Better Than Believing

Presidents' Day and the Glorification of War

    My friends who oppose the war that the United States is waging in Iraq may not fully appreciate the enormity of the task they have undertaken.  They are trying to alter the soul or personality of their country, which was founded on the principle that killing people is an honorable way to solve economic and political differences.  If you do not agree with my assessment, I suggest that you consider the contribution of the two presidents whom we extol on the third Monday in February.
    The first, George Washington, led what began as a tax-payers’ revolt and which evolved into a rebellion against the duly constituted authority of the crown and parliament.  Most historians agree, that the protests over taxes were based on the colonists’ rights as Englishmen and that as Englishmen they were probably better off than the ordinary people living in Great Britain. The armed rebellion was supported by a minority faction of disgruntled people who resented the taxes being and restrictions on trade imposed by a distant authority.  At the Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1775, Washington was one of those who most favored war to settle their grievances.  Why else did her appear in full military uniform at every session?1  I cannot help but wonder what his attitude might have been if the British authorities had not rejected his petition for a commission in their regular army.
    When the news reached Europe that the Continental Congress had issued an elaborate justification for the war—dated July 4, 1776—the wording of the document produced everything from smirks to scorn: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” How could the American colonists themselves take seriously such a statement knowing that one in every five people in the colonies lived as a chattel slave?
    A sufficient number of men, however, were willing to put aside questions of justice and morality and follow Washington to a war in which 25,000 of them were killed.  The dead represented approximately 1% of the 2,500,000 estimated population of the time.  According to reports, the British and their Hessian mercenaries lost nearly as many.  Two results of this war that claimed 50,000 lives get little attention on Presidents’ Day. 
    The first is that the separation of the United States from Britain allowed for the continuation of slavery in this country for decades after the heinous practice had been stopped throughout the empire.  Parliament abolished slavery in 1833.  By contrast, in this country slavery continued until 1865, enshrined in the Constitution, which declared every slave to be three-fifths of a human being.
    The second result of the bloody rebellion was the establishment of a tradition in which war is glorified as a means of settling economic and political disputes.  It was this tradition that made possible citizen support for another war with Britain in 1812 and the war in which we stole the northern Mexican provinces,1846-1848.
    The tradition of glorifying war also made possible the actions of the other president whom we honor in February, Abraham Lincoln.  In their reflections on the Mexican War, President Lincoln and his Secretary of State William Seward agreed that “one fundamental principle of politics is to be always on the side of your country in war.  It kills any party to oppose a war.”2
    Even Lincoln’s admirers question his claims to have constitutional authority for launching the war against the Confederate States and for his suspension of habeas corpus.  Even they admit that he spurned the delegations from the South seeking a way to a peaceful settlement.  Because of the terrible guilt the nation rightly suffers for allowing slavery, people forget that Lincoln’s war initially was not about slavery but about forcing the southern states to stay in the Union.  As Lincoln famously wrote to Horace Greeley:

    “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.  If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.  What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the Union.”

   True to his word, in 1863 in order to discourage England’s entry into the war on the Confederate side, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which in fact freed no slaves at all.  He simply declared that the slaves within the states and parts of states still in rebellion were free.  That is, Lincoln proclaimed the freedom only of the slaves who were currently beyond the protection of the federal government.  The slaves in the Union and in the parts of the South under federal control were still the property of their white owners.
    The war was about the right of states to secede from the Union, a right established by the Declaration of Independence, a right asserted by South Carolina as early as 1833, a right claimed by the New England states several times in the nineteenth century.  To deny the right of secession, Lincoln sent over 600,000 young men to their deaths.
    Without our tradition of glorifying war, I doubt that Mr. Bush could have garnered enough support to launch his invasion of Iraq.  To my friends who want to put an end to this cruel and immoral war, I say let us put a stop to the glorification of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.  Let us stop the glorification of the two presidents whose support made these wars possible.

1. Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency George Washington, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p.69
2. quoted by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 546

Back to the Middle Ages?

                                                    1.
    When I read about Pope Benedict quoting a fourteenth-century Christian’s attack on the integrity of Islam, I thought to myself, “How appropriate.”  Western civilization seems to be drifting back to a mind set that was the norm before the age of reason.  Trying to strengthen support for the church or for “Christian” governments by stirring up animosity toward Muslims is just one example.

                                                    2.
    Another is the preference for religious ideology over scientific inquiry.  For example: the refusal to accept the evidence of climate change brought about by the release of green house gases, the refusal of the FDA to accept the recommendations of their advisory panel of scientists in regard to the “morning after” pill, the refusal of the administration to support stem cell research, and the refusal to accept evolution and the transmutation of species as the basis for the understanding of biology.  Somehow the responses to Copernicus and Galileo come to mind.

                                                     3.
    The use of torture in attempts to extract information and confessions has come back into fashion.  I thought that with the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1791, at least in this country, we accepted the principle that no person could be compelled to be a witness against himself.  If the principle doesn’t hold any longer for non-citizens, how long will it be before any accused person can be put on the rack?

                                                    4.
    Although the right of habeas corpus may not have been as firmly established by the Magna Carta in 1215 as I was taught in high school, the principle was deemed to be sufficiently important to be embodied in the 1789 Constitution of the United States (Article I, Section 9).  When I read that the new national security laws permit the government to deny habeas corpus to green card holders, I thought of my son-in-law Slavčo, and my blood ran cold.  He has black hair and a dark complexion.  All it would take for him to be locked up indefinitely without recourse to the courts would be for someone to accuse him of having a terrorist connection.  Locking up suspicious people indefinitely was a primary way for the church and the king to maintain order in the middle ages and earlier in human history.

                                                      5.
    Tax farming was common in biblical days and continued to be practiced for centuries, but I never expected to see in this country contractors making a living by a percentage of the back taxes that they can extract from helpless delinquents.  Although the government could increase tax revenues more efficiently by expanding the number of IRS agents, that approach would go against the promise to slim down the federal government.  The government would probably net $1.1 billion from private debt collectors over 10 years, compared with the $87 billion that could be reaped if the agency hired more revenue officers, as former commissioner Charles O. Rossotti has recommended.

God and Katrina

While many struggle to make sense of the devastation to the U. S. Gulf Coast produced by the hurricane Katrina, extremists of various persuasions had quick explanations. Alan Cooperman in his September 4^th article in the Washington Post compared the views of several fundamentalist Christians and a Muslim.

One fundamentalist Christian whom Cooperman quoted is Steve Lefemine, an anti-abortion activist in Columbia, S. C.: "In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion. . . Providence punishes national sins by national calamities."

Another fundamentalist also pronounced the disaster as the work of God but attributed the divine wrath to a different cause. Michael Marcavage of Philadelphia wrote, "The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter were flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets."

From Israel, "Christian" journalist Stan Goodenough identified a connection between Jewish settlers losing their homes in the Gaza strip and Americans losing theirs in New Orleans. "What America is about to experience is the lifting of God’s hand of protection; the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel.

The Muslim extremist, Kuwaiti official Muhammad Yousef Mlaifi, agreed that God was responsible. "It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to the American empire," wrote Mlaifi under the headline, "The Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah."

By putting these pronouncements together, Cooperman has made the clear the problem of holding to the view that God intervenes in nature and in history. If God sends calamities or decides to not prevent them, then people of faith are driven to find explanations for this cruel and outrageous behavior on the part of a just and loving God. In my mind, many liberal Christians, who would reject all the explanations for God’s criminal action quoted from the article, participate in the problem by talking and writing as if they have an inside track to the mind of God. They tell us of God’s plan, God’s creation, God’s hope for the world. I think if we are to hold out the promise of discovering God’s love and justice, we must abandon all notions of an interventionist God. We may learn important lessons by observing history and nature, but we put ourselves in peril if we claim to learn God’s intentions.

Unintelligent Design

Much to the annoyance of many scientists and progressive Christians, The New York Times lately has been paying unwarranted attention to the proponents of "intelligent design". By granting space for the neo-creationists to express their objections to the basis of evolutionary biology, newspapers and magazines are providing an aura of legitimacy that these anti-intellectual Christianists do not deserve.

Although genuine scientists often refuse to engage in debates about evolution, some of them are becoming more determined to expose the absurdity of the "intelligent design" notion. One of the best pieces I have seen on this subject is an article by a former veterinarian, Lisa Fullam, who is currently an assistant professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, California. In the article, which first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle under the title "Of God and the case for unintelligent design", she points out that the digestive track of rabbits is so poorly designed that they have to eat some of their own feces in order to extract the nutrients they need for survival. She goes on to describe how "horses are similarly badly put together." Their inefficient digestive systems produce gut blockages that without prompt veterinary intervention "lead to slow and excruciating death."

Only scientists may be aware of the badly designed digestive tracks of certain mammals, but anyone can observe the evidence that points to the design flaws in human beings. Was it really necessary for the vast majority of the population to suffer from backache? Then there is this silly business of nipples on men. What designer would want to accept responsibility for these useless appendages?

Unfortunately, in the midst of the political controversy over evolution, some well-meaning progressive Christians continue to write and speak about God as "creator", as if they really believed that God constructed the world and intervenes in nature. They may realize that they are using a metaphor, but to the general public they often sound as if they support the notion of intelligent design.

A related word that appears to support the concept of the intelligent designer is "creature". It suggests that all mobile life forms were created. I was surprised and pleased when I discovered that the Hebrew Bible has no equivalent term. When "creature" appears in English translations, the literal meaning of the Hebrew word might be: breathers, dumb beasts, living things, feathered ones, or howlers. For more on the subject, by late October you will be able to see more on the subject in my latest book, From Literal to Literary: The Essential Reference Book for Biblical Metaphors.

Living the Questions

Living the Questions is a new small-group program designed for Christian invitation, initiation, and spiritual formation. The program provides fourteen lesson plans and a series of video clips to stimulate discussion. In reviewing the course for Christian Century (April 5), Debra Bendis and Jason Byassee seem to assume that people who sign up for such a discussion group have been living in a cultural and spiritual vacuum. They also appear to think that in a church-sponsored course of study conformity to a particular party line would be a sign of wisdom. Anyone who agrees with these two positions should obviously avoid getting involved with Living the Questions. Neither of these assumptions, however, check out with my experience of reality.

The reviewers find fault with LtQ for pitching the course to "an audience of people involved enough in church to have been wounded by its fundamentalist versions." I don’t know on what planet Bendis and Byasee have been living. In my forty years of parish ministry, most of the people who showed up were either refugees from conservative congregations, or they were tentative seekers who had been avoiding religion because of what they had thought was the Christian point of view. The latter come from the fastest growing religiously identifiable group in the country, now about nineteen percent. I have yet to meet one who hadn’t thought that all Christians believed that Jesus got up out of the tomb and that baptism washed away all sin. As a test, I quizzed an eleven-year-old boy on these subjects. He has never been to a church, except for weddings, but he knows all about these beliefs, and he holds them in contempt.

The reviewers also complain that the speakers who appear on the video clips are a "discordant mix of voices". From such teachers, "people who are investigating Christianity will have a hard time deriving . . . a coherent introduction to Christianity." To me, the wide variety of views presented by LtQ make the course inviting and energizing. This is one of the most brilliant aspects of the series. In telling the Christian story, the course replicates the Bible, which — as everyone who has ever tried to read it knows — is as incoherent a mix of voices as you can find between two covers. Without having to be told in so many words, those who participate in the course discover the power that emerges when people are living the questions rather than accepting agreed-upon answers.

Christianity or Christianism

Christianity or Christianism

William Saffire, in his New York Times Magazine On Language column, introduced me to a pair of useful terms: Christianism and Christianist.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first of the two can be traced back to the seventeenth century. In 1674, R. Godfrey wrote of a "Heathenish Christianism". In 1855, I. Taylor identified an "easy, overweening, and egotistic Christianism". These examples in the OED demonstrate that the term as a long history of derogatory use. Christianist appears to be of more recent coinage.

I think that both of these terms will be helpful. For a long time I have resented the necessity of adding the modifier "progressive" or "liberal" to the word "Christian" in order to differentiate an approach to Christianity that differs from that propounded by extreme conservatives. Many people have told me that we stand for basic Christianity and shouldn’t have to use an adjective in describing our network. Now we have the opportunity for making a distinction between our understanding of Christianity and that proclaimed by the extremists.

Christians are people who practice Christianity. They do their best to follow the way taught and lived by Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus stands at the center of the constellation of symbols by which they make sense out of their existence.

Christianists are devotees of Christianism. They use Christian symbols in propounding an ideology that they want to impose on society. They make sense out of their existence by convincing themselves that they are right and that any who disagree are outside of God’s favor.

Christianism can appear at either end of the political spectrum. For example, Pat Robertson is a Christianist on the right, while Jim Wallis is a Christianist of the left. Both sides claim to be representing the mind of God, and both want to translate their positions into public policy.

Although using derogatory terms is often a less than admirable strategy in dealing with differences of opinion, such terms can sometimes bring clarity to an argument. In this case, I think it is important to insist on the distinction between Christianity – a religion, and Christianism – a political ideology.

For more on the subject, see the comments of Ruth Walker for the Christian Science Monitor and Rob Kall on Op-Ed News.

Faith: Another Word Hijacked

It was bad enough when the extreme conservatives gave Christianity a bad name (see my first blog), but now they threaten to discredit all religious persuasions. According to a report in The New York Times, the Family Research Council has put out a flier advertising a meeting to be held at a Kentucky megachurch that reads, "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Any person who already holds a dim view of organized religion could read that statement and conclude that all, or maybe most, people of faith want the Democrats in the United States Senate to be deprived of the historic power of the minority to protect the country from the tyranny of the temporary majority. People of faith appear to be those who have been duped into demanding a judiciary that would add to the wealth of the corporate elite, the Texas billionaires, and the Wall Street insiders.

The thoughtful citizens of the United States are perfectly aware that the big money people care little or northing about abortion, gay rights, or end of life issues. The big money people give lip service to such issues because there will never be enough of them to control the democratic process. They figured out a long time ago that they needed to forge an alliance with some other sector of society to gain and keep power. They chose the extreme conservatives among the Christians. The federal judges the big money people want to put on the bench are ideologically disposed to supporting the agenda of the extreme conservative Christians, but they would also support the big money agenda.

To enhance their political clout, the big money people have decided to claim that the only faith that matters is fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity. Anyone who does not agree with their social agenda is by definition not a person of faith. Like most other adherents to a religious tradition, I object. First, they hijacked the word "Christian" and made it unusable without a qualifying adjective, and now they seem bent on seizing and twisting the term "faith" in a similar fashion. I wonder, will faith become a term that liberals and progressives will have to abandon in fear of being misunderstood? Or can we add a modifier to separate ourselves from the ranks of Christians with whom we have serious disagreements and identify ourselves as "people of progressive faith"?

Whatever we do, I think we must object to the use of religious language that in the long run will undermine any hope of institutional religion being a respectable and constructive component of a democratic society.