Good Christianists vs. Bad Christianists
Tuesday July 1, 2008
Categories: Culture
Uh-oh, now that Obama has come out saying he approves of and wants to extend Bush's government backing for faith-based initiatives, what in the world is Andrew Sullivan going to do? He's one of the blogsophere's most prominent Obama enthusiasts,...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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If gay marriage gets read by SCOTUS into the US Constitution as a fundamental civil right, as Obama no doubt wishes, I'm pretty sure that no religious organization that adheres to the traditional Christian/Jewish/Muslim teaching about same-sex marriage will be eligible to receive taxpayer funds as part of any faith-based initiative.
What basis do you have for this belief?
The Roman Catholic Church does not marry divorced people and still receives taxpayer funds for various services. This despite the fact that remarriage of divorcees is a non-issue in secular society.
If the RCC refuses to marry a couple that secular society has no qualms about and still receives funding, then what basis do you have for suggesting that the RCC will lose funding if they refuse to marry a gay couple?
I'm not (yet) suggesting that you are being intellectually dishonest and throwing out a red herring on this subject, but I would very much be interested in hearing if you have any more basis than, "I'm pretty sure."
Amen to John E. This claim of Rod's has zero basis in fact.
Rod, as a conservative, do you truly wish to see a wholesale change of the use of the Constitution in this country? The Constitution and Bill of Rights define and limit the rights of the government. Do you really want to start using the constitution to limit the rights of the people in order to disallow gay marriage? You've already admitted that you have lost the social consensus on that one.
Rod ,what are John Mccain views? Or does it matter to you? Most people on the right does not care one way or the other ,what Mac thinks. They are going to vote for him any way. They only question Obama , aka. swift boat tatics. What is the different between a christian and a worldly conserative? Nothing.
If a gay marriage ruling ultimately means that taxpayers will save all the money thrown to religious organizations, that would seem a very good argument in its favor.
I would amend conservative religion to conservative evangelical religion. A lot of the problem we face is the media loves sound bites. The most obnoxious voices on both sides get to have TV time. They say controversial things and get themselves on television. Thus, we end up with Falwells, Dobsons, Hagees, Sharptons, Jacksons as representatives of large groups of people. Having grown up in a very conservative evangelical household, I know that most of these Christians are just decent Americans who want a voice in the debate. It is just a shame that they/we did not have better representatives. These Christian leaders were just as power hungry and self-important as the liberal leaders.
On the local level, I think that too many evangelical ministers believed that having a voice meant signing on as agents for the Republican party. At my church, there is never any mention of a specific political party. When I go back home to one of my siblings churches it is not unusual to hear a minister say that voting for a Democrat is a sin. Conservative evangelicals need to find a way to have a voice in public debate while still retaining their spirituality. Putting their faith into politics has put politics into their faith. Conservative evangelicals are now conflated with the likes of Hannity, Ingraham and even Limbaugh. These are nasty people who make millions by keeping people angry. I have/had hopes that someone like Huckabee could be a better spokesperson. Let's see if he can do that now that he is a TV guy to.
Steve
The real disingenuousness in Rod's post is that he never acknowledges that the legislature passed a pro-gay marriage law that Ahnold vetoed because he wanted the judiciary to rule. So how is the will of the people not being done if their legislature voted FOR gay marriage.
The problem must be that it's not the will of the "right-thinking" people.
Or that there is something illegal if the legislature does something against the wishes of the majority of people?
Enshrining discrimination into a federal or state constitution is a reasonable thing to be opposed to, regardless of your public, political position.
Do I think Obama is really all that opposed to gay marriage? No. But he's taken a public position in opposition because of political expediency. It is no different, really, from McCain's opposition to abortion. I don't think he really cares all that much about abortion, but he can't get elected if he acknowledges how he really feels.
Bush has been the master of this. Those who know him say he's a "closet tolerant" who is much less extreme on social issues than his political positions would suggest. Reagan was genius at coopting positions he wasn't all that interested in so that he could focus on other things.
The problem with Sullivan's position is that there cannot be any government initiatives -- or initiatives of any other kind -- that are *not* faith-based. Secularism is a metaphysical view of things just as much as Christianity or any other faith that is recognized as such. When the ethical implications of that metaphysical view are put into practice they begin to constitute a religion, again whether or not the practice is recognized as such. So in that sense, political action on the basis of secular appeals is just as much an entrance of religion and of metaphysics into the public sphere as anything else. Attempts to keep faiths that are recognized as faiths outside the public sphere will only ever have the effect of enacting surreptitiously or simply unconsciously and accidentally the establishment of secularism as an established "church" that is favored over all the other churches (recognized as such) that one might choose to join. The issue is not whether or not to we should let faith into the public sphere. The question instead is how would ought to reckon with the presence of the irreconcilable faiths that are already there, that always have been there and that always will be there. My own faith is different from Andrew Sullivan's faith. But my civil rights and my civil responsibilities are the same as Sullivan's own. I am free to act politically based upon my faith and Sullivan is free to do the same. So long as this equality of rights and of responsibilities is made to hold, we will not have a perfect state of things, but we will have at least the opportunity for the best state of things that can be had in an imperfect world. The worst thing we could do is to try to disenfranchise some of those among our number who hold different faiths than we do, to establish our own faith as the only faith that may fully enunciate itself in the public sphere. The attempt to establish secularity as the official faith of the American state will prove in the long term to be just as much of a mistake as was the attempt to establish Christianity as the official faith in most of the European states -- it will do as much harm to secularity here as the analogous effort has already done to Christianity there.
The problem with Sullivan's position is that there cannot be any government initiatives -- or initiatives of any other kind -- that are *not* faith-based.Posted by: Augustus Johnson | July 2, 2008 10:32 AM
In what respect was the ocnstruction of the Interstate Highway System faith-based?
Also, would you please consider breaking up your large blocks of text into paragraphs?
Obama didn't say he approved of what the Bush administration did. In fact, he explicitly condemned it. He said it was 'used to promote partisan interests' and 'a photo-op'.
And liberals don't object to religion in public life, they tend to object to government-supported religion in public life. Many of them will object to Obama's supposed plan, although we have no idea if he's talking about something he actually will do, or if the entirety of this 'plan' is a preemptive strike before McCain starts yammering about 'Faith-based initiatives'.(1)
But although many of the left's objections were to spending government money on that at all, a lot more of the objections were that this was actually used to funnel government money to Bush supporters. This administration basically has concept of a 'policy arm' or civil service...everything they do is partisan. Including picking which charities need funding.
In other words, while 'faith-based initiatives' is something that the left traditionally distrusts, the reason they hated it under Bush is that every single thing he 'initiates' is used to funnel government money to supporters It's the same as what's happened with mercenaries in Iraq...that's a bad idea for all sorts of reasons, but it's a triply bad idea under Bush because it appeared that the entire purpose of that is to see how fast the government can spew money at those companies.
Don't assume that all objections to Bush doing something are objections to the 'something'. Sometimes it's an objection to the 'Bush doing' instead. (People sometimes ask me if I want the government running health care. Well no, I don't want this government running health care, but, OTOH, I don't want this government running the military or social security or the court system either.)
I, instead of 'faith-based' initiatives, think we should form a volunteer or low-paid agency, like the National Guard, run locally but funded federally, where the sole purpose is to help people.(2) If this sort of random charity is worth spending government money on, I don't understand why we'd need others to run it...and church group volunteers would be accepted with open arms.
Now, we have the Peace Corps, and AmeriCorps and all sort of organizations sorta like this, but they are all underfunded and unsupported. And private organizations like the United Way that get almost no government funding.
Of course, there are actually two reasons to be doing charity work, and only one of them is to help people, the other is to be seen helping people. If this volunteer corps was doing the work, the churches couldn't be seen doing it...but I don't think they have any 'right' to be seen doing charity work spending taxpayer money anyway.
1) As an aside, it is amazing how Obama is, at this point in the election, playing defense before the attacks, as McCain is just sorta standing around. So Obama's wandering around putting up fortifications and when McCain does start spewing the traditional right-wing smears, it's just going to bounce off. But anyway.
2) And, while we're at it, redefine the National Guard into an organization where the sole purpose is to protect American lives in America, either from invasion, or, more commonly, natural disaster, and not run around supporting the military overseas.
John E, any highway work on the stretch of I-90 between Cleveland and Buffalo is a tremendous act of faith :-) Seriously, good response.
It was me, btw, who had the anonymous post re: the vetoed efforts of the California legislature to pass same-sex marriage.
The Interstate Highway System was a faith-based initiative in that its construction was an ethical action undertaken collectively on the basis of the visions of the good that motivated all of those who took part. Those visions of the good were all in the finally analysis founded on metaphysical beliefs that had in the end be taken on faith, whatever plausibility on rational grounds they may also have contained. If one had barred those who hold to faiths that are recognized as such from taking part in this particular project on the basis of those faiths, there might not be an Interstate Highway System at all, or at least not one that we would recognize as anything resembling the one on which we all depend today -- those of who us who acknowledge our faiths as such and those of us who choose not to do. The same could be said for any other large-scale public project in our nation's history, any public undertaking of any considerable scale.
I hope the above paragraph was not overly demanding for you. If future you are free to ignore any paragraphs of mine that you take to be so.
An addendum to my posting above at 11:46. The second paragraph is intended for John E and not for anyone else, unless it happens to apply.
Obama, '08-if you don't like his stand on any issue, just wait a few minutes, he'll come around(or at least pay lip service to the other view).
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
If the RCC refuses to marry a couple that secular society has no qualms about and still receives funding, then what basis do you have for suggesting that the RCC will lose funding if they refuse to marry a gay couple?
It's beyond marriage. If homosexuals become a protected class under federal civil rights law, then there is a real question as to what extent organizations that discriminate against them can receive tax breaks or federal funding. Look at Bob Jones University, which lost its federal tax-exempt status over its racially discriminatory policies. The government didn't force the university to abandon its policy. It only said, "You can do this if you want to, but under federal civil rights laws, we're going to take away your tax-exempt status."
I don't know to what extent this kind of thing is going to apply at the federal level, but I believe we could be looking at something like the Catholic Charities adoption case in Massachusetts. I wish someone who was versed in the law would weigh in here to explain how serious this threat might be.
With much respect and more than a little agreement with most of what's been posted so far, I should like to see a distinction made a bit more clearly.
When Bush established the "faith-based initiatives" pork barrel, it should have been and should be called "religious faith-based".
An act of faith in the face of an uncertain future contains religious faith as a subset, not as a defining aspect.
I am sad that Obama is using the faith-based rhetoric for political gain. Not surprised, mind you -- little that politicians do can surprise me -- but sad that any candidate or office holder thinks it necessary to appeal to narrowly-defined motivations instead of desired or needed results.
The Interstate Highway System was a faith-based initiative in that its construction was an ethical action undertaken collectively on the basis of the visions of the good that motivated all of those who took part.
Posted by: Augustus Johnson | July 2, 2008 11:46 AM
Bollocks.
t's beyond marriage.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | July 2, 2008 12:03 PM
I would suggest that in the case of churches, it is not beyond marriage.
Aside from the Rite of Holy Matrimony, what service would a Roman Catholic Church refuse to offer a celibate homosexual?
I believe that Obama is a political sociopath (thanks Spengler) willing to pretend to be anything (conservative, fascist, pacifist, liberal, socialist, communist, anarchist etc.) to achieve his ends. The man behind the mask has has a deep hatred of the USA.
Even the German Rabbis loved Hitler at first. Please note - I am not saying that Obama will ACT in any way like Hitler, but the methods of their operations are identical. For goodness sake don't think that what they SAY has anything to with what they DO.
Demagogues are nothing new. Obama is just one of the more talented living ones.
It shouldn't surprise anyone here that I agree with Rod on this. If gay marriage is imposed on the country via a Supreme Court decision, we're going to see a lot of restrictions placed on those groups who continue to oppose it.
Rod's example re: Catholic Charities' adoption wing in MA is one example of the kind of thing we'll see; another example would be the Boy Scouts and their current problems--although the Supreme Court ruled that they did not have to allow homosexual scout leaders to join them, many local governments have decided that the Boy Scouts' policies in this area violate their own municipal statutes against discrimination and will no longer give the Scouts access to various public facilities or accommodations on those grounds.
"I believe that Obama is a political sociopath (thanks Spengler) willing to pretend to be anything (conservative, fascist, pacifist, liberal, socialist, communist, anarchist etc.) to achieve his ends. The man behind the mask has has a deep hatred of the USA."
I believe it was Nixon, a Republican, who counseled running to the middle once you have your party's nomination. All candidates tend to do this. I expect to see Obama spin a lot of his ideas towards the center.
The other issue here is that Obama does not fit the mold that conservatives want him to fit. He actually goes to church and is conversant with religious issues. He is definitely not the kind of Christian that conservatives want, but this is still something new to deal with. On the political side, the narrative of Obama as the most liberal Senator has been repeated so many times most people believe it. Anyone who knows statistics and checks up on how the National Journal came to this conclusion knows this is not entirely true. Therefore, whenever Obama makes a centrist proposal they will claim this is just pandering and you cannot believe the guy. You can't believe anything he says? Which politician do you believe always tells the truth?
Finally, I continue to be puzzled by this hating America thing. Could you please clarify by what you mean when you say that. Is any criticism the same as hating (boy my wife must really hate me)?
Steve
The litmus test for hating America:
Any criticism with which the accusers disagree: you hate America.
Any criticism with which the accusers agree: you love America.
Substitute freely for "America", for fun and profit: Christians, Christianity, children, "our morals and values", conservatives, liberals, libertarians, feminism, feminists, cute puppies, skateboarding, punk rock music...
This has been an equal opportunity mockery. Any resemblance to sincere thinking, living or dead, is in the paranoid fantasies of the beholder.
A more balanced assessment of Obama's emphasis on faith and Federal funding for faith-based programs can be found today via the Wall Street Journal and Steven Waldman, editor of Beliefnet, former editor of the U.S. News and World Report:
http://blogs.wsj.com/politicalperceptions/2008/07/01/obama%e2%80%99s-bold-faith-based-maneuver/
"How does Obama’s approach differ substantively from Bush’s? Obama says Bush underfunded the programs but then offers no proposal for increasing the funds, except one summer-reading program and a general promise that it will be “central” to his administration. Obama emphasizes better coordination of federal and local faith-based agencies,fine in theory but hard to assess in the abstract.
The plan does grapple with one of the central paradoxes of the faith-based charity world: Many of the best programs are effective because they’re small; but because they’re small they don’t know how to apply for aid or administer a grant. Obama focuses on “training the trainers” — helping large national nonprofits, such as Catholic Charities, to train the small groups on how to apply for government aid. This may not be sexy, but it’s a sensible focus.
But most important element of Obama’s plan may be the one that will get the least attention. Bush had promised that programs would be funded on the basis of “results” but then did little to evaluate whether programs were working. Obama says he would change that.
All of this gives a glimpse of what kind of liberal Obama is. Much of his emphasis is better coordination, training and evaluation, not money. It’s worth remembering that the bulk of Obama’s work as a community organizer wasn’t drawing together national groups in grandiose efforts or lobbying drives. It was connecting one church to another, a dozen residents of a project here with a dozen over there. In that sense, he is more like an early 1960s liberal (the sort who focused on fight poverty through local community organizing) than he is a 1970s liberal (which emphasized large scale national programs). Or, more accurately, he is a hybrid of the two that we’re just beginning to understand.
Finally, one of the tragedies of the Bush approach was that he took an idea with strong bipartisan potential and crafted it in a way designed to polarize. David Kuo’s insider book about the Bush faith-based effort described how the administration chose to pick fights rather than join forces with those across the aisle. By saying he would build upon rather than scrap a major Republican initiative Obama is trying to offer a model of his bipartisan impulse."
Boy, talk about inconsistencies run amuck. Let me get this "straight" : we have an organization (the Boy Scouts) that defends its policies as a private organization to permit it to restrict its membership in ways it sees fit; and this organization now has a problem that some communities may choose to withhold public tax dollars from it?
The Boy Scouts for years represented itself as a community organization and was in turn given many perks not given to any other private group, and certainly it has contributed plenty of good to many communities. But by its own arguments and decisions, it is NOT a community organization. I know via a Scouting council member buddy of mine of at least one Eagle Scout who was booted ex post facto (with leadership clamoring to revoke his Eagle badge) all because he came out to some people and word got around. For all anyone knows, the kid was still a virgin, but conduct doesn't matter.
The fact that some of you see no inherent problem doesn't mean that those of us who do should be restricted from using our influence on how our communities spend our tax dollars.
John E.,
When you write "bollocks," I gather that it's time for you to have your Pampers changed.
Mrs. E.,
Godspeed you to Koala-Bear Care -- your big boy's made a mess.
The post above is from me. I'm not sure why my tag is not there.
"Aside from the Rite of Holy Matrimony, what service would a Roman Catholic Church refuse to offer a celibate homosexual?"
That's a really odd question as worded. I'm not Catholic, but I'm fairly sure that the RCC would not refuse to offer a celibate homosexual marriage because a celibate homosexual would not, by definition, ask for marriage. Anyone who makes a request to enter into a homosexual marriage is by definition proclaiming his unrepentance of homosexual behavior.
But the "civil rights" approach to gay marriage won't allow it to be that way. I'm not sure if Rod is right here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the redefinition of marriage as a civil right doesn't eventually create the problem he foresees -- but if so, it likely actually would extend to straight couples seeking religiously illegitimate marriages, rather than the previous ability of the church to refuse those marriages, being allowed to extend to same sex marriages.
Sorry, didn't mean to post anonymously above.
But the "civil rights" approach to gay marriage won't allow it to be that way. I'm not sure if Rod is right here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the redefinition of marriage as a civil right doesn't eventually create the problem he foresees -- but if so, it likely actually would extend to straight couples seeking religiously illegitimate marriages, rather than the previous ability of the church to refuse those marriages, being allowed to extend to same sex marriages.
Posted by: pentamom | July 2, 2008 9:21 PM
I think you might be mistaken on that. A government official such as a Justice of the Peace would have to perform any marriage for any couple who may legally be wedded, but this is not the case for clergy.
Regarding the odd wording of my question, Rod had stated:
It's beyond marriage. If homosexuals become a protected class under federal civil rights law, then there is a real question as to what extent organizations that discriminate against them can receive tax breaks or federal funding.
But under what circumstances would a Catholic Church or Catholic Agency discriminate against homosexuals?
Clearly, at least one would hope, a CC/CA that had a government contract to feed the homeless would not discriminate against a homosexual, celibate or not. Same for a Catholic hospital. A housing agency becomes a bit more problematical for a non-celibate homosexual, but if such housing was given to non-celibate heterosexuals, it seems to me they would have to comply.
Before someone brings up the Mass. adoption agency, let me state now that I think they should have received an exemption from that law.
So I'll ask Rod again - aside from performing a marriage, which I am pretty sure is covered by the general right of clergy to refuse to perform marriages to those not thought to be suitable (for example an unmarried couple living together) and adoption services - just what service would a CC/CA be performing in which they would discriminate against homosexuals?
Darn this software - the 10:25 AM post was mine.
"Christianism" and "Christianist" are bad terminology that concedes Christianity to people who would consider the Sermon on the Mount, if it were delivered today, to be too liberal, theologically unsound.
"Theocrat" is the term for one who would make public policy conform to religious teaching.
The bigots, hypocrites and fanatics - Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, Hagee, et al. - who have sought to hijack Christian faith and confine it within narrow theologies and a hard-right secular agenda, are more accurately described as right-wing theocrats.
The more militant, authoritarian "Christian" theocrats are falangists - after the Falange, the fascist movement with a religious veneer that Francisco Franco established in Spain.
I disagree with your traditionalist agenda, as usual, but I think you are mostly right about the future not looking so great for retrograde religions which want to get government subsidies for hate.
my blog reply here
Rod,
A clarification please: (1) Do you believe in a Church/State separation? If you do, then (2) how can you justify any State help for any Church? If you don't, then would you approve of State help for a Muslim mosque? If you reject that, how do you justify it? By stating that a mosque is not a Church?
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