A Week Filled With Religion…
…And Most Of It In A Silly Fashion
We purposefully stayed mostly quiet last week as between echoes of the Beck rally, the GZM discussion and the Koran burning controversy, religion filled the airwaves, the Internet, and even print (if you bothered). We stayed silent because the whole thing struck us stunts on top of media-whoring and little of it seemed to benefit the public or faith.
There was a serious constitutional question raised in Hartford, CT which was well covered by Hugh Hewitt’s “Smart Guys” (subscription required).
In the wake of the battle over a mosque at Ground Zero, a move by the Hartford City Council is sure to have its critics.
The Council announced Tuesday that it has invited local imams to perform Islamic invocations at the beginning of the Council meetings in September.
By law, as interpreted by the SCOTUS, prayers offered at public meetings of this sort must be non-sectarian. From the appearance of this story, the prayers to be offered are NOT non-sectarian, but are rather, specifically Islamic. This move is symptomatic of what appears to be at the heart of the GZM discussion – the idea that if one appeases and does not provoke “the bully,” in this case Islam, one avoids the problems. Of course, anyone that has had to deal with a bully knows this never works. One either must steer clear of the bully (impossible in this case) or bully back. But enough of that.
There were far more religious overtones to this past weekends 9-11 remembrances than there have been at previous ones. I am going to place the blame for that squarely on the shoulders of POTUS, Barack Obama. The man promotes his agenda through divisiveness, a standard Alinsky ploy. His economic policies are disastrous and his foreign policy is steeped in appeasement, but it is his political practice based on divisiveness that could irreparably harm the nation. We don’t cover the 2010 mid-terms here much, not our portfolio, but they matter hugely and this is why.
These events have caused all sorts of people to write about religion and politics. Christopher Hitchens used it as an excuse for one of his entirely predictable diatribes against religion. Hitchens personal tragedies notwithstanding, I grow tired of repeated citations of the problems of religion. Yes, religions have done bad things, but to assume that without religion bad things would cease to happen is simply ridiculous. It’s like saying that if you live in an under-insulated house that overheats when it is incredibly hot outside, removing the inadequate insulation will allow the heat in the house to escape. Nonsense – all it will do is allow the house to get AS hot as it is outside instead of only hotter than it should be.
Some are worried that too much focus on the civil religion will dilute and harm one’s deeply held faith. Others share the concern. The concern is real, the problem is where to deal with it – more on that in a moment.
And some, predictably, are pushing things just a bit too far. In spite, there are some good people that remind us Mormons are excellent political allies.
The bottom line is this, things can compliment each other without mixing – and that is how religion and politics have worked in America. There have been conflicts – the Mormon practice of polygamy, until 9-11, being the preeminent example. In these cases the practice of religion (as opposed to the beliefs of a religion) has violated the civil good – governance and politics had no choice but to push back. If Islam, at least many aspects of it, does not reform, we may be forced to violate the typical complimentary balance.
But in general, the civil good is served by religion that makes civil people, which in turn makes civil governance works. In other words, religion makes better people who make freer and better government. That means religion has a very specific role to play – making better people. Many of the problems we see in religion and politics today are because religion, and especially Evangelicalism, has been reduced to something that is only about belief, and often nothing more than pious entertainment. Religion must reclaim its role as a builder of good people for the delicate balance to survive. If you are worried about the civil religion corrupting the true religion, then get busy building people of sufficient character that they know the difference and will stand firmly on the true religion. Doing away with the civil religion, or trying to make the civil religion exactly like your true religion will only inflame the conflict.
POTUS 2012
Oh yeah, that’s what we usually talk about here. Paul Bedard says there are 17 players on the field for the Republican nomination. That’s stretching things a bit – rumors and talk do not put someone “on the field;” If they did, I’d be a college basketball coach.
One of Bedard’s “major players” is Mitch Daniels. You’ll recall we said early on that it looked like someone was trying to back Daniels into running and that he was not particularly interested. Then he did the Weekly Standard profile which made us think he might be serious, but he did sort of fail that audition with his comments on social issues. Then he told the Louisville Courier-Journal that he had no interest in the job, it was, as we suspected, others trying to talk him into it. And yet, the rumors persist. Now, Taegan Goddard quotes him from Newsweek:
“At some stage there could well be a tax increase. They say we can’t have grown-up conversations anymore. I think we can.”
This guy DOES NOT want to run for president! At every opportunity he is saying things to get out of it. He seems to have purposefully set out to anger both social and fiscal conservatives. It is time for people to let the man be.
I was pleased to see Romney say the smart thing about the abandoned Koran burning, and absolutely dumbfounded at the ignorance of Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison:
I think that yes it will be and it is being an issue and will be debated, but I don’t think that the purveyors of this … anti-Islamic wave are going to benefit the way they think they will. I mean some of them tried to defeat President Obama by claiming that he was a Muslim. Of course, they were resoundingly defeated themselves.
When I ran, I had opponents who were doing things similar, and I won my election. Andre Carson won his election. He’s a Muslim, so my point is that Americans are generally tolerant. Americans are generally tolerant, and so I don’t think arguments about religious beliefs are going to cut much ice. I mean Mitt Romney, a leading Republican candidate, Mormon, nobody cares.
Nobody Cares?! More “ink” was spilled on Romney’s Mormonism than Ellison’s Islamic faith can dream of. Nobody Cares?! Beck is being bashed for being Mormon while everybody is rushing to protect the rights of the builders of the GZM. Nobody Cares?! The case can be made that Romney’s faith is why he is not president right now.
Ellison must live under a rock. That may be the most ignorant comment to come from a congressman since that guy thought an island was going to tip over.
It’s gonna be a long couple of years.
Posted in Reading List | 4 Comments » | 
Print this post
| 
Email This Post
coltakashi on 13 Sep 2010 at 4:45 pm #
John: You said “By law, as interpreted by the SCOTUS, prayers offered at public meetings of this sort must be non-sectarian. From the appearance of this story, the prayers to be offered are NOT non-sectarian, but are rather, specifically Islamic.”
I don’t think that is an accurate statement of the Establishment Clause law on chaplain-style prayer offered in deliberative bodies like Congress, state legislatures, and local government councils. The ACLU of Utah, no great friends of religious expression generally, are explicit in their web page (see
http://www.acluutah.org/publicprayer.htm) that such prayers at the opening of government deliberative bodies has a special status under the Establishment Clause, in that it was having a hired chaplain offer prayers at the beginning of legislative sessions was a practice that was adopted by the same Congress that enacted the Bill of Rights in the first place, and clearly did not see such action as violative of the Establishment Clause. And it is a practice which has continued for over two centuries and been adopted by many state legislatures and local government bodies.
The prayers offered in such circumstances do not need to meet a standard of diluted “civil religion” in order to be permissible under the Establishment Clause. They have a special status in their own right as an historically unequivocal expression of the intent of the Congress that wrote the clause.
Indeed, the First Amendment begins to intervene if the governmental body tries to dictate the form and content of the prayer. Apart from prohibiting political argument or condemnation of other religious expressions, which would imply a restriction on the free expression of other religious beliefs, the government bodies don’t have a charter to tell a religious minister to remove “sectarian” references from his or her prayer (such as naming Jesus Christ or Allah of even Buddha). A legislative chaplain’s prayer is NOT a message from the government body to the public, but an invitation to the citizenry (represented by the selected persons leading the prayers) to express a wish for the blessings of divine providence to come upon its deliberations, in whatever form those citizens believe efficacious.
By the same token, the practice of appointing military chaplains to minister to and lead prayers for military organizations does NOT require that the chaplains all preach and teach a generic “civil religion”, but rather that they are conceived as facilitating the free religious expression of military members. That is why military chaplains represent the specific denominations of military members, in proportion to the population of soldiers who are affiliated with each denomination. While they will conduct some generic “Protestant” services, there are also specific Catholic and and Orthodox and Jewish services. (Mormons, on the other hand, have their military congregations led by military members ordained in its unpaid priesthood; it is the exception rather than the rule when a Mormon chaplain actually serves as the leader of a local Mormon congregation. Mormon chaplain’s function to a great extent to ensure that Mormon worshippers are given a fair shake in the allocation of chapel resources, such as use of military chapels on an equal basis with other worshippers. Indeed, since the armed ofrces generally budget funds to each iinstallation’s chapel program according to total attendance at all church meetings, the Mormons, who have three meetings each Sunday, tend to contribute disproportionately to the chapel programs at the bases where they use chapel facilities, usually overseas.) Furthermore, the armed forces cannot dictate to chaplains that they censor the expression of their own denominational doctrines if they conflict with some military policy, such as the proposed acceptance of homosexual conduct as an alternative normal practice in the military.
There is nothing unconstitutional about Muslim chaplains in the military, or with Muslim chaplains offering Muslim prayers in a city council meeting or state legislative session.
Tweets that mention A Week Filled With Religion… | Article VI Blog | John Schroeder -- Topsy.com on 15 Sep 2010 at 4:29 am #
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mitt Romney in 2012!, Article VI Blog. Article VI Blog said: A Week Filled With Religion…: …And Most Of It In A Silly Fashion We purposefully stayed mostly quiet last week as … http://bit.ly/a1iExf [...]
sewinglady on 18 Sep 2010 at 9:26 am #
Congratulations to Coltakashi for another interesting, informative comment! This post is so good, and covers so much information, that it’s a little difficult to remember all that I wanted to say, but I will do my best!
I was grateful to read the article written by the minister in San Diego who wrote honestly about his experience working with the CJCLDS church members to pass Prop 8. The article was worth reading. He mentioned watching Glenn Beck talk about the Atonement on his show, and how well it was presented. Beck was discussing Black Liberation Theology and comparing the differences between traditional Christian views and this theology. My husband and I are not frequent viewers of Glenn Beck, but we happened to turn it on that night as we were going to bed, and we watched most of his presentation. It was very well done, and I also found that Beck did a good job explaining how Christians view the Atonement. My husband’s comment was “Now they’ll take Beck off the air. I don’t think you are allowed to talk about the Atonement on national TV.” All of us owe a debt to Beck for being courageous enough to talk about it, and being willing to take the arrows for it, as well.
Anyway, this minister was surprised by the lucidness of Beck’s presentation about the Atonement; he also implies that Beck must be less “Mormon” than the rest of us. I cannot let that comment stand. In fairness to the CJCLDS and the millions of missionaries who have served and are serving worldwide, this is what we teach. My husband served in Ecuador, I served in Japan, and we have a son who is currently serving as a missionary. WE TEACH ABOUT THE ATONEMENT basically in the same way that Beck did. As a missionary in Japan, we spent much of our time teaching about the Atonement since the people were mostly not Christian and knew nothing of Jesus Christ. Now, I am not implying that our doctrines are the same as more traditional Christian sects; I am well aware of the differences. It is fair to acknowledge that part of the reason that Beck can explain the Atonement is because we as members of the CJCLDS talk and teach about the Atonement. This minister, by his own admission, did not want any members of our Church to talk about our religion with him. That is fine, but then to be amazed that any of our members understand some of the same principles similarly to how he does seems to be a little silly.
I am sure that paying attention to the civic religion can potentially water down the doctrines of different religions. It’s difficult to keep doctrines clear in such situations. However, the importance of standing together to protect religion and religious beliefs is greater than ever. When a federal judge actually writes in his decision that religious beliefs harm gays and lesbians, we should all know that we are collectively heading for trouble. Times are coming in which we must band together respectfully to protect us all. I wish that my children had more Christian support in their schools. My son was one of the few who stood to defend traditional marriage in an English class. He said to the other kids, “You’re Christian why won’t you stand with me?” Their answer was that they believed everyone had a right to make their own choices. The English teacher also opposed my son. Now, I believe this debate was entirely inappropriate, but it is not easy to be the only one standing on an issue. Some members of our Church have been told that no matter what the issue is, “We don’t work with Mormons.” Okay, but as the Founding Fathers discovered, “We must all hang together, or we will hang separately.”
Thank you, John and Lowell, for the efforts you expend on this blog. It is good to have a place for intelligent, respectful discussion.
Shift, Revival, Civil War? – Tea Parties, Value Voters Summits – All That and more | Article VI Blog | John Schroeder on 20 Sep 2010 at 5:47 am #
[...] that mention A Week Filled With Religion… | Article VI Blog | John Schroeder — Topsy.com on A Week Filled With Religion…coltakashi on A Week Filled With Religion…A Week Filled With Religion… | Article VI Blog [...]