Christian Bar Mitzvahs and Ransacking Religion

The March 24th issue of the The New York Times magazine featured a provocative piece by Maud Newton entitled “Oy Vey, Christian Soldiers.” It described the extraordinary phenomenon of evangelical Christians providing “bar mitzvahs” for their children, and the ensuing debate.

To this critic’s way of thinking such is among the more dramatic instantiations of the frenetic syncretism that has become characteristic of much of American religion. As autonomy continues to be the major dynamic driving religious identity, those on spiritual quests seem increasingly willing to “borrow”  foreign doctrines and rites from other religions and graft them on to their own. Often this raiding of foreign faiths is justified under the mantra of tolerance.

To be clear all religions are syncretistic. But there is a categorical difference between the incremental evolution of the historical faiths and the wanton ransacking of other people’s religions. While arguably the ethical values fostered by the great religions are part of humankind’s universal heritage,  the specific doctrines, practices and mythoi of respective parochial  faith communities are not.

The deeper truth is that the employment of tolerance to justify such religious appropriation masks what boils down to an act of imperialism.  Blissfully unnoticed are the usual power inequities that such “borrowing” entails. This is true when Episcopalians hold Passover Seders, Unitarians engage in Native American rites or evangelicals mimic bar mitzvahs.  Never  are  the staid rituals such as communion the ones imitated, but the exotic expressions of the minority faiths.

When it comes to the relationship of current Protestant evangelical Christianity to Jews and Judaism, the appropriation of the bar mitzvah is apiece with the broader and much older profession of Christian Zionism. Both are expressions of a pseudo philo-semitism and reflect  contemporary forms of the odious doctrine of Christian supersessionism.

Tragically and fretfully many Jews have been seduced by the blandishments presented by such false friends. It’s a trap that should be seen for what it is and demonstrably rejected. Imitation may be a high form of flattery, but amalgamation is not.  In my view, one should always be wary of those who love you too much.

Obama The Philosopher

Pundits have correctly identified Barack Obama’s second inaugural as a policy prospectus for his second term. There were predications and allusions to fighting global warming, defending gay rights, protecting and inviting the immigrant, restoring the middle class, and an indirect defense of gun regulation. In this sense, his speech, rendered in elevated prose, was a halfway state of the union address. Perhaps for those who stillw ant to believe in Obama as the fulfillment of their liberal hopes, this new, reset Obama is their hopes revealed. After all, he now has nothing to lose and a legacy to gain.

But I also saw in the speech, what we might refer to as the old or authentic Obama. More interesting than his overt policy proposals, and peering from not far beneath the surface, was the philosophical template of Obama’s deepest ideas about statecraft.

According to Harvard historian, James Kloeppenberg, in his nifty book, “Reading Obama,” Barack Obama is a true intellectual, unlike everyone else who has occupied the White House in the past 100 years, except for Woodrow Wilson.

Two aspects of Obama’s philosophy were manifest in the second inaugural. The timing of the event ensured that reference needed to be made to Martin Luther King. In a stroke of rhetorical mastery, Obama wedded his own progressivism onto King’s.

In the opening paragraphs of the long neglected first half of the “I Have a Dream Speech” King revealed his deep commitment to American ideals as set forth in the Declaration. Those ideals declare the promise of equality, a promise which America has defaulted on, especially as its black population is concerned. It is therefore necessary that the current generation work to correct America’s mistakes in order to fulfill those promises. In other words, for King, America is forever a work in progress, with each generation picking up the task of striving to complete the project. Obama, in his address, reiterated this notion of evolving equality and enfranchisement as it pertains to blacks, women, and most notably, gays.

But Obama’s departure from King’s notion of an unfolding American narrative contains the more distinctive elements of his social philosophy. King, in his theological commitments, was a type of religious idealist. There is the Kingdom of Heaven, the repository of perfect justice, and we are to direct our energies here on earth to close the gap between what is and what ought to be.

Obama’s sense of progressivism emerges from different sources. He is a pragmatist, not an idealist. A such, whatever progress there may be is incremental and results from the experimental application of ideas to experience in the service of educing what works best in interests of human and social fulfillment. Hence, what was seen as weakness and capitulation in encountering Republican obstructionism, (and it may indeed have been weakness) can also be understood as Obama’s commitment to weigh both sides in the service of reaching a workable harmony and balance.

But more salient than his pragmatism, and aligned with it, is Obama’s commitment to civic republicanism. It is the idea articulated by Jefferson and Madison, that the republic can only thrive when citizens commit themselves to the common good, when they understand and execute their duties and obligations as thoroughly as they proclaim their individual rights.

I believe there can be little doubt that this value shone through Obama’s second inaugural. In a mere 18 minute speech, he invoked the world “together” six times. He spoke of the role of government as a collective enterprise, which through its entitlements liberates rather than stifles initiative. He acknowledged the power of the free market, built indicated that for that  freedom to work it needs to be bounded by rules that ensure fair play, where, implicitly the market  left to its own devices cannot. He spoke about our obligations to each other through generations. If a conservative had given that speech, the emphasis most likely would have been on the glories of individual liberty. But Obama’s address had no such emphasis.

Rather, Obama, revealed himself to be a kind of communitarian who emphasizes the primacy of social obligation. Whether such a philosophy will prove successful in his second term, in which again he will have to face obstructionism from a defiant House of Representatives, remains to be seen.

 

 

 

LaPierre’s Creepy Message

When the National Rifle Association said that it wanted to put forward proposals to move forward in light of the Newtown school massacre, there was reason to believe that there would at least be a nod toward conciliation; if not substantive steps toward gun control then perhaps mere tokenism. This would have put a  human face on a feared political machine.

But, the NRA couldn’t bring itself to do even that. It’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre, held what was billed as a “press conference.” But it was more an ideological rant that brooked no questions from the press. What we saw was a reiteration of the NRA line centered around the idea that the answer to gun violence is more guns. Guns in movie theaters. Guns in shopping malls. Guns in temples. Guns in schools. All  venues for shootouts between, as LaPierre put it, the “bad guys” and the “good guys.” Is there behind this argument an excitement that wells up when contemplating paroxysms of explosive violence like the highs that attract adolescents to action movies? I am sufficiently distrustful of human nature and Freudian enough to entertain such a notion.

In the public discourse since the Newtown killings, a triad of causes has emerged to explain the intolerable level of gun violence in American society. We are told that we need better mental health services and to work to reduce “the culture of violence,” while gun control advocates want to limit access to assault weapons and ammunition while tightening background checks.

I submit that all three are necessary. But I am suspicious when those who want more guns point their fingers at mental health and alleged cultural deterioration. It is an effort at diverting attention away from gun control.

Such was LaPierre’s proclamation. LaPierre’s and his followers are fundamentalists and absolutists. Like all fundamentalists their positions and mindsets are apiece with totalitarians. They bear  a frightening  disposition and LaPierre certainly does. I usually like to separate the message from the messenger. But I conclude that there was something in Lapierre’s delivery that I felt was personally unsettling, even creepy. His body posture was rigid, and to invoke a pop-psyche cliche he seemed not to be ” in touch with his feelings.” Though I may be unfair, I couldn’t help thinking that he seemed to harbor the same  buried demons that perhaps have possessed those crazed and violent malefactors he condemns.

We need to be wary of fundamentalists and absolutists of any stripe, especially when they advocate for, indeed, worship the gun. But there is another aspect to fundamentalism whether religious or political, and that is that it engenders opposition.

By reasserting its dogma in the spotlight for all to see, and after the nation still reels from the slaughter of children, the NRA, to invoke a bad metaphor, may have shot itself in the foot. A factoid being toted is that more than 70 percent of NRA members themselves aspire toward more rational gun laws and feel that assault weapons that can kill hordes of people in a single minute should have no place in a civilized society. Even conservatives who hunger for a 100 percent rating from the NRA are beginning to distance themselves.

May we hope that American politics at last free itself from the maw of this insidious organization in whose interests too many American men, women and children have lost their lives.

May Wayne LaPierre’s single-minded fanaticism signal the death knell for the NRA. And by so doing usher in a renewed commitment to life.

 

No More Guns!

As with most of America, the massacre of 20 small school children and their care givers in Newtown, Connecticut, moved me to shock, deep reaching sorrow and anger. That a person can look a defenseless seven-year old child in the eyes and pump her full of bullets at close range, and then do it over and over again, sinks to depths that are so dark as to take us outside the category of what we understand to be human.

It shouldn’t, because it (and I mean by “it” mass murder by gunshot) has become all too common in American life. But the murder of children, so many in one place, seems to have finally awakened the American public from its long slumber about gun violence and gun control. I know it has awakened me. At the urging of my wife, Linda, we do make a contribution to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence every year. But as essential as financial support is, it is not enough. It a necessary but minimal form of activism that requires little of the self in terms of passion, dedication and work.

In the face of this horror, I plan for this to change. I hope it will for all of us and for the nation. We have been asleep for too long. We have slept while the gun nuts have taken over and have transformed our society into a madhouse of gun ownership, though “slaughterhouse” would be a better metaphor.

Through the extremist zeal of the National Rifle Association, too many in the society have made a fetish out of guns. The right to own a gun has become an idolatrous god that has taken on the power and the feel of a religious cult. The gun has become a sacred object and with the right to own a gun, a type of untouchability.

But the extremism of the gun zealots misunderstands what rights are. No right, with the exception of the right to be free of enslavement and torture, is absolute. All rights are constrained  by the rights of others. The vaunted rights of free speech and religion, to which American society gives a very wide berth, are by no means absolute. My right to free expression does not protect my right to scream “fire” in a crowded theater (unless there is a fire) because the exercise of that right violates the right to safety, even the life of those crushed in the stampede of  people rushing to the exits. My right to freedom of religion, though absolute with regard to belief, is not with regard to practice. I may believe as I choose, but may not engage in human sacrifice, even if my god commands it, nor may I lead my church choir in Gregorian chants on my neighbor’s front lawn at 3:00 in the morning.

So it is with regard to the right to own a gun. In a regrettable decision in 2008, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority, did uphold the dubious idea that the Second Amendment allows for individuals to own guns for their personal use. We can forget about that nettlesome clause referencing “a well regulated militia.”  But even Antonin Scalia noted that this right did not forbid reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.

It is commitment to such restrictions that has been thrown to the wind in the face of the triumphalist fear mongering tactics of the NRA. And is this juggernaut that we need to stand up to. Not just now, but next month, next year and into the foreseeable future, when the spotlight moves away from Newtown, and until America gets over its paroxysm of madness in the name of gun possession.

The data are well known: The United States is an outlier among the industrialized democracies of the world, in that an American child is 13 times more likely to die by gunshot than her counterpart is in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere in the civilized world.

Second Amendment extremists will trot out the notion that abolishing automatic and semi-automatic rifles and magazine clips that hold massive rounds, which belong in war zones and not in apartments or suburban bedrooms, will do nothing to stem gun violence. I don’t believe it. The examples of other nations, including Australia (which like the United States also manifests a “wild-West” mentality) abolished such weapons after a massacre and in the 1990s, and its murder rates precipitously dropped . Moreover, there is no excuse for exempting background checks for those 40 percent of gun owners who purchase their weapons of death at gun shows than through currently licensed dealers. Nor carrying concealed weapons into bars and schools, no less, as some new legislation in some states allow!

We’re also told that guns are part of American culture, especially among hunters, and that those who do not hunt, simply don’t understand and should take a “hands off” approach. I don’t buy that either. First, few people are advocating prohibiting hunting rifles (as much as I personally despise hunting) or guns for reasonable recreational use. In addition, I am not persuaded by the “culture” argument. “Culture” is just another word for what people do. Cultures are fluid, cultures change, as much as a result of outside influences as they do from the inside. Moreover, cultures are not homogeneous. Indeed, many people who hunt also advocate for reasonable gun restrictions.

But, if we are in to changing cultures, here is a suggestion I have recently heard that I like. Through public pressure, our behavior around the culture of drinking has changed. When a guy is out with a friend to a bar or at a party, and the friend has had too much to drink, it is increasingly frequent that his companion will offer to drive on his behalf. Why not apply this to the gun culture? If you know your friend possesses firearms in the house, and he is going through a period of deep crisis or stress, or is manifesting signs of aggression or mental illness, why not suggest to him that you will remove his guns until the issue passes? Now there’s a cultural change we should begin to talk about.

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Torture, TV and the Brutalizing Effect

Americans say that they oppose torture, but the conviction is just skin deep. The new film “Zero Dark Thirty” (which I have not yet sen) ostensibly depicts the torture of terrorism suspects by American agents. Thy film also draws a line, though, reportedly not explicitly, between torture and the garnering of evidence which led to the capture of Osama bin Laden.

According to a front page article in the New York Times, (12/13/12)  the depiction of torture on television has led to a decline in the opposition to its employment in  securing of  information procured so as to make us safer. One researcher concludes, “Entertainment has an alarming impact.”

If this finding about the impact of television and the movies is true, then here lies another reason to despair at the unreason and the anti-intellectualism of the American people; and their capacity to reflect on a probing moral issue of the highest significance.

This shift toward growing acceptance of torture, if true, adumbrates a tipping of the scales in the so-called “torture debate.”  The form the debate takes is of the “ticking bomb.” We highly suspect that a time bomb has been placed in a venue crowded with people. The authorities have caught someone whom they suspect knows when and where the bomb will go off. Isn’t it better to torture the information out of the suspect and thereby save hundreds of lives, then refrain and suffer the lives lost? It is a debate that pits high principle against utilitarian interests. On the principled side, torture is something that civilized human beings NEVER do, because the very act negates both being civilized as well as being human. On the utilitarian side, one allows for the occasional use of torture if it will serve the purpose of saving lives.

The problem with those who support the utilitarian side of the debate are many. One is the slippery slope scenario. Torture employed for any reason, however circumscribed, will spread to be employed in other, perhaps less compelling, circumstances.

Notice how the use of torture depicted in the movie already departs from the  ticking bomb rationale. Suspects are tortured not because a bomb will immanently be detonated but for capturing a malefactor who may (or may not) do us further harm. Or, more cynically to make a politically powerful statement which will enhance the prestige of the administration.

This is the problem of utilitarian arguments when used to justify torture. The utilitarian field broadens, and, in fact, is open-ended so that torture can ostensibly be justified for aims which become wispier and more uncertain. Consider the following:

The ticking bomb almost never emerges as it is captivatingly depicted in the the ideal scenario that is proffered by its defenders.

If a suspect is caught, in the absence of due process, how can the authorities know they have nabbed the right culprit?

If tortured, how do they know that the information the suspect  renders is accurate? (Torture victims will say anything to get the pain to stop).

If the authorities have detained five suspects, or 20, or 50, do they torture all of them on the supposition that one of them is the culprit, has the needed information and will truthfully divulge it?

Do we torture his or her children to get the suspect to talk?

All of these rationales can be justified on the basis of a utilitarian calculus.

But utilitarianism can take us further. Using its logic, why not torture if we can deter or prevent what we assume may be a future act  of greater  harm?  We have moved far afield from the “ticking bomb” scenario. In this sense torture can be employed as a preventative tool in any war situation; the very occurrence the venerable Geneva Accords, which the United States have long championed, were ratified to prevent.  But according to the implications of “Zero Dark Thirty” that is exactly where we have arrived. It is also the position of those in the real world who defend the employment of torture on such dubious grounds. It is a violation of American values while it negates any pretense to our being a moral nation. There is no excuse for torture –ever.

 

 

 

 

Disability Rights and US Rejection

The U.S. has rejected the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. By doing so the United States has again put itself at odds with the rest of the world and has sustained a 60-year tradition of rejection of human rights treaties, which ironically, American international lawyers play a major role in drafting. What especially stands out this time is that the Convention follows on American federal laws protecting the rights of the disabled and thereby will take American norms and apply them internationally.

Robust support for the Convention should be a source of pride for the United States in that our nation has been in the forefront of  creating the progressive legislation that has placed us far ahead of the rest of the international community in safeguarding the rights of the disabled.

It was not long ago that disabled were sequestered  behind closed doors and out of public view. To be disabled was a source of shame and the object of pity and charity. The American disabilities act launched a powerful revolution of consciousness that restored dignity and fundamental rights to the disabled. People with disabilities moved from being objects to becoming subjects. The Convention carries that movement  forward by placing that advance within the panoply of international human rights.

But no. As many times before, it is reactionary members of the Senate who thumb their noses at the international human rights regime with a contempt that declares that the world has nothing to teach us. It is a narrow, ideologically driven fear of losing an iota of sovereignty, though there is not a smidgeon of chance that this Convention will have that effect. But even it it did, while advancing the human rights of the most disadvantaged, so what? What would truly be lost?

As with our refusal to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child (here the United States is the true outlier in solidarity only with Somalia – whose non-ratification can be forgiven since that country doesn’t have a government) I suspect that the greatest fear is that even mention of children’s rights is perceived as undermining the integrity of the family, sanctified as it is by Christian principles. More specifically, it was proffered that the Convention would undermine the authority of parents who home school their children.

Lobbying for the Convention was Bob Dole who was wheeled into the Senate chamber to urge his Republican colleagues to vote in favor of ratification. Dole was disabled in combat he was engaged in in World War II. Also supporting ratification was John McCain, who lost full use of his arms as a torture victim in Viet-Nam. But subsequent to Dole leaving the Senate chamber, the patriotic members of his party voted down the Convention. The nay-sayers included such paleo-conservatives as James Inhofe of Oklahoma. But not only such. Mitch McConnell and the new darling of the Republican Party, Marco Rubio,  reaffirmed the scariness of the international arena by casting a “no” vote. We Americans of a more enlightened and compassionate disposition should be ashamed.

The Boy Scouts, Pedophilia and Godliness

My atheist commitments are fully deployed when atheists have been the victims of discrimination. Most galling is the presumption that only the godly can be upstanding and moral, while those whose conscience does not lead them to affirm a cosmic custodian must be morally suspect, if not reprobate. The arrogance of this position is what truly gets my juices going.

One organization which proclaims this unwarranted and sanctimonious position, and stubbornly clings to it despite all evidence to the contrary, is the Boy Scouts of America. The recent revelations of widespread pedophilia and its coverup by the Boy Scouts (which ignominiously parallels such crimes  by the Catholic Church) in light of the great harm it has done should evoke endless contrition by the Scouts as well as immediate revision of their policy that omits atheists from their ranks. To fail to widen its circles of inclusion, the Boy Scouts remains retrograde, untethered to reality and, as stated, insufferably arrogant.

I feel some personal investment in this issue, not because I have ever aspired to be a Scout, but because as a leader of an Ethical Culture Society, a non-theistic community, I have been asked and have written letters to Boy Scout officials pleading for the acceptance of the children of our members as Scouts even though they did not affirm a belief in God.

With the revelation of widespread pedophilia in the Boy Scouts, with some of its victims in my own area of northern New Jersey, I felt impelled to pen a letter to the Record of Hackensack, our county newspaper. The letter, published in today’s edition, is included below.

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Regarding “Suit alleges years of Scout abuse” (Page A-2, Nov.14):

The article revealing widespread pedophilia and its coverup by the Boy Scouts of America, including cases in New Jersey, evokes memories of my defense of boys wanting to become Scouts, but who were barred because they could not attest to a belief in God.

As a leader in the Ethical Culture Movement, which affirms the primacy of moral ideal and ethical living, but in a non-theological context, I found myself in the position of defending the moral integrity of young people against what was I thought was a narrow, indefensible and, I dare say, bigoted view, which has long been the official position of the Boy Scouts. What pertains to the exclusion of non-believers pertains also to the exclusion of gays, a position recently reconfirmed by the Boy Scouts.

It is a stark revelation that the requirement “to do one’s duty to God” bears no relation to being “morally straight,” as the Scout oath requires.

It is painfully obvious that the Boy Scouts’ requirement of religious piety has not inoculated it from perpetrating the most morally vile behavior possible.

If the Boy Scouts seeks to reclaim a vestige of ethical integrity, beyond far-reaching restitution to its victims, it needs to drop its narrow-minded and ill-directed exclusion of atheist and gay youth.

Joseph Chuman, Leader Ethical Culture of Bergen County

Hackensack, Nov. 14