I apologize for the length, but it is worth it if you have the chance. The modern western understanding of "religion" as a distinct category from other areas of life is a relatively recent development, yet it is a category that cannot encompass such "religions" as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. So how does one make sense of the claim that "religion" causes violence as opposed to other political, economic, or social causes? The author offers an interesting perspective on this question. Enjoy.
-NB
Harvard Divinity Bulletin “Does Religion Cause Violence: Behind the common question lies a morass of unclear thinking” Vol. 35, No. 2 & 3 (Spring/Summer 2007)
By William T. Cavanaugh
Everyone knows that religion has a dangerous tendency to promote violence. This story is part of the conventional wisdom of Western societies, and it underlies many of our institutions and policies, from limits on the public role of religion to efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East.
In this essay, I am going to challenge that conventional wisdom, but not in the ways it is usually challenged by people who identify themselves as religious. Such people will sometimes argue that the real motivation behind so-called religious violence is in fact economic and political, not religious. Others will argue that people who do violence are, by definition, not religious. The Crusader is not really a Christian, for example, because he doesn't really understand the meaning of Christianity. I don't think that either of these arguments works. In the first place, it is impossible to separate out religious from economic and political motives in such a way that religious motives are innocent of violence. How could one, for example, separate religion from politics in Islam, when Muslims themselves make no such separation? In the second place, it may be the case that the Crusader has misappropriated the true message of Christ, but one cannot therefore excuse Christianity of all responsibility. Christianity is not primarily a set of doctrines, but a lived historical experience embodied and shaped by the empirically observable actions of Christians. So I have no intention of excusing Christianity or Islam or any other faith system from careful analysis. Given certain conditions, Christianity, Islam, and other faiths can and do contribute to violence.
But what is implied in the conventional wisdom that religion is prone to violence is that Christianity, Islam, and other faiths are more inclined toward violence than ideologies and institutions that are identified as "secular." It is this story that I will challenge here. I will do so in two steps. First, I will show that the division of ideologies and institutions into the categories "religious" and "secular" is an arbitrary and incoherent division. When we examine academic arguments that religion causes violence, we find that what does or does not count as religion is based on subjective and indefensible assumptions. As a result certain kinds of violence are condemned, and others are ignored. Second, I ask, "If the idea that there is something called 'religion' that is more violent than so-called 'secular' phenomena is so incoherent, why is the idea so pervasive?" The answer, I think, is that we in the West find it comforting and ideologically useful. The myth of religious violence helps create a blind spot about the violence of the putatively secular nation-state. We like to believe that the liberal state arose to make peace between warring religious factions. Today, the Western liberal state is charged with the burden of creating peace in the face of the cruel religious fanaticism of the Muslim world. The myth of religious violence promotes a dichotomy between us in the secular West who are rational and peacemaking, and them, the hordes of violent religious fanatics in the Muslim world. Their violence is religious, and therefore irrational and divisive. Our violence, on the other hand, is rational, peacemaking, and necessary. Regrettably, we find ourselves forced to bomb them into the higher rationality.
The Incoherence of the Argument
The English-speaking academic world has been inundated—especially since September 11, 2001—by books and articles attempting to explain why religion has a peculiar tendency toward violence. They come from authors in many different fields: sociology, political science, religious studies, history, theology. I don't have time here to analyze each argument in depth, but I will examine a variety of examples—taken from some of the most prominent books on the subject—of what they all have in common: an inability to find a convincing way to separate religious violence from secular violence.
Charles Kimball's book When Religion Becomes Evil begins with the following claim: "It is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history."1 Kimball apparently considers this claim too trite to need proving, for he makes no attempt to reinforce it with evidence. If one were to try to prove it, one would need a concept of religion that would be at least theoretically separable from other institutional forces over the course of history. Kimball does not identify those rival institutional forces, but an obvious contender might be political institutions: tribes, empires, kingdoms, fiefs, states, and so on. The problem is that religion was not considered something separable from such political institutions until the modern era, and then primarily in the West. What sense could be made of separating out Egyptian or Roman "religion" from the Egyptian or Roman "state"? Is Aztec "politics" to blame for their bloody human sacrifices, or is Aztec "religion" to blame? As Wilfred Cantwell Smith showed in his landmark 1962 book, The Meaning and End of Religion, "religion" as a discrete category of human activity separable from "culture," "politics," and other areas of life is an invention of the modern West. In the course of a detailed historical study of the concept "religion," Smith was compelled to conclude that in premodern Europe there was no significant concept equivalent to what we think of as "religion," and furthermore there is no "closely equivalent concept in any culture that has not been influenced by the modern West."2 Since Smith's book, Russell McCutcheon, Richard King, Derek Peterson, and a host of other scholars have demonstrated how European colonial bureaucrats invented the concept of religion in the course of categorizing non-Western colonized cultures as irrational and antimodern.3
Now that we do have a separate concept of "religion," though, is the concept a coherent one? Jonathan Z. Smith writes: "Religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study . . . . Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy."4 Brian C. Wilson says that the inability to define religion is "almost an article of methodological dogma" in the field of religious studies.5 Timothy Fitzgerald argues that there is no coherent concept of religion; the term should be regarded as a form of mystification and scrapped.6 We have one group of scholars convinced that religion causes violence, and another group of scholars which does not think that there is such a thing as "religion," except as an intellectual construct of highly dubious value.
The former group carries on as if the latter did not exist. Kimball is one of the few who acknowledges the problem, but he dismisses it as merely semantic. Describing how flustered his students become when he asks them to write a definition of "religion," Kimball asserts, "Clearly these bright students know what religion is"; they just have trouble defining it. After all, Kimball assures us, "Religion is a central feature of human life. We all see many indications of it every day, and we all know it when we see it."7 When an academic says such a thing, you should react as you would when a used car salesman says, "Everybody knows this is a good car." The fact is that we don't all know it when we see it. A survey of religious studies literature finds totems, witchcraft, the rights of man, Marxism, liberalism, Japanese tea ceremonies, nationalism, sports, free market ideology, and a host of other institutions and practices treated under the rubric "religion."8 If one tries to limit the definition of religion to belief in God or gods, then certain belief systems that are usually called "religions" are eliminated, such as Theravada Buddhism and Confucianism. If the definition is expanded to include such belief systems, then all sorts of practices, including many that are usually labeled "secular," fall under the definition of religion. Many institutions and ideologies that do not explicitly refer to God or gods function in the same way as those that do. The case for nationalism as a religion, for example, has been made repeatedly from Carlton Hayes's 1960 classic Nationalism: A Religion to more recent works by Peter van der Veer, Talal Asad, Carolyn Marvin, and others.9 Carolyn Marvin argues that "nationalism is the most powerful religion in the United States."10
At this point I can imagine an objection being raised that goes like this: "So the concept of religion has some fuzzy edges. So does every concept. We might not be able to nail down, once and for all and in all cases, what a 'culture' is, or what qualifies as 'politics,' for example, but nevertheless the concepts remain useful. All may not agree on the periphery of these concepts, but sufficient agreement on the center of such concepts makes them practical and functional. Most people know that 'religion' includes Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and the major 'world religions.' Whether or not Buddhism or Confucianism fits is a boundary dispute best left up to scholars who make their living splitting hairs."
This appears to be a commonsense response, but it misses the point rather completely. In the first place, when some scholars question whether the category of religion is useful at all, it is more than a boundary dispute. There are some who do not believe there is a center. In the second place, and much more significantly, the problem with the "religion and violence" arguments is not that their working definitions of religion are too fuzzy. The problem is precisely the opposite. Their implicit definitions of religion are unjustifiably clear about what does and does not qualify as a religion. Certain belief systems, like Islam, are condemned, while certain others, like nationalism, are arbitrarily ignored.
This becomes most apparent when the authors in question attempt to explain why religion is so prone to violence. Although theories vary, we can sort them into three categories: religion is absolutist, religion is divisive, and religion is irrational. Many authors appeal to more than one of these arguments. In the face of evidence that so-called secular ideologies and institutions can be just as absolutist, divisive, or irrational, these authors tend to erect an arbitrary barrier between "secular" and "religious" ideologies and institutions, and ignore the former.
Consider the case of the preeminent historian Martin Marty. In a book on public religion, Politics, Religion, and the Common Good, Marty argues that religion has a particular tendency to be divisive and therefore violent. When it comes to defining what "religion" means, however, Marty lists 17 different definitions of religion, then begs off giving his own definition, since, he says, "[s]cholars will never agree on the definition of religion." Instead, Marty gives a list of five "features" that mark a religion. He then proceeds to show how "politics" displays all five of the same features. Religion focuses our ultimate concern, and so does politics. Religion builds community, and so does politics. Religion appeals to myth and symbol, and politics "mimics" this appeal in devotion to the flag, war memorials, and so on. Religion uses rites and ceremonies, such as circumcision and baptism, and "[p]olitics also depends on rites and ceremonies," even in avowedly secular nations. Religion requires followers to behave in certain ways, and "[p]olitics and governments also demand certain behaviors." In offering five defining features of "religion," and showing how "politics" fits all five, he is trying to show how closely intertwined religion and politics are, but he ends up demolishing any theoretical basis for separating the two. Nevertheless, he continues on to warn of the dangers of religion, while ignoring the violent tendencies of supposedly "secular" politics. For example, Marty cites the many cases of Jehovah's Witnesses who were attacked, beaten, tarred, castrated, and imprisoned in the United States in the 1940s because they believed that followers of Jesus Christ should not salute a flag. One would think that he would draw the obvious conclusion that zealous nationalism can cause violence. Instead, Marty concludes: "it became obvious that religion, which can pose 'us' versus 'them' . . . carries risks and can be perceived by others as dangerous. Religion can cause all kinds of trouble in the public arena."11 For Marty, "religion" refers not to the ritual vowing of allegiance to a flag, but only to the Jehovah's Witnesses refusal to do so.
As you can see, we need not rely only on McCutcheon, Smith, King, Fitzgerald, and the rest to show us that the religious/secular dichotomy is incoherent. Religion-and-violence theorists inevitably undermine their own distinctions. Take, for example, sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer's book Terror in the Mind of God, perhaps the most widely influential academic book on religion and violence. According to Juergensmeyer, religion exacerbates the tendency to divide people into friends and enemies, good and evil, us and them, by ratcheting divisions up to a cosmic level. "What makes religious violence particularly savage and relentless" is that it puts worldly conflicts in a "larger than life" context of "cosmic war." Secular political conflicts—that is, "more rational" conflicts, such as those over land—are of a fundamentally different character than those in which the stakes have been raised by religious absolutism to cosmic proportions. Religious violence differs from secular violence in that it is symbolic, absolutist, and unrestrained by historical time.12
However, keeping the notion of cosmic war separate from secular political war is impossible on Juergensmeyer's own terms. Juergensmeyer undermines this distinction in the course of his own analysis. For example, what he says about cosmic war is virtually indistinguishable from what he says about war in general:
Looking closely at the notion of war, one is confronted with the idea of dichotomous opposition on an absolute scale. . . . War suggests an all-or-nothing struggle against an enemy whom one assumes to be determined to destroy. No compromise is deemed possible. The very existence of the opponent is a threat, and until the enemy is either crushed or contained, one's own existence cannot be secure. What is striking about a martial attitude is the certainty of one's position and the willingness to defend it, or impose it on others, to the end.
Such certitude on the part of one side may be regarded as noble by those whose sympathies lie with it and dangerous by those who do not. But either way it is not rational.13
War provides an excuse not to compromise. In other words, "War provides a reason to be violent. This is true even if the worldly issues at heart in the dispute do not seem to warrant such a ferocious position." The division between mundane secular war and cosmic war vanishes as fast as it was constructed. According to Juergensmeyer, war itself is a "worldview"; indeed, "The concept of war provides cosmology, history, and eschatology and offers the reins of political control." "Like the rituals provided by religious traditions, warfare is a participatory drama that exemplifies—and thus explains—the most profound aspects of life." Here, war itself is a kind of religious practice.
At times Juergensmeyer admits the difficulty of separating religious violence from mere political violence. "Much of what I have said about religious terrorism in this book may be applied to other forms of political violence—especially those that are ideological and ethnic in nature."14 In Juergensmeyer's earlier book, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, he writes: "Secular nationalism, like religion, embraces what one scholar calls 'a doctrine of destiny.' One can take this way of looking at secular nationalism a step further and state flatly . . . that secular nationalism is 'a religion.' "15 These are important concessions. If true, however, they subvert the entire basis of his argument, which is the sharp divide between religious and secular violence.
Other theorists of religion and violence make similar admissions. Kimball, for example, says in passing that "blind religious zealotry is similar to unfettered nationalism," and, indeed, nationalism would seem to fit—at times—all five of Kimball's "warning signs" for when religion turns evil: absolute truth claims, blind obedience, establishment of ideal times, ends justifying means, and the declaration of holy war. The last one would seem to preclude secular ideologies, but as Kimball himself points out, the United States regularly invokes a "cosmic dualism" in its war on terror.16 Political theorist Bhikhu Parekh similarly undermines his own point in his article on religious violence. According to Parekh,
Although religion can make a valuable contribution to political life, it can also be a pernicious influence, as liberals rightly highlight. It is often absolutist, self-righteous, arrogant, dogmatic, and impatient of compromise. It arouses powerful and sometimes irrational impulses and can easily destabilize society, cause political havoc, and create a veritable hell on earth. . . . It often breeds intolerance of other religions as well as of internal dissent, and has a propensity towards violence.17
Parekh does not define religion, but assumes the validity of the religious/secular distinction. Nevertheless, he admits that "several secular ideologies, such as some varieties of Marxism, conservatism, and even liberalism have a quasi-religious orientation and form, and conversely formally religious languages sometimes have a secular content, so that the dividing line between a secular and a religious language is sometimes difficult to draw."18 If this is true, where does it leave his searing indictment of the dangers peculiarly inherent to religion? Powerful irrational impulses are popping up all over, including in liberalism itself, forcing the creation of the category "quasi-religious" to try somehow to corral them all back under the heading of "religion." But if liberalism—which is based on the distinction between religion and the secular—is itself a kind of religion, then the religious/secular distinction crumbles into a heap of contradictions.
For some religion-and-violence theorists, the contradictions are resolved by openly expanding the definition of "religion" to include ideologies and practices that are usually called "secular." In his book Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion, religious studies scholar Richard Wentz blames violence on absolutism. People create absolutes out of fear of their own limitations. Absolutes are projections of a fictional limited self, and people react with violence when others do not accept them. Religion has a peculiar tendency toward absolutism, says Wentz, but he casts a very wide net when considering religion. Wentz believes that religiousness is an inescapable universal human characteristic displayed even by those who reject what is called "organized religion." Faith in technology, secular humanism, consumerism, football fanaticism, and a host of other worldviews can be counted as religions, too. Wentz is compelled to conclude, rather lamely, "Perhaps all of us do bad things in the name of (or as a representative of) religion."19
Wentz should be commended for his consistency in not trying to erect an artificial division between "religious" and "secular" types of absolutism. The price of consistency, however, is that he evacuates his own argument of explanatory force or usefulness. The word "religion" in the title of his book—Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion—ends up meaning anything people do that gives their lives order and meaning. A more economical title for his book would have been Why People Do Bad Things. The term "religion" is so broad that it serves no useful analytical purpose.
At this point, the religion-and-violence theorist might try to salvage the argument by saying something like this: "Surely secular ideologies such as nationalism can get out of hand, but religion has a much greater tendency toward fanaticism because the object of its truth claims is absolute in ways that secular claims are not. The capitalist knows that money is just a human creation, the liberal democrat is modest about what can be known beyond human experience, the nationalist knows that a country is made of land and mortal people, but the religious believer puts faith in a god or gods or at least a transcendent reality that lays claim to absolute validity. It is this absolutism that makes obedience blind and causes the believer to subjugate all means to a transcendent end."
The problem with this argument is that what counts as "absolute" is decided a priori and is immune to empirical testing. It is based on theological descriptions of beliefs and not on observation of the believers' behavior. Of course Christian orthodoxy would make the theological claim that God is absolute in a way that nothing else is. The problem is that humans are constantly tempted toward idolatry, to putting what is merely relative in the place of God. It is not enough, therefore, to claim that worship of God is absolutist. The real question is, what god is actually being worshiped?
But surely, the objection might go, nobody really thinks the flag or the nation or money or sports idols are their "gods"—that is just a metaphor. However, the question is not simply one of belief, but of behavior. If a person claims to believe in the Christian God but never gets off the couch on Sunday morning and spends the rest of the week in obsessive pursuit of profit in the bond market, then what is "absolute" in that person's life in a functional sense is probably not the Christian God. Matthew 6:24 personifies Mammon as a rival god, not in the conviction that such a divine being really exists, but from the empirical observation that people have a tendency to treat all sorts of things as absolutes.
Suppose we apply an empirical test to the question of absolutism. "Absolute" is itself a vague term, but in the "religion and violence" arguments it appears to indicate the tendency to take something so seriously that violence results. The most relevant empirically testable definition of "absolute," then, would be "that for which one is willing to kill." This test has the advantage of covering behavior, and not simply what one claims to believe. Now let us ask the following two questions: What percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Christians would be willing to kill for their Christian faith? What percentage would be willing to kill for their country? Whether we attempt to answer these questions by survey or by observing American Christians' behavior in wartime, it seems clear that, at least among American Christians, the nation-state is subject to far more absolutist fervor than Christianity. For most American Christians, even public evangelization is considered to be in poor taste, and yet most endorse organized slaughter on behalf of the nation as sometimes necessary and often laudable. In other countries or other traditions the results of this test might be very different. The point is that such empirical testing is of far more usefulness than general theories about the violence of "religion."
We must conclude that there is no coherent way to isolate "religious" ideologies with a peculiar tendency toward violence from their tamer "secular" counterparts. So-called secular ideologies and institutions like nationalism and liberalism can be just as absolutist, divisive, and irrational as so-called religion. People kill for all sorts of things. An adequate approach to the problem would be resolutely empirical: under what conditions do certain beliefs and practices—jihad, the "invisible hand" of the market, the sacrificial atonement of Christ, the role of the United States as worldwide liberator—turn violent? The point is not simply that "secular" violence should be given equal attention to "religious" violence. The point is that the distinction between "secular" and "religious" violence is unhelpful, misleading, and mystifying, and should be avoided altogether.
What Is the Argument For?
If the conventional wisdom that religion causes violence is so incoherent, why is it so prevalent? I believe it is because we in the West find it useful. In domestic politics, it serves to silence representatives of certain kinds of faiths in the public sphere. The story is told repeatedly that the liberal state has learned to tame the dangerous divisiveness of contending religious beliefs by reducing them to essentially private affairs. In foreign policy, the conventional wisdom helps reinforce and justify Western attitudes and policies toward the non-Western world, especially Muslims, whose primary point of difference with the West is their stubborn refusal to tame religious passions in the public sphere. "We in the West long ago learned the sobering lessons of religious warfare and have moved toward secularization. The liberal nation-state is essentially a peacemaker. Now we only seek to share the blessings of peace with the Muslim world. Regrettably, because of their stubborn fanaticism, it is sometimes necessary to bomb them into liberal democracy." In other words, the myth of religious violence establishes a reassuring dichotomy between their violence—which is absolutist, divisive, and irrational—and our violence—which is modest, unitive, and rational.
The myth of religious violence marks the "clash of civilizations" worldview that attributes Muslims' animosity toward the West to their inability to learn the lessons of history and remove the baneful influence of religion from politics. Mark Juergensmeyer, for example, sets up a "new Cold War" pitting the "resurgence of parochial identities" over against "the secular West." "Like the old Cold War, the confrontation between these new forms of culture-based politics and the secular state is global in its scope, binary in its opposition, occasionally violent, and essentially a difference of ideologies." Although he tries to avoid demonizing "religious nationalists," Juergensmeyer sees them as essentially "anti-modern." The particular ferocity of religious nationalism comes from the "special relationship between religion and violence." The question then becomes "whether religious nationalism can be made compatible with secular nationalism's great virtues: tolerance, respect for human rights, and freedom of expression." Given the war between "reason and religion," however, Juergensmeyer is not optimistic; "there is ultimately no satisfactory compromise on an ideological level between religious and secular nationalism."20
Despite its incoherence, the idea that religion is prone to violence thus enforces a binary opposition between "the secular West" and a religious Other who is essentially irrational and violent. The conflict becomes explicable in terms of the essential qualities of the two opponents, not in terms of actual historical encounters. So, for example, Juergensmeyer attempts to explain the animosity of the religious Other toward America:
Why is America the enemy? This question is hard for observers of international politics to answer, and harder still for ordinary Americans to fathom. Many have watched with horror as their compatriots and symbols of their country have been destroyed by people whom they do not know, from cultures they can scarcely identify on a global atlas, and for reasons that do not seem readily apparent.21
Nevertheless, Juergensmeyer is able to come up with four reasons "from the frames of reference" of America's enemies. First, America often finds itself cast as a "secondary enemy." "In its role as trading partner and political ally, America has a vested interest in shoring up the stability of regimes around the world. This has often put the United States in the unhappy position of being a defender and promoter of secular governments regarded by their religious opponents as primary foes." Juergensmeyer cites as an example the case of Iran, where "America was tarred by its association with the shah." The second reason often given is that America is the main source of "modern culture," which includes cultural products that others regard as immoral. Third, corporations that trade internationally tend to be based in the United States. Fourth and finally, the fear of globalization has led to a "paranoid vision of American leaders' global designs."
Juergensmeyer acknowledges, "Like all stereotypes, each of these characterizations holds a certain amount of truth." The fall of the Soviet Union has left the United States as the only military superpower, and therefore "an easy target for blame when people have felt that their lives were going askew or were being controlled by forces they could not readily see. Yet, to dislike America is one thing; to regard it as a cosmic enemy is quite another." The main problem, according to Juergensmeyer, is "satanization," that is, taking a simple opponent and casting it as a superhuman enemy in a cosmic war. Osama bin Laden, for example, had inflated America into a "mythic monster."22
The problem with Juergensmeyer's analysis is not just its sanitized account of colonial history, where the United States just happens to find itself associated with bad people. The problem is that history is subordinated to an essentialist account of "religion" in which the religious Others cannot seem to deal rationally with world events. They employ guilt by association. They have paranoid visions of globalization. They stereotype, and blame easy targets, when their lives are disrupted by forces they do not understand. They blow simple oppositions up into cosmic proportions. Understanding Muslim hostility toward America therefore does not require careful scrutiny of America's historical dealings with the Muslim world. Rather, Juergensmeyer turns our attention to the tendency of such "religious" actors to misunderstand such historical events, to blow them out of proportion. Understanding Iranian Shi'ite militancy does not seem to require careful examination of U.S. support for overthrowing Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and for the shah's 26-year reign of terror that was to follow. Instead, Juergensmeyer puzzles over why "religious" actors project such mundane things as torture and coups and oil trading into factors in a cosmic war. Juergensmeyer's analysis is comforting for us in the West because it creates a blind spot regarding our own history of violence. It calls attention to anticolonial violence, labeled "religious," and calls attention away from colonial violence, labeled "secular."
The argument that religion is prone to violence is a significant component in the construction of an opposition between "the West and the rest," as Samuel Huntington puts it.23 Huntington's famous thesis about the "clash of civilizations" was first put forward by Bernard Lewis in an article entitled "The Roots of Muslim Rage": "It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reactions of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both."24 As in Juergensmeyer, actual historical issues and policies and events are transcended by a consideration of the irrationality of the Muslim response to the West. The West is a monolithic reality representing modernity, which necessarily includes secularity and rationality, while the Muslim world is an equally monolithic reality which is ancient, that is, lagging behind modernity, because of its essentially religious and irrational character. This opposition of rational and irrational, secular and religious, Western and Muslim is not simply descriptive, but helps to create the opposition that it purports to describe. As Roxanne Euben writes in her study of Islamic fundamentalism, this opposition is part of a larger Enlightenment narrative in which defining reason requires its irrational other:
[E]mbedded in the Enlightenment's (re-)definition and elevation of reason is the creation and subjection of an irrational counterpart: along with the emergence of reason as both the instrument and essence of human achievement, the irrational came to be defined primarily in opposition to what such thinkers saw as the truths of their own distinctive historical epoch. If they were the voices of modernity, freedom, liberation, happiness, reason, nobility, and even natural passion, the irrational was all that came before: tyranny, servility to dogma, self-abnegation, superstition, and false religion. Thus the irrational came to mean the domination of religion in the historical period that preceded it.25
The problem with grafting Islamic fundamentalism into this narrative, according to Euben, is that it is incapable of understanding the appeal of fundamentalism on its own terms. It dismisses rather than explains.26 It also exacerbates the enmity that it purports to describe. As Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells put it, "Those who proclaim such a clash of civilizations, speaking for the West or for Islam, exhibit the characteristics of fundamentalism: the assumption of a static essence, knowable immediately, of each civilization, the ability to ignore history and tradition, and the desire to lead the ideological battle on behalf of one of the clashing civilizations."27
In other words, the opposition of "religious" violence to "secular" peaceableness can lend itself to the justification of violence. In the book Terror and Liberalism, The New Republic contributing editor Paul Berman's call for a "liberal war of liberation" to be "fought around the world" is based on the contrast between liberalism and what he calls the "mad" ideology of Islamism.28 Similarly, Andrew Sullivan, in a New York Times Magazine article entitled "This Is a Religious War," justifies war against radical Islam on epistemological grounds. He labels it a "religious war," but not in the sense of Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. It is, rather, radical Islam versus Western-style "individual faith and pluralism." The problem with the Islamic world seems to be too much public faith, a loyalty to an absolute that excludes accommodation to other realities: "If faith is that strong, and it dictates a choice between action or eternal damnation, then violence can easily be justified."29
At root, the problem is epistemological. According to Sullivan, it took Western Christians centuries of bloody "religious wars" to realize "the futility of fighting to the death over something beyond human understanding and so immune to any definitive resolution." The problem with religion is that authoritative truth is simply not available to us mortals in any form that will produce consensus rather than division. Locke, therefore, emerges as Sullivan's hero, for it was Locke who recognized the limits of human understanding of revelation and enshrined those limits in a political theory. Locke and the founding fathers saved us from the curse of killing in the name of religion. "What the founders and Locke were saying was that the ultimate claims of religion should simply not be allowed to interfere with political and religious freedom."30
In theory, we have the opposition of a cruel fanaticism with a modest and peaceloving tolerance. However, Sullivan's epistemological modesty applies only to the command of God and not to the absolute superiority of our political and cultural system over theirs. According to Sullivan, "We are fighting for the universal principles of our Constitution." Universal knowledge is available to us after all, and it underwrites the "epic battle" we are currently waging against fundamentalisms of all kinds. Sullivan is willing to gird himself with the language of a warrior and underwrite U.S. military adventures in the Middle East in the name of his secular faith. Sullivan entitles his piece "This Is a Religious War," though the irony seems to elude him. On the surface, the myth of religious violence establishes a dichotomy between our peaceloving secular reasonableness and their irrational religious fanaticism. Under the surface often lies an absolute "religious" devotion to the American vision of a hegemonic liberalism that underwrites the necessity of using violence to impose this vision on the Muslim other.
Sam Harris's book about the violence of religion, The End of Faith, dramatically illustrates this double standard. Harris condemns the irrational religious torture of witches, but provides his own argument for torturing terrorists. Harris's book is charged with the conviction that the secular West cannot reason with Muslims, but must deal with them by force. In a chapter entitled "The Problem with Islam," Harris writes: "In our dialogue with the Muslim world, we are confronted by people who hold beliefs for which there is no rational justification and which therefore cannot even be discussed, and yet these are the very beliefs that underlie many of the demands they are likely to make upon us." This is especially a problem if such people gain access to nuclear weapons. "There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. . . . In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe." Muslims then would likely misinterpret this act of "self-defense" as a genocidal crusade, thus plunging the world into nuclear holocaust. "All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world's population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher's stone, and unicorns."
In other words, if we have to slaughter millions through a nuclear first strike, it will be the fault of the Muslims and their crazy religious beliefs. Before we get to that point, Harris continues, we must encourage civil society in Islamic countries, but we cannot trust them to vote it in. "It seems all but certain that some form of benign dictatorship will generally be necessary to bridge the gap. But benignity is the key—and if it cannot emerge from within a state, it must be imposed from without. The means of such imposition are necessarily crude: they amount to economic isolation, military intervention (whether open or covert), or some combination of both. While this may seem an exceedingly arrogant doctrine to espouse, it appears we have no alternatives."31
Harris's book is a particularly blunt version of this type of justification for neocolonial intervention, but he is by no means isolated. His book is enthusiastically endorsed by such academic superstars as Alan Dershowitz, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Singer. Indeed, Harris's logic is little different in practice from the Bush Doctrine, which says that America has access to liberal values that are "right and true for every person, in every society," that we must use our power to promote such values "on every continent," and that America will take preemptive military action if necessary to promote such values.32 Today, the U.S. military is attempting, through the massive use of violence, to liberate Iraq from religious violence. It is an inherently contradictory effort, and its every failure will be attributed in part to the pernicious influence of religion and its tendency toward violence. If we really wish to understand its failure, however, we will need to question the very myth of religious violence on which such military adventures depend.
Notes
Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 1.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Macmillan, 1962), 19.
See, for example, Russell McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford University Press, 1997); Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and 'The Mystic East' (Routledge, 1999); The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History, ed. Derek Peterson and Darren Walhof (Rutgers University Press, 2003).
Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (University of Chicago Press, 1982), xi.
Brian C. Wilson, "From the Lexical to the Polythetic: A Brief History of the Definition of Religion," in What Is Religion? Origins, Definitions, and Explanations (Brill, 1998).
Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (Oxford University Press, 2000).
Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil, 15.
See Fitzgerald, Ideology of Religious Studies, 17.
Carlton Hayes, Nationalism: A Religion (Macmillan, 1960); Peter van der Veer, "The Moral State: Religion, Nation, and Empire in Victorian Britain and British India," in Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, ed. Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (Princeton University Press, 1999), 3-9; Talal Asad, "Religion, Nation-state, Secularism," in Nation and Religion, 178-91; Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, "Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 768.
Martin Marty, with Jonathan Moore, Politics, Religion, and the Common Good: Advancing a Distinctly American Conversation About Religion's Role in Our Shared Life (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), 25-26, 10-14, 24.
Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press, 2000), 146, 153, 154, 217.
Ibid., 148-49.
Ibid., 149, 155, 217.
Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (University of California Press, 1993), 15.
Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil, 38, 36.
Bhikhu Parekh, "The Voice of Religion in Political Discourse," in Religion, Politics, and Peace, ed. Leroy Rouner (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 72.
Ibid., 74.
Richard E. Wentz, Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion (Mercer University Press, 1993), 37.
Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? 1-2, 5, 8, 201.
Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 179.
Ibid., 180, 181, 182.
Samuel Huntington, "If Not Civilizations, What?" Foreign Affairs 72 (November/December 1993): 192.
Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," Atlantic Monthly, September 1990, 60.
Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton University Press, 1999), 34.
Ibid., 14–15.
"Introduction: Constructing the Muslim Enemy," in The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, ed. Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells (Columbia University Press, 2003), 28-29.
Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (W. W. Norton, 2003), 191, 182. Berman takes issue with Huntington's "clash" thesis, saying that only Islamists see the conflict in such epic terms. "They also looked upon every new event around the world as a stage in Judaism's cosmic struggle against Islam. Their ideology was mad. In wars between liberalism and totalitarianism, the totalitarian picture of the war is always mad."
Andrew Sullivan, "This Is a Religious War," New York Times Magazine, October 7, 2001, 44, 47.
Ibid., 46-47, 53.
Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), 87-92, 192-99, 128-29, 151.
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, prologue and p. 15.
William t. cavanaugh is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author, most recently, of Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism. This essay was presented earlier this year as part of a Lenten series sponsored by Harvard's Memorial Church and Episcopal chaplaincy.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Article 17 (Social Policy/Homelessness)
The three articles I posted this week appear on the same page-and-a-half in the latest Economist magazine. I think they are each worth some consideration for Christians who want to wrestle with what the proper place of government is in society (local, state, and federal). I hope we might discuss how our Christian identity informs our political views on these issues, as well as, how our particular Christian communions are engaging these issues directly.
-NB
The Economist “Getting Strategic” (June 26-July 2, 2010)
IT USED to be the case that the homeless were, almost exclusively, single adults. Today homelessness is affecting a growing share of families with children too. The number of homeless families has increased by 30% during the past two years. During the 2008-09 school year, America’s public schools reported more than 956,000 homeless pupils, a 20% increase over the previous school year. In New York City alone, some 8,200 families with children are homeless.
Overall, the number without homes is staggering. The number of homeless veterans of the Vietnam war is greater than the number who died in it. On any given night in America more than 640,000 men, women and children are forced to seek shelter, live in their cars, or sleep on the streets. Last year nearly 1.6m people used an emergency shelter.
The Obama administration unveiled a multi-agency national strategy to combat this national disgrace on June 22nd. The plan has four goals. It aims to end chronic homelessness (defined as being continuously homeless for more than a year) in five years, and homelessness among veterans in five years, too. It also seeks to end homelessness for families and children within a decade. And it will lay down a strategy for tackling all other types of homelessness as well. The 67-page plan, called “Opening Doors”, is the first comprehensive federal effort to end the evil, which is normally a matter for the states. This is “a tragedy we can solve” says Shaun Donovan, secretary of housing and urban development and chair of the Inter-agency Council on Homelessness, which drew up the plan.
Much of the progress made in battling homelessness—chronic homelessness has fallen by a third in the past five years—has been at local level. The new plan hopes to take what is working best in cities and counties and apply it nationwide.
Expanding the supply of affordable housing would be a good first step. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there is a shortage of 3.1m low-cost rental units. Collaborative efforts at the state and local level, along with partnerships with private and non-profit groups, have reduced homelessness in places like Chicago by as much as 12%. Getting federal agencies to work together has helped to take veterans off the streets and obtain health benefits for them. A multi-agency effort that combines housing with social-services support is essential, according to Mr Donovan, and results in fewer hospitalisations, fewer costly ambulance and police call-outs and fewer days behind bars. It will save money for taxpayers, too.
Barack Obama seems determined to do something about homelessness. Last year’s stimulus package included $1.5 billion to prevent it. He also signed the HEARTH Act, which strives to rehouse rapidly those who lost their homes. The Reverend Glenn Chalmers, of the Holy Apostles soup kitchen in New York, is glad that the federal government has finally taken the lead on this issue. Perhaps because the queues for food begin early every morning outside his church and are as much part of the urban landscape as the skyscrapers, he remains a little sceptical.
-NB
The Economist “Getting Strategic” (June 26-July 2, 2010)
IT USED to be the case that the homeless were, almost exclusively, single adults. Today homelessness is affecting a growing share of families with children too. The number of homeless families has increased by 30% during the past two years. During the 2008-09 school year, America’s public schools reported more than 956,000 homeless pupils, a 20% increase over the previous school year. In New York City alone, some 8,200 families with children are homeless.
Overall, the number without homes is staggering. The number of homeless veterans of the Vietnam war is greater than the number who died in it. On any given night in America more than 640,000 men, women and children are forced to seek shelter, live in their cars, or sleep on the streets. Last year nearly 1.6m people used an emergency shelter.
The Obama administration unveiled a multi-agency national strategy to combat this national disgrace on June 22nd. The plan has four goals. It aims to end chronic homelessness (defined as being continuously homeless for more than a year) in five years, and homelessness among veterans in five years, too. It also seeks to end homelessness for families and children within a decade. And it will lay down a strategy for tackling all other types of homelessness as well. The 67-page plan, called “Opening Doors”, is the first comprehensive federal effort to end the evil, which is normally a matter for the states. This is “a tragedy we can solve” says Shaun Donovan, secretary of housing and urban development and chair of the Inter-agency Council on Homelessness, which drew up the plan.
Much of the progress made in battling homelessness—chronic homelessness has fallen by a third in the past five years—has been at local level. The new plan hopes to take what is working best in cities and counties and apply it nationwide.
Expanding the supply of affordable housing would be a good first step. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there is a shortage of 3.1m low-cost rental units. Collaborative efforts at the state and local level, along with partnerships with private and non-profit groups, have reduced homelessness in places like Chicago by as much as 12%. Getting federal agencies to work together has helped to take veterans off the streets and obtain health benefits for them. A multi-agency effort that combines housing with social-services support is essential, according to Mr Donovan, and results in fewer hospitalisations, fewer costly ambulance and police call-outs and fewer days behind bars. It will save money for taxpayers, too.
Barack Obama seems determined to do something about homelessness. Last year’s stimulus package included $1.5 billion to prevent it. He also signed the HEARTH Act, which strives to rehouse rapidly those who lost their homes. The Reverend Glenn Chalmers, of the Holy Apostles soup kitchen in New York, is glad that the federal government has finally taken the lead on this issue. Perhaps because the queues for food begin early every morning outside his church and are as much part of the urban landscape as the skyscrapers, he remains a little sceptical.
Article 16 (Immigration)
The Economist “Our Town” (June 26-July 2, 2010)
A small city passes a controversial immigration ordinance
SOME of the earliest settlers of Nebraska were Germans. During the first world war the state forbade any teaching in their native language. But that was long ago. These days, just outside the tidy little city of Fremont, a new batch of residents is trying to settle in. The Regency II trailer park houses immigrants, mostly from Mexico. Many of the trailers are just flimsy boxes. Others are painted brightly, or sport day lilies on a small lawn. One house has an American flag beside it. And on June 21st the Regency displayed a white sign at its entrance with the message: “Vote No”.
That day Fremont voted “yes” to a new ordinance that aims to rid the town of illegal immigrants. It is the latest place to try to solve immigration problems on its own. “This is our town,” declares Jerry Hart, a retired worker for the Internal Revenue Service and one of the ordinance’s main advocates. “Nobody is going to take care of us but us.”
Fremont is far from the heat of the border. But in recent decades farm states like Nebraska have seen a slow ebbing of their population and the influx of two new sorts of people. Slaughterhouses have moved from the cities to places where land is cheap and unions less pesky. Immigrants, seeking jobs, have followed. In 2007 foreign-born residents made up 5.6% of Nebraska’s population, triple the share of 1990. This has led to small flare-ups—a school overwhelmed by Spanish-speaking pupils, for example—and big ones, such as clashes in 2008 between Hispanic and Somali meatpackers.
In Fremont, as in many other such towns, the Hispanic population has surged. Between 2000 and 2008 the Hispanic share of Fremont’s population grew from 4.3% to 7.8%. Meanwhile Fremont’s white population dipped. Les Leech, Fremont Beef’s president, says that his company would have struggled without immigrants. “I didn’t need cheap labour. I needed labour,” he explains.
Not everyone has been encouraged by the change. The vote on June 21st followed more than two years of rancour. A city councilman proposed the ordinance in 2008, demanding that the city should evaluate the legal status of all renters and force businesses to check workers’ documents with a federal database, E-Verify. (The language was drafted by the same lawyer who helped craft Arizona’s recent anti-immigrant law.) After a failed council vote, a petition drive and a legal brawl to stop the referendum, in April Nebraska’s Supreme Court ruled that a vote should proceed. It was approved by 57% to 43%.
It is unclear how the new law will curb illegal immigration. Hormel and Fremont Beef, the big local meatpackers, already use E-Verify. The plants themselves are outside city limits, as are trailer parks such as the Regency. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” insists Mr Hart.
The most likely result, however, is further strife. Susana Patino, a Hispanic-American born in Texas, works at a local tool-and-dye business. Her husband, born in Mexico, has been promoted at Hormel. But she worries about her family and friends. “It’s stupid, crazy,” she says, bewildered. “We helped Fremont to grow.”
A small city passes a controversial immigration ordinance
SOME of the earliest settlers of Nebraska were Germans. During the first world war the state forbade any teaching in their native language. But that was long ago. These days, just outside the tidy little city of Fremont, a new batch of residents is trying to settle in. The Regency II trailer park houses immigrants, mostly from Mexico. Many of the trailers are just flimsy boxes. Others are painted brightly, or sport day lilies on a small lawn. One house has an American flag beside it. And on June 21st the Regency displayed a white sign at its entrance with the message: “Vote No”.
That day Fremont voted “yes” to a new ordinance that aims to rid the town of illegal immigrants. It is the latest place to try to solve immigration problems on its own. “This is our town,” declares Jerry Hart, a retired worker for the Internal Revenue Service and one of the ordinance’s main advocates. “Nobody is going to take care of us but us.”
Fremont is far from the heat of the border. But in recent decades farm states like Nebraska have seen a slow ebbing of their population and the influx of two new sorts of people. Slaughterhouses have moved from the cities to places where land is cheap and unions less pesky. Immigrants, seeking jobs, have followed. In 2007 foreign-born residents made up 5.6% of Nebraska’s population, triple the share of 1990. This has led to small flare-ups—a school overwhelmed by Spanish-speaking pupils, for example—and big ones, such as clashes in 2008 between Hispanic and Somali meatpackers.
In Fremont, as in many other such towns, the Hispanic population has surged. Between 2000 and 2008 the Hispanic share of Fremont’s population grew from 4.3% to 7.8%. Meanwhile Fremont’s white population dipped. Les Leech, Fremont Beef’s president, says that his company would have struggled without immigrants. “I didn’t need cheap labour. I needed labour,” he explains.
Not everyone has been encouraged by the change. The vote on June 21st followed more than two years of rancour. A city councilman proposed the ordinance in 2008, demanding that the city should evaluate the legal status of all renters and force businesses to check workers’ documents with a federal database, E-Verify. (The language was drafted by the same lawyer who helped craft Arizona’s recent anti-immigrant law.) After a failed council vote, a petition drive and a legal brawl to stop the referendum, in April Nebraska’s Supreme Court ruled that a vote should proceed. It was approved by 57% to 43%.
It is unclear how the new law will curb illegal immigration. Hormel and Fremont Beef, the big local meatpackers, already use E-Verify. The plants themselves are outside city limits, as are trailer parks such as the Regency. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” insists Mr Hart.
The most likely result, however, is further strife. Susana Patino, a Hispanic-American born in Texas, works at a local tool-and-dye business. Her husband, born in Mexico, has been promoted at Hormel. But she worries about her family and friends. “It’s stupid, crazy,” she says, bewildered. “We helped Fremont to grow.”
Article 15 (Law/Divorce)
The Economist “Divorce in New York: Let Them Unwed” (June 26-July 2, 2010)
CHANA and Simon Taub battled in the courts for years. Unlike every other state in the union, New York does not allow a fast, blameless divorce. Irreconcilable differences or “we grew apart” won’t fly; adultery, abandonment, or cruel and inhumane treatment must instead be proved. Mr Taub denied his wife’s claims of abuse. Both refused to leave their Brooklyn home; so a court-ordered dividing wall split their living quarters. And the Taubs are hardly alone. Rudy Giuliani, a former presidential candidate and former mayor of New York, famously feuded for months with his ex-wife over who was cruel and inhumane. Both couples might have benefited from a new bill that has just been passed by New York’s state Senate.
If the bill is also passed by the Assembly, New York will at last join the other 49 states in allowing people to divorce speedily without the consent of their spouse or a proof of fault. This worries Raoul Felder, a celebrity lawyer known to the gossip columns as “Dr Estranged Love” and the “Duke of Divorce”. He thinks that divorce rates will rise and that the only beneficiaries of the change will be his fellow legal eagles. He is partly right. According to a 2007 paper by Justin Wolfers at the Wharton School, divorce rates rose sharply after other states adopted no-fault divorce, but this trend reversed within a decade. Indeed, Mr Wolfers found that “15 years after the reform, the divorce rate is lower.”
The New York State chapter of the National Organisation for Women (NOW) and the Catholic church for once agree; they are both vehemently opposed to the new measure. NOW fears the change will leave women unprotected. Liz Krueger, a state senator who co-sponsored the bill, disagrees. “The research shows female suicide and domestic violence fell in states that adopted no-fault divorce laws,” she said. Ms Krueger had to move to Ohio to get her own divorce.
Even judges are fed up with the outdated process, not to mention all the judicial time it wastes. New York’s divorce law is in “the dark ages”, lamented one law-school professor, but it is not the only antiquated law on the books. Adultery, for instance, is still a class B misdemeanour.
CHANA and Simon Taub battled in the courts for years. Unlike every other state in the union, New York does not allow a fast, blameless divorce. Irreconcilable differences or “we grew apart” won’t fly; adultery, abandonment, or cruel and inhumane treatment must instead be proved. Mr Taub denied his wife’s claims of abuse. Both refused to leave their Brooklyn home; so a court-ordered dividing wall split their living quarters. And the Taubs are hardly alone. Rudy Giuliani, a former presidential candidate and former mayor of New York, famously feuded for months with his ex-wife over who was cruel and inhumane. Both couples might have benefited from a new bill that has just been passed by New York’s state Senate.
If the bill is also passed by the Assembly, New York will at last join the other 49 states in allowing people to divorce speedily without the consent of their spouse or a proof of fault. This worries Raoul Felder, a celebrity lawyer known to the gossip columns as “Dr Estranged Love” and the “Duke of Divorce”. He thinks that divorce rates will rise and that the only beneficiaries of the change will be his fellow legal eagles. He is partly right. According to a 2007 paper by Justin Wolfers at the Wharton School, divorce rates rose sharply after other states adopted no-fault divorce, but this trend reversed within a decade. Indeed, Mr Wolfers found that “15 years after the reform, the divorce rate is lower.”
The New York State chapter of the National Organisation for Women (NOW) and the Catholic church for once agree; they are both vehemently opposed to the new measure. NOW fears the change will leave women unprotected. Liz Krueger, a state senator who co-sponsored the bill, disagrees. “The research shows female suicide and domestic violence fell in states that adopted no-fault divorce laws,” she said. Ms Krueger had to move to Ohio to get her own divorce.
Even judges are fed up with the outdated process, not to mention all the judicial time it wastes. New York’s divorce law is in “the dark ages”, lamented one law-school professor, but it is not the only antiquated law on the books. Adultery, for instance, is still a class B misdemeanour.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Article 14 (International Affairs/Israel)
The Economist "Israel's siege mentality: The government’s macho attitude is actually making Israel weaker" (June 5-11, 2010)
THE lethal mishandling of Israel’s attack on a ship carrying humanitarian supplies that was trying to break the blockade of Gaza was bound to provoke outrage—and rightly so. The circumstances of the raid are murky and may well remain that way despite an inquiry (see article). But the impression received yet again by the watching world is that Israel resorts to violence too readily. More worryingly for Israel, the episode is accelerating a slide towards its own isolation. Once admired as a plucky David facing down an array of Arab Goliaths, Israel is now seen as the clumsy bully on the block.
Israel’s desire to stop the flotilla reaching Gaza was understandable, given its determination to maintain the blockade. Yet the Israelis also had a responsibility to conduct the operation safely. The campaigners knew that either way they would win. If they had got through, it would have been a triumphant breaching of the blockade. If forcibly stopped, with their cargo of medical equipment and humanitarian aid, they would be portrayed as victims—even if some, as the Israelis contend, brought clubs, knives and poles. As it was, disastrous planning by Israel’s soldiers led to a needless loss of life.
For anyone who cares about Israel, this tragedy should be the starting point for deeper questions—about the blockade, about the Jewish state’s increasing loneliness and the route to peace. A policy of trying to imprison the Palestinians has left their jailer strangely besieged.
Losing friends, strengthening Hamas
The blockade of Gaza is cruel and has failed. The Gazans have suffered sorely but have not been starved into submission. Hamas has not been throttled and overthrown, as Israeli governments (and many others) have wished. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken hostage, has not been freed. Weapons and missiles can still be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.
Just as bad, from Israel’s point of view, it helps feed antipathy towards Israel, not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in Europe too. Israel once had warm relations with a ring of non-Arab countries in the vicinity, including Iran and Turkey. The deterioration of Israel’s relations with Turkey, whose citizens were among the nine dead, is depriving Israel of a rare Muslim ally and mediator. It is startling how, in its bungled effort to isolate Gaza, democratic Israel has come off worse than Hamas, which used to send suicide-bombers into restaurants.
Most telling of all are the stirrings of disquiet in America, Israel’s most steadfast ally. Americans are still vastly more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians. But a growing number, especially Democrats, including many liberal Jews, are getting queasier about what they see as America’s too robotic support for Israel, especially when its government is as hawkish as Binyamin Netanyahu’s. A gap in sympathy for Israel has widened between Democrats and Republicans. Conservatives still tend to back Israel through hell and the high seas. Barack Obama is more conscious that the Palestinians’ failure to get a state is helping to spread anti-American poison across the Muslim world, making it harder for him to deal with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. His generals have strenuously made that point. None other than the head of Israel’s Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, declared this week that America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset.
That has led to the charge by hawkish American Republicans, as well as many Israelis, that Mr Obama is bent on betraying Israel. In fact, he is motivated by a harder-nosed appreciation of the pros and cons of America’s cosiness with Israel, and is thus all the keener to prod the Jewish state towards giving the Palestinians a fair deal. He has condemned the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory more bluntly than his predecessors did, because he rightly thinks they make it harder to negotiate a peace deal. Mr Obama’s greater sternness towards Israel is for the general good—including Israel’s.
Harmony is not just a dream
Israel is caught in a vicious circle. The more its hawks think the outside world will always hate it, the more it tends to shoot opponents first and ask questions later, and the more it finds that the world is indeed full of enemies. Though Mr Netanyahu has reluctantly agreed to freeze settlement-building and is negotiating indirectly with Palestinians, he does not give the impression of being willing to give ground in the interests of peace.
Yet the prospect of a deal between Palestinians and Israelis still beckons. The contours of a two-state solution remain crystal-clear: an adjusted border, with Israel keeping some of the biggest settlements while Palestine gets equal swaps of land; Jerusalem shared as a capital, with special provisions for the holy places; and an admission by Palestinians that they cannot return to their old homes in what became Israel in 1948, with some theoretical right of return acknowledged by Israel and a small number of refugees let back without threatening the demographic preponderance of Jewish Israelis.
And what about Hamas, if Israel is to lift the siege of Gaza? How should Israel handle an authoritarian movement that refuses to recognise it and has in the past readily used terror? One answer is to ask the UN to oversee the flow of goods and people going in and out of Gaza. That is hardly a cure-all, but Hamas would become the world’s problem neighbour, not just Israel’s. The Arab world must do more, pressing Hamas to disavow violence, publicly pledge not to resume the firing of rockets at Israeli civilians and revoke its anti-Semitic charter. The West, led by Mr Obama, should call for Hamas to be drawn into negotiations, both with its rival Palestinians on the West Bank as well as with Israel, even if it does not immediately recognise the Jewish state. It is still the party the Palestinians elected in 2006 to represent all of them. None of this will be easy. But the present stalemate is bloodily leading nowhere.
Israel is a regional hub of science, business and culture. Despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians in the land it occupies, it remains a vibrant democracy. But its loneliness, partly self-inflicted, is making it a worse place, not just for the Palestinians but also for its own people. If only it can replenish its stock of idealism and common sense before it is too late.
Article 13 (Political/National Identity)
As with the last two week period, I am again posting two unrelated articles for discussion. -NB
Christianity Today “Who Are Americans: What Christians Contribute to the Search for a National Identity” (June 2010)
By Chuck Colson with Catherine Larson
Nations around the world are suffering from identity crises. Perhaps it began two decades ago, when the last European holdouts were dragged in and the European Union was finally established, a move described by one journalist as “the triumph of the Eurocrats over the peoples of Europe.” More recently, The New York Times reported on France’s efforts to articulate its national identity. Soon thereafter, controversy erupted when Switzerland banned the construction of Muslim minarets. The Times and Forbes reported on identity crises facing South Korea and China, as immigration makes largely homogenous nations increasingly diverse.
All these reports raise the question, “Who are we?” --which is also the title of scholar Samuel P. Huntington’s final and most prophetic book. “The more general causes of these...questionings,” wrote Huntington, “include the emergence of a global economy, tremendous improvements in communications and transportation, rising levels of migration, [and] the global expansion of democracy...”
There’s also an identity crisis bubbling just under the surface in the United States.
Huntington documents several challenges to a cohesive sense of American identity. First, while early settlers and immigrants were never ethnically homogenous, they largely traded in the same Anglo-Protestant cultural currency. But as 21st-century demographic trends increasingly draw people from other quadrants of the world, shared cultural assumptions erode.
Exacerbating the problem is a rise in dual citizenship and more subnational identities, which have created divided loyalties. Meanwhile, in the business community, an increasingly globalized economy has caused leaders to adopt a more transnational identity, what some call “Davos man.” And aside from a temporary resurgence of patriotism after September 11, Huntington documents how academic elites have led the way in devaluing patriotism and American history.
We rightly pride ourselves on our multiethnic, multiracial society. But as our society grows ever more diverse, how will we understand our national identity?
Huntington poses four possible solutions. The first is a creedal community whose identity exists only in a social contract embodied in the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents. This has historically provided cohesion. The next option is a bifurcated America, one that is bilingual and bicultural like Canada or Belgium. The third option is an exclusivist or imperial notion of America. And the last alternative, the one Huntington clearly favored, is a reinvigorated core culture and religion coupled with the earlier solution of a reinvigorated creedal community.
Can a Christian worldview inform us as a we wrestle with out national identity? Any kind of racially or ethnically intolerant society would be incompatible with Christian principles.
Further, we know that the core values of our creeds, which in particular promote the dignity of all people, resonate with Scripture and are worth preserving. American patriotism does not rest on jingoistic nationalism but on a universal creed that says, “All men are...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Liberty is one of those unalienable rights. And this core value, also emphasized in Scripture, teaches us that we cannot force beliefs on others. Our founders understood, however, that freedom of religion is not synonymous with expunging religion from public life, a problem that I and others addressed last fall in the Manhattan Declaration. So if Huntington is in fact right that the U.S. needs a reinvigorated religious commitment, it won’t come from a nation-mandated religion but rather from a reinvigorated populace.
I believe, then, that for national identity to be salient in the midst of our changing society, we need a recommitment to our creeds, a respect for American history, and a proper role of patriotism, rooted in love of neighbor. Our founders’ Judeo-Christian heritage helped produce a culture in which moral responsibility, transcendent ethical principles, and the dignity of all people could flourish--a culture in which our creedal values made sense. This is why our role as leaven within society is so important, and why we must continue to bring biblical influence to the public square, reinvigorating society.
As we do so, we must guard against the easy tendency to embrace xenophobic notions or fall into equally perilous trap of promoting subcultural identities over national identity. People will not live with, let alone die for, a nation that has abandoned its religious moorings and adopted a creed that suggests we simply live together in cosmopolitan bliss. Millions of us, however, have been willing to live and die for beliefs rooted in our deepest convictions about God and man--convictions that were expressed so well in the stirring words of our national creed, the Declaration of Independence.
Christianity Today “Who Are Americans: What Christians Contribute to the Search for a National Identity” (June 2010)
By Chuck Colson with Catherine Larson
Nations around the world are suffering from identity crises. Perhaps it began two decades ago, when the last European holdouts were dragged in and the European Union was finally established, a move described by one journalist as “the triumph of the Eurocrats over the peoples of Europe.” More recently, The New York Times reported on France’s efforts to articulate its national identity. Soon thereafter, controversy erupted when Switzerland banned the construction of Muslim minarets. The Times and Forbes reported on identity crises facing South Korea and China, as immigration makes largely homogenous nations increasingly diverse.
All these reports raise the question, “Who are we?” --which is also the title of scholar Samuel P. Huntington’s final and most prophetic book. “The more general causes of these...questionings,” wrote Huntington, “include the emergence of a global economy, tremendous improvements in communications and transportation, rising levels of migration, [and] the global expansion of democracy...”
There’s also an identity crisis bubbling just under the surface in the United States.
Huntington documents several challenges to a cohesive sense of American identity. First, while early settlers and immigrants were never ethnically homogenous, they largely traded in the same Anglo-Protestant cultural currency. But as 21st-century demographic trends increasingly draw people from other quadrants of the world, shared cultural assumptions erode.
Exacerbating the problem is a rise in dual citizenship and more subnational identities, which have created divided loyalties. Meanwhile, in the business community, an increasingly globalized economy has caused leaders to adopt a more transnational identity, what some call “Davos man.” And aside from a temporary resurgence of patriotism after September 11, Huntington documents how academic elites have led the way in devaluing patriotism and American history.
We rightly pride ourselves on our multiethnic, multiracial society. But as our society grows ever more diverse, how will we understand our national identity?
Huntington poses four possible solutions. The first is a creedal community whose identity exists only in a social contract embodied in the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents. This has historically provided cohesion. The next option is a bifurcated America, one that is bilingual and bicultural like Canada or Belgium. The third option is an exclusivist or imperial notion of America. And the last alternative, the one Huntington clearly favored, is a reinvigorated core culture and religion coupled with the earlier solution of a reinvigorated creedal community.
Can a Christian worldview inform us as a we wrestle with out national identity? Any kind of racially or ethnically intolerant society would be incompatible with Christian principles.
Further, we know that the core values of our creeds, which in particular promote the dignity of all people, resonate with Scripture and are worth preserving. American patriotism does not rest on jingoistic nationalism but on a universal creed that says, “All men are...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Liberty is one of those unalienable rights. And this core value, also emphasized in Scripture, teaches us that we cannot force beliefs on others. Our founders understood, however, that freedom of religion is not synonymous with expunging religion from public life, a problem that I and others addressed last fall in the Manhattan Declaration. So if Huntington is in fact right that the U.S. needs a reinvigorated religious commitment, it won’t come from a nation-mandated religion but rather from a reinvigorated populace.
I believe, then, that for national identity to be salient in the midst of our changing society, we need a recommitment to our creeds, a respect for American history, and a proper role of patriotism, rooted in love of neighbor. Our founders’ Judeo-Christian heritage helped produce a culture in which moral responsibility, transcendent ethical principles, and the dignity of all people could flourish--a culture in which our creedal values made sense. This is why our role as leaven within society is so important, and why we must continue to bring biblical influence to the public square, reinvigorating society.
As we do so, we must guard against the easy tendency to embrace xenophobic notions or fall into equally perilous trap of promoting subcultural identities over national identity. People will not live with, let alone die for, a nation that has abandoned its religious moorings and adopted a creed that suggests we simply live together in cosmopolitan bliss. Millions of us, however, have been willing to live and die for beliefs rooted in our deepest convictions about God and man--convictions that were expressed so well in the stirring words of our national creed, the Declaration of Independence.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Article 12 (Cultural Commentary/Marriage)
This article fits well with Article 10 and its discussion on the way social institutions, and the ideas and norms embedded in them, greatly influence culture over time. I also post this article because I recently watched a debate about same-sex marriage on iTunes U (Fora.tv) entitled "Gay Marriage: A Debate Featuring David Boies, Keith Boykin, Maggie Gallagher and Glenn Stanton (recorded at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, on October 20, 2009). It was really well done, and I found it very interesting. -NB
Christianity Today "Same Sex, Different Marriage" (May 2010)
By Mollie Ziegler Hemingway
Christianity Today "Same Sex, Different Marriage" (May 2010)
By Mollie Ziegler Hemingway
Many of those who want marriage equality do not want fidelity.
Same-sex marriage advocates frequently ask, "How would gay marriage affect your marriage?" The question is posed rhetorically, as if marriage is a private institution with no social consequences.
But The New York Times, of all papers, argues that gay unions could significantly alter marriage norms. A new study of gay couples in San Francisco shows that half are "open," meaning that partners consent to each other having sex with other people. The Times says that the prevalence of such relationships could "rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony" by showing straight couples that monogamy need not be a "central feature" of marriage and that sexually open relationships might "point the way for the survival of the institution."
In the gay community, open relationships are neither news nor controversial. Many of my partnered, gay male friends are in open relationships, some of which have lasted for decades. But the Times reporter, Scott James, who is himself gay, notes that nobody in an open relationship agreed to give their full name for the story, worrying that "discussing the subject could undermine the legal fight for same-sex marriage."
Indeed, some gay activists were upset with the Times. Gay political commentator Andrew Sullivan derided the piece and pointed to several critiques of the study. However, Sullivan himself has made the same argument, saying that gay male unions could "help strengthen and inform" traditional marriages.
"Among gay male relationships, the openness of the contract makes it more likely to survive than many heterosexual bonds …. There is more likely to be a greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman," he wrote in his book Virtually Normal.
Other same-sex marriage advocates say a legal change would transform the institution. New York University professor Judith Stacey, testifying before Congress against the Defense of Marriage Act, said changing the law to allow same-sex partners to marry would help "supplant the destructive sanctity of the family" and help it assume "varied, creative, and adaptive contours," including "small group marriages."
Activist Michelangelo Signorile wrote that gays should "demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution."
To be sure, some advocates of same-sex marriage hope that heterosexual marital norms of monogamy and fidelity would be transferred to same-sex unions. But since these norms are based on the ideal that marriage is the union of a man and woman making a permanent and exclusive commitment for the purpose of bearing and rearing children, it would be irrational to expect same-sex partners—whose sexual relations bear no risk of procreation—to share the same norms.
Whether or not marriage law should change, the fact is that changing it to include same-sex partnerships would teach people that marriage is fundamentally about the emotional union of adults and not primarily about the bodily union of man and wife (let alone the children who result from such a union). The norms of permanence, monogamy, and fidelity would make less sense under such a change.
Consider changes in divorce laws. The spread of no-fault divorce in the 1970s didn't just make it easier for men and women to get out of troubled marriages. It also changed people's ideas about the permanence of the institution and the responsibility parents have to their children.
It had other unintended consequences as well. Studies showed that after divorce laws were changed, spouses tended to invest less in their marriages. Economists found that spouses in states that had passed no-fault divorce laws were 10 percent less likely to put the spouse through college or graduate school and 6 percent less likely to have a child together.
Marriage rates fell and cohabitation rates increased as men and women lost confidence in the institution. Some 20 percent of children are now born to cohabiting couples, the majority of whom will see their parents split up by the time they reach adolescence.
Legal changes have consequences. But no matter how marriage laws may change, we can, paradoxically, find more freedom in chastity—which calls for abstinence when unmarried and sexual fidelity when married—than in any form of open marriage.
As Catholic author Christopher West says, "Chastity is first and foremost a great yes to the true meaning of sex, to the goodness of being created as male and female in the image of God. Chastity isn't repressive. It's totally liberating. It frees us from the tendency to use others for selfish gratification and enables us to love others as Christ loves us."
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