Steve Waldman: March 2008 Archives

With battles already raging in Florida and Texas over whether to teach intelligent design in school, the topic will soon gain even more attention thanks to the April release of a new film by conservative actor Ben Stein.

The traditional battle lines are drawn, with religious conservatives fighting for the teaching of intelligent design, and the scientific community (among others), fighting against.

It might come as some surprise to both sides, then, that one of the paragons of the enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson, seemed to believe in intelligent design. To be clear, he did not favor teaching religious doctrine in schools, but as a personal matter seemed to describe the world in a way that echoes the language of intelligent design advocates.

It is true that Jefferson believed in applying the scientific method toward spiritual matters. In a letter to his nephew Peter Carr, he urged rigorous application of scientific principles to the Bible. For instance, he encouraged him to look at the story of Joshua making the sun stand still and then added, "you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped" without then having "prostrated animals, trees, buildings." Jefferson conceded that such an investigation might take the young man away from God. "Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. " If, on the other hand, "you find reason to believe there is a God," you will find comfort and happiness in that, too. And you should not feel badly or anti-God should your mind take you away from the church since "your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven."

It was this same rationalist impulse that led him to cut out the parts of the Bible he disliked, mostly the miracles and signs of Jesus's divinity. (Beliefnet now has the Jefferson bible online, including the portions he cut).

But Jefferson's scientific bent nonetheless led him to believe in God. The best explication came in a letter to John Adams April 11, 1823, when Jefferson was 80. "I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition," he wrote. This "design," as he called it, can be seen in many aspects of nature. "The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms." Some Being is the "fabricator" of all these things.

What's more, he writes, it wasn't a one time event. Providence is helping to keep this equilibrium. Though he predated Darwin, so we'll never know what kind of impact evolutionary theory would have had on his theism, Jefferson believed that even the death of living organism and galactic bodies was sign of a "design" from a Creator. "We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it's course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe."

Yes, Thomas Jefferson - hero of modern liberals -- believed that an "intelligent and powerful" agent had created a "design" that regulated the universe at the most cosmic and microscopic levels. Where he'd likely disagree with today's proponents of intelligent design is that he did not believe that theology should be taught in the schools, particularly to the impressionable young. Still, it's a reminder that intelligent design need not be viewed as inherently incompatible with science and the use of reason.

I laughed when I heard the line in this new Obama ad about how he "organized with Christian churches" to help unemployed workers. Normally, just saying "churches" pretty much implies "Christian." But with a chunk of Americans still thinking he's Muslim, I guess Obama felt he ought to be more explicit about the Christianness of the Christian Churches he went to as a Christian.

As we mull Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America” theory, it’s worth remembering that in an earlier era, politicians routinely talked in these terms. During the revolutionary era, there was an assumption that God was paying attention and, thanks to the nobility of our cause, intervening on the side of the Americans. But when things were not going well, speculation would bubble up that perhaps God was damning America because of our bad behavior.

At some points during the war, John Adams feared that the cause would fail because he saw too much greed and commercialism in the colonies. "I have seen all my life such selfishness and littleness even in New England, that I sometimes tremble to think that, although we are engaged in the best cause that ever employed the human heart, yet the prospect of success is doubtful not for want of power or wisdom but of virtue." During the revolution, Adams – evoking the manner of his Puritan ancestors – told his friend Benjamin Rush that the colonials would only have a chance of winning, "if we fear God and repent our sins." He even speculated that God might intend for America to be defeated so that its "vicious and luxurious and effeminate appetites, passion and habits" would be cleansed, laying the foundation for a more-deserved victory in the future. Adams wasn’t alone in seeing the events on the ground as a reflection – positive and negative – of God's assessment. One minister ascribed the Continental Army's difficulties to the presence of slavery. Noting the brutal winter, the poor crops, the loss of cattle, and the seemingly imminent collapse of the army, a Quaker farmer speculated that it was part of a divinely-ordained set of plagues. When on July 20, 1775 the Continental Congress called for a day of prayer, it was accompanied by a call for fasting, self-reflection and a unified effort to “unfeignedly confess and deplore our many sins."

Yesterday I wrote that it was the best instance of a black politician articulating the anxieties and racial resentments of whites. It’s worth reflecting for a moment on the (obvious) fact that we still refer to Obama as a black politician rather than a half-black-half-white politician. Someone with an Irish mom and an Italian dad would be described as half Irish, half Italian.

Yet someone with a black dad and white mom is described as black. His skin color defines him more profoundly in our eyes, and, to some degree, in his own mind. That’s just the way race works in America.

But on racial matters, part of Obama’s promise is not just that he’s empathetic and listens well. It’s that he can transcend race in part because he is black and his mother is white. Biography matters as much as ideas. I hate to sound horribly cruel, but if he loses the election, I can’t help but think it will partially be because his mother isn’t alive to campaign with him.

One of the most remarkable, and complex, parts of the speech was this line:

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Unpack that sentence. On one level, in this anecdote the grandmother is acting as a negative example -- a white who caused him pain, as a black, with her words. But he’s also conveying that when he hears insulting or racial things, he goes immediately to a place of attempting to understand where it comes from, just as he had to with his own grandmother. Most important, he reminds people that he was raised by whites and felt loved by whites. While some blacks (perhaps Jeremiah Wright) may view whites as more oppressors than helpers, Obama has been nurtured, loved and treasured by whites.

But there’s a missing piece: how did having a white mother enable him to understand the anxieties of whites better? So far he’s tried to make the point simply by stating what he thought those resentments were and expressing sympathy:

And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

But this doesn’t connect explicitly back to his own biography. We know how he felt as a black man hearing the negative stereotypes from his white grandmother. But how did having white mother and grandmother help him to identify with whites? Perhaps he feels he shouldn’t have to be this explicit. Perhaps he’s cautious about “using” his mother when she’s not here to approve or elaborate. Only he can know. But we can infer from the fact that Obama is a remarkable man, that she must have been a remarkable woman, who not only encouraged him to dream but also helped him to have a world-historic sense of empathy. I don’t think she’ d mind if he conveyed that a bit more.

I feel winded listening to that speech. I’m sitting in my chair but feeling like I have to catch my breath. It was remarkable and will take some time to process. But here is my quick, gut reaction.

His distancing from Jeremiah Wright's statements was effective because he not only said he disagreed but why he disagreed.

“But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

And this:

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made."

I've believed that Obama’s primary (short term) task was not to explain what he agreed with and disagreed with but rather why he stayed in the church. His answer on that was twofold: 1) This church does a lot of good 2) Wright brought me to God. I ultimately think that the second answer will be the more effective one. “He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.” Quoting from his book, he said:

"And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story..

"

For many white Americans it will be the first time they hear Obama say things that only a black politician can say:

"The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America."

Most remarkably, and most importantly, he attempted to speak to the anxieties and wounds of both blacks and whites. He spoke both as a black man and the son of a white woman. Probably the most extraordinary passage was this one:

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

And this, which is probably the most empathetic I’ve ever heard a black politician be toward angry whites:

"And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

Embarrassingly, I want to end on a pedestrian, tactical note. Obama had made a mistake in an earlier tatement implying that he had only ever heard Wright speak about loving one’s neighbor. This made Obama seem dishonest (it just didn’t seem plausible) and meant he would have to explain every newly discovered Wright soundbite. He walked back from that a bit in this speech.

“For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

I actually think this was the one paragraph in the speech that wasn’t quite pitch perfect. “Could be considered controversial”? He could have gone farther than that (and certainly has in regard to the clips that have gained prominence).

But in the end, the real risk of the speech was that he dove directly into the central issue of race. He realized that he could no longer “transcend” race by not talking about it. He had to wade directly in. I don’t know whether it will be effective or not. But it surely was historic.

"Either believes this , has some affinity for what his pastor is saying or he just joined the largest church for political reasons, for opportunistic reasons." --Bill Kristol, Fox News Sunday I’m not defending Obama on this but it does...

I’ve long loved the public radio show, Speaking of Faith, with Krista Tippett. It was such an honor to have her apply her special talents to Founding Faith. What an amazing job she did. And don’t I sound a good...

“Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related...

Should a candidate be held responsible for the views of his or her pastor? If we were all held accountable for the views of our clergymen/women, then no one would ever go to church/synagogue etc. Obama shouldn’t be held responsible...

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation October 3, 1789 We may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions... Several things...

----------------------- Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price, October 9, 1780 "When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself, and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors...

The most moving quote I came across during my research did not actually relate directly to religious freedom. It was the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams upon hearing of Abigail Adams’s death. Recall that the two men had been...

By the way, John Hagee has been controversial in the Jewish community, for reasons you might not expect. Though he's been anti-Catholic and anti-Muslim, Hagee has been a defender of Jews and foe of anti-Semiticism. His group Christians United For...

It’s sort of fun watching John McCain try to suck up to the religious right – because he’s just so bad at it. Take John Hagee. McCain was no doubt told that Hagee is a popular and influential Christian leader....

You know how John McCain has been struggling all year to live down his comment from 2000 that leaders of the “religious right” were “agents of intolerance”? In my mind, I sort of imagined that as a “gaffe,” a quick...

My book goes on sale Tuesday! Here's what's going on to celebrate and self-promote: On this blog, I'm going to lay out some of the most controversial of the ideas and also the Top Ten Founding Fathers Quotes on...