“Get Low” and the Gospel, by Russell Moore
— MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13TH, 2010 —
On Sunday afternoons, typically, the adrenaline of the morning’s activity crashes in, and I’m left with the stillness of a week’s worth of exhaustion. This past Sunday the house was especially quiet, with everyone else napping (something I can’t do well). Without the energy to read or write, I slipped off to my neighborhood movie theater to, like Walker Percy’s Binx Bolling, just to “be” for a while. As the closing credits of Get Low filed by, I realized I hadn’t expected a near encounter with the gospel.
Get Low is the story of a mysterious hermit (played with brilliance by Robert Duvall) who hires a funeral director (Bill Murray) and his associate to carry out a “funeral party” for him. The catch is that this memorial service is to be held before the hermit is actually dead, in order that he would be there to hear all the stories folks would tell about him.
I was first struck by the fact that this was one of the very few contemporary films I’ve seen that portrays positively either the clergy (two of them, in this movie) or funeral directors (well, at least one of the two). But that was not the most impressive part of the movie. I was jarred by the guilt that throbbed through the whole of it.
I’ll try not to spoil the plot for you, except to say that the hermit turns out to be a hermit for a reason. There is something wicked back there in his past. And that’s what the funeral party is about. He wants to hear the stories others have of him (knowing they’ll be awful) because he is fearful of telling the story that only he knows about himself.
Get Low is not a “Christian movie.” The point of view is decidedly non-Christian, as is most of the mode of discourse. And that’s just the point. The film portrays something the Christian Scriptures insist to be true. Guilt isn’t something society foists upon us. There’s something primal, something real, in the guilty conscience.
The apostolic preaching confirms what human experience already affirms, a moral law is embedded in the human conscience. The conscience is not simply a kind of internal prompt for good behavior. It is instead a foretaste of judgment, of the Day when every secret is unearthed.
“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome. “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:14-16).
Get Low portrays where we all are, apart from Christ. Our conscience shows us who we really are, cut off from our only source of life and unable to get back to it past the watching angel’s fiery sword. That kind of guilt is enslaving. Like the protagonist in the film, we want somehow to explain our actions, or to assemble a cloud of witnesses who can explain it for us, without admitting our culpability. We want to live through judgment (which is, after all, what a living funeral is) so that we can reassure ourselves that the end result of our choices isn’t quite the horror we fear it to be.
Get Low ought to prompt us to sympathy for those around us, in our neighborhoods and sometimes in our own homes. They are in captivity, the gospel tells us, to “lifelong slavery” to the one who by his accusation has the power of death, the devil (Heb. 2:14-15).
In the movie, the hermit exiles himself. In his forty year (forty years? Was this accidental?) isolation, he sought to make up for his past. He sacrificed family and friends; he did thankless good deeds, even constructing a church. But, through it all, he denies himself what the Christian preachers tell him he needs: confession of sin before God. In fact, in a chilling scene, the hermit denies that he has wronged God at all.
That’s where Get Low leaves us just this side of Golgotha. The hermit confesses his sin, but his confession is, it seems, just short of repentance. His sin is unveiled. The context is explained. Through forgiveness, human relationships are restored. And then, finally, there’s what the film portrays as the (atoning?) release of death.
But the conscience won’t leave us alone that easily. We know that our death can’t wipe away our sin. Our exile doesn’t end there. It’s only just begun. Without the shedding of blood, of a blood we cannot draw from our own guilty veins, there is no remission of sin. We need more than explanation, confession, restoration. We need crucifixion, burial, resurrection. We need to be born all over again.
Get Low isn’t Christian, but it’s Christ-haunted. In an often animalistic culture, it reminds us that even the Gentiles know that guilt is real, and that it burns. It also reminds us that, no matter how deep the exile, where there is still a conscience there is still the God who put it there.
That’s not the good news, but its a step toward acknowledging the bad. It’s not the whole truth, but it’s the truth, the (almost) gospel truth.
(Russell Moore)
Monday, September 20, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Cardus - Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
Cardus - Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
POINT OF VIEW
Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
September 17, 2010 - John Seel with Ray Pennings
Henry Van Til observes that "culture is religion externalized." By this, he meant that the culture of a people reflects their true religious priorities. So the existence of civil religion is not ultimately surprising. Like so many things, it's a mixed bag, so discernment is needed.
But understanding the proper role of civil religion is complex. It is a normal symptom of national stress. It is about finding national meaning and purpose grounded in the transcendent. Philip Rieff argues in his provocative book, Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life Among the Deathworks (University of Virginia Press, 2006), that "cultures give readings of sacred order and ourselves somewhere in it . . . Culture and sacred order are inseparable, the former the registration of the latter as a systemic expression of the practical relation between humans and the shadow aspects of reality as it is lived."
"No culture has ever preserved itself," he concludes, "where it is not a registration of sacred order." Our age is unprecedented because unlike all societies in the past, we do not publicly ground our social order in the sacred. As a result, for many, today's appeals to civil religion sound odd or even alarming. What was once common is no longer as widely accepted in public discourse.
Some have suggested other alternatives. In Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (Routledge, 2007), New York University sociologist Craig Calhoun proposes cosmopolitanism, liberalism's proposed universalistic alternative, as a substitute. But even as he offers cosmopolitanism as a viable alternative to civil religion, he acknowledges that it does not ultimately satisfy—it "does not provide the proximate solidarities on the basis of which better institutions and greater democracy can be built." So for better or worse, we're going to be left with some form of civil religion.
This is why those who hold religion in high regard and are most inclined to appeal to civil religion in public discourse need clear-eyed discernment.
At times of national stress, civil religion resurfaces. It did after September 11 and it has again today in the midst of our current economic struggles and growing frustration with the direction of the Obama White House. It was evidenced this summer at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally held at the Lincoln Memorial on the U.S. National Mall. Timothy Dalrymple asked whether Americans have squandered their cultural inheritance. Many feel that the current financial woes are connected to a longstanding moral decline, as Dr. Alveda King posited at the rally: "Our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses."
Societies need myths, stories, and images. Few would deny the role religion has played in America's past or its continuing relevance to vast numbers of its population. Even as modernity squeezes religion to the margins in most areas of public life, it continues to have great resonance as our social cement. Even in the midst of fragmenting pluralism, God-talk and notions that America has a distinct divine destiny are the natural recourse when Americans somehow feel attacked—physically, economically, or psychologically. Civil religion is understandable, and in many cases, it serves a valuable civic purpose.
But civil religion also has its dangers, and these dangers are best kept in mind, particularly when we feel under stress. For civil religion can dilute genuine religious belief and eventually lead to idolatry. Idolatry is not a term common to civic discourse, but it's appropriate here.
Civil religion insists on providing a faith that is inclusive of all religious views and all citizens. It eschews exclusivity. So the civil religion's pattern is to water down religious doctrine by deemphasizing belief over symbolic practices that usually cost one nothing. It reinforces the tendency to accommodate one's faith to fits one's social surroundings. It is an ecumenism of the lowest common denominator, where the citizenship in the City of Man is blurred with that in the City of God. And while we are to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, in the final analysis, a Christian believer's "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). This fact trumps all other commitments and loyalties. And herein is the fundamental danger of civil religion.
Civil religion changes religion from being an end to being a means. It uses religion as social glue, thereby making social solidarity the final end. Variants of this tendency were in Germany's national socialism and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. To confuse an end with a means is to change one's relationship to the thing itself. When one gets married in order to gain the inherited wealth of one's future spouse, so-called marital love has become merely a means to an end. So too with civil religion: When religion is used to support the state, the state become the end, and not religion. God is not mocked, and those who would post the Ten Commandments on courthouse walls should well remember the first of those commandments: He tolerates no other God before Him. He is to be worshipped on his own terms—no God but God.
Civil religion also tends to emphasize the symbolic over the substantive. It is difficult to see how allowing vocalized prayer in public schools would substantively improve education or fundamentally change the direction of American culture. But simplistic pyrrhic victories, particularly if mediagenic and populist in nature, are to be sought at all cost. The amount of dust and rhetoric over matters that don't really matter is astounding. We major on minors—and then wonder why nothing changes.
And finally, because it is socially accepted and religiously justified, civil religion can easily turn into idolatry, with all the consequences of pride and self-deception associated with it, when good things—like patriotism—are loved too much. When the cross is conflated with the flag and patriotic appreciation becomes over-attachment and reliance, civil religion crosses a line. But good things often become the worse things, because their inherent goodness blinds us to the danger of loving it too much. Parochialism, nationalism, and jingoism are the inevitable results of idolatrous civic religion. Civic self-righteousness is more dangerous than its purely religious cousin, because the state has the power of the military to back up its sense of being aggrieved. As Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, we should be careful in assuming that God is uniquely on our side.
Separation of church and state will not stop civil religion. The separation is a legal institutional arrangement, while civil religion is a public search for meaning in times of stress. So civil religion's head will rise again and again, even in the midst of increasing secularity. And though it may be a balm to those who chafe against the godlessness of civil society, it demands increasing discernment, particularly by those most inclined to its appeal.
Ironically, political conservatives, who most frequently use civil religion to bolster their desire to return America to its founding values, are not only putting a sacred patina on government, but they are diluting faith. The state is given a religious sanction and the church a secular justification—and yet, when all the rhetoric ends and the TV cameras stop rolling, nothing fundamental has been done or changed. Some may feel better about themselves, but it is at the expense of the body politic and theological integrity. It's a bad bargain that is easily made—which is why caution is advised.
Corruptio optimi pessima: "The corruption of the best things are the worst things."
NB: What follows is a piece of reflection on the same topic with specific focus on Canadian context
Resisting melting-pot
Ray Pennings
The substance of John Seel's four-fold caution regarding civil religion is equally applicable north of the forty-ninth parallel, although a bit of translation into Canadianese seems apt. Unlike our American friends—for whom debating exactly what the principle of separation of church and state means seems foundational in these debates—Canadian history does not include any such principle. (Even our Supreme Court declared in a 1985 decision that "recourse to categories from American jurisprudence is not particularly helpful" in relation to these matters.)
While we have our own historical contentions, our founding involved a "pact" between French Catholics and English Protestants, in which various commitments that look very much like "establishment" clauses were constitutionally guaranteed. The public role of religion was so deeply embedded that as recently as the patriation of the constitution and passage of the Canadian Rights and Freedoms in 1982, religious language was preserved. "Whereas Canada is founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law . . . " is the Canadian counterpart to "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness."
In practice, however, the cosmopolitan alternative to civil religion has been more aggressively propagated in Canada than the United States. Our official policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism have combined to resist melting-pot strategies, so the Canadian public square is one in which theistic language are not welcomed. Combined with our self-image of being "nice" and "tolerant," this means that where public religious engagement can be framed as welcoming particular ethnic or minority interests, such activity is tolerated, whereas majority religious expressions of civil religion are frowned upon. In very practical terms, this meant that Canada's post-9/11 service was multi-faith in character, although it did not include a Christian prayer.
That this is unsustainable is increasingly self-evident and civil religionists—of both the cosmopolitan and Christian persuasion—are increasingly engaging in public discussion on these matters. I suspect both sides of the border need to recognize that if we are to live together in peace, we must have some conception of what constitutes the "public good" that transcends the simple majority opinion of the day. At the same time, we need to recognize that the public square is not equipped to sort through competing truth claims of various faith perspectives, be they religious or secular truth claims: A new sort of civil discourse is required.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
POINT OF VIEW
Civil Religion: Caution is Advised
September 17, 2010 - John Seel with Ray Pennings
Henry Van Til observes that "culture is religion externalized." By this, he meant that the culture of a people reflects their true religious priorities. So the existence of civil religion is not ultimately surprising. Like so many things, it's a mixed bag, so discernment is needed.
But understanding the proper role of civil religion is complex. It is a normal symptom of national stress. It is about finding national meaning and purpose grounded in the transcendent. Philip Rieff argues in his provocative book, Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life Among the Deathworks (University of Virginia Press, 2006), that "cultures give readings of sacred order and ourselves somewhere in it . . . Culture and sacred order are inseparable, the former the registration of the latter as a systemic expression of the practical relation between humans and the shadow aspects of reality as it is lived."
"No culture has ever preserved itself," he concludes, "where it is not a registration of sacred order." Our age is unprecedented because unlike all societies in the past, we do not publicly ground our social order in the sacred. As a result, for many, today's appeals to civil religion sound odd or even alarming. What was once common is no longer as widely accepted in public discourse.
Some have suggested other alternatives. In Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (Routledge, 2007), New York University sociologist Craig Calhoun proposes cosmopolitanism, liberalism's proposed universalistic alternative, as a substitute. But even as he offers cosmopolitanism as a viable alternative to civil religion, he acknowledges that it does not ultimately satisfy—it "does not provide the proximate solidarities on the basis of which better institutions and greater democracy can be built." So for better or worse, we're going to be left with some form of civil religion.
This is why those who hold religion in high regard and are most inclined to appeal to civil religion in public discourse need clear-eyed discernment.
At times of national stress, civil religion resurfaces. It did after September 11 and it has again today in the midst of our current economic struggles and growing frustration with the direction of the Obama White House. It was evidenced this summer at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally held at the Lincoln Memorial on the U.S. National Mall. Timothy Dalrymple asked whether Americans have squandered their cultural inheritance. Many feel that the current financial woes are connected to a longstanding moral decline, as Dr. Alveda King posited at the rally: "Our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses."
Societies need myths, stories, and images. Few would deny the role religion has played in America's past or its continuing relevance to vast numbers of its population. Even as modernity squeezes religion to the margins in most areas of public life, it continues to have great resonance as our social cement. Even in the midst of fragmenting pluralism, God-talk and notions that America has a distinct divine destiny are the natural recourse when Americans somehow feel attacked—physically, economically, or psychologically. Civil religion is understandable, and in many cases, it serves a valuable civic purpose.
But civil religion also has its dangers, and these dangers are best kept in mind, particularly when we feel under stress. For civil religion can dilute genuine religious belief and eventually lead to idolatry. Idolatry is not a term common to civic discourse, but it's appropriate here.
Civil religion insists on providing a faith that is inclusive of all religious views and all citizens. It eschews exclusivity. So the civil religion's pattern is to water down religious doctrine by deemphasizing belief over symbolic practices that usually cost one nothing. It reinforces the tendency to accommodate one's faith to fits one's social surroundings. It is an ecumenism of the lowest common denominator, where the citizenship in the City of Man is blurred with that in the City of God. And while we are to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, in the final analysis, a Christian believer's "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). This fact trumps all other commitments and loyalties. And herein is the fundamental danger of civil religion.
Civil religion changes religion from being an end to being a means. It uses religion as social glue, thereby making social solidarity the final end. Variants of this tendency were in Germany's national socialism and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. To confuse an end with a means is to change one's relationship to the thing itself. When one gets married in order to gain the inherited wealth of one's future spouse, so-called marital love has become merely a means to an end. So too with civil religion: When religion is used to support the state, the state become the end, and not religion. God is not mocked, and those who would post the Ten Commandments on courthouse walls should well remember the first of those commandments: He tolerates no other God before Him. He is to be worshipped on his own terms—no God but God.
Civil religion also tends to emphasize the symbolic over the substantive. It is difficult to see how allowing vocalized prayer in public schools would substantively improve education or fundamentally change the direction of American culture. But simplistic pyrrhic victories, particularly if mediagenic and populist in nature, are to be sought at all cost. The amount of dust and rhetoric over matters that don't really matter is astounding. We major on minors—and then wonder why nothing changes.
And finally, because it is socially accepted and religiously justified, civil religion can easily turn into idolatry, with all the consequences of pride and self-deception associated with it, when good things—like patriotism—are loved too much. When the cross is conflated with the flag and patriotic appreciation becomes over-attachment and reliance, civil religion crosses a line. But good things often become the worse things, because their inherent goodness blinds us to the danger of loving it too much. Parochialism, nationalism, and jingoism are the inevitable results of idolatrous civic religion. Civic self-righteousness is more dangerous than its purely religious cousin, because the state has the power of the military to back up its sense of being aggrieved. As Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, we should be careful in assuming that God is uniquely on our side.
Separation of church and state will not stop civil religion. The separation is a legal institutional arrangement, while civil religion is a public search for meaning in times of stress. So civil religion's head will rise again and again, even in the midst of increasing secularity. And though it may be a balm to those who chafe against the godlessness of civil society, it demands increasing discernment, particularly by those most inclined to its appeal.
Ironically, political conservatives, who most frequently use civil religion to bolster their desire to return America to its founding values, are not only putting a sacred patina on government, but they are diluting faith. The state is given a religious sanction and the church a secular justification—and yet, when all the rhetoric ends and the TV cameras stop rolling, nothing fundamental has been done or changed. Some may feel better about themselves, but it is at the expense of the body politic and theological integrity. It's a bad bargain that is easily made—which is why caution is advised.
Corruptio optimi pessima: "The corruption of the best things are the worst things."
NB: What follows is a piece of reflection on the same topic with specific focus on Canadian context
Resisting melting-pot
Ray Pennings
The substance of John Seel's four-fold caution regarding civil religion is equally applicable north of the forty-ninth parallel, although a bit of translation into Canadianese seems apt. Unlike our American friends—for whom debating exactly what the principle of separation of church and state means seems foundational in these debates—Canadian history does not include any such principle. (Even our Supreme Court declared in a 1985 decision that "recourse to categories from American jurisprudence is not particularly helpful" in relation to these matters.)
While we have our own historical contentions, our founding involved a "pact" between French Catholics and English Protestants, in which various commitments that look very much like "establishment" clauses were constitutionally guaranteed. The public role of religion was so deeply embedded that as recently as the patriation of the constitution and passage of the Canadian Rights and Freedoms in 1982, religious language was preserved. "Whereas Canada is founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law . . . " is the Canadian counterpart to "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness."
In practice, however, the cosmopolitan alternative to civil religion has been more aggressively propagated in Canada than the United States. Our official policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism have combined to resist melting-pot strategies, so the Canadian public square is one in which theistic language are not welcomed. Combined with our self-image of being "nice" and "tolerant," this means that where public religious engagement can be framed as welcoming particular ethnic or minority interests, such activity is tolerated, whereas majority religious expressions of civil religion are frowned upon. In very practical terms, this meant that Canada's post-9/11 service was multi-faith in character, although it did not include a Christian prayer.
That this is unsustainable is increasingly self-evident and civil religionists—of both the cosmopolitan and Christian persuasion—are increasingly engaging in public discussion on these matters. I suspect both sides of the border need to recognize that if we are to live together in peace, we must have some conception of what constitutes the "public good" that transcends the simple majority opinion of the day. At the same time, we need to recognize that the public square is not equipped to sort through competing truth claims of various faith perspectives, be they religious or secular truth claims: A new sort of civil discourse is required.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Islamophobia... and the stifling of debate
by ANDREW KLAVAN
Name-Calling
“Islamophobia”: the latest charge to try to stifle legitimate debate
27 August 2010
One of the cleverest tricks of the cultural Left is demonizing perfectly reasonable actions and opinions by giving them sinister names. It is the logical go-to technique for those whose ideas have failed in every practical application but who nonetheless still dominate the media by which ideas are spread.
A favorite example of mine is the old feminist declaration that men “objectify” women when they respond to female beauty as nature decrees. This particular reframing was not successful over the long term for the same reason that health scares involving coffee have never caught on: no one was willing to give up the stimulant. A more tenacious variation of the same approach is the accusation that law enforcement officers practice “racial profiling,” which sounds as though police center their suspicions on one race over another out of simple bigotry or meanness. In fact, if criminals of a certain type or in a certain neighborhood tend to be of a specific race, then the proper term for “racial profiling” would be “good police work.” And though, fortunately for liberals and conservatives alike, police continue to do that good work, the evil-sounding sobriquet has forced them to waste a lot of time, effort, and money pretending they don’t.
Recently, in defending an imam’s proposal to build a triumphalist “Muslim Cultural Center” near Manhattan’s Ground Zero—where, we may remember, so many innocents were slaughtered in the name of Allah—the Left has outdone itself. Rather than engage in serious debate with the vast majority of New Yorkers and Americans who oppose the project, the mosque’s defenders have simply dubbed the opposing viewpoint “Islamophobia.” As ever when this naming device is used, the left-wing media seem to rally as one. Within the space of a single week, Time put the word on its cover, Maureen Dowd accused the entire nation of it in her column, and CBS News trotted out the charge in reporting on mosque opposition.
For anyone born with the gift of laughter, the term is absurd to the point of hilarity. A phobia, after all, is an irrational fear. Given that Islam is cancerous with violence in virtually every corner of the globe, given the oppressive and exclusionary nature of many Islamic governments, given the insidious Islamist inroads against long-held freedoms in western Europe, and given those aspects of sharia that seem, to an outsider at least, to prohibit democracy, free speech, and the fair treatment of the female half of our species, those who love peace and liberty would, in fact, be irrational not to harbor at least a measure of concern.
A religion is only a system of beliefs, and to say that all beliefs deserve equal respect or acceptance is to say that ideas have no moral weight, a patent absurdity. Because the human soul thirsts so for God, the sacred principle of individual liberty demands that religion be given wide latitude when it comes to internal mind-states, modes of worship, and the description of the metaphysical. But when it comes to the practical affairs of humankind, humankind may judge—and Islam, as the world stands now, has a lot to answer for. Whether radical Islamic violence, sexism, religious bigotry, and triumphalism are the natural outgrowths of its dogma or a series of aberrations is a perfectly valid question. Likewise the question of Islamic intentions toward Western culture in general and, by extension, the intentions of those behind the Ground Zero Mosque proposal. By what outlandish moral logic does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf call America an “accomplice to the crime” of 9/11? From whom will he acquire the $100 million required to build his center, and what will they receive in return? None of these questions will be answered by simply condemning as phobic those who bring them to the fore.
With a hostility toward Christianity second only to Dracula’s, the Left has no credibility on the subject of freedom of religion. In a representative moment in February 2006, liberalism’s flagship paper, the New York Times, refused to publish the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed in order to “refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols.” The next day, it famously illustrated a story on the cartoons with an offensive image of the Virgin Mary smeared with dung. One wonders, therefore: Does the Left really cherish the rights of Islam, or is theirs but a short-sighted alliance with the enemy of their enemies?
Which is to say that perhaps opponents of the mosque should question the motives of those who question their motives. In any case, they should greet the designation of Islamophobia with the derision that it deserves.
Andrew Klavan is a contributing editor to City Journal.
Name-Calling
“Islamophobia”: the latest charge to try to stifle legitimate debate
27 August 2010
One of the cleverest tricks of the cultural Left is demonizing perfectly reasonable actions and opinions by giving them sinister names. It is the logical go-to technique for those whose ideas have failed in every practical application but who nonetheless still dominate the media by which ideas are spread.
A favorite example of mine is the old feminist declaration that men “objectify” women when they respond to female beauty as nature decrees. This particular reframing was not successful over the long term for the same reason that health scares involving coffee have never caught on: no one was willing to give up the stimulant. A more tenacious variation of the same approach is the accusation that law enforcement officers practice “racial profiling,” which sounds as though police center their suspicions on one race over another out of simple bigotry or meanness. In fact, if criminals of a certain type or in a certain neighborhood tend to be of a specific race, then the proper term for “racial profiling” would be “good police work.” And though, fortunately for liberals and conservatives alike, police continue to do that good work, the evil-sounding sobriquet has forced them to waste a lot of time, effort, and money pretending they don’t.
Recently, in defending an imam’s proposal to build a triumphalist “Muslim Cultural Center” near Manhattan’s Ground Zero—where, we may remember, so many innocents were slaughtered in the name of Allah—the Left has outdone itself. Rather than engage in serious debate with the vast majority of New Yorkers and Americans who oppose the project, the mosque’s defenders have simply dubbed the opposing viewpoint “Islamophobia.” As ever when this naming device is used, the left-wing media seem to rally as one. Within the space of a single week, Time put the word on its cover, Maureen Dowd accused the entire nation of it in her column, and CBS News trotted out the charge in reporting on mosque opposition.
For anyone born with the gift of laughter, the term is absurd to the point of hilarity. A phobia, after all, is an irrational fear. Given that Islam is cancerous with violence in virtually every corner of the globe, given the oppressive and exclusionary nature of many Islamic governments, given the insidious Islamist inroads against long-held freedoms in western Europe, and given those aspects of sharia that seem, to an outsider at least, to prohibit democracy, free speech, and the fair treatment of the female half of our species, those who love peace and liberty would, in fact, be irrational not to harbor at least a measure of concern.
A religion is only a system of beliefs, and to say that all beliefs deserve equal respect or acceptance is to say that ideas have no moral weight, a patent absurdity. Because the human soul thirsts so for God, the sacred principle of individual liberty demands that religion be given wide latitude when it comes to internal mind-states, modes of worship, and the description of the metaphysical. But when it comes to the practical affairs of humankind, humankind may judge—and Islam, as the world stands now, has a lot to answer for. Whether radical Islamic violence, sexism, religious bigotry, and triumphalism are the natural outgrowths of its dogma or a series of aberrations is a perfectly valid question. Likewise the question of Islamic intentions toward Western culture in general and, by extension, the intentions of those behind the Ground Zero Mosque proposal. By what outlandish moral logic does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf call America an “accomplice to the crime” of 9/11? From whom will he acquire the $100 million required to build his center, and what will they receive in return? None of these questions will be answered by simply condemning as phobic those who bring them to the fore.
With a hostility toward Christianity second only to Dracula’s, the Left has no credibility on the subject of freedom of religion. In a representative moment in February 2006, liberalism’s flagship paper, the New York Times, refused to publish the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed in order to “refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols.” The next day, it famously illustrated a story on the cartoons with an offensive image of the Virgin Mary smeared with dung. One wonders, therefore: Does the Left really cherish the rights of Islam, or is theirs but a short-sighted alliance with the enemy of their enemies?
Which is to say that perhaps opponents of the mosque should question the motives of those who question their motives. In any case, they should greet the designation of Islamophobia with the derision that it deserves.
Andrew Klavan is a contributing editor to City Journal.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Necessary for Life
POINT OF VIEW
Necessary for Life
August 27, 2010 - Ray Pennings
In public conversation, death is usually a "no-go zone." Dealing with this subject flippantly is irreverent and disrespectful. Dealing with it respectfully exposes profound and deeply held differences. Talking about a world without "me" in it requires some skill in mental gymnastics—like imagining attending your own funeral. Yet the effort is deserved, since talking about death also changes our life priorities.
Last year, the British think tank Theos issued a report which suggested that discussing death more would decrease people's fear of death. The Humanist Association cried foul, suggesting the study was a ruse that "invented a cultural problem which only religion could solve" in order to advance a religious agenda. Sociologist Reginald Bibby has been asking young Canadians their views on various matters, including death, since 1975. In Restless Gods, he observes that "it may well be that people are not taking the time to reflect on 'life's big questions' to the extent they did three decades ago."
Although fear of death can hardly be a recently-invented cultural problem, measuring how different people deal with this fear seems to be subjective. My nineteen-year-old son has attended one funeral: an aged great-grandparent. When I was his age, I had been to five funerals, two of them after sudden and tragic deaths. We recently talked about our first direct exposures to death and we each had vivid, emotional memories. I asked my father about his teenaged memories of dealing with death. He recalls attending half a dozen or so funerals, mostly of older folk but also one of a teenaged neighbour. Interestingly, however, it was the much more involved engagement in the grieving process which distinguished his experience from ours. In the rural Dutch village where he was raised, what we typically contract to professionals was cared for by the entire community. The deceased's closest neighbour was responsible for overseeing the funeral arrangements, which included constructing a casket. The wake was held in the home with defined roles for neighbours, family members, and clergy. The town bells tolled during the entire funeral procession, and most of the community walked behind the horse-drawn cortege as it made its way from the home of the deceased to the cemetery. It was a communal event.
Thinking about our own death is obviously a very personal and spiritual matter and grieving the death of someone close to us is clearly experienced differently by those who knew the deceased in an intimate and personal way. As often as not, I attend a viewing or funeral today to express condolences and show support for people I know who are related to the deceased. My time and presence are all that is required. Increasingly of late, it seems that this communal participation in the funeral process is being separated from reality of death as funeral services have transformed into memorial services celebrating life and a private service is held for the internment or cremation. The community involvement in customary grieving processes generally requires much less direct exposure to the realty of death than it once did.
We deal with death less directly, but also less frequently. The advances of medicine have increased the average life expectancy, and the distance many of us live from our families means that we attend fewer funerals. A card or phone call becomes our expression of grief for the passing of an uncle, schoolmate, or former colleague. Unless we were close, no one expects us to purchase an airplane ticket to attend a wake or funeral.
I wonder what the impact of this less frequent and direct brush with death might be. Personally, I feel the pain of sin more than at any other time when I stand by an open grave. My theology teaches me that the wages of sin is death. I hate death. Never is it more real to me than when a casket is laid on a grave and the mourners have to turn to leave it behind. I see its coldness and cruelty in the faces and tears of those most intimately affected and I intensely realize just how serious sin really is.
Thankfully, my Christian theology provides me more. Services conducted in a Christian tradition provide a message of hope and triumph in the face of sin and death. Even as we prepare to leave the body behind, we recite the Apostles Creed, in which we declare that "Christ was crucified dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead . . . I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Christ rose from the grave—a miraculous historical truth, which if not affirmed as such renders our faith as vanity (I Corinthians 15.17).
I know these things to be true. My faith is tested when I try to understand how dust and ashes will be raised into a glorious body, just as I don't fully understand how an acorn becomes an oak. But I know it does, and that gives me hope and reason to live on.
The impact of this truth is more than personal. What we think about death also shapes how we approach life. If there is no life beyond the grave, then whatever meaning one ascribes to life on earth is, by definition, limited. Logic dictates that we should live for the moment and enjoy life. Saving for the future, having concern for a legacy, participating in projects that are multi-generational in nature—few compelling arguments can really be mustered to support these activities. By the time the impacts of these activities are realized, we are not even there to observe. If it makes you feel good to give something to future generations, or if you want to be remembered, then do it; but beyond that, why bother?
Short-term horizons affect everything from our bank accounts to our construction projects. When things break down and decay, it will be someone else's problem. We stand and marvel at the cathedrals that took centuries and generations to build, but we hardly stop to reflect on what it says about us that we cannot muster the vision to undertake these sorts of projects. Most fundamentally, not thinking beyond ourselves deprives us of our sense of purpose and hope.
I have no embarrassment in admitting to the humanists that encouraging people to think about death will encourage them to think about spiritual questions. In fact, that is a good thing, even if it causes discomfort. But, I would argue, it impacts more than spiritual questions. It will shape their priorities and attitudes about what is good and true and beautiful, what is worth saving for, and how much they are prepared to sacrifice for social goods that they may not participate in. It gives my work a purpose beyond my own satisfaction and short-term benefit, and provides a perspective that will define my citizenship and neighbourliness.
I don't enjoy discussing death. It evokes uncomfortable emotions and painful memories. But I recognize its importance. It is part of the process of creation-fall-redemption-restoration, and puts what I do and who I am into a perspective beyond what I can touch and measure. That in turn gives what I can touch and measure greater texture and value. Ultimately, it helps me to truly live.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - Necessary for Life
Necessary for Life
August 27, 2010 - Ray Pennings
In public conversation, death is usually a "no-go zone." Dealing with this subject flippantly is irreverent and disrespectful. Dealing with it respectfully exposes profound and deeply held differences. Talking about a world without "me" in it requires some skill in mental gymnastics—like imagining attending your own funeral. Yet the effort is deserved, since talking about death also changes our life priorities.
Last year, the British think tank Theos issued a report which suggested that discussing death more would decrease people's fear of death. The Humanist Association cried foul, suggesting the study was a ruse that "invented a cultural problem which only religion could solve" in order to advance a religious agenda. Sociologist Reginald Bibby has been asking young Canadians their views on various matters, including death, since 1975. In Restless Gods, he observes that "it may well be that people are not taking the time to reflect on 'life's big questions' to the extent they did three decades ago."
Although fear of death can hardly be a recently-invented cultural problem, measuring how different people deal with this fear seems to be subjective. My nineteen-year-old son has attended one funeral: an aged great-grandparent. When I was his age, I had been to five funerals, two of them after sudden and tragic deaths. We recently talked about our first direct exposures to death and we each had vivid, emotional memories. I asked my father about his teenaged memories of dealing with death. He recalls attending half a dozen or so funerals, mostly of older folk but also one of a teenaged neighbour. Interestingly, however, it was the much more involved engagement in the grieving process which distinguished his experience from ours. In the rural Dutch village where he was raised, what we typically contract to professionals was cared for by the entire community. The deceased's closest neighbour was responsible for overseeing the funeral arrangements, which included constructing a casket. The wake was held in the home with defined roles for neighbours, family members, and clergy. The town bells tolled during the entire funeral procession, and most of the community walked behind the horse-drawn cortege as it made its way from the home of the deceased to the cemetery. It was a communal event.
Thinking about our own death is obviously a very personal and spiritual matter and grieving the death of someone close to us is clearly experienced differently by those who knew the deceased in an intimate and personal way. As often as not, I attend a viewing or funeral today to express condolences and show support for people I know who are related to the deceased. My time and presence are all that is required. Increasingly of late, it seems that this communal participation in the funeral process is being separated from reality of death as funeral services have transformed into memorial services celebrating life and a private service is held for the internment or cremation. The community involvement in customary grieving processes generally requires much less direct exposure to the realty of death than it once did.
We deal with death less directly, but also less frequently. The advances of medicine have increased the average life expectancy, and the distance many of us live from our families means that we attend fewer funerals. A card or phone call becomes our expression of grief for the passing of an uncle, schoolmate, or former colleague. Unless we were close, no one expects us to purchase an airplane ticket to attend a wake or funeral.
I wonder what the impact of this less frequent and direct brush with death might be. Personally, I feel the pain of sin more than at any other time when I stand by an open grave. My theology teaches me that the wages of sin is death. I hate death. Never is it more real to me than when a casket is laid on a grave and the mourners have to turn to leave it behind. I see its coldness and cruelty in the faces and tears of those most intimately affected and I intensely realize just how serious sin really is.
Thankfully, my Christian theology provides me more. Services conducted in a Christian tradition provide a message of hope and triumph in the face of sin and death. Even as we prepare to leave the body behind, we recite the Apostles Creed, in which we declare that "Christ was crucified dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead . . . I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Christ rose from the grave—a miraculous historical truth, which if not affirmed as such renders our faith as vanity (I Corinthians 15.17).
I know these things to be true. My faith is tested when I try to understand how dust and ashes will be raised into a glorious body, just as I don't fully understand how an acorn becomes an oak. But I know it does, and that gives me hope and reason to live on.
The impact of this truth is more than personal. What we think about death also shapes how we approach life. If there is no life beyond the grave, then whatever meaning one ascribes to life on earth is, by definition, limited. Logic dictates that we should live for the moment and enjoy life. Saving for the future, having concern for a legacy, participating in projects that are multi-generational in nature—few compelling arguments can really be mustered to support these activities. By the time the impacts of these activities are realized, we are not even there to observe. If it makes you feel good to give something to future generations, or if you want to be remembered, then do it; but beyond that, why bother?
Short-term horizons affect everything from our bank accounts to our construction projects. When things break down and decay, it will be someone else's problem. We stand and marvel at the cathedrals that took centuries and generations to build, but we hardly stop to reflect on what it says about us that we cannot muster the vision to undertake these sorts of projects. Most fundamentally, not thinking beyond ourselves deprives us of our sense of purpose and hope.
I have no embarrassment in admitting to the humanists that encouraging people to think about death will encourage them to think about spiritual questions. In fact, that is a good thing, even if it causes discomfort. But, I would argue, it impacts more than spiritual questions. It will shape their priorities and attitudes about what is good and true and beautiful, what is worth saving for, and how much they are prepared to sacrifice for social goods that they may not participate in. It gives my work a purpose beyond my own satisfaction and short-term benefit, and provides a perspective that will define my citizenship and neighbourliness.
I don't enjoy discussing death. It evokes uncomfortable emotions and painful memories. But I recognize its importance. It is part of the process of creation-fall-redemption-restoration, and puts what I do and who I am into a perspective beyond what I can touch and measure. That in turn gives what I can touch and measure greater texture and value. Ultimately, it helps me to truly live.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - Necessary for Life
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