Two days ago, a group of 80 evangelical leaders (including Jim Wallis, Os Guinness, Richard Mouw, and Dallas Willard) released "An Evangelical Manifesto." The document's two purposes are "first to address the confusions and corruptions that attend the term evangelical in the United States and much of the Western world today, and second to clarify where we stand on issues that have caused consternation over Evangelicals in public life." It is well worth reading. It is also noteworthy that more polarizing figures such as James Dobson and Richard Land are not among the signatories. And a spokesperson for Concerned Women for America said the manifesto was "blurring the distinctions between liberal and conservative" and confusing Christian voters about the most important issues: abortion and gay marriage. Under this approach, I suppose that even discussing any issues other than abortion and gay marriage as relevant considerations for Christian voters must be written off as "confusing."
Friday, May 9, 2008
Evangelical Manifesto
God and Myanmar
As we ponder Robert Araujo's question about the reponsibility to protect, I have another question. I just read a blog post of a friend of mine recounting a comment from a coworker to the effect that the cyclone that hit Myanmar was God "cleaning things out over there." What is it that prompts people to regard disaster or disease as God's punishment for being bad? We heard some people say it about the tsunami. We heard some people say it about 9/11. And, if you remember back to the early days of the AIDs epedemic, there was no shortage of people proclaiming that AIDS was God's way of punishing homosexuals. It all seems so inconsistent with my understanding of the God who loved us first and unconditionally (the subject of a blog post I coincidentally made earlier today) that I just don't get it.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
The Responsibility to Protect—and Catholic Legal Theory
When His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the United Nations on April 18, he addressed the duty and responsibility to protect peoples—not only from gross violations of human rights but also in situations of humanitarian crises, human or natural. It strikes me that the current situation in Myanmar/Burma may provide a situation in which a difficult and uncooperative government is augmenting the dreadful suffering of the Burmese people who are experiencing the many tragedies of Cyclone Nargis. I am in the process of trying to develop some thoughts about what does Catholic legal theory have to say about the responsibility to protect. I begin with these words of Pope Benedict delivered during his UN address:
Recognition of the unity of the human family, and attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman, today find renewed emphasis in the principle of the responsibility to protect. This has only recently been defined, but it was already present implicitly at the origins of the United Nations, and is now increasingly characteristic of its activity. Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made. If States are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations Charter and in other international instruments. The action of the international community and its institutions, provided that it respects the principles undergirding the international order, should never be interpreted as an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty.
RJA sj
Introduction
I would like to thank Mark Sargent and Rick Garnett for inviting me to join the Mirror of Justice. I have followed the blog for the past few years and appreciate the respectful engagement with often difficult issues. As some of you know, I am particularly interested in how Catholic tradition informs questions related to poverty alleviation and interreligious dialogue. I actually see one as a bridge to the other. I believe that dialogue regarding policy and jurisprudential approaches to poverty (along with other social justice concerns) provides a tremendous opportunity for meaningful interaction with other communities. In my scholarship, I am most interested in dialogue with Islam. My interest in Christian-Muslim dialogue was a pivotal factor in my choice to join the Jesuits many years ago. Although my discernment in formation led me to conclude that I was not called to priesthood, I still feel called to a vocation in dialogue as a legal academic and am deeply grateful for my time in the Society of Jesus. I look forward to many fruitful conversations on the Mirror of Justice.
Russell Powell
Seattle University School of Law
Models of Christian Legal Scholarship
Bill Brewbaker (Alabama) posts what looks to be a very interesting paper, Theory, Identity, Vocation: Three Models of Christian Legal Scholarship. From the abstract:
Recognizably Christian scholarship is becoming more commonplace in the American legal academy, yet little systematic attention has been given to fundamental questions of approach. This article highlights moments of continuity and discontinuity between Christian legal scholarship and its secular counterparts. Contrary to the expectations generated by contemporary political debate, the distinctive contribution of Christian legal scholarship is not primarily to provide ammunition for political programs of the right or the left, but to situate law and human legal practices within a larger story about the world.
The "vocation" model seems particularly interesting:
Finally, a vocation model emphasizes that legal scholarship is one of many human (and not merely Christian) callings, the point of which, as with other such callings, is the glory and enjoyment of God. In order to know what pleases God, the scholar will need to study the Scriptures and theology; he or she will need the church. But the scholar will also need to study God's creation, including not only the world God has made directly, but also those relevant human institutions that, in God's providence, inhabit it. On this view, there is no reason to prescribe a uniform methodology for Christian legal scholars, nor should we necessarily expect widespread agreement among Christians on contestible legal issues.
Tom
Frans de Waal Answers Your Primate Questions
Frans de Waal, as you may know, directs the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University (where I and many other primates teach). If you follow this link, you'll find a host of fascinating comments about everything from nonprocreative sex (it works for our primate cousins, the bonobos) to income inequality (could be the downfall of us human primates). Interesting stuff!
More on Obama and Judges
In reaction to Rick and Rob on Obama, I think that we do not want judges (in constitutional and statutory cases) to carry out "their broader vision of what America should be," but that we do want judges who can understand (or try to understand) "what it's like to be gay, poor, or black" (as well as other characteristics; I do think there's a problem with overly selective sympathy). Sympathy for the real-world conditions of people is a judicial virtue, not because the judge is suppose to enact that sympathy solely or in the face of the law, but because it is often essential to giving meaning to the directives of the law (constitutional or statutory). Interpretation, even an under an originalist analysis, often requires making an analogy (or disanalogy) between the context of the enactment and the context today. For example, could a justice have voted to strike down school segregation in Brown without making some judgment that segregation denied equality to people in an analogous way to the black codes of 1868, and that education had become so pervasive a factor in people's opportunities by 1954 that it was analogous to the rights (property, contracts, etc.) as to which the 1868 framers meant to guarantee equality? Would a justice be able to reach those conclusions, or even address those questions, without trying to imagine "what it [was] like to be black" in segregated societies/schools"?
As another example, I've found that asserting the constitutional right to bring religion into the public square -- a well-grounded right historically, but one whose contours in current situations are not entirely clear -- won't succeed unless judges try to sympathize with the religious believer facing the state: the student who wants to do a religious paper topic in class over a teacher's objection, or the family that wants their religious choice included equally in a school choice program as against the state's teacher's lobby and Blaine Amendment history. Without thinking "what it's like to be a serious religious believer," judges tend to say "I don't see that you're that burdened; you can still practice your religion at church and home."
Tom
Memory and Intelligence
I know this is not really on topic, but I’ve always been interested in the connections between memory and intelligence, perhaps because I’m so absent-minded. And I never like to miss an opportunity to plug a Borges short-story. (Borges is the Simpsons of literary reference, since virtually any topic of conversation can be connected in some way to one of his stories.) This story in USA Today about a woman who can remember every day of her life since age 14 is terrifically interesting, particularly because of the trouble she has with abstract concepts. It calls to mind the Borges story, Funes el memorioso (Funes, the Memorious), about Irineo Funes, a young man who, after a fall from a horse, remembers every detail of everything he experiences. Borges talks about how Funes, who is bed-ridden after his fall, passed the time. On several occasions, he recalled his memories of particular days in the past, a project that, each time, took an entire day. On another occasion, using his powers of memory, he created a numbering system in which every number had a different name (names like “Luis Melian Lanifur” and “Agustin de Vedia”). At the end of the story, Borges ventures some comments on the connections between memory and thought. Describing Funes, he says:
He had effortlessly learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very good at thinking. To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract. In the teeming world of Ireneo Funes, there was nothing but particulars — they were virtually immediate particulars.
The comment about about ignoring is interesting (and additional proof of Borges’s perceptiveness), because the USA Today story talks about another person with a prodigious memory who has no trouble with abstract concepts. The difference between the man with perfect memory who can abstract and the woman who cannot seems to be the control the man has over his memories. The woman describes them as crowding in on her even when she doesn’t want them, while the man talks about his ability to call them up at will. So Borges is correct in suggesting that perfect memory may not be fatal to the ability to generalize and abstract if one has sufficient control over his thoughts to be able to ignore the memories when they’re not useful. In any event, the possibility that a certain degree of forgetting is actually helpful for thinking has always given me some hope.
A Post-Doc Opportunity
[In case some MOJ readers are interested:]
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Christian Ethics and
Public Life
Applications are invited for a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Christian
Ethics and Public Life, tenable from 1 October 2008 or as soon as possible
thereafter. This fixed-term, 5 year position is designed to provide an outstanding academic at an
early stage in their career with opportunities for research, teaching, and
collaborative work. The initial starting salary for this post is fixed due
to the nature of the funding, but annual increments and national pay awards
will be payable.
The successful candidate will hold a doctorate in Christian ethics/moral theology or in a related field. He or she will also show evidence of potential for producing distinguished research in the field of Christian theology, ethics, and public life; the ability to bring advanced research projects to fruition; the ability to teach in Christian ethics/moral theology to a high standard; and competence to engage in collaborative work.
Further particulars, including details of how to apply, are
available from the Faculty Board Secretary, The Theology Faculty Centre, 41 St
Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LW.
E-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: +44 (0)1865 270791 The closing date
for applications is 2 June 2008.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The Indiana Primary and the Catholic Vote
Given that Senator Hillary Clinton was coming off the best two weeks of her campaign, while Senator Barack Obama was experiencing the worst two weeks of his campaign, Clinton’s slender victory in Indiana and landslide loss in North Carolina is nearly unadulturated bad news for her presidential aspirations. Sure it could have be a little worse. She actually could have lost Indiana. And, for a while last night around midnight, that possibility was looming large. Lake County, Indiana, where Obama was expected to do well (especially in Gary), came under the national spotlight for withholding reporting of votes for many hours after the polls closed. A win in Indiana may allow her to limp on for another week or two. But I don’t know of anyone outside of the Clinton campaign who still thinks she can find a way to the nomination.
As is often the case in politics, the significance of last night’s results depends in good part on how the expectations game was played. Only a month ago, before Pennsylvania and the return of Jeremiah Wright, Obama was expected to win North Carolina by 20 or more points and was thought to be at least even with Clinton in his neighboring state of Indiana. Thus, from that previous point of expectations, last night’s outcomes were unremarkable. But expectations after Pennsylvania and with the Wright controversy had changed dramatically, making anything less than a very good night for Clinton the equivalent of a great loss in the expectations game. And rewinding the campaign back a month in terms of expectations and comparative momentum would hardly benefit Clinton. Back then, she was on the ropes, before Pennsylvania breathed new life into her campaign — temporarily it now appears.
But while last night’s close contest in Indiana and lopsided result in North Carolina reflect a significant shift in the ebb and flow between the two candidates, a closer look at the results (at least in Indiana) suggests a remarkable and continuing stability in the general trends of the Democratic primary vote by demographic groups. The more things change in the prospects of the two candidates, the more they stay the same in terms of how different segments of the electorate have responded to their candidacies.
In series of posts over the past couple of months (here, here, and here), I’ve charted the Catholic vote in the Democratic primaries, documenting the overwhelming advantage that Clinton has enjoyed (and disadvantage that Obama has suffered) among Catholic voters. In the two states that held elections yesterday, Catholics were a smaller segment of the primary electorate, as compared with such earlier primary states as Rhode Island (55 percent), Massachusetts (45 percent), Pennsylvania (36 percent), California (34 percent), and even Ohio (23 percent).
North Carolina has a very small Catholic population, such that Catholics were only about 8 percent of Democratic primary voters yesterday. Thus, North Carolina doesn’t fit the same profile as those previous primary states with substantial Catholic populations and venerable Catholic communities, among which Senator Clinton has compiled huge margins. Clinton did win the overall Catholic vote in North Carolina, even while the state was going by a large margin for Senator Obama, but only by 51-48 percent. Clinton’s margin among white Catholics climbed up to 58-41, which is a bit closer to the larger Catholic margins experienced elsewhere.
By contrast, the basic Catholic voting pattern remained in place in Indiana, although it was somewhat less pronounced than in most previous contests. In Indiana, Catholics accounted for 19 percent of Democratic primary voters. Clinton carried that Catholic vote by a 22 point margin (61-39 percent). While that is a comfortable victory by any estimation, it does fall short of the more than two-to-one and even close to three-to-one rout of Obama among Catholic voters that we have seen in prior state primary votes.
What might account for the reduced Clinton margin among Catholic voters in Indiana, as compared with such nearby states as Pennsylvania and Ohio? At least three possibilities suggest themselves.
● First, perhaps Obama’s free fall among Catholic voters has bottomed-out. If this is true, while Obama still faces an up-hill climb to secure Catholic votes, the incline may not be quite as steep as previously.
● Second, because Indiana lies in Illinois Senator Obama’s backyard, the demographic results in the Indiana primary may be anomalous. After all, for purposes of divining national trends, no one places much weight on how Obama fared among various demographic groups in his home state Illinois primary (where he still lost the Catholic vote to Clinton, but by a closer 50-48 margin).
● Third, the overall Indiana Catholic vote results may indicate a unique “South Bend Effect.” In South Bend, home of the nation’s leading Catholic university, Notre Dame, the unusual mix of demographics created interesting and conflicting tugs and pushes with respect to the Obama and Clinton candidacies. Catholics generally have moved toward Clinton in big numbers (and, in addition, South Bend has a larger blue-collar population, another pro-Clinton constituency, than the average college town). By contrast, affluent white liberals and young people, more prevalent of course in university communities, have gone heavily for Obama in Democratic primary votes. Yesterday, Obama did win St. Joseph County, in which South Bend is the county seat, but by the modest margin of 53-47 percent. By comparison, Obama won Monroe County, where the University of Indiana-Bloomington is located, by 65-35 percent. We would hypothesize that Obama’s margin among non-Catholics in the South Bend area was substantially larger than 53-47 (observing also that almost a quarter of South Bend’s population is African-American, a constituency that has voted for Obama by nearly 90 percent). Thus, Obama probably lost the Catholic vote even in St. Joseph County. But the margin of defeat for Obama among Catholics in South Bend-St. Joseph County presumably was smaller and thus may have had the effect of diluting the heavier tilt toward Clinton among Catholic primary voters elsewhere in Indiana. Our friends at Notre Dame may have a better sense of the reality on the ground there yesterday. If there was a “South Bend Effect” at play yesterday in Indiana, it is not something likely to be replicated elsewhere in the country.
Whatever the reason, and it may well be a combination of all three of these theories and others, losing the Catholic vote in Indiana by only 22 points, rather than 30 or 40 points as elsewhere, should hardly be grounds for celebration in the Obama camp.
Whether the few remaining primary contests will shed any further light on our subject — by way of either confirming the continued and substantial Catholic deficit for Obama or showing that the gap may be narrowing — is hard to say, but I think doubtful.
West Virginia holds its primary next week on May 13, but it is among the ten states with the lowest levels of Catholic adherents (only about 6 percent).
The populations of Kentucky and Oregon, which hold their primaries on May 20, are only about ten percent Catholic. Still, given that Catholics traditionally have leaned Democratic and also tend to turn out to vote more reliably than most other groups, the Catholic portion of the primary vote may be somewhat higher. Oregon offers an interesting political case for other reasons, as those of us who do empirical work on religious demographics recognize it as one of the most secular states in the union (and, not incidentally and also consistently with other voting trends during this primary season, therefore looks to be a lock for Obama).
Looking ahead to June 3, Montana (with just under 20 percent) and South Dakota (with nearly 25 percent) have robust Catholic populations, which again may prove to be an even higher proportion of the Democratic primary voting electorate. And, of course, there is Puerto Rico on June 3 as well, which is overwhelmingly Catholic (85 percent), but also overwhelming Latino, a community that has not warmed to Obama.
But it now is hard to see a fully-fueld Democratic race racing along all the way to June 3. First, Senator Clinton may recognize the realities of the situation and drop out. Second, the super-delegates may shift to Obama in sufficient numbers to give him the majority of the delegates, thus ending any remaining suspense. Or, third, Clinton may stay in the race and plug along, but receive increasingly less attention from either pundits or voters — much as was the case with Governor Mike Huckabee, who stubbornly refused to withdraw from the GOP contest, even though it was clear that Senator John McCain was too far ahead to be denied the Republican nomination.
So, at least until Clinton pulls the plug on her campaign, we’re on to West Virginia next week. But it’s hard to believe a meaningful contest will carry on much beyond that.
Greg Sisk
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