We've followed the stories of right-wing evangelicals threatening the lives of Supreme Court justices and federal judges...watched last week as Tom DeLay led a meeting at the National Day of Prayer...shook our heads at the attempt by creationists in Kansas (and about a dozen other states) to present religion as science, and make our students even LESS prepared to compete in the global marketplace (wait...are we supposed to win the battle of capitalism, or are we supposed to accept the Bible as infallable? If I were an impressionable young rightie, I'd be really confused right now!).
Here are two other recent stories that aren't likely to garner a great deal of attention:
First, as the New York Times reports, evangelicals are out of control at the Air Force Academy:
One chaplain instructed 600 cadets to warn their comrades who had not been born again that "the fires of hell" were waiting. Pressure to view "The Passion of the Christ" was reported, extending to "official" invitations at every cadet's seat in the dining hall. Nonevangelicals complained of bias in the granting of cadet privileges and of hazing by upper-class superiors, who made those who declined to attend chapel march in "heathen flights."
...General Baldwin had segments cut out [of an instructional video] on such non-Christian religions as Buddhism, Judaism and Native American spirituality.
Second, an important reminder that it's not just the evangelical Christians who pose a threat to rationality, liberty and intelligent debate. I've expressed my opinions about Islamo-Fascism before; here is a recent story about Leicester University in Britain, which cancelled a lecture over fears of retaliation by Islamic fundamentalists (who are kissing cousins of Falwell, et al, even if they occasionally have serious family spats):
Leicester University has cancelled a talk by Muslim lesbian feminist Irshad Manji because of fears of hostile reaction from right-wing local Muslims.
Compare Haifa. Ilan Pappe, a lecturer at Haifa University, is a vehement anti-Zionist, as unpopular with right-wing and conservative opinion in Israel as Irshad Manji is with right-wing and conservative Muslims.
Pappe has had trouble at the university, and some professors there are very hostile to him, but he is still in his job, still lecturing.
The pro-boycotters in the Association of University Teachers persuaded the AUT conference on 22 April to declare an academic boycott of Haifa because of Pappe's hard times.
If so, why not a boycott of Leicester University? The Manji incident shows up the pro-boycotters' double standards.
Irshad Manji spoke in London today, 12 May. She is, as far as I can judge, no sort of socialist or social radical, but she is an advocate of universal human rights, an opponent of cultural relativism, an advocate of what she calls a "reformation" in Islam.
According to Irshad Manji, Leicester University gave two reasons for cancelling.
First, that they feared hostile reactions from some local Muslims so severe that they could not guarantee the security of a lecture by Irshad Manji.
Secondly, the scheduled date of the lecture being soon after the General Election, they feared pressure during the election campaign on local politicians to come out against Manji speaking.
In both my personal and political life I have seen others deploy religion and spirituality in extremely progressive, loving, and humanizing, liberating ways. I have also seen others deploy religion and spirituality in exploitative, ignorant, silencing, marginalizing and destructive ways. The key difference is whether one is willing to submit their religion to pluralistic, rational, deliberative conversation and shared understanding. One can do this without abandoning one's beliefs. One can agree to disagree in the public arena, still motivated by the desire to do good things, a desire motivated by one's religous beliefs. The only question is whether one is willing to temper those beliefs with the humility of public deliberation.
That such a compromise seems alien to so many religious people (and seems impossible from the point of view of the non-religious) only reveals why the entire absolutist paradigm of religious faith ought to be challenged. The idea that one can be deeply religious and simultaneously committed to reaching deliberative consensus on matters of both faith and politics has been the guiding belief of Unitarians, Universalists, anti-trinitarians, and huge sections of the real religious left for centuries. In fact, I would submit that the wacked out evangelical Air Force brats, the Islamo-nazis and the bible-thumping creationists, while possessing boatloads of certainty and pantloads of dogma, actually lack faith.
1 comment:
I wish to determine whether or not not I agree with the my good friend Matt Stannard. Perhaps more accurately, I wish to explore the the degrees to which we agree and disagree.
It is one thing to say the there are admirable, even inspirational, religiously-motivated human beings who use their faith for inarguably progressive or humanistic ends. The few priests I met in revolutionary Nicaragua in 1984 who subscribed to liberation theology made more decisive contributions to a just world order in that year than any American Marxist is likely to contribute in their lifetime.
And I accept that a key factor in these postive contributions was an embrace of pluralism, not merely of the religious variety, but intellectually, including openness to the worth of other views and faiths, the Jesuitical preference for logic and elegant proof, etc.
It is ALL TOGETHER another thing to describe the Unitarians and the others you acknowledge as enlightened contributors to a new world. They are at best less bad.
And that is where this debate terminates. It is politically inconvenient to challenge the positive contributions of the religiously motivated, but necessary even as we reach common cause.
This is not some abstract exercise or theological debate.
We live in an era in which the future of human and much other life on this planet will be determined. Addressing this complex web of problems, including climate change, ocean die-off, space weaponization, cumulative industrial pollution, etc., in short the whole range of civilizational-level challenges, cannot be addressed without rational inquiry, i.e. the application of the scientific approach and abandonment of sentimentality, faith, and other similar neuroses.
My view is some religious doctrines may be less bad, but only in similar ways as the crystal sniffing New Age crowd are "less bad" than Father Coughlin or Rev. Falwell. They are less bad because of their personal values or roles as people, not because of their belief in a different schema of false consciousness.
To the degree religious traditions adopt a critical approach that rejects any belief on faith and which demand rigorous proof, to that degree they actually operate to create critical individuals; the religious garb is epiphenomenal. To the degree they operate in other directions, to that degree they are ultimately obscurantist and will impede recognition of the need to apply scientifically-validated knowledge to our various civilizational challenges.
In short, faith operates either (nearly) wholly as a regressive force OR, to the degree it does not, this is a function of the non-faith based beliefs and actions of their adherents.
Religious belief is either strong and wholly regressive, or "weak" (in the terms I have here sketched) and makes positive contributions exogenous to their more metaphysical assumptions.
In either case, faith and religious and metaphysics function in the current social order in a net regressive fashion. That Jim Jones talked socialism and people's power does not change the fact his movement operated in ways that materially and inarguably weakened the ability of revolutionary forces to challenge the current order.
My view is that non-scientific knowledge cannot ulitmately operate or function otherwise. Warm, fuzzy religion is just an opiate with fewer outwardly objectionably side effects.
T. Jacobsen
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