My menial administrative duties have kept me from responding to the many interesting posts in the last few weeks re Catholic legal education, Rick Santorum and now the notion of "liberal" evangelicism. I haven't been entirely consumed by fund-raising and brow-beating my staff, however: I managed to finish the paper I wrote for the St Tommy conference on prolife progressivism (sorry about the delay, Tom Berg!). In the sidebar under my name is the article under the title "The Coherence and Importance of Prolife Progressivism." Much of it is my usual Seamless Garment stuff with which MOJ readers are familiar. I do try to add something new, however, on the question of whether PLP or the consistent ethic of life or whatever you want to call it can be culturally and politically important after secular liberalism has morphed from its traditional preoccupation with economic and social justice (the "beloved community")to a preoccupation with sexuality and autonomy, and religion in the public square has become identified almost exclusively with the religious right and its preoccupations with abortion, sexuality and "family values". Can there be a religiously inspired mass democratic movement that bridges this gap with a capacious conception of life that recognizes both the tragedy of abortion and the tragedy of poverty? I suggest that "liberal" movements need religious inspiration (and often have had it). I suggest further that Catholic social justice types need to share in the evangelical Great Awakening of the early 21st century by joining hands with liberal evangelicals such as Jim Wallis. So read the article... I will try to blog later or the NYT Santorum piece, which raises some ointersting related pieces.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Evangelicals, Pro-Life Progressivism and More
The Biography of a Bad Statistic
William & Mary law prof Eric Chason sent me this link debunking the claim (previously discussed on MoJ) that abortions have increased under George W. Bush's presidency.
Rob
More on Gambling
Thanks to the PPK Blog and to St. Thomas prof Bob Kennedy for responding to my question on gambling by directing me to the Catechism:
2413 Games of chance (card games, etc.) or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice. They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others. The passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement. Unfair wagers and cheating at games constitute grave matter, unless the damage inflicted is so slight that the one who suffers it cannot reasonably consider it significant.
This standard sheds limited light on the gambling phenomenon in modern society. Is gambling only problematic when it becomes addictive, or when it directly undermines the financial stability of an individual or his immediate family? For example, does the emerging centrality of Las Vegas to the American cultural experience pose any concerns, even if most of the pilgrims are firmly middle class? I confess to enjoying myself thoroughly at poker night during law school, but I was taken aback a few months back when my fourth-grade nephew sat me down to teach me the intricacies of "Texas Hold 'Em." It seems to me that gambling's capture of mainstream America represents a key culture war front for Catholic social thought that has been woefully undermanned, especially in comparison to the hot button sex issues.
(But note that it has not been completely unmanned, of course, as I found this interesting letter from the Massachusetts Catholic Conference opposing proposals to expand gambling there. Noting the dangers of addictive gambling and the socioeconomic impact, the writer notes in passing the "unfortunate" reliance of many Catholic organizations on games of chance.)
Rob
EVANGELICALS, LIBERALS, AND POVERTY
In his column in today's New York Times, conservative pundit David Brooks has some interesting things to say. MOJ readers may be interested. To read the whole piece, click here. An excerpt follows:
A Natural Alliance
[W]e can have a culture war in this country, or we can have a war on poverty, but we can't have both. That is to say, liberals and conservatives can go on bashing each other for being godless hedonists and primitive theocrats, or they can set those differences off to one side and work together to help the needy.
The natural alliance for antipoverty measures at home and abroad is between liberals and evangelical Christians. These are the only two groups that are really hyped up about these problems and willing to devote time and money to ameliorating them. If liberals and evangelicals don't get together on antipoverty measures, then there will be no majority for them and they won't get done.
Now, you might be thinking, fat chance. And I say to you: All around me I see bonds being formed.
I recently went to a U2 concert in Philadelphia with a group of evangelicals who have been working with Bono to fight AIDS and poverty in Africa. A few years ago, U2 took a tour of the heartland, stopping off at places like Wheaton College and the megachurch at Willow Creek to urge evangelicals to get involved in Africa. They've responded with alacrity, and now Bono, who is a serious if nonsectarian Christian, is at the nexus of a vast alliance between socially conservative evangelicals and socially liberal N.G.O.'s.
Today I'll be at a panel discussion on a proposed antipoverty bill called the Aspire Act, which is co-sponsored in the Senate by social conservatives like Rick Santorum and social liberals like Jon Corzine.
And when I look at the evangelical community, I see a community in the midst of a transformation - branching out beyond the traditional issues of abortion and gay marriage, and getting more involved in programs to help the needy. I see Rick Warren, who through his new Peace initiative is sending thousands of people to Rwanda and other African nations to fight poverty and disease. I see Chuck Colson deeply involved in Sudan. I see Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals drawing up a service agenda that goes way beyond the normal turf of Christian conservatives.
I see evangelicals who are more and more influenced by Catholic social teaching, with its emphasis on good works. I see the historical rift healing between those who emphasized personal and social morality. Most of all, I see a new sort of evangelical leader emerging.
Millions of evangelicals are embarrassed by the people held up by the news media as their spokesmen. Millions of evangelicals feel less represented by the culture war-centered parachurch organizations, and better represented by congregational pastors, who have a broader range of interests and more passion for mobilizing volunteers to perform service. Millions of evangelicals want leaders who live the faith by serving the poor.
Serious differences over life issues are not going to go away. But
more liberals and evangelicals are realizing that you don't have to
convert people; sometimes you can just work with them. The world is
suddenly crowded with people like Rick Warren and Bono who are trying
to step out of the logic of the culture war so they can accomplish more
in the poverty war.
_______________
mp
PRESIDENT BUSH: PETITIONER OR PROPHET?
Petitioner or Prophet?
-- David Domke and Kevin Coe
President Bush delivered his first 2005 commencement address on May 21 at Calvin College, a small evangelical Christian school in western Michigan. This address marked the latest attempt by the Republican Party to use talk about God for political gain.
For some time now there has been heated debate about whether President Bush is different from other presidents in his wielding of religious rhetoric. He is. What sets Bush apart is both how much he talks about God and what he says when he does so.
In his Inaugural and State of the Union addresses earlier this year, Bush referenced God eleven times. This came on the heels of twenty-four invocations of God in his first-term Inaugural and State of the Union addresses. No president since Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 has mentioned God so often in these high-state settings.
The president nearest Bush's average of 5.8 references per each of these addresses was Ronald Reagan, who averaged 5.3 references in his comparable speeches. No one else has come close. Jimmy Carter, widely considered to be as pious as they come among U.S. presidents, only mentioned God twice in four addresses. Other also-rans in total God talk were wartime presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson at 1.8 and 1.5 references per address, respectively.
Bush also talks about God differently than have most other modern presidents. Presidents since Roosevelt have commonly spoken as petitioners to God, seeking blessing, favor, and guidance. The current president has adopted a position approaching that of a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world. Among modern presidents, only Reagan has spoken in a similar manner -- and he did so far less frequently than has Bush. This change in rhetoric from the White House is made all the more apparent by considering how presidents have historically spoken about God and the values of freedom and liberty, two ideas central to American identity.
For example, in 1941, Roosevelt, in a famous address delineating four essential freedoms threatened by fascism, said: "This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God." Similarly, John F. Kennedy, in 1962, during the height of the Cold War, said: "[N]o nation has ever been so ready to seize the burden and the glory of freedom. And in this high endeavor, may God watch over the United States of America."
Contrast these statements, in which presidents requested divine guidance, with Bush's claim in 2003 that "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." He has made similar statements a number of times, across differing contexts of national addresses, presidential campaign debates, and press conferences. These are not requests for divine favor; they are declarations of divine wishes.
Such certainty about God's will is troubling when found in a president and administration not known for kindly brooking dissent. This makes it particularly noteworthy that Bush encountered something in his visit to Calvin College that he has rarely faced as president: vocal and public criticism from other Christians, many of them evangelicals.
More than 800 faculty, alumni, students, and friends of the college signed a letter published by the Grand Rapids Press, decrying Bush administration policies. The letter included these words: "By their deeds ye shall know them, says the Bible. Your deeds, Mr. President -- neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the environment, and misleading the country into war -- do not exemplify the faith we live by." Another letter expressing similar sentiments was signed by one-third of Calvin's faculty, while dozens of graduating seniors wore stickers on their caps and gowns that read, "God is not a Democrat or a Republican."
Such courageous words prompt the hope that, in these challenging times, politicians who are quick to speak about God might also learn to listen.
David Domke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, and is the author of God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press. Kevin Coe is a doctoral student in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Herzog on the Solomon Amendment case
Over at Left2Right, Don Herzog has these thoughts on the Solomon Amendment litigation. Here's the heart of his argument that the Amendment (which requires law schools that receive federal funding to treat military recruiters like other recruiters, notwithstanding the schools' objections to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy):
I think Congress and DoD were within their constitutional rights every step of the way — until late 2001. (So I'm not buying the bill of goods FAIR sold the third circuit, though I grant that the issues surrounding the spending clause and the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions are tricky.) When the feds said to the law schools, "sorry, no binders in libraries, no interviewing offices across the street, we have to get the identical treatment other employers do," they were insisting on more than their functional interests in being able to interview law students. They were insisting that the law schools no longer symbolically affirm their nondiscrimination policies. Put differently, the feds were saying to the law schools, "you can't say that any more." I think that's the only plausible interpretation of the 2001 move. But we don't have to speculate. Again, DoD told us why they changed the policy: anything less than identical treatment "sends the message that employment in the Armed Forces is less honorable or desirable than employment with other organizations." But may the government tell people, under pain of coercion, "don't say what you want to say; say what we want you to say"? That's a classic loser under first amendment law.
Herzog is right to remind us that, in the First Amendment context, "targeting" and "burdening" by governments are often treated differently. That said, the facts in this case do not require the conclusion that, in fact, when lawmakers enacted the Amendment, "they were insisting on more than their functional interests in being able to interview law students. They were insisting that the law schools no longer symbolically affirm their nondiscrimination policies." This seems a real stretch to me. The effect of the Amendment on (what the law schools characterize as) the law schools' antidiscrimination stance is minimal; no one should think that, say, Yale Law School -- even if it is required to comply with the Amendment is going to have any difficulty promulgating its message. (Now, Herzog's point is that Congress should not have tried to silence the law schools' anti-discrimination message; my point here is that, because it is so clear that the Amendment does not, in fact, silence that message, it is not likely that Congress enacted the Amendment in order to silence the message).
In any event, this seems to me to be the kind of question -- i.e., "is this law about silencing the schools' antidiscrimination messages, or about ensuring equal treatment for recruiters" -- that courts are not going to find any easier to resolve than the "whose interests weigh more" questions that Herzog himself (wisely) thinks should be avoided. In any event, read the whole thing . . .
Rick
UPDATE: I had an e-mail conversation with Professor Herzog, and he emphasizes that his objection is not to the Solomon Amendment itself, but to the government's actions after late 2001. It is in these later actions that Herzog sees pretextual targeting of the schools' anti-discrimination messages.
Cloning research and nationalism
Eugene Volokh has some provocative thoughts about the possible role of "nationalism" in our discussion in the United States about regulating and / or funding so-called "therapeutic" cloning:
Americans like to lead the world, in science, in wealth, in influence. If people start flocking to Korea to get cured, if Koreans start getting the key patents and making billions from exploiting them (perhaps even in the U.S., but certainly in the rest of the world), and if other countries compete with Korea while the U.S. is left behind, will enough Americans really hold the line on their abstract moral principles to sustain an American funding ban? So while America's religious sensibilities may cut in favor of restrictions on therapeutic cloning (or at least restrictions on federally funding it), America's sense of its place in the world will cut against such restrictions.
I fear that Volokh is right.
Rick
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Senator Santorum and the Poor
The story on Senator Rick Santorum in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine is quite interesting. A recurring theme in it is that Santorum makes at least a good-faith effort to bring Catholic faith to bear not only on issues like abortion and homosexuality, but also on government efforts to assist the poor (through funding of private charities). For example, Joe Lieberman is quoted as saying:
''People associate him just with these [sexual] issues. . . . But he is more complex than that. He has a faith-based concern about poverty, and he's prepared to fight for more money than the administration wants to allot.''
The story also cites David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who complains that the Republican Party is concerned "too little with poverty":
[Kuo] considered Santorum the exception. ''He was a singular voice in Republican leadership fighting for antipoverty legislation,'' Kuo said. ''He kept pushing it. I was in meetings when people would start rolling their eyes when he started talking about it. It is very much at odds with the public perception of him. He fought behind the scenes where nobody could see it. His compassion is genuine.''
This is the same Mr. Kuo who explained late last year on Beliefnet how President Bush's promise of "compassionate conservatism" remains "unfulfilled in spirit and in fact" in part because of pervasive "indifference" to the issue in the administration and in the Republican Party (not by the president, but by the people who actually staff the White House, the Congress, and the agencies):
In June 2001, the promised tax incentives for charitable giving were stripped at the last minute from the $1.6 trillion tax cut legislation to make room for the estate-tax repeal that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. The Compassion Capital Fund has received a cumulative total of $100 million during the past four years. And new programs including those for children of prisoners, at-risk youth, and prisoners reentering society have received a little more than $500 million over four years--or approximately $6.3 billion less than the promised $6.8 billion. . . .
In December 2001, for instance, Sen. Daschle approached the Domestic Policy Council with an offer to pass a charity relief bill that contained many of the president's campaign tax incentive policies plus new money for the widely-popular and faith-based-friendly Social Services Block Grant. The White House legislative affairs office rolled their eyes while others on senior staff yawned. We had to leave the offer on the table.
To be sure, Kuo also emphasized that the Democrats' "knee-jerk opposition" to greater funding of religious entities, based on "hackneyed church-state scare rhetoric," has likewise greatly hampered the initiative. "At the end of the day, both parties played to stereotype -- Republicans were indifferent to the poor and the Democrats were allergic to faith."
Let's recognize Sen. Santorum for bringing a Catholic moral vision to bear on other issues in addition to abortion, homosexuality, and embryonic stem cells. I didn't hear much at the time about his push for more anti-poverty money; I suppose that few media outlets find it remunerative to do stories that emphasize non-stereotypical behavior like that. (But let's recognize that the Times, and reporter Michael Sokolove, played the point fairly prominently in Sunday's piece.)
If any of the eye-rolling and yawning White House staffers were Catholics, or Christians more generally -- as I expect many would claim to be -- it's hard to see how they'd square that contempt and indifference with their faith. Funding for private community-based anti-poverty entities (faith-based and secular), especially through block grants to the states, broadly combines the preferential option for the poor and the principle of subsidiarity. Someone who rolls his eyes at the idea, it seems to me, is likely operating on the principle that a libertarian friend of mine articulated: life should be as tough as possible for the poor, to discourage them from staying poor.
Tom B.
Gambling Nation and the Church's Bingo Problem
Sports Illustrated has taken note of the dangers arising from our nation's poker obsession, especially among young people. States have become dependent on lotteries, and casinos dot the landscape. Growing up in an evangelical household where even possessing playing cards was frowned upon, I was always under the impression that Catholics fully embraced gambling given the number of bingo advertisements plastered on local parish halls. In fact, one easy swipe at Catholics was to label them as more concerned with bingo than with spreading the Gospel. I know that times have changed (I think), but I'm not sure whether the Church has staked out an official position on gambling, so I'll ask readers and co-bloggers: What does Catholic legal theory have to say about America's gambling obsession?
Rob
Convicted murderers and lawyers
This story might seem a bit random, but it hits close to home for me. About 15 years ago, one of my first (maybe my first) "letters to the editor" was published, in support of James Hamm, a convicted murderer who served 17 years in prison and has since graduated from the Arizona State University College of Law. I'm open to the possibility that I am excessively discounting some serious concerns that my own bar (Arizona) might have, but I believe that Mr. Hamm -- who did, I assume, an evil thing -- should now be permitted to practice law. (Whether he should win with his 14th Amendment claim is an entirely different matter . . . ).
Rick
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