Christianity and Things
Here's an old New York Times article about evangelical Christianity written by a professor whose class I'm taking next quarter: "Getting Religion" by Mark Lilla (who also wrote the article about liberal arts education I referenced a few weeks ago). Lilla, now on the Committee on Social Thought (the mysterious Dream Team of professors at Chicago, none of whom seem to be brilliant enough to update their website), writes about his experience as an evangelical Christian during his teenage years, his subsequent association with the Word of God community in the Midwest, and his eventual relinquishing of his faith and assumption as trendy, frequent NY Times Op-Ed contributor. I liked it, I guess, because it confirmed my hopes that the (straight) marriage between evangelical Christianity and politics is primarily a local phenomenon in history. Not that Christianity hasn't played an important part in American politics before now; but it's implicitly rather than explicitly directed secular policies before now, and never before have Christian organizations had such pull with a political party. I'm sure there's a great book out there about how this all came about, and personally, I highly recommend it.
In a lot of my classes at college I feel like we're sometimes being called upon to dump on Christianity and all the damage it's doing to the country, and a lot of my fellow students jump on the chance to launch into another argument about how Christianity is so adept at stifling intellectual inquiry. I don't have an argument against them, except to point out that when you don't specify which sector or denomination of Christianity you're dumping on, you dump on a whole lot of people who don't really deserve it. These are Christians, at least, who have little interest in making the government in their image, who respect the distance between their religious lives and the secular responsibilities of the government. At the Lutheran Church in Roswell where my family went, I had no idea what the political lives of the congregants were, even in high school when I was overly looking for that kind of thing. Lutherans by nature have no political lives, at least in America at the turn of the millennium (except by some cursory affiliation with NPR and A Prairie Home Companion). I wouldn't say either that the people at this Lutheran church embodied some secular ideal of the intellectually-enlightened Christians, either. They were just middle-class Midwestern transplants with a natural instinct for the separation of church and state, an inclination I would think has been the norm in American democracy.
I believe it's natural for religion to show itself in the political sphere when there is an important question to be debated. Evolution, I think, is something that should be challenged and dealt with in the public-political debate. It is something that, understandably, challenges the thinking of a lot of people of faith and forces them to face the issue in their private spiritual lives as well as their public lives (confronting what their children are taught in school, for instance). The problem is, we already dealt with religion and evolution in schools 80 years ago. The Scopes Monkey Trial was what I would call an inevitable "working through" (overcoming the inconsistencies of separation of church and state) of society's ambivalence towards teaching religion in public schools. When all the commotion cleared, the nation eventually became comfortable with the arrangement dictating that secular knowledge would remain in school and religious belief would remain in church. That seems like a gross simplification, but that's simply the way that most Americans justify the conflicting interests of church and state. The issue of Intelligent Design is being dragged back into the politics of the day because 1) minority evangelical groups now have the influence to thrust it into the public eye and 2) people calling each other stupid and intolerant over science and religions makes for really great news stories. I have to believe that there's only a small sect of Americans who really have an investment in getting Intelligent Design taught in their kids' science classes. Forget that the children of this sect obviously are taught in their own homes the failings of evolution, forget that they have no right imposing their beliefs on other peoples' kids. Evolution is just not a debate that society needs to revisit. The specific problems of the separation of church and state may not be completely resolved in American society, but our understanding of the principle hasn't regressed 80 years; only the scope of power of these minority evangelical Christian groups has changed. If Intelligent Design gets enough widespread sponsorship in the scientific community, then maybe in the future society will reach a crossroads where it has to address it in the courts. But currently, it's only a political softball that will get tossed around for a few years before it's replaced with a better top story.
Gay marriage, I think, is an issue that American society is gearing up to deal with. There's not a simple court ruling that is going to neutralize things the way that Scopes v. State might have neutralized its debate over the long run, and that's why I tell people that it's going to be a quite a few years before society fully works through it...but these Christian political action groups aren't going to help the process simply because they aren't all that representative of the population, despite their very high visibility.
Anyway, if you skipped the awful argument I just made, the thesis was this:
Christian political action groups: bad.
Really liberal classmates: take it easy.
Lutherans: OK by me.
(Also, thanks to Rita for the Lilla article.)
Update: A Pennsylvania court just struck down a school board's attempt to introduce Intelligent Design lessons into its biology curriculum (article here). ...And I would totally set as my life's goal to become a judge just so that I can rule on a case and throw out a beautiful phrase like "breathtaking inanity."
Here's an old New York Times article about evangelical Christianity written by a professor whose class I'm taking next quarter: "Getting Religion" by Mark Lilla (who also wrote the article about liberal arts education I referenced a few weeks ago). Lilla, now on the Committee on Social Thought (the mysterious Dream Team of professors at Chicago, none of whom seem to be brilliant enough to update their website), writes about his experience as an evangelical Christian during his teenage years, his subsequent association with the Word of God community in the Midwest, and his eventual relinquishing of his faith and assumption as trendy, frequent NY Times Op-Ed contributor. I liked it, I guess, because it confirmed my hopes that the (straight) marriage between evangelical Christianity and politics is primarily a local phenomenon in history. Not that Christianity hasn't played an important part in American politics before now; but it's implicitly rather than explicitly directed secular policies before now, and never before have Christian organizations had such pull with a political party. I'm sure there's a great book out there about how this all came about, and personally, I highly recommend it.
In a lot of my classes at college I feel like we're sometimes being called upon to dump on Christianity and all the damage it's doing to the country, and a lot of my fellow students jump on the chance to launch into another argument about how Christianity is so adept at stifling intellectual inquiry. I don't have an argument against them, except to point out that when you don't specify which sector or denomination of Christianity you're dumping on, you dump on a whole lot of people who don't really deserve it. These are Christians, at least, who have little interest in making the government in their image, who respect the distance between their religious lives and the secular responsibilities of the government. At the Lutheran Church in Roswell where my family went, I had no idea what the political lives of the congregants were, even in high school when I was overly looking for that kind of thing. Lutherans by nature have no political lives, at least in America at the turn of the millennium (except by some cursory affiliation with NPR and A Prairie Home Companion). I wouldn't say either that the people at this Lutheran church embodied some secular ideal of the intellectually-enlightened Christians, either. They were just middle-class Midwestern transplants with a natural instinct for the separation of church and state, an inclination I would think has been the norm in American democracy.
I believe it's natural for religion to show itself in the political sphere when there is an important question to be debated. Evolution, I think, is something that should be challenged and dealt with in the public-political debate. It is something that, understandably, challenges the thinking of a lot of people of faith and forces them to face the issue in their private spiritual lives as well as their public lives (confronting what their children are taught in school, for instance). The problem is, we already dealt with religion and evolution in schools 80 years ago. The Scopes Monkey Trial was what I would call an inevitable "working through" (overcoming the inconsistencies of separation of church and state) of society's ambivalence towards teaching religion in public schools. When all the commotion cleared, the nation eventually became comfortable with the arrangement dictating that secular knowledge would remain in school and religious belief would remain in church. That seems like a gross simplification, but that's simply the way that most Americans justify the conflicting interests of church and state. The issue of Intelligent Design is being dragged back into the politics of the day because 1) minority evangelical groups now have the influence to thrust it into the public eye and 2) people calling each other stupid and intolerant over science and religions makes for really great news stories. I have to believe that there's only a small sect of Americans who really have an investment in getting Intelligent Design taught in their kids' science classes. Forget that the children of this sect obviously are taught in their own homes the failings of evolution, forget that they have no right imposing their beliefs on other peoples' kids. Evolution is just not a debate that society needs to revisit. The specific problems of the separation of church and state may not be completely resolved in American society, but our understanding of the principle hasn't regressed 80 years; only the scope of power of these minority evangelical Christian groups has changed. If Intelligent Design gets enough widespread sponsorship in the scientific community, then maybe in the future society will reach a crossroads where it has to address it in the courts. But currently, it's only a political softball that will get tossed around for a few years before it's replaced with a better top story.
Gay marriage, I think, is an issue that American society is gearing up to deal with. There's not a simple court ruling that is going to neutralize things the way that Scopes v. State might have neutralized its debate over the long run, and that's why I tell people that it's going to be a quite a few years before society fully works through it...but these Christian political action groups aren't going to help the process simply because they aren't all that representative of the population, despite their very high visibility.
Anyway, if you skipped the awful argument I just made, the thesis was this:
Christian political action groups: bad.
Really liberal classmates: take it easy.
Lutherans: OK by me.
(Also, thanks to Rita for the Lilla article.)
Update: A Pennsylvania court just struck down a school board's attempt to introduce Intelligent Design lessons into its biology curriculum (article here). ...And I would totally set as my life's goal to become a judge just so that I can rule on a case and throw out a beautiful phrase like "breathtaking inanity."
5 Comments:
First, let me say that I like this new posting daily thing. It gives me lots to do at the Press.
Second, and unsurprisingly, I totally disagree with you.
1) What is implicit versus explicit religion in politics? The ideological basis of abolitionism, for example, was entirely religious. The temperance movement = nagging Christian women. Prohibition = huge victory of nagging Christian women. In fact, pretty much all 19th century social movements were explicitly Christian. And who ran on the Populist/Democratic ticket in 1896? Everyone's favorite suspenders-wearing evangelical William Jennings Bryan, with a speech that ended "and you will not crucify me upon this cross of gold!" Jesus apparently was in favor of going off the gold standard. Is that implicit Christianity?
2) I would venture to suggest that the separation of church and state is, fundamentally, kind of incoherent. Christianity is a religion that asks believers to hold their faith above the civil law (yes, render unto Ceasar, but your salvation is ultimately your highest concern). The problem of secular vs. religious authority in Christianity didn't arise in America. It arose when the Roman Empire officially became Christian. And it has not been resolved since. Moreover, without Christianity, there is no longer any basis to natural right (or, if we're feeling Straussian, modern natural right). All rights become arbitrary gifts of the state. It is no coincidence that Locke's Letter on Toleration excludes one group in particular from toleration--atheists. Atheists cannot respect the basis of the liberal state, and they must be removed or they will undermine it.
3) You're obviously taking all the wrong classes. In my experience, the U of C is the first place where I have been forced to actually take Christianity seriously, and not in an I'm Ok, You're Ok way that says "There are many people who believe this religion and we must respect their choices" or a high school Christian club "Let's memorize inspirational Bible verses to get us through AP Exams!" kind of way. I mean in an individual "Have you considered that your human reason is insufficient and that you need God?" kind of way. It's mostly because of Augustine. He has some sort of appeal that all the other Christian apologists I've read lack.
Also, did you see the picture accompanying the Lilla article? It's pretty fantastic.
you should really read God's Politics by Jim Wallis if you haven't already...I think you'd like it.
hey! i went to visit teachers today at the new Milton and Jonesy still has your square project thingy of him and the british flag up on his wall. yeah, i thought you'd be excited!
Rita:
1) My distinction between implicit and explicit politics is none too good. You're right about William Jennings Bryan and the Temperance movement, especially the latter, which had a number of its own contemporary Christian political action groups wielding pull in Washington. Really, I guess there's no use of religion in politics that is really "implicit"--there are only periods of American history where religious revivals have great influence or they have little influence in electing leaders. We're apparently living in an era of American history where Christian groups have a lot of public influence, and politicians who openly sympathize with the Christian right are rewarded with votes. I would still argue that the amount of political support behind the Republican party that is coming from Christian groups is pretty unprecedented. And it's not just the number of groups and voters that Republicans receive; it's the large portion of evangelicals who loyally support only this party (virtually the only ones who don't are black evangelicals and an impotent group of liberal evangelicals). In his campaigns for presidency, Bryan certainly used a lot of "explicit" Christian rhetoric, but that was also a fairly customary practice among politicians; Bryan never mobilized any Christian base until they mobilized him. He was regarded as a spokesperson for the common Christian man, but his role as Crusader never really materialized until well after his political career was caput. As for the Temperance Movement, it put pressure on both parties; otherwise, there is no way it could have brought about a whole Constitutional amendement by supporting only the party in power.
2) I didn't say that the separation of church and state has ever been resolved. I do hold that over US history, the finer points of the problem have been at least neutralized--in the 19th century this was carried out mostly through public opinion and discourse (even Lincoln was criticized by some editorialists for using too much Christian rhetoric), but in the 20th century it has largely been the work of the Supreme Court to determine where the "wall of separation" stands. There's a lot push to go after smaller and smaller points like "God" in the pledge of allegiance, but I'm still undecided about the value of attacking these details in the name of church-state separation--I think Locke makes a correct point about the necessity of Christianity and natural right, but I don't know if that means democracy is going to fail if we remove the Christmas tree from the Capitol.
3) Well, you took Greek Thought and Classics, I took Media Aesthetics and Self,Culture,Society--you know, the relativistic, flaky classes.
Mindy: From the Amazon page, it looks pretty compelling. Are there many liberal evangelicals besides you at Wheaton? I know there are some pretty smart theological cookies up there.
Ashleigh: That warms my heart.
And speaking of high school, where's a copy of The Enduring Vision when you need one?
I got a little (read: a lot) overenthusiastic writing a response to Rita. It has been placed on my blog and can be read here. I like it and I hope the rest of you do, too.
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