certainly, such people are relatively rare in American commentary, but Nat Hentoff is one example, anyway).

Acts 10:9-16 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)

On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:

And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance,

And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth:

Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air.

And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.

But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.

And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven.

‘Acts 10:9-16 means that any Old Testament commandment – except the ones with which I agree – can and should be ignored.’

Er….am I like missing something here?

Tom t nails it. What is at issue is the plausibility and warrant of the moral claims being offered. And while there may be religious leaders who support moral positions (for unions, against abortion, whatever) in implausible ways (“it says so here in psalm 78 — problem solved”) many, and I dare say most religious arguments advanced in political discourse are just as technically ‘public’ as those of PETA, or NARAL, or the CATO institute.

…the successful effort in the 60’s and 70’s to drive Christianity out of public life.
I wonder how samchevre manages to communicate with us from the parallel universe which he apparently inhabits. The cosmologists need to get on this right away.

Get a life, dude. One of the most important things that actually happened in the 60s, the civil rights movement, had a very important overtly religious component. And at no time did candidates for high political office ever have to stop declaring their fealty to Christianity in order to get elected. As for an “overtly Christian” government, the United States Constitution is not a prescription for theocracy, nor is an “overtly Christian” government a realistic or desirable thing for a secular, religiously plural society. May I suggest Iran if you would enjoy living in a theocracy.

Celebrate your religion as much as you like. That is your business, not the government’s.

Is it possible for you to comprehend that, in a country in whuch at no time has it ceased to be impossible for an openly unbelieving candidate to be elected to any high office, samchevre’s ruminations about the ejection of Christianity from public life are indeed delusional? I guess not. Goes to show just how dangerous people who want an “overtly Christian government” really are- it’s impossible to satisfy their (Constitutionally inappropriate) demands, especially since the goalposts keep moving.

Brendan, the Jewish Bible contains strict rules on which animals may be eaten and how they must be slaughtered and prepared. Only foods from permitted animals that are prepared properly are “kosher” or ritually clean. When Peter says he has never eaten anything “unclean” he means he has never eaten food that is not kosher. Then the voice tells him that he doesn’t have to observe the dietary laws any more.

Soru – Sam’s rather amusing original claim (#10) was that

Christianity was (successfully) driven out of public life (in the US) during the 60s and 70s

1) Do you seriously want to defend this?
2) Do you own a TV set?

‘Then the voice tells him that he doesn’t have to observe the dietary laws any more.’

Er….yeah I get that. What I don’t get is how that means: ‘Acts 10:9-16 means that any Old Testament commandment – except the ones with which I agree – can and should be ignored.’
(italics added).

There are still public Christmas programs.

‘still’?

Is that in the sense that it is a reducing trend, but there are some left, or that they are regrettable things that should have been abolished a while back?

And I don’t see anything particularly incredible about the claim that explicit Christianity in public affairs peaked in the 1950s, there was a backlash, and then a backlash to the backlash.

soru

Here, Brendan: THE 613 OLD TESTAMENT COMMANDMENTS AND REGULATIONS. That’s not the “Ten Commandments”.

Well, no matter how y’all lie and spin here, we all know the truth: white Christian men are the ones persecuted in America these days. God damn’em libruls, straight to hell.

Where is Sebastian Holsclaw to remind us all that liberals detest good Christians but would applaud a fundamentalist Islamic nominee to the supreme court? It’s just not the same around here without him speaking up to defend that persecuted, victimized white Christian minority.

abb1 and others, you can make fun of American Christian political claims all you like, but you miss the crux of the argument.

Up until about the mid-to-late 1960s, the public morality of the United States – the moral precepts by which its laws were decided, and the framework in which people argued over conflicting moral claims, was essentially Christian. Additionally, Christian symbols and celebrations were given a place of prominence in our political culture.

Since then, there has been a strong shift away from that. There is a movement which grew out of liberalism, which seeks to banish Christian symbolism from government property and government action, and which claims that Christian moral theology has no place in our legal and political deliberations. While this movement pretends to be religiously neutral, it has smuggled into our jurisprudence and lawmaking a set of moral precepts which, while it has many commonalities with Christianity, is avowedly non-Christian.

That is the primary grievance of the “Christian Right” in this country today, though it gets expressed in a number of ways and on a number of issues. Up until the 1960s, there was a Christian Right, and a Christian Left, and even arguments for respecting the rights of non-Christians were made from within a Christian moral framework. As the Left abandoned Christianity, the Right suspects that its claims can no longer be justified within a Christian framework (and the Left reinforces this impression), and therefore, the claims of the Left lack legitimacy. This is doubly true as the Left claims to have a “neutral” or “objective” vision, while in fact, promoting a bastardised Christian moral philosophy. So essentially the Left has embraced a heresy while claiming to have found Truth. The implicit charge of heresy cuts both ways, as the Right’s moral vision, when the Left acknowleges that there is one, looks an awful lot like a bastardised version of the Left’s, which is why our politics grow ever more bitter with time.

Up until about the mid-to-late 1960s, the public morality of the United States – the moral precepts by which its laws were decided, and the framework in which people argued over conflicting moral claims, was essentially Christian.

Could you point me to the biblical verse that enjoined Southern communities to install “Whites Only” signs on drinking fountains and public restrooms?

So we had Christians drawing on their faith as a justification for racial oppression, and other Christians drawing on their faith as a justification for opposing it. And non-Christians, apparently, were expected to sit on their hands and keep quiet, since their rights (or lack thereof) could only be debated in the context of competing schools of Christian doctrine. Or, as you put it:

Up until the 1960s, there was a Christian Right, and a Christian Left, and even arguments for respecting the rights of non-Christians were made from within a Christian moral framework.

Quite a fascinating take on recent American history, Anthony. We needn’t dwell too long the fact that you write “Christian” when you would be more accurate in writing “Protestant”; JFK, after all, had to go to great lengths to reassure people that he wouldn’t be a puppet of the Vatican, so obviously his Christianity didn’t count as the right kind in those days.

Beyond that, I’m looking for some kind of clear distinction between the Golden Age of American Theocracy, as you posit it, and contemporary Iran, where “public morality” is entirely dependent on religious precepts. I can’t find one.

We needn’t dwell too long the fact that you write “Christian” when you would be more accurate in writing “Protestant”

Catholicism wasn’t universally accepted by the whole population, but it was accepted by a significant fraction of it. Al Smith lost in 1928, but being a Catholic wasn’t a barrier to a very large part of the population voting for him. Kennedy did receive a majority of the vote (sort of, but that’s irrelevant here) in 1960, in an election pitting him against a Protestant near-incumbent during reasonably good economic times.

But it’s clear that you’re missing at least some of the point. My narrative is what people on the religious right (of which I am not) generally believe about the course of recent political history. It does people on the Left (or the non-Christian Right) no good to say “Historically, you’re wrong”, or to say “Well, the 1950s were an age of untrammeled theocracy, and we must sweep away the vestiges of those unenlightened times”. What you propose to do by saying such things is to delegitimate the claims of the Religious Right to have a voice in the political sphere, to marginalize them in a way which Jews and atheists were marginalized in the past.

In a democracy, it’s possible to marginalize small minorities without too much difficulty, but it’s much harder to marginalize in excess of a quarter of the population without using violence. Yet that appears to be the Left’s project – not just to reshape America’s laws in accordance with their own moral precepts, but to exclude conservative Christians, and their ideas, from the political arena entirely.

The fact is that even today, the vast majority of the population is at least naively Christian in outlook, and as such, arguments based on, or supported by, references to Christian ideas will play much better among the population at large. There is plenty in Christianity to draw from – the phrase “Christian Socialist” is not an oxymoron.

It is an interesting point that the american civil religion does seem to provide rather a lot of space for justifications for terrorism.

As Moore noted, Minuteman is just another words for jihadist, a religiously-sanctioned Holy Warrior, as explicitly supported in the Holy Writ of the Constitution.

I am sure some approved and trained legal scholar quote chapter and verse from other parts of the Constitution to show that blowing up federal daycare centers was not what the Founding Fathers intended. But that doesn’t seem to affect the young men who go off and do such things.

soru

A dogma that’s too rigid will die. Public conscience evolves, Christianity has to catch up and keep catching up or become fringe and disappear; and same is true for Islam and every other religion and ideology.

Conservatism as such is a losing proposition, its only role is to prevent wild swings. I don’t think what’s happened in the US in regards to law nad morality since the 50s can be interpreted as a series of radical chaotic far-reaching moves; I think it was pretty modest, in fact.

Simon Blackburn has written a paper which nicely articulates some of my own feelings about claims that the rest of us should welcome displays of religiosity (only of the kind approved of by the demander, of course) in the public square.

OK, Kvetch, abb1 and labonne,

Are you really going to defend the proposition, that in matters of race, sex, and creed there hasn’t been a radical change in public discourse in the last 50 years?

Even conservatives don’t openly defend the natural inequality of the races and sexes in the way that was frequent, if not mainstream, as recently as 50 years ago.

The whole idea of the White Man’s Burden and spreading Christianity across the world with fire and sword is just not something one openly discusses to the New York Times.

I assume you think this is a good thing. I think most people do. But it is a change.

To deny the conservative christians the pathetic rump of meaning, the decadent remainder of this once grand dream, and to declare that just because they want elected leaders and supreme court justices to bend the knee on abortion, the death penalty, quotas and prayer in school that things haven’t changed dramatically in America is petty and dishonest.

Its like you want to win AND have the losing side like it and say its not a change.

Anything is possible, but I’m quite certain that if Roe is overturned, the opposition won’t stress the “continuity” of a ban on abortion as a quite “modest” change from prior jurisprudence.

My narrative is what people on the religious right (of which I am not) generally believe about the course of recent political history. It does people on the Left (or the non-Christian Right) no good to say “Historically, you’re wrong”

Huh. Then what, other than unconditional surrender, would do some good? If they’re not open to rational persuasion about flaws in their argument, what do you recommend?

In a democracy, it’s possible to marginalize small minorities without too much difficulty, but it’s much harder to marginalize in excess of a quarter of the population without using violence. Yet that appears to be the Left’s project – not just to reshape America’s laws in accordance with their own moral precepts, but to exclude conservative Christians, and their ideas, from the political arena entirely.

Nonsense. No one seriously proposes to take the vote away from conservative Christians, or deny them the right to make their political arguments on the same terms as everyone else. But those terms include the right of others to disagree. Loudly sometimes.

The problem is that Christianity used to dominate the public square, insofar as anything did. Now it doesn’t. Conservative Christians confuse having to share public space with not being allowed to use it at all. I understand perfectly their unwillingness to share; I’ve been there myself. But I’m no more willing than my mother was to indulge it indefinitely.

Martin,
radical compare to what? Take Spain for example: by the grace of God, Caudillo of Spain and of the Crusade Generalisimo Franco died in 1975 – and a few months ago gay marriage was legalized there. And you’re saying changes in the US have been radical?

Engels, abb1, kvetch,

I’m not trying to make the case that the Christians don’t have power, I’m trying to get you to “feel their pain”. Listen to the feelings behind the grotesque hyperbole not the literal words.

For example, when the doctor spoke to my 6th grade class in 1976 and told us that masturbation was normal, it may not have been Christianity being driven from the public sphere, but it was a cultural change and it may have felt like Christianity being driven from the public sphere to the prudish.

As to abb1’s point about Spain, I agree, but the whole point is that the Christian Right sees Europe as the decadent abyss (and by golly isn’t decrying European decadence as American as apple pie) while most of the left sees Europe as a hoped for ideal.

As to Engel’s 3 points, the point is they ain’t the point. Imagine a standard like the sexual harassment in the workplace standard. If they FEEL like they are being harassed, then they are being harassed.

As for Kvetch, I see the matter much more as identity politics than actual policies. They don’t want people to conform, they want the cultural stnading to stigmatize people who don’t conform on a guilt-free basis.

Here is an even more absurd take on the matter. Part of the appeal of the Christian Right is it’s anti-authority authoritarianism. The sefl-righteousness of challenging certain taboos against intolerance.

I’m arguing that just because its only an inch deep doesn’t mean its not miles and miles wide.

I’m actually thinking the opposite. If people really understood each other, they’d hate each other that much more.

Its not just the size of the minority, it’s their access to power. It made sense to say that women were oppressed in the 1950’s, for example, even though they were about half the population. Not that this helps the US Christian claim to be oppressed – most presidents, governors, congressmen, senators, CEOs, generals, doctors, lawyers, professors, etc are Christian – academia is probably the only area where Christians are even close to being in a minority.

What Steve Labonne said.

“Much of the “Religious Right’s” fury and political involvement began in reaction against the successful effort in the 60’s and 70’s to drive Christianity out of public life.”

There was no “effort in the 60’s and 70’s to drive Christianity out of public life.” Since the effort didn’t happen it could not have been successful. Similarly, the “Religious Right’s “fury” [better “fervor” or “zeal,” in my opinion] and political involvement” could not have begun in reaction to an effort that never was made.

This isn’t a species of interdenominational doctrinal dispute (e.g. infant v. adult baptism, Jesus was/wasn’t the Messiah) no “side” of which can be proved to the satisfaction of those who believe otherwise. Nor is it a matter of opinion on which reasonable people can differ. The statement “There was a (successful) effort in the 60’s and 70’s to drive Christianity out of public life” asserts a matter of fact. It’s false because the real facts are otherwise.

Propagation of this false claim is likely to generate, in those Christians who are persuaded to believe it, ill will against whoever is portrayed to have been responsible for this effort. To propagate such a falsehood is unethical. Catholicism would regard it as calumny, a grave sin. It’s my understanding that most Christian sects would take a similar position.

By that standard, the “effort to drive Christianity out of public life” began long before –

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.

Tom,

There was no “effort in the 60’s and 70’s to drive Christianity out of public life.”

How would you characterize the school prayer cases? What about the first prong of the Lemon test (“government action must have a legitimate secular purpose”)? What about “non-discrimination on the basis of religion” as a requirement for almost all businesses (before that law was passed, many businesses made it clear that only certain churches/synagogues were acceptable for their employees)?

Steve Labonne, in his second post (#13) makes my point better than I could: nor is an “overtly Christian” government a realistic or desirable thing for a secular, religiously plural society. In 1955, no mainstream commenter would have referred to America as a secular society; a very common formulation would have been that America is a Christian nation, and our enemies (the Communists) are “godless”.