The Public Square
Richard John Neuhaus
Copyright (c) 2002 First
Things 122 (April 2002): 61-84.
Scandal Time
Cultural Masochism
After Israel
Mainlining in the Basement
Plain Talk About "Muslim Rage"
The Uses of Confrontation
While We’re At It
Scandal Time
The timing, it seems, could not have been worse. In last month’s issue I offered
my considered and heartfelt defense of Father Maciel, founder of the Legionaries
of Christ, against unfounded charges of sexual abuse. I meant and I mean every
word of what I said there. Just after the issue had gone to press, however,
scandals involving sexual abuse by priests in Boston exploded, creating a level
of public outrage and suspicion that may be unparalleled in recent history.
The climate is not conducive to calm or careful thought about priests and sexual
molestation. Outrage and suspicion readily lead to excess, but, with respect
to developments in Boston, it is not easy to say how much outrage and suspicion
is too much.
Professor Philip Jenkins of Penn State University has written extensively on
sexual abuse by priests, also in these pages (see “The
Uses of Clerical Scandal,” February 1996). He is an
acute student of the ways in which the media, lawyers, and
insurance companies—along with angry Catholics, both liberal
and conservative—are practiced at exploiting scandal in
the service of their several interests. Scholars point out
that the incidence of abusing children or minors is no greater,
and may be less, among priests than among Protestant clergy,
teachers, social workers, and similar professions. But,
it is noted, Catholic clergy are more attractive targets
for lawsuits because the entire diocese or archdiocese can
be sued. That is a legal liability of the Church’s hierarchical
structure. Moreover, the expressions of outrage by many
in the media are attended by an ulterior agenda, namely,
discrediting the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, about
which they are genuinely outraged. These and other considerations
can and should be taken into account, but the tragic fact
remains that great wrongs have been done, and there is no
avoiding the conclusion that, in Boston and elsewhere, some
bishops bear a heavy burden of responsibility.
Children have been hurt, solemn vows have been betrayed, and a false sense
of compassion—joined to a protective clericalism—has apparently permitted some
priests to do terrible things again and again. For some Catholics, this is a
time that will test their faith in Christ and his Church, as distinct from their
faith in the holiness, or even competence, of some of the Church’s leaders.
Catholics used to be good at that sort of thing, pointing to figures such as
Alexander VI (Pope from 1492 to 1503) whose thorough corruption—he gained the
papacy by bribery and used it to benefit his illegitimate children—was thought
to prove that the truth of the Church and the validity of her sacraments were
not dependent upon the holiness of her leaders. In the fourth century, the Donatist
heretics took the opposite position, and Catholics have been exuberant in their
condemnation of Donatism. We all have a steep stake in the rightness of that
condemnation. At the same time, the orthodoxy of anti–Donatism is not to be
confused with moral indifference. All three synoptic gospels report the warning
of Jesus about those who corrupt the innocence of children. “It would be better
for him if a millstone were tied around his neck and he were cast into the depths
of the sea.”
Conformed to the Culture
The current scandals constitute a painful moment of truth for bishops, heads
of religious orders, and others responsible for the moral integrity of the Church’s
ministry. More often than not, the priests allegedly involved in these scandals
are now in their sixties and seventies or even older. They received their formation
and were ordained in the 1960s and 1970s when, in addition to false compassion
and clerical protectiveness, there was in sectors of the Church a wink–and–a–nudge
attitude toward what were viewed as sexual peccadilloes. Anyone who was around
during those years, and had eyes to see, knows that was the case. Ecumenically,
and especially among clergy involved in social activism, both Protestant and
Catholic, there was frequent confusion and laxity with respect to sexual morality—heterosexual,
homosexual, and unspecified. That is deplorable but should not surprise. In
this way, too, the institutions of religion are too often conformed to the culture
of which they are part.
Among Catholics, the situation is generally very different with today’s seminarians
and younger priests. It is not unusual to encounter priests who claim they were
ordained in, say, the 1970s with the expectation that the celibacy requirement
would be abandoned within a few years. Many of them have since left the active
priesthood. For others, the “acceptance” of homosexuality and the rejection
of every form of “homophobia” was clearly the approved attitude. Today, I think
it fair to say that seminarians and younger priests know beyond doubt what is
expected of them in terms of faithfulness to the Church’s teaching. But the
penalty for past laxity and malfeasance is now coming due, and has been coming
due since the reality of sexual abuse by priests was brought to public attention
more than a decade ago. Of course the Church will survive, and more than survive,
but I expect this storm is not going to pass any time soon. I expect we have
not yet seen its full fury. I very much wish that I were more confident than
I am that every bishop understands that there can now be no returning to business
as usual. The word crisis is much overused, but this is a crisis.
Despite all the talk about the pervasive “nonjudgmentalism” in our culture,
about some things judgments are much harsher today. In anything having to do
with children, for instance, what some viewed as embarrassing misbehavior in
the 1970s was, by the 1990s, viewed as a heinous crime. Psychological theory,
law, and public attitudes have all changed dramatically. The very subject of
homosexuality was, not so very long ago, pretty much in the closet. Like most
people, bishops did not know, or did not want to know, about rude things that
men did together, and sometimes did with little boys. Today’s scandals notwithstanding,
there was something to be said for such reticence and naiveté, even if the naiveté
was sometimes feigned. When it comes to priestly adherence to the Church’s teaching,
zero tolerance must now be the order of the day. The enforcement of zero tolerance,
in this connection and others, can lead to ridiculous extremes and can inhibit
natural and healthy interactions, especially in working with young people, but
that, too, is probably part of the price to be paid.
There was a similar sense of crisis following the first public revelations
of sexual abuse by priests in the mid–eighties, but then the issue receded after
CNN notoriously sensationalized charges against the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
of Chicago in 1993 and the charges turned out to be false. That incident helped
remind people that priests, too, are to be deemed innocent until proven guilty.
In the current climate of outrage, we need to be reminded of that truth again.
Unbridled outrage can too easily become hysteria. One recalls that during the
same period, there was a blizzard of criminal charges and lawsuits over alleged
abuses, including satanic rituals and other grotesqueries, perpetrated by people
working in day care centers. Whole communities around the country were caught
up in a frenzy of mutual recriminations, and many people went to jail, until
the heroic and almost single–handed work of Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall
Street Journal exposed the madness for what it was.
Other Casualties
Among the potential casualties of the present scandal is severe damage to what
has historically been called the “liberty of the Church” to govern her own affairs.
Catholics have a distinct tradition of canon law that goes back to the Council
of Nicaea in 325 and took lasting form with Gratian’s Decretum in the
twelfth century. This history of ecclesiastical liberty is basic to the various
exemptions and immunities in current law and practice that protect religious
freedom not just for Catholics but for everyone. The right of religious institutions
to govern themselves may be gravely eroded under pressure from lawyers, insurance
companies, and the state. The ruthlessness of many in the legal profession should
not be underestimated. As Peter Steinfels writes in the New York Times,
it has now been “discovered that lawyers for plaintiffs could play hardball,
too, inflating charges and using the news media to play on public fears and
prejudices in hopes of embarrassing the Church into settlements.” With respect
to self–governance, “confidentiality” is now commonly translated as “secrecy”
and “discretion” as “evasion.” The cultural revolution popularized the slogan
that the personal is the political. So also, it now seems, the religious is
the political, and the legal. All of life is to be lived on the front pages
or in the courtroom, or at least under the threat of the front pages and the
courtroom.
News reports claiming that a certain number of priests have been charged with
abuse and that the claims were settled out of court must not be interpreted
to mean that the priests are guilty. Some of them insisted and insist that they
are innocent, but bishops were advised by lawyers and insurance companies that
a legal defense against the charges would cost much more than settlement out
of court, and could well end up in a guilty verdict entailing even greater financial
liability. In some cases, settlements were agreed to with the guarantee that
they would remain forever confidential. In Boston, that guarantee has now been
broken by court order. This can be seen as an ominous encroachment by the state
on the Church’s right to self–governance. It can also be argued that the Church
forfeited that right by failing to govern itself, and by surrendering episcopal
governance to lawyers and insurance companies.
At least in some cases, there can be no question of the state’s legitimate
interest. To cite the most notorious instance, that of the defrocked John Geoghan,
he is already convicted of one criminal act, and is charged with many more.
Sin is the business of the Church, and crime is the business of the state. There
was once a time, centuries ago, when there were ecclesiastical courts to deal
with clerics who committed sins that were also crimes. Although it had no standing
in law, that way of handling things continued in a vestigial and informal way
up to our day. If the cops suspected Father of criminal activity, it was reported
to the bishop in the confidence that he would take care of it. No more.
Another potential casualty is an erosion of confidence in the possibility of
repentance and amendment of life. Such confidence is dismissed as “naive” when
it comes to priests being given another chance. But the belief in the power
of the grace of God to transform lives is at the heart of Christian faith, and
is overwhelmingly supported by Scripture and the experience of innumerable Christians.
Belief in the gift of grace, however, is perfectly consistent with knowing that
the gift is not always effectively received. When a priest repents after being
caught dipping into the collection plate, there is forgiveness. There is even
forgiveness, if he is repentant, after he has done it several times, but there
are also secure measures for denying him access to the collection plate. Children
and the integrity of sacred vows are immeasurably more valuable than the collection
plate. It is now evident that it is much easier to keep violators away from
collection plates than to keep them away from children.
The Meaning of Episcopos
Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston was already in 1993 thought to be taking a “hard
line,” going through diocesan files to find any cases in which priests had believably
been accused of molestation, and trying to make sure they were not assigned
to positions involving regular work with minors. It now seems obvious that some
priests eluded such scrutiny. In other cases assignments were made on the basis
of medical and psychological counsel that at the time was thought to be perfectly
sound. There were also experts who warned that simply getting rid of a priest
would loose a sexual predator on the society. The beating that Cardinal Law
has taken is, in large part, because of his inability to anticipate changes
in medical and psychological thinking about sex abuse and sex abusers. At the
same time, the medicalizing of gross wrongdoing too often lets ever–changing
psychological theory trump commonsense judgments about sin and its consequences.
In any event, Cardinal Law has confessed that, in all of this, he has made “tragic
mistakes.” It is not possible to disagree. The word bishop is derived from the
Greek episcopos, which means overseer, and there would seem to be no
doubt that there have been grave deficiencies in the moral oversight of some
of the clergy of Boston.
An outraged reader writes that, if I do not publicly call for Cardinal Law’s
resignation, I am clearly “circling the ecclesiastical wagons in defense of
the indefensible.” Nonsense. Saying who should be placed or replaced as a bishop
is way above my pay grade. Many people, including many devout and orthodox Catholics,
are calling for the Cardinal’s resignation. A wire service story is headed,
“Boston Cardinal Vows to Stay, Despite Poll Numbers.” In the Catholic Church,
bishops do not run for election. Nor are they to be viewed, or at least not
chiefly, as CEOs of a corporation. In the Catholic Church, a bishop is a successor
to the apostles appointed to his see by the Bishop of Rome. The bishop’s task
is “to teach, to sanctify, and to govern.” Cardinal Law has been an outstanding
teacher of the faith, and was instrumental, not incidentally, in producing the
Catechism of the Catholic Church. Nobody can complain about his fidelity
to his sacramental duties. In the third task, that of governing oversight, he
has, as he has confessed, made tragic mistakes. His future as Archbishop of
Boston is a matter between him, his conscience, and the Pope. He may conclude
that the effectiveness of his ministry in Boston has been crippled beyond repair.
I sincerely hope not. His resignation would be a severe loss to the Church in
the United States. Nor dare we despair of God’s bringing great good out of these
terrible events. There cannot help but be a deeper awareness of sin, its consequences,
and our radical dependence upon grace—and such deepened awareness is a precondition
for spiritual renewal.
There is an unseemly readiness on the part of many, including some Catholics,
to believe the worst. What we know for sure is wretched enough. We would not
know what we do know without the reporting of the Boston Globe. It is
pointed out that the Globe, like its owner the New York Times,
is no friend of the Church. The suggestion is not that we should kill the messenger,
but that we should be keenly aware that the messenger has, on issue after issue,
points to score against the teaching and claims of the Catholic Church; that
the messenger is not a neutral party. All that is true, but it is of limited
pertinence. It is also true that Catholics should not be apologetic about wanting
to defend the Church. It is their duty. Doing that duty, however, is not incompatible
with, but in fact requires, a recognition that, in this case as in so many others
through history, leaders of the Church are guilty of giving ammunition to those
who would attack her. Throughout his pontificate, John Paul II has been urging
such a candid recognition, which is at the heart of our understanding that the
Church is a community of sinners called to be saints.
That having been said, what has happened in Boston is inexcusable. Those responsible
can be forgiven, but what they did cannot be excused. And again, Boston is not
an isolated instance. Catholics and others who wish the Church well should be
braced for the probability that the storm of scandal is by no means past. It
will only be magnified if bishops and heads of religious orders have not learned
from what happened in Boston. They must take the governance of the Church back
from lawyers, insurance companies, spin doctors, blackmailers, and priests who
are misguidedly protective of colleagues engaged in great evil. Meanwhile, these
pages will continue to address this crisis—closely, candidly, and with a wrenching
sadness tempered by, I pray, the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
Cultural Masochism
The New Criterion and Mark Steyn are well matched. The former, edited
by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball, delivers each month a sophisticated thumb
in the eye to the several cultural elites who exuberantly undermine culture
in the cause of anti–elitism. Steyn, who, in addition to his contributions to
the New Criterion, appears regularly in the London Spectator,
Canada’s National Post, and almost everywhere else worth reading, wields
what may be the most humorously devastating pen in today’s culture wars. Kramer
and Kimball invited him to be part of their series on “the survival of culture,”
and in the course of his contribution on multicultural madnesses Mr. Steyn illustrates
his argument by reference to a strange development that has been discussed from
time to time in these pages. Steyn notes that shortly after September 11, a
resolution came before Congress to observe “Native American Month.” The resolution
contained the usual platitudes, and then this: “Native American governments
developed the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and separation of
powers in government, and these principles form the foundation of the United
States Government today.” The reference is to the Iroquois Confederation, which,
multiculturalists would have us believe, served as the blueprint for the U.S.
Constitution. Mr. Steyn then makes the connection to the aforementioned strange
development:
“Until relatively recently in Canada, many natives went to ‘residential schools’
run by the Christian churches on behalf of the federal government. They learned
the same things children learned in other schools: there was a map on the wall
showing a quarter of the globe colored red for the Queen–Empress’ realms; there
was Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson, and ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’;
there was not a lot about the Iroquois Confederation. No doubt, as in any other
school system, there were a number of randy teachers and sadistic brutes.
“In the Nineties, a few middle–aged alumni came forward to claim they’d been
‘abused’ while at the residential schools. How did the churches react? Here
is Archbishop Michael Peers, the Anglican Primate of Canada, making his first
public statement on the matter in 1993: ‘I am sorry, more sorry that I can say,’
he said, ‘that in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally,
emotionally.’
“At that point, there was not one whit of evidence that there was any widespread,
systemic physical or sexual abuse in the residential schools. There is still
none. But His Grace had lapsed reflexively into a tone that will be all too
familiar to anybody who’s attended an Anglican service anywhere outside of Africa
or the Pacific isles in the last thirty years. In the Sixties, ‘Peter Simple,’
the great satirist whose work appears in the Daily Telegraph, invented
a character called Dr. Spacely Trellis, the ‘go–ahead Bishop of Bevindon,’ whose
every sermon on the social issues of the day reached a climax with the words,
‘We are all guilty!’ Riddled with self–doubt and an enthusiastic pioneer of
the peculiar masochism that now afflicts the West, the Anglican Church has for
years enjoyed the strange frisson of moral superiority that comes from blanket
advertising of one’s own failures. It was surely only a matter of time before
some litigious types took them at their own estimation.
“So, in the wake of Archbishop Peer’s sweeping declaration of his own guilt,
more victims spoke up—dozens, hundreds, totaling eventually some fifteen thousand
‘survivors’ with some five thousand claims of damages. Though none has yet been
tested in a court of law, by 1999 the costs of merely responding to the charges
were threatening to bankrupt not just the several Protestant and Catholic dioceses
but the entirety of both churches throughout Canada. Yet still the clergymen
felt it would be bad form to defend themselves. A United Church of Canada employee,
John Siebert, spent six years researching the history of residential schools
and their impact on native culture and pointed out several helpful facts:
- Native children were not forced to abandon their own beliefs
and become Christians; in 1871, before the first residential school ever opened,
96 percent of Canada’s Indians identified themselves as either Anglican or Catholic.
- When, over the years, the Federal Government and the churches
wanted to close residential schools, it was the Indian bands (the tribal councils)
that wanted to keep them open.
- . . . ah, but there’s no point even going on. The defendants
weren’t looking for a defense, only a way to plea–bargain themselves into oblivion.
“So Mr. Seibert’s former employers at the UCC wrote to the papers, indignantly
dissociating themselves from his position, facts notwithstanding: ‘It is the
position of the United Church that the national residential schools system was
an integral part of a national policy intended to assimilate First Nations people
into the dominant Euro–Canadian culture,’ they said. ‘There are simply too many
stories of the pain and cultural loss experienced by survivors of the residential
schools system to conclude that this policy and its expression in the residential
schools system represents anything but a profound failure in the history of
the relationship between First Nations and non–First Nations peoples.’ With
defendants like this, who needs plaintiffs? The Canadian Government, a codefendant,
prepared for an optimistically priced out–of–court settlement of some $2 billion,
split between fifteen thousand ‘survivors’ of ‘crimes’ never recognized by any
court.
“Nonetheless, ‘pain and cultural loss’ are categories worth separating. Is
it possible even the horniest vicars could sodomize fifteen thousand kids? Well,
no. Ninety percent of the claims are for the vaguer offense of ‘cultural genocide,’
a crime we’ll be hearing a lot more of in the future. ‘Cultural genocide’ is
similar to traditional forms of genocide—such as being herded into ovens or
hacked to pieces with machetes—but with the happy benefit, from the plaintiff’s
point of view, that you personally won’t have to be killed in order to have
a case. All you need are blurry accusations, historical resentments, and a hefty
dose of false–memory syndrome. Against craven clerics like the Anglican Church,
that’s more than enough.”
“Craven clerics” may seem somewhat harsh. They understand themselves to be
practicing the virtue of sensitivity, which, if it is a virtue worth practicing,
is worth practicing to excess, even to excruciating excess. There must be a
better word than craven.
After Israel
I remember many years ago being taken aback when at a dinner party a friend
concluded her vigorous defense of Israeli policy with the seemingly off–hand
remark, “But of course, in the long run, Israel won’t survive.” When I pressed
her, she explained that the Arabs, with such overwhelming numbers, will never
be reconciled to the existence of Israel on “their” land. In other words, demography
is destiny. It is true that the twenty–two nations of the Arab League have a
fast–growing population of 300 million, compared with less than six million
in Israel, with more than a million of those being Arabs. The population imbalance
will become ever more dramatic, and Israel is such a small sliver of territory
in such a vast region. I am no longer surprised when I hear people, including
some in positions of considerable influence, say, usually sotto voce, that Israel
will not survive “in the long run.”
In this connection, I took note of a Commentary article by Norman Podhoretz—a
more hawkish hawk on Israel than whom is not to be found—in which he argues
that there is, in fact, no “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians.
Responding to Podhoretz, Ron Unz, the prominent California businessman and political
activist, wrote: “As someone whose grandparents helped found Israel, I felt
immense sadness after reading Norman Podhoretz’s powerful analysis. There appear
to be only two possible outcomes to this conflict. Israel may eventually choose
to . . . exterminate or expel Palestinians from Israel and the West Bank. Or
the endless bloodshed will produce an accelerating exodus of Israeli Jews to
America and other more peaceful and affluent places, eventually leading to a
collapse of the Jewish state. Since I doubt that Israel will ever develop a
consensus for killing or expelling millions of Palestinians, I expect the country’s
trajectory to follow that of the Crusader kingdoms, surviving for seventy or
eighty years after its establishment in 1948 and then collapsing under continual
Muslim pressure and flagging ideological commitment.”
I was even more impressed by Podhoretz’s response to Unz: “I do not accept
that Israel will wind up as another Crusader kingdom. . . . It would be foolish
to dismiss this possibility altogether. . . . But I am still convinced that,
if the Israelis can hold on tight against the forces [Unz] specifies, the day
may yet come when the Arab world will call off the war it has been waging against
the Jewish state since 1948.” He agrees that killing or expelling millions of
Palestinians is simply not an option. He then goes on to say that much depends
on whether the U.S., in its current war against terrorism, treats Israel as
a partner rather than an obstacle to its purposes in the Middle East. But there
is a wan note to Podhoretz’s response to Unz’s prognosis: “I do not accept
. . . I am still convinced . . . if the Israelis can . . . the
day may yet come.” And this from the archenemy of any hint of defeatism.
I do not say this in criticism of Podhoretz. But it does seem to me that, for
the first time in a very long time, there is now an explicitness about—and in
some quarters an openness to—the possibility that Israel will not make it, and
I find this profoundly troubling.
In Patrick Buchanan’s new book, The Death of the West, he reports a
conversation with former President Richard Nixon, known as a strong supporter
of Israel. Buchanan’s wife Shelley asked Nixon if Israel will survive. In the
long run? he responded. He then turned his hand and put his thumb down. The
answer was No.
What would it mean for the future of Judaism and world Jewry (the two are not
separable) were the state of Israel to disappear? Of course I do not know. Nobody
does. I don’t mean what would happen if Israel was obliterated by an Arab atomic
bomb, as some Arabs contemplate with relish. I mean, rather, the prospect of
Israel being abandoned by Jews as a noble but failed Zionist dream. I suppose
it is possible that five million Jews could go elsewhere, mainly to America,
and flourish in security. It seems more than possible that a substantial number
would, remembering Masada, be determined to die with the dream.
These are grim and unwelcome thoughts. As too many people are eager to remind
us, Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians. And, as too many fail to
say, Palestinians are doing bad things to Israelis, and it is not always easy
to sort out which is action and which reaction, which is aggression and which
defense. There should be no difficulty, however, in sorting out the difference
between the one party that has the declared purpose of destroying or expelling
the other party, and the other party that wants only to live in security and
peace. This, I think, we know for sure: there could be a real peace process
and a real peace if the Arabs believably accepted a sovereign Jewish state in
their midst. This, sadly, does not seem to be in the offing. So maybe the present
conflict will go on for another five years. Ten years? Sixty years? How long
is “the long run”? I may be wrong, but it seems to me that more supporters of
Israel are asking that question, and asking it out loud. I’m not sure what should
be made of that, but I am sure it is not unimportant.
Mainlining in the Basement
Winston Churchill once observed of Clement Attlee: “He is a modest man, with
a great deal to be modest about.” There is the appearance of considerable modesty
in Charles T. Matthewes’ essay in Theology Today, “Reconsidering the
Role of Mainline Churches in Public Life.” Do not be misled by the snappy title.
The essay is a low–key reflection on what has happened to oldline Protestantism
since the days when the “church and society” bureaucracies of the United Methodists,
Presbyterians (USA), United Church of Christ, et al. made public waves with
their perpetually prophetic pronouncements styled as “speaking truth to power.”
Although much reduced, those bureaucracies are still in place, but they are
not even mentioned by Mr. Matthewes, who appears to be skirting the embarrassment
of their failure by turning it into a virtue.
Matthewes, who teaches religious studies at the University of Virginia, takes
as his text a new study by Robert Wuthnow of Princeton, The Quiet Voice of
God: Faith–Based Activism and Mainline Protestantism. The study finds that
“the mainline’s typical forms of involvement in civic life and public discourse
are multitudinous and subterranean,” of the kind that often go unnoticed. The
mainline is not “noisy” like the religious right but is “quietly influential.”
A chief source of its influence is in providing space for numerous civic activities,
many of them not “Christianly indexed” (i.e., they are not specifically Christian).
By providing space, Mr. Matthewes means, quite literally, providing space, as
in letting all kinds of groups meet in their otherwise empty church facilities.
“To place these findings in conversation with Robert Putnam’s work on social
capital,” Matthewes writes, “mainline Protestant church basements may save us
from bowling alone.” He continues, “Whether or not the public square is ‘naked,’
as Richard Neuhaus suggested, might depend on whether or not one thinks that
church meeting halls are part of the public square.”
Church basements are multitudinous and subterranean, and yes, they can be seen
as part of the public square, but that is not what I chiefly meant by the public
square, nor what oldline Protestantism meant by the public square back in its
noisy days before it was forced to take refuge in the conclusion that God’s
voice is very quiet. The noteworthy item in the Wuthnow–Matthewes view, however,
is the suggestion that, whether publicly prominent or publicly ignored, the
voice of mainline Protestantism is the voice of God.
Matthewes does not assume that all is well, and he calls for some changes.
For instance, for mainliners there needs to be a stronger connection “between
what happens on Sunday mornings and what happens during the rest of the week.”
Connecting Sunday morning with real life: it may not be thinking outside the
box, but it’s hard to argue with it. Matthewes approves of the idea that the
civic order has its own integrity quite apart from any specifically Christian
reference, and he cites Martin Luther’s famous maxim, “Better to be ruled by
a wise Turk than a stupid Christian.” (The evidence from exhaustive research
is that Luther never said that, but it is certainly what he might have said,
if he had thought to say it.) But, Matthewes writes, wise Christians should
also participate in politics, and to do so they need a better theological grounding.
In that connection he recommends a reappropriation of the thought of the brothers
Niebuhr, Reinhold and H. Richard. Back to the future, as it were.
Another suggested source of proposed mainline renewal is identification with
the salvific experience of African–Americans. “What if,” Matthewes asks, “white
people began talking about white people as already burdened (just by being white)
with a special ‘original sin’ of racial privilege?” What if, indeed. I suppose
it could have the perverse effect of making white people feel even more special.
And mainline white people must already feel very special, what with bearing
the burden of being the quiet voice of God in public life and all that. But
it appears the mainline has no choice; there is nobody else to take on these
burdens. “The two largest alternatives, evangelical Protestantism and Roman
Catholicism,” Matthewes writes, “cannot replace the mainline churches’ historically
beneficial effects on civic life.”
The evangelicals can’t do it because they are “too well integrated in the society
to provide much new social capital,” and because they are too “political” in
what he calls the narrow sense. With that I am simply at a loss. Does he mean
that members of the Assemblies of God are more socially established or more
at home in American society than, say, Presbyterians? That seems unlikely. As
for political action, we have a number of studies showing that evangelicals
and their churches tend not to be activist, but when they do act they tend to
get noticed, especially by liberals who assume that liberals have a copyright
on “speaking truth to power.”
Nor are Catholics up to replacing the indispensable mainline. Matthewes writes
that, while Catholics provide “much of the intellectual impetus” for public
action, “their stronger hierarchical inheritance will be a stumbling block for
cultivating the necessary sort of ‘republican’ civic spirit.” Alas, it seems
that Alexis de Tocqueville and John Courtney Murray, who argued that Catholicism
is particularly well suited to cultivate republican virtue, have lived in vain.
Paul Blanshard, thou hast conquered! Mr. Matthewes does allow that Catholics
may have a larger role to play in the public square if they become less Catholic
and more like mainline Protestants. The author winds down with this: “The mainline
‘civic style,’ then, remains the most viable form for religious groups to influence
American society today and in the foreseeable future, and thus to have some
say in the culture that so profoundly affects their lives.”
The Mainline Deserves Better
Among many commentaries on the dispiriting spectacle of establishment Protestantism’s
decline from the mainline to the oldline to the sideline, Mr. Matthewes’ is
notably depressing. There is a continuity in the story, however, and it is to
be found in the mainline’s abiding smugness. The appearance of modesty is misleading,
even though there is today so very much for the mainline to be modest about.
From the late–nineteenth–century social gospel crusade aimed at “Christianizing
America and Americanizing Christianity,” through the modernist triumph over
fundamentalism in the 1920s, through the faux–prophetic radicalisms of the 1960s
and consequent marginalization, mainline Protestantism has never doubted that
it speaks for God. It’s only that now God is speaking very quietly. In the church
basement. Through voices that are not necessarily “Christianly indexed.”
Joshing aside, oldline Protestantism and its place in our public life is an
important subject. And it is true, as the prophet Elijah learned, that God sometimes
does speak in “a still, small voice.” There are many voices in American Christianity,
and none should assume that it is the voice of God. The most theologically confident
and publicly effective voices today are evangelical Protestant and Catholic.
The cultural and political hegemony of the old mainline has long since collapsed.
This does not mean that the mainline has collapsed. While national and regional
structures may be largely ignored, while church and society bureaucracies may
be discredited, and while cooperative efforts such as the National Council of
Churches are only waiting for a date to be set for their funeral, it is worth
remembering that approximately one–third of the Christians in this country still
belong to local churches associated with the old mainline. And across the country
one can find oldline congregations that are vibrantly alive in their very specifically
Christian faith and mission.
“Reconsidering the Role of Mainline Churches in Public Life” is a good thing
to do. But it is not helpful when done as a nostalgic exercise in the afterglow
of a hegemony long lost, or as a desperate grasp for moral legitimacy in identification
with black victimhood, or by the smug equation of its voice with the voice of
God, or on the anti–ecumenical and thoroughly sectarian premise that its identity
is derived from invidious comparison with evangelicals and Catholics. The churches
that are heirs to what was once the mainline are deserving of better than that.
Plain Talk About “Muslim Rage”
We are told by President Bush that the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
is just the beginning of the war on terrorism. Yet I am
struck by how many pundits and news reports give the impression
that that was an isolated action; all that is left is a
clean–up operation and then it’s back to the world as usual.
Our December 2001 editorial, “In
a Time of War,” asserted that, whatever happens next,
power relationships in the world have already been dramatically
reconfigured by September 11. At the center of that reconfiguration
is Islam, as a religion and a culture. In that editorial,
we cited Bernard Lewis, doyen of Western students of Islam,
on how the resentment and rage of most of the billion Muslims
in the world came to be targeted on the United States. Many
Middle East “experts” and those who teach in Islamic studies
departments in this country have been telling us for a long
time, and continue to tell us, that the “Muslim problem”
is really the “American problem”; that terrorism is, if
not excusable, at least understandable in view of the nasty
things we have done to Muslims, and especially to Arab Muslims.
Of course, it is always imperative to work at better understanding, to clear
up misunderstandings, to build bridges, and even, if possible, replace conflict
with peaceful dialogue. Such were the aims of Pope John Paul II with his January
24 gathering of world religious leaders at Assisi. Such efforts, no matter how
futile they may sometimes seem, are to be wholeheartedly and prayerfully supported.
It is absolutely necessary that de–politicized space be created for conversation
about, and mutual recognition of, our common humanity and our accountability
to a judgment that transcends our animosities and clashes. In no way should
such efforts be dismissed as soft, idealistic, or utopian. “How many divisions
does the pope have?” Stalin cynically asked. Those who did not know the answer
before were amply instructed by the fall of Soviet communism. In politics among
nations, as everywhere else, it is a crackpot “realism” that derides the importance
of culture and ideas, and especially the commanding ideas associated with religion.
It is precisely in order to achieve peaceful understanding that we need plain
talk about what stands in the way of such understanding. Victor Davis Hanson,
a military historian and foreign policy analyst, provides such plain talk in
“Why the Muslims Misjudged Us” (City Journal, Winter 2002). “The catastrophe
of the Muslim world,” he writes, is that its leadership recognizes the failure
of their societies but then “seeks to fault others for its own self–created
fiasco. Government spokesmen in the Middle East should ignore the nonsense of
the cultural relativists and discredited Marxists and have the courage to say
that they are poor because their populations are nearly half illiterate, that
their governments are not free, that their economies are not open, and that
their fundamentalists impede scientific inquiry, unpopular expression, and cultural
exchange.” Chances for better understanding are now much reduced. “Tragically,
the immediate prospects for improvement are dismal, inasmuch as the war against
terrorism has further isolated the Middle East. Travel, foreign education, and
academic exchanges, the only sources of future hope for the Arab world, have
screeched to a halt. All the conferences in Cairo about Western bias and media
distortion cannot hide this self–inflicted catastrophe and the growing ostracism
and suspicion of Middle Easterners in the West.”
Muslim autocrats make threatening noises about the dire consequences for the
West if they are provoked. Hanson writes: “There is an abyss between such rhetoric
and the world we actually live in, an abyss called power. Out of politeness,
we needn’t crow over the relative military capability of one billion Muslims
and 300 million Americans; but we should remember that the lethal 2,500–year
Western way of war is the reflection of very different ideas about personal
freedom, civic militarism, individuality on the battlefield, military technology,
logistics, decisive battle, group discipline, civilian audit, and the dissemination
and proliferation of knowledge.” Hanson is undoubtedly right about that, although
the potential destructive power of terrorism is, by definition, in its indifference
to the “Western way of war.”
One–Way Copying
Here is how he depicts the larger picture: “Values and traditions—not guns,
germs, and steel—explain why a tiny Greece of fifty thousand square miles crushed
a Persia twenty times larger; why Rome, not Carthage, created world government;
why Cortes was in Tenochtitlán, and Montezuma not in Barcelona; why gunpowder
in its home in China was a pastime for the elite while, when stolen and brought
to Europe, it became a deadly and ever evolving weapon of the masses. Even at
the nadir of Western power in the medieval ages, a Europe divided by religion
and fragmented into feudal states could still send thousands of thugs into the
Holy Land, while a supposedly ascendant Islam had neither the ships nor the
skill nor the logistics to wage jihad in Scotland or Brittany. Much is made
of five hundred years of Ottoman dominance over a feuding Orthodox, Christian,
and Protestant West; but the sultans were powerful largely to the degree that
they crafted alliances with a distrustful France and the warring Italian city–states,
copied the Arsenal at Venice, turned out replicas of Italian and German cannon,
and moved their capital to European Constantinople. Moreover, their dominance
amounted only to a rough naval parity with the West on the old Roman Mediterranean;
they never came close to the conquest of the heart of Western Europe.” That
rings true, except for their never coming close. At least at the time, both
Christians and Muslims thought the confrontation leading up to Vienna 1683 was
a very close–run thing.
Today, however, it is a matter, above all, of culture. “We are militarily strong,
and the Arab world abjectly weak, not because of greater courage, superior numbers,
higher IQs, more ores, or better weather, but because of our culture. When it
comes to war, one billion people and the world’s oil are not nearly as valuable
military assets as MIT, West Point, the U.S. House of Representatives, C–Span,
Bill O’Reilly, and the GI Bill. Between Xerxes on his peacock throne overlooking
Salamis and Saddam on his balcony reviewing his troops, between the Greeks arguing
and debating before they rowed out with Themistocles and the Americans haranguing
one another on the eve of the Gulf War, lies a 2,500–year tradition that explains
why the rest of the world copies its weapons, uniforms, and military organization
from us, not vice versa.”
If Israel Did Not Exist . . .
Also in this country, there are many who claim that Israel is at the heart
of this confrontation. Much more is that the claim in the Middle East. “Millions
in the Middle East are obsessed with Israel, whether they live in sight of Tel
Aviv or thousands of miles away. Their fury doesn’t spring solely from genuine
dismay over the hundreds of Muslims Israel has killed on the West Bank; after
all, Saddam Hussein butchered hundreds of thousands of Shiites, Kurds, and Iranians,
while few in Cairo or Damascus said a word. Syria’s Assad liquidated perhaps
twenty thousand in sight of Israel, without a single demonstration in any Arab
capital. The murder of some 100,000 Muslims in Algeria and 40,000 in Chechnya
in the last decade provoked few intellectuals in the Middle East to call for
a pan–Islamic protest. Clearly, the anger derives not from the tragic tally
of the fallen but from Islamic rage that Israelis have defeated Muslims on the
battlefield repeatedly, decisively, at will, and without modesty. If Israel
were not so successful, free, and haughty, if it were beleaguered and tottering
on the verge of ruin, perhaps it would be tolerated. But in a sea of totalitarianism
and government–induced poverty, a relatively successful economy and a stable
culture arising out of scrub and desert clearly irks its less successful neighbors.
Envy, as the historian Thucydides reminds us, is a powerful emotion and has
caused not a few wars.
“If Israel did not exist, the Arab world, in its current fit of denial, would
have to invent something like it to vent its frustrations. That is not to say
there may not be legitimate concerns in the struggle over Palestine, but merely
that for millions of Muslims the fight over such small real estate stems from
a deep psychological wound. It isn’t about lebensraum or some actual physical
threat. Israel is a constant reminder that it is a nation’s culture—not its
geography or size or magnitude of its oil reserves—that determines its wealth
or freedom. For the Middle East to make peace with Israel would be to declare
war on itself, to admit that its own fundamental way of doing business—not the
Jews—makes it poor, sick, and weak.”
As for the U.S., its financial aid to Israel has to be weighed against the
many billions of dollars that go to the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, and other
Muslim countries. In addition, there is this: “Far from egging on Israel, the
United States actually restrains the Israeli military, whose organization and
discipline, along with the sophisticated Israeli arms industry, make it quite
capable of annihilating nearly all its bellicose neighbors without American
aid. Should the United States withdraw from active participation in the Middle
East and let the contestants settle their differences on the battlefield, Israel,
not the Arab world, would win. The military record of four previous conflicts
does not lie. Arafat should remember who saved him in Lebanon; it was no power
in the Middle East that brokered his exodus and parted the waves of Israeli
planes and tanks for his safe passage to the desert.”
Loving What They Hate
We will remember what too many Muslims forget, writes Hanson. “The Muslim world
suffers from political amnesia, we now have learned, and so has forgotten not
only Arafat’s resurrection but also American help to beleaguered Afghanis, terrified
Kuwaitis, helpless Kurds and Shiites, starving Somalis, and defenseless Bosnians—direct
intervention that has cost the United States much more treasure and lives than
mere economic aid for Israel ever did. They forget; but we remember the Palestinians
cheering in Nablus hours after thousands of our innocents were incinerated in
New York and the hagiographic posters of a mass murderer in the streets of Muslim
capitals.”
“Even in the crucible of war,” Hanson writes, “we have discovered that our
worst critics love us in the concrete as much as they hate us in the abstract.”
The concrete evidence of their love, if that is what it is, is that they want
to come here and to send their children here. Hanson asks, “Why do so many of
these anti–Americans, who profess hatred of the West and reverence for the purity
of an energized Islam or a fiery Palestine, enroll in Chico State or UCLA instead
of madrassas in Pakistan or military academies in Iraq? The embarrassing
answer would explain nearly everything, from bin Laden to the intifada. Dads
and moms who watch Al–Jazeera and scream in the street at the Great Satan really
would prefer that their children have dollars, an annual CAT scan, a good lawyer,
air conditioning, and Levis in American hell than be without toilet paper, suffer
from intestinal parasites, deal with the secret police, and squint with uncorrected
vision in the Islamic paradise of Cairo, Teheran, and Gaza. Such a fundamental
and intolerable paradox in the very core of a man’s heart—multiplied millions
of times over—is not a healthy thing either for them or for us.”
Hanson ends on the note of friendly counsel: “So a neighborly bit of advice
for our Islamic friends and their spokesmen abroad: topple your pillars of ignorance
and the edifice of your anti–Americanism. Try to seek difficult answers from
within to even more difficult questions without. Do not blame others for problems
that are largely self–created or seek solutions over here when your answers
are mostly at home. Please, think hard about what you are saying and writing
about the deaths of thousands of Americans and your relationship with the United
States. America has been a friend more often than not to you. But now you are
on the verge of turning its people—who create, not follow, government—into an
enemy: a very angry and powerful enemy that may be yours for a long, long time
to come.”
I’m sure that some might complain that Hanson’s critique of Muslim venting
is but another form of venting. I don’t think so. I am reminded, rather, of
Dr. Johnson’s observation that clear thinking begins with clearing the mind
of cant. The reconfiguration of world politics since September 11 offers nought
for our comfort. Almost unbelievable has been the obtuseness and mendacity of
Muslim organizations in this country. They continue to act as though nothing
fundamental has changed; they are just another poor minority being picked on
by a prejudiced majority. Because of the incorrigible niceness of Americans,
they can get away with that most of the time. But continued denials and evasions
about the evils perpetrated in the name of Islam and of Muslims seem almost
suicidal. Again and again, one wants to cry out, “Please, please do not say
that.” They keep digging themselves into an ever deeper hole. We must continue
to hope that voices of candor and correction will emerge from the Muslim world,
both here and abroad. Meanwhile, I think Hanson got it about right in explaining
why they misjudge us, and why we must brace ourselves for the duration, which
is likely to be very, very long.
The Uses of Confrontation
I first met the late Saul Alinsky when I was a very young pastor in black Brooklyn.
It was at the Urban Institute in Chicago, which in the 1960s was at the center
of honing young clergy, Protestant and Catholic, for urban ministries. Alinsky
was already then a fabled veteran of confrontational activism, an amiably rough
man who was loquaciously exultant in communicating his discovery that the Catholic
Church was the lever with which to move the world, or, as it was put then, to
radically change The System. The Catholics had the resources and the people,
while Protestant clergy, with usually dwindling city parishes, had the time
and energy for agitation. In that first meeting, there were perhaps thirty younger
clergy and seminarians in the room. Alinsky began with this: “If there’s anybody
here who has any ideas about becoming a bishop some day, he should leave right
now.” I was impressed.
Alinsky’s books Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals
were hot items in their time. His lasting contribution is the Industrial Areas
Foundation, which is still going strong today. IAF recruits local churches to
challenge “the power structure” on behalf of radical change by “pitting power
against power.” Power is, as IAF organizers unabashedly proclaim, the only game
in town. (A good introduction to IAF goals and tactics, written from an admiring
perspective, is Jim Rooney’s Organizing the South Bronx, available in
paperback from State University of New York Press.) IAF is reported to have
more than sixty–five affiliated organizations around the country, and claims
to represent, through its affiliates, millions of people. In its boot camps
for organizers, IAF prides itself on taking an unsentimental and brutally realistic
approach to the power struggle. The purpose is to “wean church people off the
conventional religious expectation” that their role is to achieve dialogue and
cooperation. The goal is to win, and the means is confrontation and conflict.
The tactic, as Rooney explains, is to unambiguously target a vulnerable public
official or an institution as “the enemy,” to very publicly defeat the enemy,
and then build on the momentum to attack the next vulnerable target.
The IAF approach is very political and unapologetically partisan. IAF as an
organization usually keeps a low profile. It has, for instance, no website,
although it is the directing force behind coalitions such as BUILD in Baltimore,
WIN in Washington, D.C., and numerous similar campaigns. South Bronx Churches
(SBC) is among affiliates that have an impressive record in marshaling public
and private resources for low–income housing, although not without stepping
on the toes of a Catholic urban coalition that it upstaged. Stepping on toes,
indeed stomping on toes, is the ordinary operating procedure for IAF and its
affiliates. Critics of IAF say it is “divisive” and has the unhappy effect of
“politicizing” churches, to which IAF leaders happily plead guilty. Readers
of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities will remember his account of the
riotous mass mugging of New York’s mayor (a stand–in for Ed Koch), a classic
IAF–style confrontation. At the same time, and I have some ambivalence about
this, IAF leaders have said they are promoting the “mediating institutions”
approach to public policy advocated by Peter Berger and me in our To Empower
People.
Over the years, readers have asked about IAF, usually occasioned by the involvement
or proposed involvement of their local churches. My standard response has been
that I have known IAF leaders, on and off, over many years, that they do have
a heart for creating leaders for sometimes necessary social change, but that
intention is joined to a manipulative methodology and a tendency to use religion
for narrowly partisan purposes. In short: look very carefully at what you may
be getting into. One reader, Edward H. Sisson, a Washington lawyer, has looked
very carefully indeed and does not at all like what he has found. He was a member
of the vestry of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bethesda, Maryland, when that
parish was invited to join an IAF affiliate known as Action in Montgomery (AIM).
After his investigation of IAF’s history and methods, he strongly opposed joining.
He is willing to make the very substantial file he accumulated on IAF available
to readers who send him $20 (for duplication and mailing costs) at 555 Twelfth
Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004. In my judgment, the material raises substantial
questions that should be considered by any church thinking about signing up
with an IAF project.
Saul Alinsky died many years ago. In the 1960s he was viewed as part of a mainly
Jewish world of the Old Left dating from the 1930s. Some leftists committed
to a Marxist version of class struggle condemned him as a dangerous revisionist.
Then and now, IAF cannot always be easily slotted on the left–right spectrum.
The problems, including moral problems, arise in connection with recruiting
religion to a methodology of unremitting confrontation, deliberate polarization,
targeting of “enemies,” and obsession with power. But, it is said, it is all
in a good cause. Maybe so. A Lutheran pastor who is a friend of long standing
has worked with IAF for decades. “Sure we use tough street talk to rouse the
people and get the attention of the establishment,” he says, “but the most effective
and most devout Christian leaders I know have come out of this program.” Such
testimonies are not hard to come by, and they, too, should be weighed by churches
thinking about joining up with IAF.
While We’re At It
Playing fast and loose
with fasting would seem to be another instance of what is aptly described as
the “destabilizing” of the Catholic ethos. The bar has been so lowered that
what officially counts as fasting today is tantamount to a moderate and well–balanced
diet. That is not what the Scriptures or the fathers meant by fasting: a rigorous
self–discipline whereby appetites are brought under control in order to sharpen
prayerful adhesion to God. But here is a Lenten reflection from the bishops’
Secretariat for Liturgy announcing that “Lenten fasting can encompass fasting
from food, sin, ignorance, violence, and apathy.” Really? Fasting from ignorance?
We read, “Lent is a time to fast from violence and to witness ‘the peace the
world cannot give.’” We are encouraged to ask, “Do I avoid not just the violence
of hands, but also the cruel words born of angry hearts, the thoughtless gossip,”
etc., etc. So if one does not commit adultery, is he fasting from adultery?
This is impossibly muddled. Fasting is not refusing to do bad things but the
spiritually purposeful giving up of good things. Like food. Once upon a time,
everybody knew that. Many still do. Little thanks to the professional destabilizers.
The professor from Nowhere
strikes again. More than two billion dollars have been raised for victims of
September 11. Private gifts, combined with various government programs, will
result in some families getting more than a million dollars. Peter Singer of
Princeton writes in Slate, “Questions of justice immediately arise.”
Ah ha! One would expect no less from the gimlet–eyed professor whom some call
the most influential living philosopher in the world. He goes on to offer a
typically utilitarian consideration: “It makes sense for the community to reward
the families of those who die while bravely trying to save others, for doing
so both recognizes and encourages acts of great benefit to the community.” But
then he gets to his main complaint: that more people in the world die of hunger
every day than died on September 11, and the U.S. is, compared to other nations,
a piker when it comes to the percentage of wealth given to world organizations
dealing with economic development. Singer ends with this: “Americans are fond
of talking of their belief in human equality, but it seems that their circle
of concern drops off sharply once it gets to the boundary of their own nation.
The sums donated to the victims of Sept. 11 show this once again. We would be
a better nation if our generosity was more closely related to need and less
closely tied to whether someone is a fellow citizen, or a victim of terrorism,
or even a hero.” Well, yes, in the utilitarian Nowhere where each counts as
one and none counts as more than one, that makes a kind of sense. Perhaps there
are people who would say, “I see where three thousand people died in New York
because of a terrorist attack. But twenty–seven thousand children died of hunger
in poor countries the same day. So I’ll give five dollars to a fund for the
New York victims and fifty dollars to UNICEF. On second thought, since the victims
in New York are already dead and not much can be done for them, and since others
will give generously to their survivors, I’ll give all my money to hungry children
who might still be helped.” Singer himself, in a brief touch–down in Somewhere,
offered the thin utilitarian justification of rewarding and thus encouraging
acts that benefit the community. He seems impervious, however, to the fact that
most Americans, with good reason, do not share his naive confidence in international
organizations that claim to help the poor, and he is only slightly more appreciative
of the fact that billions of dollars and thousands of American lives are devoted
to helping the poor in other countries, usually under religious auspices. Most
drearily predictable, however, is Singer’s almost total lack of understanding
or sympathy for the very human phenomenon of a great outburst of generosity
in response to the unprecedented attack of September 11. Such a response is
not logical, it does not conform to a utilitarian calculus of distributive judgment.
And of course he is right. I have noted before Chesterton’s observation that
the problem with madmen (including mad ethicists) is not that they are not logical
but that they are only logical. Extending people’s concerns for others in need
is a very good thing to do, but it is not likely to be accomplished by churlish
complaints about uncalculated generosity or by the guiltmongering to which Prof.
Singer is prone. Much wiser is the celebration of the generous response to September
11, in the hope that generosity breeds generosity all around.
“The His–and–Hers Bible”
is Emily Nussbaum’s response to the brouhaha over Today’s New International
Version of the Bible. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Nussbaum
concludes: “To translate the Bible this way is understandably tempting, but
it’s also a lie. I’m reminded of a modern Orthodox coworker I once had, who
said, ‘Look, being Jewish is a game with a set of rules: go ahead and move the
pieces anyplace you want, but don’t call it chess.’ A truly gender–neutral interpretation
of the Bible would quickly begin to fall apart at the seams—laws about rape
or slavery rising up like invisible ink from ancient parchment. One solution,
of course, is to reject the Bible entirely. Another is to regard it merely as
a parable whose historical foundation can be ignored. But for anyone who wants
to take religion seriously, neither solution truly suits. Instead, it seems
necessary to confront the contradictions in the text—to keep the pronouns as
they are and wrestle instead with the messy truth, like, well, manly Jacob with
his angel. It’s a more difficult task, but it’s the only honest way out.” A
friend cautions me that conservatives who count Ms. Nussbaum as an ally in the
Bible–translation wars should know that she also runs a soft–porn website. On
the other hand, that may simply be evidence of her expertise in wrestling with
contradiction.
With shrinking membership
and influence, the mainline/oldline Protestant denominations are also running
into trouble with their publishing houses. Westminster/John Knox (Presbyterian)
is a merger of two houses, as is Augsburg Fortress (ELCA Lutheran). Along with
Pilgrim (United Church of Christ) and the United Methodist Publishing House,
which includes the Abingdon imprint, they are searching for a more profitable
“niche.” Augsburg Fortress announced losses of $4 million for the first three
quarters of 2001, and has sharply cut back on staff. A common explanation is
that these houses are in trouble because they no longer serve the denominations
to which they belong, while others claim that the larger problem is that the
denominations have so lost touch with what made them distinctive that nobody
knows what a Methodist, or Lutheran, or Presbyterian “niche” might look like.
In this view, a generalized Protestantismby little other than liberal leanings
and not being Catholic or Orthodox—simply cannot sustain inherited denominational
institutions, including publishing houses.
For eighty years, the
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (a.k.a. Jehovah’s Witnesses) raged first
against the League of Nations and then against the United Nations as the “Great
Babylon” predicted in the Book of Revelation. A British journalist reported
in passing that, in fact, since 1991 the organization has been a fully accredited
nongovernmental organization at the UN, which means it had to subscribe to the
UN charter and agree to publicize its objectives. The revelation sparked a storm
of protests from Witnesses, and the group has broken off its ten–year fling
with the Great Babylon. While on the Witnesses, you may have seen from time
to time press references to the group as “the fastest growing Christian denomination
in America,” just as there are frequent references to Islam as “the fastest
growing religion in America.” Both are instances of hype. There are about 990,000
Witnesses in America. Despite their aggressive recruitment programs, the number
of people leaving by the back door has kept the membership at that level for
many years. The fastest growing religious community in America, Christian or
otherwise, is the Catholic Church, at sixty–three million and counting.
The celebration of pseudo–pluralism by the champions of “multi–religious
America” is aimed at, among other things, expunging from
public life explicit religious faith. See, for a particularly
egregious example, Diana Eck’s A New Religious America
(“One Nation Under
Many Gods,” Public Square, October 2001). Then there
is the usually sensible “Houses of Worship” section of the
Wall Street Journal plumping for the “Jewish–Christian–Islamic
tradition.” It includes the tattered claim—this time by
Stephen Prothero of Boston University—that Islam is “the
fastest growing religion in the U.S.” Professor Barry Kosmin
of City University of New York, one of the most careful
and respected authorities on religious demographics, concludes
that there are probably fewer than two million Muslims in
the country. According to Kosmin and his colleagues, the
best estimate is that African–Americans are about one–quarter
of that two million. He notes in passing that Muslims are
under 2 percent of the black population, while 6 percent
of blacks are Catholics. Eck and others peddle their version
of “religious pluralism” in explicit opposition to the idea
of “Christian America.” There are, as we have often discussed
in these pages, many problems with the idea of Christian
America. Denying the demographic reality of Christian America,
however, is not a good way of addressing those problems.
Clear thinking on the
much muddled question of homosexuality is rare, but that is what is offered
by Paul Campos, law professor at the University of Colorado. The Rev. Scott
Landis, pastor of a fashionable Congregationalist church in Denver and father
of three children, announced to his congregation that he is gay and is terminating
his marriage. This met with a standing ovation and an outpouring of “love and
compassion” that was exuberantly reported in the Denver Post. Prof. Campos,
writing in the Rocky Mountain News, is not quite so certain: “Now the
interesting question is, why? We can be sure that if the Rev. Landis had announced
to his congregants that he was dumping his wife for the twenty–year–old daughter
of one of their number, their reaction would not have been to stand and cheer.
Yet surely having an enduring sexual preference for twenty–year–old women is
something many a middle–aged man finds he was born with. That biological fact
does not excuse him from his social and moral obligations. Why then is the Rev.
Landis’ choice treated as an instance of something like heroism? The answer,
of course, is that the reverend’s renunciation of his marriage vows can be shoved
through the moral laundromat of identity politics. His desires can be attached
to a term (being ‘gay’) that magically transforms his infidelity into a species
of self–actualization. As there is no analogous term for the middle–aged reverend
who manages to achieve self–actualization with the daughter of his neighbor’s
wife (actually there is, but it’s not the sort of term one would use as the
basis for a political interest group), the latter divine will be out of luck
if he should be so imprudent as to turn to his congregants for ‘love and acceptance.’
Like all analogies, this one isn’t exact. A man who has either been consciously
suppressing or unconsciously repressing a desire for other men is not in exactly
the same situation as an older man who finds that as he ages his desire for
young women does not alter nearly as quickly as his age. But he is in a similar
situation. The notion that something as psychologically and morally complex
as sexual desire fits into neat little boxes labeled ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ serves
the interests of the mainstream gay rights movement, and it certainly serves
the interests of those who seek absolution at the confessional of identity politics.
But things aren’t quite that simple. Matters of the heart never are.”
According to a study
conducted by City University of New York and published in the Jewish Week,
1.4 million Jews say they are Jewish by birth but now identify with another
faith, usually Christianity. That’s about one–quarter of the Jewish population
of the U.S. Another quarter say they are secular and have no religion, leaving
51 percent of Jews in America claiming Judaism as their religion.
College and graduate
students, along with young professionals, are invited to sign up for the John
Paul II Roundtable in connection with World Youth Day events in Toronto at the
end of July. The Roundtable is sponsored by a feisty new group, the World Youth
Alliance, and features lectures, small group discussions, and other lively exchanges
on life issues, the dignity of the person, and Catholic doctrine on what makes
for a free and just society. The Roundtable is scheduled for July 25, 2002,
and speakers will include, among others, George Weigel, author of Witness
to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II, and Father Robert Sirico of the
Acton Institute. I’ve agreed to moderate all this, moderate that I am, and am
supposed to make a presentation as well. I expect it will be very instructive
fun, and edifying to boot. If you’re interested in participating, mail a résumé
and a 250–word statement on how your interests and work relate to Catholic social
doctrine to Melinda Mounsey, World Youth Alliance, 847A Second Avenue, #502,
New York, New York 10017, or visit www.worldyouthalliance.org.
The Times Literary
Supplement is coming up on its hundredth birthday and congratulations are
in order. Derwent May has written a book for the occasion, Critical Times,
which is reviewed by Joseph Epstein in, of course, the TLS. Bruce Richmond
was the first editor, and Epstein writes that “no paper over the past century
has done more than the TLS, in Bruce Richmond’s phrase, to ‘irradiate
the humanities.’ It has been unrelenting in its insistence on a high standard
of scholarship and on the primacy and autonomy of culture. As Alan Pryce–Jones
once put it, in another connection, the TLS is for those who ‘find themselves
looking at pictures, hearing music, reading in other languages, traveling, correlating
as far as possible the whole plan of civilization in which the English faculty
at a university occupies only one corner.” Epstein concludes that the TLS
is “the perfect paper for the serious dilettante,” which he readily admits to
being. About half the circulation of the TLS is outside the UK, with
most of that being in the U.S. Our academic and intellectual life (the two being
by no means the same thing) would be greatly improved—in my judgment and, I
expect, in Epstein’s—were the TLS to have as many readers here as does,
for obvious instance, the New York Review of Books. If, as seems possible,
there are to be another hundred years, may they not be unaccompanied by the
TLS.
In the fall of 2000,
Michael Bellesiles’ book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture
was greeted with high praise by influential reviewers such as Garry Wills and
Edmund Morgan. Also by John Wilson, editor of the evangelical Books &
Culture, who thought the book deserved a Pulitzer Prize. Bellesiles’ chief
claim, that guns were much less common in early America than is generally thought,
understandably pleased those in favor of gun control. Then things got interesting.
A number of serious historians, joined by Second Amendment activists, began
to dig into Bellesiles’ alleged sources and discovered that he had skewed, twisted,
and simply fabricated evidence on which his argument rested. Emory University,
where he teaches, asked for an explanation and he eventually produced one. Of
that explanation Wilson gingerly says, “It was a great disappointment to those
who held out hope that he might still mount a credible defense.” Obviously,
Wilson, who says he has no ax to grind in the debate over gun control, was among
the disappointed. Wilson concludes his reflection on this unhappy affair with
this: “Some have said that whatever the flaws of Arming America, the
book has opened up a productive debate. Perhaps, though that remains to be seen.
As for Bellesiles himself, the future is unclear, but it seems likely that ultimately
his career will be ruined. That is the saddest aspect of this whole episode.”
There are several things not quite right about that. What might such a “productive
debate” be about? Certainly not about the merits of gun control, since the Bellesiles
affair can only be powerful ammunition for the gun rights folk in claiming that
their opponents deal in gross mendacities. As for Bellesiles’ career as a historian,
it is not likely that it will ultimately be ruined; it is ruined now. And why
is that “the saddest aspect of this whole episode”? Maybe Mr. Wilson says that
because he does not wish to sound as though he is personally whining about the
sadness of being taken in by Bellesiles’ fraud. That is understandable, even
commendable. But the saddest aspect of all this is that a historian would commit
fraud on such a grand scale, and that so many distinguished academics, either
through carelessness or political bias, were complicit in promoting his fraud.
(The book won the coveted Bancroft Prize in history.) I do not wish to sound
unfeeling, but it is not sad at all, in fact it is deeply gratifying, that Mr.
Bellesiles was found out and has been punished by the termination of his career
as a historian. That is called justice, and getting straight the emotions appropriate
to seeing justice done is part of the work of moral clarity. I am sure that
Mr. Wilson did not mean to say that Bellesiles’ career should not be ruined,
or at least so severely damaged as to require credible repentance and years
of penitential labor before it is rehabilitated.
There is a welcome increase
in resources dealing with same–sex attraction, appropriate therapy, and how
churches and other groups can be of help. For one fine example, the Catholic
Medical Association has put out a thirty–page document, Homosexuality and
Hope. It is available by calling toll–free 1–877–CathDoc, or it can be downloaded
at www.cathmed.org.
The Rev. Alexander C.
Wilson of Cabot, Pennsylvania, has served small, medium–sized, and large Protestant
congregations. The following item appeared here a while back: “The Barna Research
Group telephoned 3,764 Protestant churches nationwide and in 40 percent of the
calls was not able to get through to anyone, even after calling back as many
as twelve times. Half of the churches in the 40 percent did not even have an
answering machine. Schedule your crises for eleven o’clock Sunday morning.”
On which the Rev. Wilson offers this reflection: “Barna does not realize how
many Protestant churches have less than fifty members. About 40 percent of them
are under seventy–five members. Many of these small churches have only a part–time
pastor, often a lay pastor with another full–time job. There is no secretary
on duty to answer the phone. An answering machine? Everyone in the community
knows how to get in touch with the pastor or the leaders of the church. In most
small communities there is a network of knowledge of need that works superbly.
If someone is injured, or in the hospital, or had a fire, within twenty–four
hours everyone knows about it, and help is supplied. Answering machines can’t
do that. Many small church buildings have a telephone for use only in emergencies,
either an emergency at the church, or in the home of someone who is at the church.
Our small churches are splendidly efficient at meeting emergencies, usually
far better than large churches. . . . Don’t put down the small and effective
churches because they don’t have answering machines. They don’t need them. People
know where to go to get help. And usually, they don’t have to ask for it. Small
churches don’t wait for meetings. The communication of need and the response
of love does not depend on machinery.” I wish I had said that.
Despite the catalogue
blurb, we might be giving some review attention to Heidegger’s Atheism
by Laurence Paul Hemming. The catalogue says, “Hemming argues [that] Heidegger’s
atheism is an implicit critique of theology.” Ah, so, as Charlie Chan might
have said.
Samuel Huntington is
a piker with only eight “cultural constellations” that figure in his Clash
of Civilizations. David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford
University Press) lists 12,600 cultures of the world in what he calls the Ethnosphere.
Barrett and his colleagues have done a most ambitious thing, and a most difficult
thing, in trying to sum up the maddeningly diverse state of Christianity in
the world, especially since, among Christian groups claiming the greatest growth,
statistics are often a matter of enthusiastically inspired guesstimates. One
among many statistics that stands out is that in 1981 there were 20,800 denominations,
while today there are 34,000. Of course many of these are in the “Independent”
category and are post–denominational and pentecostal groups consisting of only
one congregation. The Independent category, however, accounts for 27.7 percent
of the world’s Christians and 38 percent of the world’s full–time Christian
workers. The prayer Ut unum sint (that they may all be one) would, it
seems, require an ever greater measure of faith.
All of a sudden it is
proposed as the received wisdom that T. S. Eliot was homosexual. The Times
Literary Supplement cites several instances of commentators stating it as
though it were a well–known fact, and I’ve seen a couple of such references
also on this side of the water. In his authoritative T. S. Eliot, Peter
Ackroyd writes: “It would be the tritest form of reductionism to assume that
Eliot, because he could not adequately deal with female sexuality, was therefore
homosexual.” That’s on page 310, in the event you need the reference when you
run into someone who confidently states “what everybody knows” about the sexuality
of Eliot.
Parse this: “We should
not allow theology, philosophy, or politics to interfere with the decision we
make on this issue.” That’s Congressman Ted Strickland of Ohio insisting that
the question of human cloning should be guided solely by the best available
science. But how are we to make a decision if the decision is made by
science? And who is this fellow Science who makes decisions? Francis Fukuyama
writes in the Public Interest, “It is only ‘theology, philosophy, or
politics’ that can establish the ends of science and technology. Scientists
may help to establish moral rules concerning their own conduct, but they do
so not as scientists but as scientifically informed members of a broader political
community.” Fukuyama is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and
he insists that “the march of biotechnology is not an unstoppable juggernaut.”
He cites a wide range of instances in which we more or less effectively regulate
science and technology, such as nuclear weapons, chemical warfare, replacement
human body parts, and various drugs. He opposes the libertarian doctrine that
defines freedom exclusively in terms of people—whether parents wanting designer
children, scientists playing with the creation of new species, or entrepreneurs
in search of very big bucks—doing what they want. Fukuyama writes: “But this
kind of freedom will be different from all other freedoms that people have previously
enjoyed. Political freedom has heretofore meant the freedom to pursue those
ends that our natures had established for us. Those ends are not rigidly determined;
human nature is very plastic, and we have an enormous range of choices conformable
with that nature. But it is not infinitely malleable, and the elements that
remain constant—particularly our species–typical gamut of emotional responses—constitute
a safe harbor that allows us to connect, potentially, with all other human beings.
It may be that we are somehow destined to take up this new kind of freedom,
or that the next stage of evolution is one in which, as some have suggested,
we will deliberately take charge of our own biological makeup rather than leaving
it to the blind forces of natural selection. But if we do, we should do it with
our eyes open. Many assume that the posthuman world will look pretty much like
our own—free, equal, prosperous, caring, compassionate—only with better health
care, longer lives, and perhaps higher levels of intelligence than today. But
the posthuman world could be one that is far more hierarchical and competitive
than the one that currently exists, and full of social conflict as a result.
It could be one in which any notion of shared humanity is lost, because we have
mixed human genes with those of so many other species that we no longer have
a clear idea of what a human being is. It could be one in which the average
person is living well into his or her second century, sitting in a nursing home
hoping for an unattainable death. Or it could be the kind of soft tyranny envisioned
in Brave New World, in which everyone is healthy and happy but has forgotten
the meaning of hope, fear, or struggle. We do not have to accept any of these
future worlds under a false banner of liberty, be it that of unlimited reproductive
rights or of unfettered scientific inquiry. We do not have to regard ourselves
as slaves to inevitable technological progress when that progress does not serve
human ends. True freedom means the freedom of political communities to protect
the values they hold most dear, and it is that freedom that we need to exercise
with regard to the biotechnology revolution today.”
The Rev. John B. Chane,
formerly dean in San Diego, has been elected the new Episcopal bishop of Washington,
D.C. He is a champion of the ordination of women and non–celibate homosexuals,
the blessing of same–sex unions, and the unlimited abortion license. In his
talking about himself, the word “prophetic” pops up repeatedly. On social issues
in San Diego, the Washington Post admiringly reports, Chane accused utilities
of setting “immoral” rates, worked for free needle–exchange programs for drug
addicts, and spoke out against what he called “the broad issues of racism, sexism,
and homophobia.” It has the makings of a movie: A Prophet Goes to Washington.
And a humble prophet at that. When asked his greatest strength, he replied:
“I love people. Of all the things I’ve done in parishes I’ve served and the
cathedral, if you talk to the people, they will tell you I’m very much a people
person and solid pastoral caregiver.” That, mind you, is simply the chief of
all the things he might have mentioned. “Bishop–Elect Bold From Start” is the
headline of the next day’s story in the Post. Upon his arrival in Washington
he issued a “blunt challenge” to the assembled faithful, saying that they must
give more generously “if I am to be the compassionate pastor, the engaged congregational
visitor, the prophetic preacher and teacher that I believe you have called me
to be.” Compassion, engagement, and prophecy must be adequately funded. He explained
that resources are necessary “to free your bishop from the administrative conundrums
that have literally crucified so many bishops in the Episcopal Church.” Episcopal
bishops, and many of them, have been literally crucified? However much some
curmudgeons might relish the thought, surely there is a law against that. The
Post says that Chane “will take time to assess his new job, the diocese,
and the Washington area before tackling new church issues, the city, or the
federal government.” So the Episcopal Church, the city, and the nation have
a little time to shape up before Bishop Chane unleashes his prophetic fury.
Racists, sexists, homophobes, and persons favoring immoral utility rates have
been put on notice. (Another successful placement by www.central_casting@ecusa.org.)
Here’s an entry for the
Only in America Awards. Down in Powhatan, Virginia, there was Huguenot Academy,
a private school established by white folk during the era of racial integration.
There was also there a school established by Benedictine sisters for lonely
Catholics in that part of the country, called Blessed Sacrament. I don’t know
the details of how the merger came about, but the new name is wonderful: Blessed
Sacrament Huguenot School. Maybe that’s what Paul Tillich had in mind when he
spoke of combining Catholic substance and Protestant principle, even if the
principal is Catholic.
On the wooden box containing
twenty–five of these quite good cigars from Honduras is imprinted, “This Product
Contains/Produces Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer,
and Birth Defects or Other Reproductive Harms.” That is fascinating. Not, of
course, that cigars contain/produce chemicals that, taken in sufficient quantity,
are damaging or even lethal. The same is true of Hershey chocolate bars or,
for that matter, mother’s milk. No, the interesting thing is the notice that
this fact is “known to the State of California.” If it is a fact, it is presumably
known to others, including other states and maybe even the people of California.
The notice does not say, “According to the State of California, this product,
etc.” Nor does it say that “the State of California claims to know, etc.” At
the same time, it seems unlikely that the State of California is making a claim
to epistemic privilege, as though it knows something that others do not know.
Rather, the State of California wants it to be known that it knows. It wants
everybody to know that it knows, which is why boxes exported to, for instance,
New York carry the notice. Perhaps California law requires the notice on boxes
shipped to California, and it’s not worth the bother for the manufacturer to
remove it from boxes shipped elsewhere. On the other hand, I would not be surprised
if the California law stipulates that anyone shipping boxes there must put the
notice on boxes shipped anywhere, just to make sure that everyone knows that
the State of California knows. One may wonder why the law requires the words
“known to the State of California.” It might seem that the statement would be
stronger if it flatly asserted that the product “is known to cause cancer, etc.”
But then the State of California would not get credit for its heightened consciousness,
which is the presumption of its campaign to californicate America. A constituent
part of that effort is, of course, its antismoking crusade, in which it proudly
claims to lead the country. Crusades are prone to excess, as, for instance,
in California’s antismoking television ads aimed specifically against the smoking
of cigars. They depicted a fellow who has seventy cigarettes stuffed in his
mouth, with the message that smoking one cigar is equivalent to smoking seventy
cigarettes. This backfired in a big way since people, knowing that smoking a
cigar or two per day is a pretty temperate thing to do, concluded that smoking
seventy cigarettes per day, never mind just a pack or two, must also be all
right. But back to the box with the declaration about what is “known to the
State of California.” Perhaps it is a claim to epistemic privilege. In
that case, given the justifiably jaundiced view of most Americans toward the
presumptions of California, the notice on the box may have the happy effect
of enhancing respect for the much maligned cigar. (Voice from the peanut gallery:
Don’t you have more serious things to write about? The answer is yes, and I
admit that the foregoing item is an instance of whimsy in the service of procrastination—without,
however, agreeing with the obviously misguided implication in the question that
the cigar is not a subject deserving of serious reflection.)
The Virginia Military
Institute, forced by court order a while back to go coed, is now under judicial
fire for permitting a spoken (out loud!) prayer at dinner. According to the
Associated Press, VMI’s lawyer explained to the federal judge that the prayer
“is intended for development of military leaders, not for religious indoctrination.”
VMI’s spokeswoman adds that the prayer is voluntary; students are given the
opportunity to say a blessing but they are, she says, “to refrain from specific
religious references.” A neat trick, if you can do it; like playing a game of
sports in general. Law that requires people to say asinine things in defense
of what should not need to be defended is, as the fellow said, an ass. VMI lost
the case.
On First Avenue, around
the corner from where I live, there are still posters to be seen: “Bloomberg
wants to buy your vote for $60 million. Vote for Mark Green.” Green narrowly
lost the mayoral race. I suppose there were enough people who wanted that $60
million. They must be very disappointed. Actually, Michael Bloomberg is reported
to have spent $69 million on the race and—in response to a question frequently
asked—a lot of us are disappointed. Not that much was expected. Bloomberg may
be a fiscal conservative, but he’s a social and cultural lefty and stridently
pro–abortion. Of course, Rudy Giuliani was also pro–choice, but he invoked the
excuse that there was not much a mayor could do about abortion. Bloomberg, by
way of contrast, is in your face. With all the problems facing the city and
its new mayor, one of his earliest acts was to require all the public teaching
hospitals in the city to provide training in doing abortions. (Only two of the
eleven public hospitals had made it standard for residents.) On a number of
issues, including his treatment of racial charlatans like Al Sharpton as big
time players, Bloomberg appears to be reversing the Giuliani course. Of course,
that might give a boost to Sharpton’s presidential ambitions for 2004, which
would make for great political theater. As for the future of the city, however,
some thoughtful New Yorkers are referring to Mayor Doomberg.
I don’t know what this
does to the law that says where orthodoxy is optional it will sooner or later
be proscribed, but it is an odd twist. It depends, I suppose, on whether the
witch cult called Wiccan qualifies as a kind of orthodoxy. In any event, Mary
LeBlanc of Houston joined the Unitarian Fellowship because it “welcomes persons
of every religious belief.” It seems the fellowship was too welcoming of her
beliefs, wanting her to teach other members how to perform Wiccan rituals. Wiccans,
however, practice a form of what might be called closed communion. Ms. LeBlanc
states that “only those who are priests or priestesses of the religion may perform
this ritual and that it was highly offensive for someone who is not a member
of that religion to do public performance of one of their rites.” The next thing
she knew, she received a letter from the fellowship notifying her that she “was
evicted from membership.” Not only that, but members began to harass her and
call her “a humpbacked, toothless, redneck hillbilly witch.” Her lawsuit against
the fellowship, claiming millions of dollars in damages, charges that members
have acted “with great venom and spite” and have thereby inflicted “emotional
distress.” Let the excommunicated Ms. LeBlanc stand as a warning to anyone thinking
of joining up with an open–minded spiritual fellowship that welcomes persons
of any and every religious belief.
A chillingly instructive book is Nicholas Wade’s Life Script: How the
Human Genome Discoveries Will Transform Medicine and Enhance
Your Health. Genomic technologies will proceed, he writes,
in “three overlapping waves of innovation which can be called
conventional, germ–line, and life–extending.” The conventional
seems fairly innocent, involving “gene chips” that will
enhance individual medical treatment. Germ–line manipulation
is spookier; it involves making genetic changes that will
be passed on from generation to generation. The third, life–extending,
means increasing the “natural” life span to, say, two hundred
years or more. That is part of the “immortality project”
about which Leon Kass has written so persuasively in these
pages (see “L’Chaim
and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” May 2001). Adam
Wolfson, who has a key staff position with the President’s
Council on Bioethics, discusses how the questions raised
by Wade can be publicly deliberated and decided. It will
not be easy, he suggests, given the widespread values of
“nonjudgmentalism” and “equality,” and the credulity toward
science that is aptly called “scientism.” He writes, “Modern
science, whose overriding goal is the conquest of the blind
forces of nature, is now itself considered a blind force
beyond human control.” Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon
wrote that the aim of science is “the relief of man’s estate.”
In The Great Instauration he warned: “Lastly, I would
address one general admonition to all; that they consider
what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek
it . . . but for the benefit and use of life; and that they
perfect and govern it in charity.” Wolfson comments: “In
today’s secularized culture, it is increasingly difficult
to insist, as Bacon once did, that scientists should be
governed by a religious or ethical norm like charity. Such
a norm is dismissed as the residue of a faded religious
faith, a faith that must not be forced on nonbelievers,
or a humanism that has been discredited.” But that is precisely
what the President’s Council, and all of us, must insist
upon. In a democracy in which more than 90 percent of the
people believe in God and what, however confusedly, they
call objective moral values (which, pressed not very hard,
turn out to be religiously grounded), why on earth should
a small minority of atheists be allowed to claim that their
presuppositions are the norm for public deliberation? There
is no reason whatever for the rest of us to go along with
their attempt at an intellectual coup d’état. They are free
to try to persuade of us the truth of their presuppositions.
Failing that, they are free to find a society that agrees
with them. But in a democratic polity, it is we the people,
locked in civil argument and contending for what we hold
to be true, who are to deliberate and decide the great questions
bearing on our common future. That, at least, is the theory,
and it is the duty of the President’s Council, and all of
us, to try to make it the practice as well.
In his two–part effusion
in the New York Review of Books on what is wrong with the idea of intelligent
design and those who advocate it (“Saving Us from Darwin”), Frederick Crews
takes some cracks at this journal and the New Criterion, but, given what
he takes to be our editorial biases, he’s not much surprised. He writes, “The
case of Commentary looks more significant, however, because the magazine
is published by the American Jewish Committee and is much concerned with defending
Jewish beliefs and affinities.” To those to whom the connection between Darwin
and Jewish beliefs and affinities may not be immediately obvious, Crews explains
that intelligent designers such as Phillip Johnson and William Dembski are really
Christians. Like they really believe that stuff. He got the goods on Dembski,
who, he reveals, has written that all truths “find their completion in Christ.”
Crews goes on to note, however, that Commentary has a track record of
giving a pass to “the evangelical right” in order to secure its neoconservative
political alliances. An early instance of that was a 1985 article I did for
Commentary, “What Do the Fundamentalists Want?”, that went so far as
to suggest that even people such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are American
citizens who have a right to take part in the political process. What all this
has to do with Darwin and intelligent design may elude some readers, but for
the record, Commentary’s problem, if that is what it is, is not with
the “religious right” but more specifically with Catholicism. In recent years
it has repeatedly taken its cudgel to beat up on Pius XII for his putative silence
about the Holocaust, has favorably reviewed slash–and–burn anti–Catholic polemicists
such as James Carroll, and, most recently, has trashed Jewish–Christian (meaning
mainly Catholic) theological dialogue, which, we are given to understand, threatens
to reduce hostility between Jews and Christians and thus encourage Jewish conversions
to Christianity. So Crews may be on to something about “Jewish beliefs and affinities,”
at least as those are represented by Commentary, but it is by no means
clear what that has to do with the growing criticism, on both philosophical
and scientific grounds, of Darwinism. Nonetheless, for an all–stops–pulled and
entertainingly wrongheaded assault on the critics, you might want to check out
“Saving Us from Darwin.”
You advised someone not
to have an abortion? Be careful. Be very careful. You may be engaged in criminal
activity. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL)
has enlisted the support of New York’s attorney general, Elliot Spitzer, in
claiming that crisis pregnancy centers are violating the law by “advising persons
on medical options without being licensed to do so.” There are thousands of
such centers around the country, and more than a hundred in New York. Most offer
adoption services, placement into maternity homes, free prenatal care, free
ultrasounds, free counseling, and free child care supplies and other help after
the child is born. And yes, they encourage women not to have an abortion. “This
attack,” says Chris Slattery, founder of Expectant Mother Care, “could have
ripple effects nationwide. If they can successfully ban counseling by volunteer
lay people, this could spread across the country and literally cripple the movement
that is the heart and soul of compassionate abortion alternatives counseling.”
Slattery’s organization and others are launching a vigorous legal defense, and
for that they need money. Write Expectant Mother Care, 210 East 23rd St., 5th
Floor, New York, New York 10010.
The clock is ticking,
and many in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee are counting the days, the hours, and
even the minutes before Archbishop Rembert Weakland has to submit his resignation
at twelve noon on his seventy–fifth birthday. I am told that the champagne bottles
will be popped at 12:01 p.m. upon receiving the fax from Rome that the resignation
is accepted. Truth to tell, I’ve always had something of a soft spot for the
Archbishop. He’s liberally daffy but more amusingly candid than most of that
persuasion. Of course he has a very high opinion of himself, but he’s never
tried to hide it. I particularly liked his public statement that he would have
made a great Bishop of Salzburg in the time of Mozart but ended up as Bishop
of Milwaukee in the time of rock and roll. There’s something perversely refreshing
about a bishop who doesn’t mind saying that he’s too good for the people he’s
called to serve. Or consider his essay in The Catholic Church, Morality,
and Politics, an interesting collection of readings in moral theology just
published by Paulist Press. The Archbishop takes off from my book, The Catholic
Moment, and his point is that it’s not going to happen—and a very good thing,
too. He does not share my hopes for cooperation with evangelical Protestants,
or what he calls “the religious right.” “In fact,” he writes, “most Catholics
are leery of that movement, seeing it as narrow–minded and even dangerous. If
at times the position of the United States Conference of Roman Catholic bishops
coincides with that of the religious right, it does so out of totally different
theological premises.” Totally different? Like the premise that Jesus Christ
is Lord? Or that human beings, born and unborn, are a gift from God and are
to be legally protected? Or the Apostles’ Creed? The Archbishop is a cultivatedly
cultured man (he is, in fact, an accomplished musician), and he is not going
to let all that cultivation be compromised by association with those fundies.
He also has some very decided ideological views: “The tenets of the politically
neoconservative thinkers in the United States, of which group Father Neuhaus
is one of the most compelling exponents, are not shared by the majority of American
Catholics. The latter do not expect a political Catholic moment to come about
through the coalescence of Catholic social teaching, as taught by Pope John
Paul II, with a neoconservative agenda. Nor do they expect that this combination
will then be embraced by the religious right. They do not accept that the neoconservative
agenda is consonant with the teachings of the present Pope or consistent with
Catholic social tradition.” The Archbishop’s confidence that the Catholic moment
can be warded off rests on his assessment of the Catholic circumstance in this
country. “What militates most against a Catholic moment, however, is the lack
of cohesiveness among Catholics themselves in the United States.” He writes
that Mass attendance has fallen off, that there is “disagreement among Catholics
about what they believe, especially in the area of moral teaching,” and that
most Catholics “are almost totally illiterate about the teachings, history,
and traditions of their faith.” He concludes, “They are independent and critical
thinkers.” I am sure the Archbishop does not mean to say that it is a good thing
that most Catholics are lax in practice and religiously illiterate. But that
seems to be the causal connection with their being “independent and critical
thinkers,” which he clearly does think is a good thing. And laxity and illiteracy
do serve the useful purpose of militating against the chances of there being
anything like a Catholic moment, which he considers a very good thing. As I
say, the clock is ticking. I do not say that I will miss Rembert Weakland, since
he has declared that, with retirement, he will have even more time for engaging
the great issues of Church and society. We would be the poorer without his voice
of curmudgeonly reaction against the failure of the revolution that he mistakenly
thought was declared by the Second Vatican Council. Such voices are becoming
ever more rare and should be cherished, if for no other reason than to remind
us of how things used to be before people sensed the promise of a Catholic moment.
What a century it was.
In 1910 a great Protestant missionary conference was held in Edinburgh to plan
the evangelization of the world. Fourteen hundred delegates gathered, only eighteen
of whom were not from Europe or North America. There was not one African. The
assumption, understandably, was that world evangelization meant the expansion
of Western Christianity to the rest of the world. Historian Mark Noll of Wheaton
College comments: “What actually happened was dramatically different. The surprises
as well as the magnitude of developments in the twentieth–century history of
Christianity can be illustrated by considering a series of comparisons for present
realities of this past week:
- Last Sunday it is probable that more believers attended church in China than
in all of so–called Christian Europe.
- Last Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa,
Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Episcopalians in
the United States combined—and the number of Anglicans at church in Nigeria
was several times the number in these other African countries.
- Last Sunday more Presbyterians were at church in Ghana than in Scotland, and
more were at church in the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa
than in the United States.
- Last Sunday more members of the Assemblies of God in Brazil were in church
than the combined total of the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in
Christ in the United States.
- Last Sunday more people attended the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul (Pastor
Paul Young–gi Cho) than attended all of the churches in significant American
denominations like the Christian Reformed Church, the Evangelical Free Church,
or the Presbyterian Church in America.
- Last Sunday, Roman Catholics in the United States probably worshiped in
more languages than at any previous time in American history.
- Last Sunday the churches with the largest attendance in England and France
had mostly black congregations.”
Careful historians such as Noll are generally nervous about making
generalizations, but he takes a stab at it: “If it were possible to summarize
the momentous changes in world Christianity over the course of the twentieth
century, five themes might emerge: First, the decline of Christianity in Europe,
as a result of a steady erosion in Western Europe and the traumatic clash with
communism in Eastern Europe. Second, the renovation of the Roman Catholic Church,
symbolized by the Second Vatican Council, to reflect both cultural conditions
of the modern world and the growing presence of the Two–Thirds World in the
Church (which now numbers about one billion adherents). Third, the displacement
among Protestants of Britain and Germany as the driving agents of Christian
expansion by the United States. Fourth, the expansion of Christianity into many
regions where the Christian presence had been minimal or nonexistent, including
China, Korea, many parts of India, and much of Africa. Fifth, a change in the
pressing issues bearing down upon the Christian heartland, from the jaded discontents
of advanced Western civilization to the raw life–and–death struggles of poverty,
disease, and tribal warfare in non–Western civilizations.” It certainly isn’t
what the folks at Edinburgh in 1910 expected, writes Noll, but “what actually
happened was much more unexpected, much more intriguing, much more threatening,
much more complex, and much more an occasion for praising the Lord who sent
his witnesses ‘to the ends of the earth.’”
Shmuley Boteach, who,
it says here, is a “practicing rabbi,” is also the author of very popular books,
such as Kosher Sex, which has sold over 1.5 million copies. Here’s an
ad for his latest, Judaism for Everyone: Renewing Your Life through the Vibrant
Lessons of the Jewish Faith. (It seems the focus group came up with so many
buzz words that they decided to use them all in the title.) The Rabbi writes,
“Sex is the holiest human experience, the highest form of knowledge.” Holier
than studying Torah? Higher than the knowledge of G–d? His fans eagerly await
next year’s hot offering, Kosher Idolatry.
“Can’t you get through
an issue without quoting Chesterton?” asks a reader in Chicago. The answer is
that it’s not easy. The Chicago critic can skip this item from GKC’s Orthodoxy,
but I expect others will relish its wisdom and its pertinence to our present
world circumstance, even if they might quibble over the slight to Eastern monasticism.
We should, suggests Chesterton, be more careful than we usually are when we
speak about Christianity being monotheistic: “If we take any other doctrine
that has been called old–fashioned we shall find the case the same. It is the
same, for instance, in the deep matter of the Trinity. Unitarians (a sect never
to be mentioned without a special respect for their distinguished intellectual
dignity and high intellectual honor) are often reformers by the accident that
throws so many small sects into such an attitude. But there is nothing in the
least liberal or akin to reform in the substitution of pure monotheism for the
Trinity. The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect;
but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than
the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere awful unity is not
only a king but an Eastern king. The heart of humanity, especially of European
humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols
that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy
pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing
even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt
keenly the idea ‘it is not well for man to be alone.’ The social instinct asserted
itself everywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled
by the Western idea of monks. So even asceticism became brotherly; and the Trappists
were sociable even when they were silent. If this love of a living complexity
be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than
the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)—to us
God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and
even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant
to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting
as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the
intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places
and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians
who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for
God to be alone.”
John Dewey died in 1952, writes a reader, and Deweyism had expired long before
that. The complaint is about my giving extensive attention
to Dewey in “The
American Mind” (Public Square, December 2001). There
I am appreciatively critical of Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical
Club, pointing out that his version of pragmatism as
the American philosophy went out with the whimper
of Dewey’s 1934 tract, A Common Faith. Dewey correctly
saw that his god of democracy could not be sustained without
a religious faith, or its functional equivalent. Since it
is hard to sell people on a religion that is presented as
a functional equivalent of religion, Dewey bit the bullet
and called his “common faith” a religion. In doing that,
he offended some of his more militantly secularist friends,
and ended up converting almost nobody to his very uncommon
faith. While Dewey’s project flopped, the idea persists
that our society needs shared values and beliefs that are
held with religious intensity, and that Christianity or
even the Judeo–Christian moral tradition cannot, for various
reasons, supply that need. That idea was prominent in what
a few years ago was called the communitarian movement championed
by Amitai Etzioni, and is evident in Alan Wolfe’s blithe
diagnosis of American culture’s religion of Nonjudgmentalism.
John Dewey is also very much alive in Eldon Eisenach’s The
Next Religious Establishment: National Identity and Political
Theology in Post–Protestant America (Rowman & Littlefield).
Once again, the assumption is that no religious tradition
is inclusive enough to nurture the diverse values of a pluralistic
society. What was called mainline Protestantism once tried
to do that, and succeeded more or less, but that is history.
What is needed now, says Eisenach, is a new “Protestantism
without Christianity.” This will require a post–Christian
“national theology,” and the only institutions that can
produce and disseminate such a theology are the university
and, to a lesser extent, the public school. One might note
in passing that much of American Protestantism is already
and very effectively attending to the job of supplying Protestantism
without Christianity. The more pertinent point, however,
is that Eisenach’s “next religious establishment” is John
Dewey’s “common faith” redivivus. The belief that the contemporary
university—run largely by a privileged and self–indulgent
elite as a hothouse for the cultivation of resentments against
the American experience—can provide a belief system for
the guiding and sustaining of this society is, well, not
very believable. I see, however, that in the current issue
of Theology Today, Peter J. Paris of Princeton Theological
Seminary has a very different take on Eisenach’s proposal.
“This,” he concludes, “is a novel book that greatly advances
the current discourse about public religion and national
identity.” That judgment may or may not say something about
post–Christian Protestantism at Princeton. In any event,
The Next Religious Establishment is as novel as John
Dewey’s Common Faith, Jean–Jacques Rousseau’s “civil
religion,” or the religious establishment imposed by the
Directoire of the French Revolution. The fabrication
of new religions is a perennial project of activist intellectuals
who have been and predictably will be frustrated by the
disinclination of people to take their religion from their
presumed betters, and by the continuing inconvenience of
the vitality of Christianity.
These telephone sales
pitches are irritating enough without the stranger at the other end calling
me by my first name. I sometimes respond that I didn’t know we were acquainted,
and perhaps he would be so kind as to remind me of his name and where we met.
I realize that may be a bit snooty, since the poor guy, or gal, is probably
instructed to presume. (A graduate student at Harvard to John Kenneth Galbraith:
“Do your friends call you John?” Galbraith, looking down from the heights: “My
friends call me Kenneth. You may call me Professor Galbraith.”) The purpose
of the foregoing is to introduce this by Roger Scruton from “Real Men Have Manners”
in City Journal: “In a world organized and disciplined by manners . .
. strangers could have confidence in one another. They did not feel threatened
in the street or in public gatherings; they negotiated their passage with relaxed,
easy gestures. Take manners away, and public space becomes threatening, relations
take on a provisional aspect, and people feel naked and exposed. In the absence
of manners, law is not the only recourse. You can try to preempt conflict by
pretending that you are not living among strangers at all. Thus arises a substitute
for manners that, while it generates an inferior ideal of human life, nevertheless
enables us to avoid the worst of our frictions. This substitute is informality.
Where manners prevail, people stand at a certain distance from one another.
They hold themselves in reserve—in just the way that courtship holds sex in
reserve. Such reserve does not diminish the value of intimacy but, on the contrary,
augments it by raising it to the level of a gift. The loss of manners implies
that true intimacy is less and less obtainable, since less and less is there
the condition with which intimacy is contrasted and from which it gains its
meaning. Instead, a pretense of intimacy has arisen, enabling people to deal
with one another not as strangers but as friends—at least until the word or
deed that initiates the lawsuit. Familiarity, then, is both an offense to good
manners and a substitute for them, a way of getting others to your side with
the speed and impersonality of a transaction on the stock exchange. Modern business
therefore depends upon familiarity. The person who insists on antique forms
and courtesies is on his way to early retirement. Hence in the world of business
and the professions, there is much affectation of friendship but very little
friendship. Paradoxically, the loss of manners, rather than abolishing hypocrisy,
has created a vast realm of pretense.” Admittedly, Scruton is from the UK, where
manners are often confused with mannerisms, but his complaint is a welcome antidote
to the fake friendships that would deprive people of the pleasure of becoming
friends.
The sad truth is that
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Sources: Mainlining in the basement,
Theology Today, January 2002. On the future of Israel, Commentary,
January 2002. Peter Steinfels on sexual scandal, New York Times, February
9, 2002. Mark Steyn on Canadian churches, New Criterion, February 2002.
While We’re At It: On fasting, Catholic Trends, January
19, 2002. Peter Singer on charity after September 11, Slate.com, December
12, 2001. Emily Nussbaum on Bible translations, New York Times Magazine,
February 10, 2002. On mainline/oldline publishing houses, Religion Watch,
December 2001. On the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Religion Watch, December 2001.
Religious pluralism and demographic realities, Wall Street Journal, December
14, 2001; private correspondence. Jewish identity, Jewish Week, November
2, 2001. On the centenary of TLS, Times Literary Supplement, November
9, 2001. John Wilson on Michael Bellesiles, Books & Culture, January/February
2002. T. S. Eliot’s sexuality, Times Literary Supplement, November 2,
2001. Francis Fukuyama on cloning, Public Interest, Winter 2002. On Bishop
John B. Chane, Washington Post, January 26 and 28, 2002. Prayer at VMI,
Associated Press, December 16, 2001. Unitarian Wiccans, Houston Chronicle,
January 11, 2001. Adam Wolfson on biotechnology, Public Interest, Winter
2002. Frederick Crews on intelligent design, New York Review of Books,
October 4 and 18, 2001. A crisis for crisis pregnancy centers, Catholic Infonet,
January 9, 2002. The new Deweyism, Theology Today, January 2002.