I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the “Obama’s Pastor” controversy, because it’s the product of three forms of conservative stupidity that I am glad to be immune to. The first is their deliberate, calculated, and organized distortion of political campaigns with red herring issues and machine-gun assaults of irrelevant attacks whipped up by their noise machine to drown out a substantive discussion of issues on which they cannot compete. The second is their inability to think for themselves and its corollary, their assumption that nobody else is capable of thinking for themselves - hence the bizarre “controversy” over whether Obama was present in the room when somebody else said something that makes white conservatives uncomfortable. (It’s true: a major portion of the noisemaking over individual sentences spoken by Jeremiah Wright and taken out of context by Obama’s critics is the question not whether Obama agrees with them, but whether he was present when they were spoken. Somebody should ask these clowns if they are so weak-minded that they are incapable of hearing anything and not believing it - and if not, why they assume that black people must be.) The third is the inherent inability even to acknowledge race and racial history as an issue in America - the drooling stupidity that allows conservative whites to imagine that the Confederate flag is not a symbol of race hatred, but that black anger over discrimination is. Like so much of conservative discourse, this nonsensical “controversy” simply fails to rise to the level that would deserve to be taken seriously; as with conservatism in general, giving it no credence is the safest and most efficient way to deal with the mess it presents.
But the speech that Obama planned on the subject was interesting to me - interesting as a phenomenon. It occurs to me that this election has now seen two “Kennedy moments” - defining speeches in which a candidate has been forced, by others’ bigotry, to confront their own outsider status and challenge America to expand its notion of community membership and our range of shared values. Kennedy did it with panache over the question of Catholicism, and this year Romney did a decent job in the same vein regarding Mormonism. Obama faces a larger challenge on the question of race. Race and sex are the fundamental lines of discrimination written into the Constitution itself; race especially was the ground of the most vicious and tenacious divisions of American society, the one that defined and shaped the country as no other, and laid the groundwork on which the lives of all Americans are lived today.
Americans have always been able to make themselves feel good about themselves by invoking both religiosity and religious freedom, but they have invested to an even greater degree in defining and maintaining racial divisions. In some ways, Kennedy and Romney were fighting a downhill battle; it required little more for either of them than to express teary-eyed religious fervor and promise not to go overboard with it. Obama is unquestionably struggling uphill; he cannot claim community with other groups by invoking his devotion to his own, as Kennedy and Romney could, and he cannot erase their bigotry by any degree of non-threatening rhetoric or promises not to challenge their complacency (which is just as well, because that’s not what he’s about). Even so, a speech on race is an opportunity to bring race to the forefront of the discussion in a serious way, and potentially to cut through the winking code-words and denials and evasions that invariably smothered any approach to the subject heretofore. It was an unique enough opportunity, also, that it just might have had a chance to make whites shut up and listen for a change, and maybe shift the grounds of discussion just a bit. I was interested to see what Obama would do with it.
(More after the break)
March 18th, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Read Your Bible, Race |
23 comments
KTK has already said most of what needs to be said about this, but I think there are a couple of additional things that are worth pointing out:
First, as KTK points out in comments, but needs to be addressed more explicitly, the fact that one “truly believes” ones religion does not prohibit us from making moral judgments about those beliefs. We don’t excuse the Islamofascist who blows up a market because he “truly believes” this is God’s will. We condemn it irrespective of the sincerety of his belief. Why, then, should the beliefs of Christianity be immune to such criticism?
Second, it seems to be a common objection that Coulter is merely embracing the whole of Christian ideology, and that this not only excuses and justifies what she said, but is the only correct belief for a “true” Christian to hold. However — and this doesn’t get near as much attention as it should — nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody embraces and follows the whole of Christian ideology. Every Christian — indeed, every religious adherent of any religion — selectively adheres to that religion. In many ways, they have to, because the teachings of most religions are inherently self-contradictory. But that’s not even what I’m talking about. In most cases, they choose to. This is how conservative evangelicals can justify ignoring admonitions against eating shellfish, or calls for blood sacrifice, or requirements to banish their menstruating women from the town, hiding behind the excuse that “the New Testament fulfills [and/or replaces] the Old,” but as soon as the subject changes to homosexuality or Wiccanism or abortion, they go all Leviticus on us without so much as batting an eyelash.
Based on these two observations, I call bullshit on the idea that Coulter, as a “good Christian,” is somehow compelled to hold the vile beliefs she spews, or that we shouldn’t criticize those beliefs because of it.
October 12th, 2007
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Politics, Religion, Read Your Bible |
3 comments
Steven Goldstein and Daniel Gross became the first people to complete the civil union ceremony for homosexuals in New Jersey on Monday. The video is here. And a little note to anyone who would attack these men. These men are our family, our firends, our co-workers, our countrymen. They are as decent as worthy of rights and respct as any other American, as any other person. And they will have them.
And when they do, finally, wrestle full equality form your bitter hands, your children and your grandchildren will look upon you with the same measure of bewilderment and disgust that the children of 60s Klan members and followers of Bull Connor do. Hopefully, you will have learned enough to be ashamed.
February 20th, 2007
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Culture, Read Your Bible |
51 comments
This came from the Skeptics Society, and could be quite interesting. Reprinted in its entirety:
NEWLY published by the Skeptics Society…
The Bible Against Itself is a witty and well-informed work of revisionist Bible scholarship, a courageous exercise in the deconstruction of Holy Writ and a healthy corrective to anyone who still thinks of the Bible as the revealed word of God.
— Jonathan Kirsch, author of The Harlot by the Side of the Road
and A History of the End of the World
Before the Bible was the Bible it was a lot of little books written by many writers with many different viewpoints.
If you open up the Bible and read it straight through, you will notice two things that should not be true if it had been written as a coherent whole and with a single purpose. First, the Bible is quite repetitious; second, the Bible frequently seems to contradict itself. Readers have often ignored these contradictions, and apologists have long tried to reconcile them. Randel Helms chooses a third course — to understand the contradictions by looking at the cultural and historical factors that produced them.
December 13th, 2006
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Religion, Books, Read Your Bible |
12 comments
UPDATED by tgirsch below.
Far too many people spew about what Christianity is or is not without appearing to have actually read the Bible or any o the commentaries on its translations. As a public service, we here at Lean Left will attempt to educate these poor souls. A brief FAQ:
- What qualifies you to do this? Believe it or not, tgirsch was a theology student. KTK is an ethicist, and thus has a deep understanding of Christina morals and ethics and the foundation of those morals and ethics. I have no qualifications aside from having read the thing. Which, really, is the point: this is mainly going to deal with statements about the meaning of Christianity that can only have come form someone who has not actually read the whole thing or thought much about what he/she was reading.
- Isn’t this a bit arrogant? I am sorry, did you notice this was a blog? Besides, the entire text of the Bible, numerous commentaries and its translation history/controversies are all available in English. This isn’t some esoteric branch of human knowledge, like rocket science, brain surgery, or Kremlinology.
- Why should I listen to your opinions when scholars, ministers, etc have studied these things for years? The argument is all that matters — if any of the arguments in this series are wrong, then it should be easy to find learned commentary to refute them.
Onto our first example, a relatively easy one, Mark Steyn. All emphasis mine:
“No,” agreed Bishop Kate. “It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”
Now, that may or may not be a great idea, but it’s nothing to do with Christianity, only for eco-cultists like Al Gore.
The bolded statement is either a bald-faced lie or born of such deep ignorance about Christianity that it calls into question the writer’s ability to adhere to the actual tenets of the faith. Genesis gave man dominion over the environment, broadly speaking, but dominion does not have to mean exploitation. It is not hard to find commentary that treats dominion as a reasonability to stewardship of God’s creation. In fact, the Bible itself re-enforces this notion.
In Leviticus, Israel is told how to deal with the land:
1. The LORD then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, 2. “Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, ‘When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a Sabbath to the LORD. 3. ‘Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, 4. but during the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. 5. ‘Your harvest’s aftergrowth you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year. 6. ‘And all of you shall have the Sabbath [products] of the land for food; yourself, and your male and female slaves, and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who live as aliens with you. 7. ‘Even your cattle and the animals that are in your land shall have all its crops to eat. 8. ‘You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, [namely], forty-nine years. 9. ‘You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. 10. ‘You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. 11. ‘You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in [from] its untrimmed vines. 12. ‘For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field.
In Isaiah, God judges those who misuse the land:
8. Woe to those who add house to house [and] join field to field, Until there is no more room, So that you have to live alone in the midst of the land! 9. In my ears the LORD of hosts [has sworn], “Surely, many houses shall become desolate, [Even] great and fine ones, without occupants. 10. “For ten acres of vineyard will yield [only] one bath [of wine], And a homer of seed will yield [but] an ephah of grain.”
Jesus himself speaks of His Father’s love for all of His creation:
26. “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and [yet] your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? Mat 10:29. “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And [yet] not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
And those are just the obvious parts. Galatians commands us to treat all men kindly. Is it kind to poison the air that your neighbor breathes, to delete the fish that feeds them, to heat the plant to the point that glaciers melt and flood his country? No, anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Bible knows that God cares for all of his creation and that man’s dominion over it is a responsibility. One could argue about the relative importance of such stewardship, but no one who knows anything at all about Christianity could claim that the responsible stewardship of God’s creation — environmentalism — has “nothing to do with Christianity”. Anyone who does is a liar or an ignorant fool.
Link via LGM and Tbogg.
UPDATE [tgirsch]: A much more thorough scriptural case for environmentalism is given here. While many Christians (and in particular, the conservative variety) are likely to disagree with much of it, I think it’s more than sufficient to debunk Steyn’s argument that environmentalism has “nothing to do with Christianity.”
November 27th, 2006
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General, Religion, Read Your Bible |
24 comments
