Party of 1

Newt Gingrich is on the warpath.  The Washington Post on Friday offered space to the former Speaker to respond to criticism from the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman Ornstein, who regards President Obama as a “mainstream, pragmatic moderate,” taking exception to Gingrich’s assessment of Obama as the “most radical president in American history.” Gingrich described the Obama administration as a “secular, socialist machine.”

Gingrich has any number of points to make in response to Ornstein.  For present purposes, I’ll focus on his argument that Obama is an aggressive secularist.  He cites Obama’s April statement describing America as a “secular country that is respectful of religious freedom,” which the ex-Speaker finds to be “an act of willful historical revisionism. The United States was founded as an intensely religious country that believes our rights come from God…. This understanding of America’s promise is far more tolerant of religion in the public square than the secular purge that we have seen since the Supreme Court outlawed school prayer in 1963.”

The Obama statement in question came from a press availability with President Gul of Turkey. Reporters were questioning the two leaders, not about Supreme Court decisions of the 1960s but rather about Turkish-American relations. Here is a more extensive excerpt from Obama’s remarks:

“Turkey and the United States can build a model partnership in which a predominantly Christian nation and a predominantly Muslim nation, a Western nation and a nation that straddles two continents — that we can create a modern international community that is respectful, that is secure, that is prosperous…. And I’ve said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is — although as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation…. I think Turkey was — modern Turkey was founded with a similar set of principles, and yet what we’re seeing is in both countries that promise of a secular country that is respectful of religious freedom, respectful of rule of law, respectful of freedom, upholding these values and being willing to stand up for them in the international stage.”

I question whether there’s anything here about which to be outraged here. “Secular state” might have been a better choice of words than “secular country,” especially if we are concerned primarily with humoring Gingrich’s sensibilities — which Obama was not, at least not in these extemporaneous remarks.  All he was trying to say is that Turkey and the United States are not like Iran, even though America is “a predominantly Christian nation.”

There’s a legitimate debate to be had about the place of religion in the public square. However, methinks that in this case the former Speaker is a bit overeager to find something about which to be outraged….

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine brings a rather grotesque story by Russell Shorto about the struggle over standards for the teaching of history being fought out before the Texas State Board of Education. Informed readers who recall prior battles over the teaching of biology will not have much trouble surmising what the controversy is about without my going into excruciating detail here. The author allows as that “the Christian activists have a certain amount of history on their side…. There was a religious element to the American Revolution, which was so pronounced that you could just as well view the event in religious as in political terms.”

This sort of controversy is not going to go away in the foreseeable future, even though there is no way to resolve it in a manner that will come close to pleasing all of the parties to the dispute. In my view, it is not the sort of matter that can be ignored or treated with “benign neglect,” given that so many of the people caught up in it on the conservative side are individuals of low, or at least moderate, income.

In my view, our dysfunctional polity would be in much healthier shape if the religious-versus-secular element were removed from it — and that cannot be done  by attempting to settle all controversies in favor of secular views, since the country is so overwhelmingly devout at the grassroots. American history should not be taught  as though the country and all its inhabitants have always been secularists. Furthermore, it h,as always been my view that, in a large federation, it is best to observe what Roman Catholic thought calls the “principle of subsidiarity,” and permit localized decision-making as much as possible. That would mean, for instance, that localities should be permitted to decide for themselves whether or not to implement “abstinence-based” sex education.

A country such as this has to consist more than just 300 million individuals and a national government. There have to be the intermediary institutions of so-called “civil society.” And, since people do not come into existence in a vaccum, they have to be raised and educated by parents who will carry with them particularist cultural baggage — and, in our country, much of that baggage will be religious. If we refuse to acknowledge this, it is going to make the governance of the country complicated in the extreme, unless we are going to attempt a “root and branch” elimination of religious institutions, after the fashion of the Jacobins. Such a thing is just what religious conservatives are afraid of — bizarre as that fear might strike those of a more secular bent.

Solutions will not be easy, since, over the course of the last generation, as evangelical Christianity has become more partisan, it has more and more come to take on the characteristics of the cult. In the strip-mall nondenominational churches what we are liable to find being preached is a witch’s brew of  “dispensationalism,” “premillennialism,” “end-times” doctrine of the sort found in the “Left Behind” novels, “Christian Zionism” or “Christian Identity,” and some version of “creationism” or “intelligent design,” in some combination or another.

If Christians of this sort seek to become politically dominant, they will find that the rest of the country will not stand for it. Still, their numbers are large enough that they can constitute a nearly implacable faction. More than likely, a religious-versus-secular split is going to hang over this polity For some time to come.  We won’t be able to come to even a tentative resolution until there is a change of heart on the part of both the secular and the devout….

To follow up on my discussion of Ross Douthat’s Monday column — the Washington Post on Tuesday reports on a new study that puts abstinence-based sex-ed programs in a more favorable light. “There are populations that really want an abstinence intervention. They are against telling children about condoms…. This study suggests abstinence programs can be part of the mix of programs that we offer,” says John B. Jemmott III of the University of Pennsylvania, who led the study.

Ross Douthat has a salutary column in Monday’s New York Times sex education. I have just about blogged myself to death about this and related subject matter since the launch of this site, so I will try to keep this brief.

The column is occasioned by the publication of new figures showing an increase in the teenage birthrate after 15 years of decline. The increase is being blamed on the Bush administration’s emphasis on “abstinence-only” programs.

Douthat thinks that most sex-ed programs, those based on contraception as well as those stressing abstinence, are ineffective. “What is taught in the classroom is vastly less important than the matrix of family, culture and economics: the values parents impart and the example that they set, the friends teenagers make and the activities they join, and the cross-cutting effects of wealth, health and self-esteem. (And, of course, the impact of entertainment: the MTV reality show ‘Teen Mom’ is far more absorbing than the average sex-ed curriculum, and probably more influential as well.)”

The takeaway: “We federalize the culture wars all the time, of course — from Roe v. Wade to the Defense of Marriage Act. But it’s a polarizing habit, and well worth kicking…. Don’t try to encourage Berkeley values in Alabama, or vice versa.” Amen and amen.

People need to get it through their heads that this form of government of ours was intended originally to work on a small scale. The fashion in which we have federalized, or centralized, some of these questions has tended to blow the lid off the system — although, mercifully, it has played out in such a way as to stop a bit short of that. This stuff ought to be addressed in such a way as to allow at least a tentative resolution of some of these questions. If you think that other matters, like health care or the deficit, are more important — just remember that the “culture wars” are hanging over and impacting everything else we are trying to do.

There’s probably no way to reverse the “federalization” of the abortion question. In my view, it would be better all the way around if the law more closely reflected public sentiment on the matter — which, in my judgment, lies somewhere between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” extremes. I’m not holding my breath waiting for such a thing to happen….

Within the past hour, the Associated Press has called the Massachusetts special election for Scott Brown. Martha Coakley has made her concession speech. Brown held a lead of about 52%-47% all evening. With over 2 million votes cast, his winning margin was in excess of 100,000 votes.

In one of the overnight press reviews, I linked to this column by David Brooks, in which he argued that it would be arrogant for the Democrats to press ahead with health-care reform in the wake of a Brown victory. I don’t know. Arguably, they ought to go ahead and do it out of a sense of obligation to poor people. After all, what has happened is the culmination of a situation in which the political process has come to be dominated by the affluent, of both political parties.

The vast legion of readers who consult this website regularly will have noted that a recurring theme is the phenomenon of backlash. I’ve lived through over 40 years of it, practically my entire adult life. Now it has spread to Massachusetts. Just over a year ago, we were looking at a Democratic, African-American presidential candidate who carried both Virginia and North Carolina — which I would wager would not happen again, where the election to be repeated today.

We notice once again a pattern that has marked the post-1960s political environment: The voters do indeed seek an alteration in power from time to time, but as soon as a Democratic president is elected, the conservatives practically are at his throat. It’s as though the barbarians are forever at the gate, threatening to back down the walls of the city with battering rams to burn the city and rape all our women. I recall hearing it argued insistently that the election of Obama would change all this. It rather looks as though we’re going to be seeing this over and over again, for the rest of our lives.

I have to raise once again the question whether American progressivism as presently constituted is a tenable governing philosophy. Its intellectual base of degreed professionals in the public sector is far too narrow. All the populist energy  is on the side of a right-of-center “culture war,” with the economic question rendered almost secondary. I am afraid that the characteristics of the country simply will not permit progressives to get very far in taking the country in the direction in which they would have us go. To take but one example — as someone once said, we have a mass public as religious as India and an elite as secular as Sweden. No one wants to address the secular-versus-religious question — and so it is going to hang over this political system indefinitely, I suppose.

I suppose it sounds far-fetched to interpret the Massachusetts special election in light of secular-versus-religious issues. Indeed, such matters were barely discussed during the campaign, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, the abortion issue has raised its head during the health-care debate, and health care most certainly was an issue in tonight’s election. If the secular-versus-religious dimension were removed, would Barack Obama be riding high?  Would a health-care reform bill have passed by now? Would the Democrats have won tonight’s special election? No one can say for sure, but to address the matter wouldn’t hurt….

Peter Wehner at National Review Online’s “The Corner” offers what surely must be the last word on Pat Robertson’s remarks with regard to Haiti.

On this site, I do my best to leave the celebrity news to TMZ. Nevertheless, in polemics, everything is grist for the mill, and a minor controversy has erupted over Brit Hume’s remarks during a January 3 Fox News Sunday roundtable to the effect that, in the light of his marital infidelities, Tiger Woods needs to abandon Buddhism and find Jesus. Michael Gerson weighed in, defending Hume in Friday’s Washington Post. “Hume, in an angry sea of loss and tragedy — his son’s death in 1998 — found a life preserver in faith. He offered that life preserver to another drowning man. Whatever your view of Hume’s beliefs, he could have no motive other than concern for Woods himself.”

If Hume insists on expressing himself with regard to such matters, I might suggest a less partisan context. I am not able to watch the Sunday talk shows regularly, but I have some acquaintance with the sort of opinions Brit Hume expresses in this context. The problem is that one week we are liable to hear that the emerging health-care reform bill is a scandalous power grab; the next week, that Barack Obama is laughably soft on terrorism; and, the week after that, that Tiger Woods needs to find Jesus. It may become just another episode in the process by which Christianity is rendered partisan.

Beyond that, if pressed on the matter, I might have objected that, something like Will Rogers, all I know about Tiger Woods is what I read in the papers, generally in electronic form these days. Before  offering a spiritual diagnosis, I would prefer to have some up-close-and-personal contact with the troubled individual — and I might also stipulate that I lack training as a pastor or counselor. Absent those elements, such a high-profile comment in national media smacks a bit of Bill Frist’s diagnosis-by-videotape of Terri Schiavo, which derailed his presidential ambitions. For those, such as myself, whose Christianity is less gung-ho than Brit Hume’s beliefs would appear to be, his statements about Woods come across as a bit presumptuous. Of course, in Protestantism there is the notion of a priesthood of all believers — and, in sectarian evangelical expression, there is the insistence that everyone needs to become “convicted” and to experience a spiritual turnaround. If anyone has a serious problem, it just must be the case that he or she needs to find Jesus. Spiritual counseling is one-size-fits-all, no experience necessary.

Too much should not be made of Brit Hume’s remarks, especially in light of the ease with which hackles can be raised over “secularist” media bias. Hume’s remarks may simply represent what we can expect from someone with the sort of beliefs he appears to harbor. Suffice it to say that I wouldn’t have said it….

This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine brings a portrait of Robert P. George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and devout Roman Catholic. The author, David D. Kirkpatrick, describes him as “this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.”

As a schoolboy, your humble servant can recall being told what a bright boy he was. However, I have to bow to the likes of Robert P. George. I have to wave the white flag; I cannot match the rhetorical and  polemical skills of such an individual. The education such people have received positions them to become past masters of casuistry.

As portrayed by Kirkpatrick, it is George’s position that the abortion issue gives Roman Catholic ideologues an effective veto over the political system. In Kirkpatrick’s telling, he admonished a gathering of Catholic bishops last spring to confine themselves to the “‘moral social’ issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage” — and shut up about the economic question. If this sort of instruction is to be taken at face value, we then are to understand the entire political system as nothing but a venue for referendum on abortion and associated issues — never mind that these issues were thrust upon a system in which it is the economic question by which the parties define themselves.

Taken at face value, the implication is that any and every position taken by conservative Republicans effectively is “baptized” — since those politicians also are pro-life, rhetorically at least. As much is revealed by George’s belittling remark that, up to a point, he will tolerate the bishops “making utter nuisances of themselves” on the economic question — “as long as they did not advocate specific remedies,” according to Kirkpatrick.

I think I can predict safely that the result will not be the victory of conservative Christian political stances, and certainly not the salvation of souls. Instead, what will happen is that Christianity will be rendered ever more partisan — and, as such, it may well contribute to the digging of its own grave. Those Catholics who find themselves under the jackboot of the unfettered market may find themselves branded as apostates if they speak out. George will find that he may indeed attempt to combine spiritual and political coercion if he wishes, but, while some people will local under in the face of such pressure, others will stiffen their spines and stand up for themselves.

What is it that George is attempting to achieve? Does he think that he can restore the situation as it was prior to the Protestant Reformation? (Readers may be flabbergasted, but in my checkered career I have run across ideologues whose invention, by all appearances, was to accomplish just such a thing.) Can he establish his dogmatic positions with sufficient objectivity that the American polity as a whole will accede to them? If he holds that there is an overriding spiritual obligation to bring such a thing about, what then is he willing to do to accomplish it?

Based only upon what I read in the New York Times Magazine, I cannot determine whether Robert P. George should be assessed as spiritually sincere, or as politically ruthless. I will concede this much: the dynamic described here by Kirkpatrick illustrates what a fateful turn was taken by the United States Supreme Court, and by this polity as a whole, when it opted to handle the abortion question in the way it has been handled since 1973….

“Survivalism” never completely goes away.  The Washington Post, via Religion News Service, reports on “self-sufficiency” activities on the part of self-described “first-century Christians.” Reportedly, sales of freeze-dried groceries and  hand-crank radios are surging.  The Post’s version of this story includes this link to an “end-times ministry” site that makes for, shall we say, interesting reading.

These activities are prompted by any number of phenomena, including the economic downturn, the new Hollywood feature “2012,” and, of course, a school of interpretation of so-called “Bible prophecy” according to which the end is always just around the corner.

A surge in such activity was seen over fifty years ago, in the first years of the Cold War, when the fear involved the possibility of an intercontinental thermonuclear war.  People eventually got the idea that it might be better to work on averting such a war in the first place….

The Washington Post’s “On Faith” feature discusses the problems faced by Muslims in the U. S. military. The report mentions remarks offered by Pat Robertson  on his Monday night telecast: “Islam is a violent — I was going to say religion — but it’s not a religion. It’s a political system. It’s a violent political system bent on the overthrow of governments of the world and world domination.”

Robertson knows that George W. Bush and John McCain would not want him to say such things. Furthermore, we never heard such things about Islam before September 11, 2001. Before that — well, the people we now refer to as the Taliban, once were known as the Mujahedin. They were the heroes of the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. (These statements are subject to considerable interpretation and may not go unchallenged, I am sure.) There was King Hussein of Jordan, a long-standing friend of the United States. You can even watch this video of a prominent American official shaking hands with the notorious head of a predominantly Muslim state — albeit with a secular government at the time — in 1983.

Some months ago I had occasion to attend a lecture and multimedia presentation about the “Muslim agenda for America” — in the meeting hall of a church, the sort of church the halls of which I rarely darken. It has to be said that the individual giving the presentation had converted from Islam to Christianity — and subsequently his siblings had attempted to have him murdered. He then emigrated from his native country to America. He therefore was well acquainted with the darker side of the faith into which he had been born.

The presentation eventually reached the matter of what American Christians ought to do upon encountering Muslim immigrants. The answer, of course, was that Christians ought to be friendly and hospitable — but apparently this hospitality was to consist largely of an attempt to convert the Muslims. What was to be done if the Muslims were unwilling to convert — as most people, having been born into whatever faith they practice, would not be — was left unstated. The presentation moved on to a lurid account of Muslim efforts to win converts in America. At the same time, euphoric atmospherics accompanied news of the successful Christian evangelism in the Muslim world, even in countries as hostile as Iran.

The whole affair left me considerably agitated and upset. Those who need to be exposed to objections to it probably never will encounter such a thing, since they may inhibit a sealed-off media world consisting of their churches, evangelical Christian radio and other media, and such outlets as Fox News.

At a mosque somewhere in Teheran, is there an imam presenting a lurid lecture and multimedia presentation on “the Christian agenda for Iran”? Just asking….