A few weeks ago, on a long airplane trip, I had a chance to read George Weigel's new book, "The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God", and also Steve Smith's essay, "Justice Douglas, Justice O'Connor, and George Orwell: Does the Constitution Compel Us to Disown Our Past?". The recent Ten Commandments decisions, and all of the debate about the place, if any, for acknowledgment -- even endorsement -- of religion in public spaces and discourse, got me thinking again about these two works.
Smith’s essay is a reflection on Justice Douglas’s (in)famous observation that "we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." Smith believes that this statement – one that might today seem incongruous with what we now know, or think we know, about Justice Douglas – is true. That is, he contends, most of “we are the people” are -- in some meaningful, if sometimes less-than-deep, sense -- “religious.” What’s more, he continues, our “institutions” do – or can plausibly to be said to – “presuppose”, rest upon, and proceed from claims and commitments regarding a “Supreme Being” and that Being’s connection to human affairs and action.
If all this is true, Smith asks, why are we so uncomfortable with Douglas
’s claim? In particular, why do we see so many hotly contested lawsuits about the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, our National Motto, the names of California
cities, and so on? Why have we moved from a constitutional commitment to the dis-establishment of religion to what Smith regards as a (very different) obsession with (at best) ignoring and (worse) re-writing our history?
This and other questions lead Smith to a reflection, inspired by Orwell’s “1984,” on memory, history, truth-telling, and identity. As he puts it, "if we are cut off from our history, or if we degrade our history into a mutable fabrication fashioned not according to truth but rather by present perceived needs, then we lose our identity and become merely transitory phantoms of shifting consciousness and conversation, without continuity or substance. . . . For a nation, history is not merely what holds it together: it is only as a historical entity that a nation enjoys reality in the first place. After all, does anyone believe that a political community has anything like an immaterial soul that might give it identity independent of its temporal history? And in this view, it seems that whetehr this nation exists and can 'long endure', as Lincoln put it, depends among other things on having leaders who are bold enough, or at least reckless enough, to proclaim the large, enduring truths that constitute it. Truths like 'we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.'"
Weigel’s book is short, accessible, and engaging, but it covers a whole lot: freedom, faith, democracy, Europe
, danger, and hope. Among other things, Weigel explores the causes and implications of the debate that played out not long ago – though, in light of recent events, it might seem like ages ago – concerning the place (if any) of Christianity in Europe’s proposed (now apparently rejected) Constitution. Weigel not only makes the case that “the Cathedral” (i.e., Europe’s long tradition of Christian humanism) is a better candidate for supporting the values to which Europe professes to be committed (democracy, equality, freedom) than “the Cube” (the modernist La Grande Arche de la Defense, erected in commemoration of the Declaration of the Rights of Man), he also expands on the claim (like Smith’s) that the effort to deny, ignore, and/or rewrite Europe’s history – to pretend that Europe and its values are a product of 1688 or 1789, but not Christianity, is to doom the project. Any account of Europe, and of human freedom, that denies these things is going to do a bad job of explaining and sustaining Europe
, and of explaining and sustaining human freedom.
Here is a First Things essay by Weigel that explores some of the same themes as does "The Cube and the Cathedral."
Rick
John Witte has a new paper out, "One Public Religion, Many Private Religions: John Adams and the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution." Here is the abstract:
John Adams is gaining new respect today both for his political shrewdness and his religious wisdom. Both these talents were on full display in the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution that Adams largely crafted. Striking a via media between defenders of the traditional Congregationalist establishment and religious dissenters, Adams' constitution established one public religion but granted freedom to all peaceable private religions. This juxtaposition reflected Adams' political and religious philosophy. Every state and society, he believed, had to establish by law some common values and beliefs to undergird and support the plurality of private religions that it embraced. The notion that a state and society could remain neutral and purged of any public religion was, for Adams, a philosophical fiction. Absent a commonly adopted set of values and beliefs, politicians would invariably hold out their private convictions as public ones. But every state and society also had to respect and protect a plurality of forms of religious exercise and association. The notion that a state could coerce all persons into adherence and adherents to a single established religion alone was, for Adams, equally a philosophical fiction. Persons would make their own private judgments in matter of faith and conscience, even if they pretended to conformity.
(HT: Solum)
Rob
When the New York Times devotes an editorial to events in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you can bet that the editors are not espousing the virtues of midwestern common sense as a template for their readers. It seems that the directors of the Tulsa Zoo voted to supplement a display about evolution with a display about the Genesis account of creation. An ill-advised vote, perhaps. But from the Times' perspective, these votes are the stuff of knee-slapping hilarity:
After the inevitable backlash from bewildered taxpayers warning that Tulsa would be dismissed as a science backwater, the directors "clarified" their vote to say they intended no monopoly for the Adam and Eve tale but rather wanted "six or seven" creation myths afforded equal time. There was the rub: there are hundreds of creation tales properly honored by the world's multifarious cultures, starting with the American Indian tribes around Tulsa.
You want creationism? How about the Cherokee buzzard that gouged the valleys and mountains? And why should Chinese-Americans tolerate neglect of P'an Ku and the cosmic egg at the zoo, or Norse descendants not speak up for Audhumla, the giant cow?
The futility of this exercise was emphatically made clear last week when a crowd of critics demanded reconsideration. With the speed of the Mayan jaguar sun god, zoo directors reversed themselves, realizing they had opened a Pandora's box (which see). In stumbling upon so many worthy cosmogonies, Tulsa did us all a favor by underlining how truly singular the evolution explanation is, rooted firmly in scientific demonstration.
Exactly how is the evolution explanation "truly singular?" Scientists are in an ongoing process of revising, rejecting, and rescinding previous work tracing the evolutionary path. Individuals who strongly believe in evolution strongly disagree about the particulars. And the litany of creation stories cited in the editorial are simply derivations of The Creation Story: the belief that a divine power is responsible for life's origins. It is only disagreement about the particulars that is reflected in the various creation stories. In this sense, we could say "how truly singular the creation explanation is."
Now in all likelihood, the editors meant "truly singular" in the sense of "not religious." And I assume that the many creation stories are more threatening to the editors than the many varieties of the evolutionary pathway because people may be more passionate about the former than the latter (and those believing the former, we assume, are much more prone to unreasonable action than those believing the latter). So as we've seen in our discussion of Noah Feldman's work and the Ten Commandments cases, the specter of divisiveness drives the inquiry. In the Times' view, the existence of many religious beliefs creates an (apparently irrebuttable) presumption that the government-facilitated expression of some subset of those beliefs in the public sphere is illegitimate. Put simply, religious belief is inherently divisive, science is not; organize society accordingly.
To be clear, I would not vote to install a Genesis timeline in the local science museum. But my reluctance stems from my fear that such efforts foster an unnecessary science versus faith tension -- i.e., the notion that kids can believe their science teacher OR they can believe the Bible. I don't, however, buy the suggestion that our society must respond to religious pluralism by pretending in public that no one is religious and allowing science to fill the gaps.
Rob
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Try to track down Vigen Guroian's essay, "Family Offices: Teaching Children to Love Being Sons and Daughters," in the July / August issue of Touchstone Magazine. (Unfortunately, I do not have a link to the essay). Like everything of Guroian's I've ever read, the essay features beautiful prose and style. It also -- in the course of suggesting that we ought to teach our children not to despise childhood and dependence, but rather to accept and love them -- has some very provocative and, I think, instructive things to say about Catholic Legal Theory. After all, as we've discussed often at MOJ, many of our legal doctrines, cultural values, and political premises reflect an anthropology of autonomy, of the "mystery passage," etc. Guroian explores, in one particular context, the implications of a Christian anthropology that emphasizes both dignity and dependence.
Rick
E.J. Dionne's review of Noah Feldman's new book, "Divided by God," is available here. Here's the conclusion:
Feldman does not simply tell a compelling story. He also offers a proposal for bringing peace, or at least a truce, to the current round of religious warfare. "We want to acknowledge the centrality of religion to many citizens' values while keeping religion and government in some important sense distinct," Feldman writes. He proposes a deal between the legal secularists and the values evangelicals. He would "offer greater latitude for public religious discourse and religious symbolism, and at the same time insist on a stricter ban on state funding of religious institutions and activities." His solution, he insists, "would both recognize religious values and respect the institutional separation of religion and government as an American value in its own right." He summarizes his view as "no coercion and no money."
I admire the respectful spirit of the Feldman Compromise. Surely liberals must accept that "religious values form an important source of religious beliefs and identities for the majority of Americans." Religious people have a right to form their political conclusions on the basis of their religious values, and to voice those views in the public debate. He is also right that evangelicals "need to acknowledge that separating the institutions of government from those of religion is essential for avoiding outright political-religious conflict."
But Feldman's solution is easier said than carried out. As the Supreme Court's messy Ten Commandments decisions showed, giving broader latitude for "religious symbolism" can easily conflict with "the institutional separation of religion and government." Feldman would put roadblocks in the way of President Bush's efforts to expand federal financing of faith-based groups. But how, exactly, would the "no money" principle affect government funding for health care provided in religious hospitals or long-standing cooperative ventures between government and religious social service organizations? What does Feldman's solution have to say about the problems at the Air Force Academy, where "religious discourse" by officers higher up in the chain of command had deleterious effects on the religious liberty of cadets who did not share the faith of the brass?
Rick
An article in today's New York Times says, "[d]utch doctors have proposed a procedure for infant mercy killing. Is this humane or barbaric?" Here's more:
One sure way to start a lively argument at a dinner party is to raise the question Are we humans getting more decent over time? Optimists about moral progress will point out that the last few centuries have seen, in the West at least, such welcome developments as the abolition of slavery and of legal segregation, the expansion of freedoms (of religion, speech and press), better treatment of women and a gradual reduction of violence, notably murder, in everyday life. Pessimists will respond by citing the epic evils of the 20th century -- the Holocaust, the Gulag. Depending on their religious convictions, some may call attention to the breakdown of the family and a supposed decline in sexual morality. Others will complain of backsliding in areas where moral progress had seemingly been secured, like the killing of civilians in war, the reintroduction of the death penalty or the use of torture. And it is quite possible, if your dinner guests are especially well informed, that someone will bring up infanticide. . . .
Our sense of what constitutes moral progress is a matter partly of reason and partly of sentiment. On the reason side, the Groningen protocol may seem progressive because it refuses to countenance the prolonging of an infant's suffering merely to satisfy a dubious distinction between ''killing'' and ''letting nature take its course.'' It insists on unflinching honesty about a practice that is often shrouded in casuistry in the United States. Moral sentiments, though, have an inertia that sometimes resists the force of moral reasons. Just quote Verhagen's description of the medically induced infant deaths over which he has presided -- ''it's beautiful in a way. . . . It is after they die that you see them relaxed for the first time'' -- and even the most spirited dinner-table debate over moral progress will, for a moment, fall silent.
The author's premise -- i.e., that recoiling from the Groningen protocal, or from the notion that a purported desire to "relieve suffering" excuses or justifies intentional, direct killing of human beings, reflects "moral sentiment", not "moral reasons" -- is, it seems to me, entirely (yet typically) incorrect.
Rick
Thanks very much to Fr. Araujo for his extremely helpful post on Catholic law schools. We've taken up, and returned to, many times here at MOJ the question, "what does it mean to be, and what are the markers of, a meaningfully 'Catholic' law school?" Fr. Araujo's post raises these questions again, and in a very thoughtful way.
He surfaces at least two points that, it seems to me, are clearly correct: First, to say that a law school cares about ethics, or is committed to social justice, or aspires to intellectual rigor is not to say that a law school is "Catholic" (though, obviously, a Catholic law school should be all of these things), but only to say that a law school is not lousy. Second, whether or not a law school is meaningfully "Catholic" depends crucially on its faculty and administrators and their ideals and commitments.
Let me propose, as a complement to Fr. Araujo's post, a few more theses, which I hope others will address and criticize: First, a law school is not meaningfully "Catholic" if Catholic faith and teaching -- broadly understood, of course -- is not present in the school's intellectual and in-class life. (That is, a chapel, a clinic, a Christian Legal Society, a death-penalty-abolition group . . . a Catholic law school should have all of these, but they are not enough, and they do not make a law school "Catholic").
Second, for a law school to be meaningfully "Catholic" there must be an overwhelming embrace by the faculty -- whether Catholic or not, whether religious or not -- of the idea that it matters, and is a good thing, for there to be in the arena of legal education meaningfully "Catholic" law schools. (This does not mean, of course, that the faculty will be entirely, or perhaps even predominantly, Catholic, or that there will be agreement on the particulars of what it means to be a "Catholic" law school; it means that there will be agreement that it matters to be a Catholic law school).
Thoughts?
Rick
