Wednesday, December 1, 2010
More on the Church and "political" activity
Rob linked here to his very helpful and thoughtful Commonweal piece about the charge that Arbp. Nienstedt acted in a "political" (and, so, inappropriate) manner by opposing publicly same-sex marriage in the recent election. For what it's worth, I addressed similar questions in this USA Today op-ed, a few years ago:
Does politics have a place in the pulpit? Should places of worship be homes for engaged and unsettling activism — or tranquil havens, sealed off from the rough-and-tumble of today's bitter partisan debates? These questions are both cutting-edge and perennial. . . .
For starters, and with all due respect to Jefferson, the First Amendment does not constrain — in fact, it protects — "political" preaching and faith-filled activism. Yes, our Constitution preserves a healthy separation between the institutions of religion and government. This wise arrangement protects individual freedom and civil society by preventing the state from directing, co-opting or controlling the church. It imposes no limits, though, on conversations among religious believers — whether on Sunday morning, around the water cooler, or at the dinner table — about the implications of their faith for the controversies of the day. Our First Amendment protects religious freedom, individual conscience and church independence from government interference; it requires neither a faith-free public square nor politics-free sermons.
Even if the Constitution does not presume to tell ministers to stick to parables, is it bad citizenship, or just plain bad manners, for ministers to confuse our "public" role as citizens and voters with our supposedly "private" religious lives and beliefs? No. Religious faith makes claims, for better or worse, that push the believer inexorably toward charitable and conscientious engagement in "public life." To the extent that religion purports to provide insight into human nature and relations, it necessarily speaks to politics. We best respect each other through honest dialogue by making arguments that reflect our beliefs, not by censoring ourselves or insisting that religious believers translate their commitments into focus-group jargon or cost-benefit analysis. . . .
Of course, there are good reasons — religious reasons — for clergy to be cautious and prudent when addressing campaigns, issues and candidates.
Reasonable people with shared religious commitments still can disagree about many, even most, policy and political matters. It compromises religion to not only confine its messages to the Sabbath but also to pretend that it speaks clearly to every policy question. A hasty endorsement, or a clumsy or uncharitable political charge, has no place in a house of worship or during a time of prayer — not because religion does not speak to politics, but because it is about more, and is more important, than politics.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/12/more-on-the-church-and-political-activity.html
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Part of the problem here, if I may say Mr. Garnett, is that your view comes from a place of wide education. I am not trying to flatter you, and turn a clever trick here, but detail how I disagree with you. When you say "politics" you are presuming a tradition of rhetorical engagement that accords with some of the best aspects of Western Culture. In that light, your view makes some sense. Using this tradition as a conceptual horizon, as you are doing for the latest activities of religious figures, seems inexorably connected with a kind of respect for such activity coming from the Ciceronian tradition, which really never died. But, I ask you as a reasonable person, do you think modern politics bears any relationship to these traditional conceptions, which seem to underlie your view?? The last exemplar of this type of rhetoric in our culture, Sen. Byrd of West Virginia is gone. That tradition is over, and so we should not calculate "politics" or religion" in relation to it, as if it were possible actually be involved, 'inexorably in charitable and conscientious engagement in 'public life'". This does not mean that ethics ought to be banished from the public square -- God forbid, things would be even worse! -- but that the ethics must address what politics actually is now. Namely, the manipulation of media to promote a viewpoint. In this regard what maters ethically is whether this manipulation has a connection to reality or not. If not then it is related to another facet of modern political orders, propaganda.
My objection to the activities of the Catholic Church vis-a-vis politics in this country is not that they are political. Rather that they are employing the dark end of that engagement. On the issue of same sex marriage they engaged in the trafficking of some of the worst stereotypes of gay citizens, which nobody really believed. But because propaganda is quite technically useful for stimulating fear preconsciously, they had some limited success. But in fact because of their success their engagement in the low end of media manipulation laid bare their habitual tactics. Now the organizations that front for them, like the truly heinous American Principles Project, are being recognized by organizations that monitor purely prejudicial activities politically, as being engaged precisely in just this sort of thing. They want to fall back on defense of politics and religion generally, again presuming a now vanished noble tradition. The chutzpah of these folks! -- as if they were remotely engaged in such a thing!! They are rank media manipulators, and their tiny successes have revealed their tactics all too well. Their stories about gay people are no different than all the crazy stories that circulate regularly in Middle East about all sorts of things. One should always keep in mind that someone has to start such things. The funny thing is that in the Middle East it is often hard to come up with etiologies for these media diseases. Here, these people have been so explicit with their "Declarations" that we know exactly where to look for the genesis of this very low behavior.