The current issue of The New Republic features two articles that should be of great interest to MOJ readers, and that are also relevant to Michael's post, below, about the expression of opposition by some Calvin College professors to President Bush's policies.
"What God Owes Jefferson," by Alan Wolfe, is a lengthly review essay of two books, Jim Wallis's God's Politics and an edited volume, Taking Faith Seriously. Wallis -- currently the Nation's most prominent left-leaning evangelical Christian -- is also the focus of Michelle Cottle's piece, "Prayer Center."
Early on in the essay, Wolfe writes:
Once confined to the margins of American politics, the religious right seems to be everywhere these days, rallying to the cause of Terri Schiavo or lobbying intently for conservative judges. No wonder that activists on the left of the political spectrum find themselves filled with wonder. Surely, they believe, it ought to be possible to remind Americans that Jesus was a man of compassion who turned swords into plowshares. On theological grounds alone, the left's case to rally God to its side ought to be stronger than the right's. "It's time to take back faith in the public square," writes Jim Wallis, America's leading evangelist for progressive causes. In the presidential campaign last year, Howard Dean asserted that he belonged to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Jim Wallis insists that he belongs to the Christian wing of Christianity.
Sigh. In my view, that "Jesus was a man of compassion" does nothing to support the claim that "on theological grounds alone, the left's case to rally God to its side ought to be stronger than the right's." That is, it does nothing to support this claim unless one proceeds from the (I think) debatable premises that (a) "the left", but not "the right", embraces "compassionate" policies, and (b) that there is nothing else in Christianity that might be relevant to the challenge of "choosing sides", besides a particular notion of "compassion" and what it requires. Of course Jesus was, and called us to be, "compassionate"; of course this call is relevant to politics, and of course this call will likely make it hard for committed Christians to be entirely at home in today's Republican (or Democratic) Party. But the politically relevant "theological grounds" supplied by Christianity are considerably more complicated than a bare injunction, "be compassionate". (And, the content of the injunction "be compassionate", is also considerably more complicated than "support Professor Wolfe's slate of public-welfare programs").
There's a lot more to the essay, and I'd welcome others' reactions. I should say, I agree entirely with a claim that Wolfe makes later, namely, that "separation of church and state" and "free exercise" are ideas that are good for religion, including "conservative" religion. (Wolfe writes, for example: "Of all liberal society's great innovations, none has been more important to the rise of conservative religion than the commitment to free exercise embodied in one of the First Amendment's two clauses."). Wolfe is wrong, though, to direct his complaints against a straw-man "religious right", who (Wolfe thinks) rejects these "liberal ideas." With a few marginal exceptions, "conservative" Christians in America do not reject the "separation of church and state", properly understood, and they agree completely with Wolfe that the autonomy and freedom of the church from state control and manipulation is essential to religious freedom. They simply believe (reasonably) that the content of the separation norm has been distorted and misshaped, into a norm of established secularism and enforced privatization of religion. There is, in my view, nothing particularly "liberal" about these distortions.
Wolfe writes, approvingly, that -- from the beginning -- "American religion, banned from the state, infused the culture. The more it was kept out of politics, the deeper would be its reach into every other area of life." As has been observed many, many times on this blog, though, "politics" is part of "culture", and to exclude religion from the "state" is not, and should not be, to exclude it from "politics." To be sure, as Wolfe cautions, it is a dangerous and bad thing for religion to be "politicized," but this does not mean it should be "privatized."
Well, the Cottle essay is well worth reading, too . . . but this post is already too long.
Rick
Steffen Johnson makes a compelling case for ending the practice of filibustering judicial nominees in his op-ed, How Filibusters Drain Quality. Here is a sample:
"Beyond the issue of who controls the presidency or the Senate, filibustering judges is plainly a bad idea. It enables the minority party to blackball any nominee with any record of distinction, since any nominee worth his or her salt will have offended one or another interest group in the course of prior government or academic service. This means the courts will be filled with undistinguished, inoffensive "moderates" rather than a diverse group of the most talented judges from both parties."
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, May 18, 2005:
President Bush to Face Widespread Faculty Dissent When He Speaks at Evangelical College on Saturday
By THOMAS BARTLETT
More than 100 professors at Calvin College, in Michigan, have signed a
letter criticizing the policies of President Bush, who is scheduled to
speak at the evangelical Christian institution's spring commencement on
Saturday.
The letter, which will be published as an advertisement in The Grand Rapids Press
on Saturday, says that the professors "see conflicts between our
understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the
policies of your administration." It calls the war in Iraq "unjust and
unjustified" and argues that President Bush's policies "favor the
wealthy of our society and burden the poor."
A spokesman for the college said on Tuesday that the letter was
proof of a lively intellectual climate at Calvin. "I would have been
disappointed if there hadn't been dissent on this issue," said Phil de
Haan, the spokesman. He noted that the college has 300 faculty members,
so about one-third of the professors actually signed the letter.
"I think the majority of people on campus are excited about the president's visit," he said.
Among those who conceived and circulated the letter was David
Crump, a professor of religion at Calvin. "We wanted to object to some
specific policies but also to object to the way that the language of
orthodox evangelical Christianity has been hijacked by the religious
right and its close association with this administration," he said.
Mr. Crump said he knew of no plans for demonstrations during President Bush's visit.
An Open Letter to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush
On May 21, 2005, you will give the commencement address at
Calvin College. We, the undersigned, respect your office, and we join
the college in welcoming you to our campus. Like you, we recognize the
importance of religious commitment in American political life. We seek
open and honest dialogue about the Christian faith and how it is best
expressed in the political sphere. While recognizing God as sovereign
over individuals and institutions alike, we understand that no single
political position should be identified with God's will, and we are
conscious that this applies to our own views as well as those of
others. At the same time we see conflicts between our understanding of
what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your
administration.
As Christians we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate
war only as a last resort. We believe your administration has launched
an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq.
As Christians we are called to lift up the hungry and
impoverished. We believe your administration has taken actions that
favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor.
As Christians we are called to actions characterized by love,
gentleness, and concern for the most vulnerable among us. We believe
your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has
often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees.
As Christians we are called to be caretakers of God's good
creation. We believe your environmental policies have harmed creation
and have not promoted long-term stewardship of our natural environment.
Our passion for these matters arises out of the Christian faith
that we share with you. We ask you, Mr. President, to re-examine your
policies in light of our God-given duty to pursue justice with mercy,
and we pray for wisdom for you and all world leaders.
Concerned faculty, staff, and emeriti of Calvin College
_______________
Michael P.
Ave Maria School of Law will host the Fifteenth Annual Conference of University Faculty for Life on June 3-5, 2005 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The conference is supported in part by a generous grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
The conference features over 25 talks on a diverse range of issues relating to life issues. The conference features two plenary talks. One plenary will be by John Keown. Keown, who holds the Rose F. Kennedy Chair in Christian Ethics in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and is one of the leading scholars in the world on the legal and moral aspects of euthanasia, will give a lecture entitled "Euthanasia in Europe." The second plenary will be by Richard Wilkins. Wilkins, who is Professor of Law and Managing Director of The World Family Policy Center at Brigham Young University, will speak on "International Law: A Threat to the Right to Life?" The banquet speaker will be Father Thomas King SJ from Georgetown University.
Other notable sessions include a panel discussion on the Terri Schiavo case. That discussion will include presentations by Father Rob Johansen who has written extensively about the Schiavo case, Professor Mark Latkovic from Sacred Heart Major Seminary, and Professor Richard Myers who is a Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law and the President of University Faculty for Life. The conference will also include a talk by Clarke Forsythe, who is the Director of Americans United for Life Project in Law and Bioethics, and a talk by Father John Conley SJ on the thought of Pope Benedict XVI.
University Faculty for Life (UFL) was founded in 1989 to promote research, dialogue, and publication among faculty members who respect the value of human life from conception to natural death. UFL members are drawn from a variety of disciplines, including law, philosophy, mathematics, nursing, theology, history, political science, literature, and psychology.
The conference schedule and a registration form are available on the UFL website, here.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Larry Solum has posted a link to, and some thoughts on, a paper of mine, which was recently posted on SSRN, called "Taking Pierce Seriously: The Family, Religious Education, and Harm to Children." I wrote:
The Supreme Court famously proclaimed, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, that parents enjoy a fundamental right to direct and control the education of their children, but do we really accept, or even understand, the premises, foundations, and implications of this pronouncement? Recent calls for a thicker liberalism and for the harnessing of education to create truly liberal citizens make it all the more important that we take Pierce seriously. And if we do, it is suggested that state functionaries, guided and restrained by a proper humility about their authority and competence, should override parents' educational decisions only to prevent harm, carefully defined, to a child. The problem is, how do we define harm. This paper proposes that the content of religious instruction, traditions, or beliefs should not be viewed as harmful in the sense necessary to justify government second-guessing or supervention of parents' decisions about such instruction. In a free society, one that values religious freedom, the state should not entertain, let alone enforce, a belief that children would be better off without religious faith.
Solum comments:
I was intrigued by Garnett's treatment of the autonomy argument--which he conflates with the notion of "the best interests of the child." Of course, there is a sense in which this conflation is exactly right--the interest of persons in their own autonomy is their "best interest" in a sense, but the terminology is also misleading. Following Rawls we might say that the relevant interest is the interest of persons in developing the two moral powers: "a capacity for a sense of justice and for a conception of the good." (Political Liberalism, p. 19):
A sense of justice is "the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice which characterizes the fair terms of cooperation." This sense expresses "a willingness...to act in relation to others on terms that they also can publicly endorse" Id.
A conception of the good includes "a conception of what is valuable in human life." Normally it consists "of a more or less determinate scheme of final ends, that is, ends [goals] that we want to realize for their own sake, as well as attachments to other persons and loyalties to various groups and associations." (PL 19) Rawls says that we also "connect such a conception with a view of our relation to the world...by reference to which the value and significance of our ends and attachments are understood" (Political Liberalism, pp. 19-20)
In particular, when we protect the interest of children in developing the first moral power, we aim to provide persons with the capacity to judge what is in their own best interests and not to impose some particular conception of what particular form of life or conception of the good would constitute those "best interests."
Rick
Rick has pointed out some problems with the interesting article by Mark Lilla in Sunday's N.Y. Times Magazine called "Church Meets State." A couple of other criticisms occurred to me. The first is that Professor Lilla, like so many others, sees the American founding as a process by which the Enlightenment thinkers managed the unruly anti-liberal religious sects. (The framers bet, he writes, "that entering the public square would liberalize [religious sects] doctrinally, that they would become less credulous and dogmatic, more sober and rational.") The next step, of course, is to assume that controlling or managing those sects is also the major task for today. But this overlooks another side to the founding, one in which the sects themselves played a leading role. On the very issue of religious liberty that is of such concern to Lilla, there is now a strong historical record (assembled by Michael McConnell, William McLoughlin, and others) that it was the fervent and "narrow" evangelical sects that provided the biggest push for religious liberty and disestablishment in the years 1776-1833; meanwhile, a lot of more "enlightened" thinkers supported retaining established churches of a mild, rationalistic variety. If "enlightened" thought often sought to retain established churches, then just maybe it should not be the sole guide to the meaning of the American "liberal democratic order" that swept those churches away. Maybe the fervent believers also have something central to tell us about the meaning of the American experiment.
Second, although Professor Lilla points out incisively how and why liberal religion has declined and given way to fervent evangelical religion, he seems ultimately to regard this as a wholly dangerous thing. (That's why, he says, citizens need to be "more viligant about policing the public square" these days.) But the fervent evangelical spirit that has given us anti-evolution crusades has also given us movements such as abolitionism -- which was, indeed, a direct outgrowth of one of the Great Awakenings whose "ecstatic" and "credulous" spirit Professor Lilla warns about. Take also the civil rights movement, the touchstone for all modern social-justice efforts. It owed most of its energy to the fervor of an "ecstatic" and pretty "literalistic" African-American church; and much of Martin Luther King's religious depth and perseverance came from his embrace of some very un-rationalistic, un-Enlightenment Christian concepts like the pervasiveness of human sin and the high costs that must be paid for redemption. (These elements in the civil rights movement are documented in a great recent book by David Chappell called Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow.)
My former law faculty colleague, David Smolin, has written:
It is very nice for academics to talk about the dangers of making absolutist, divisive, sectarian religious statements in the political arena, but in fact those sorts of statements are necessary if people are going to be motivated to pay the cost of doing what is right, whether the subject is race, the poor, the environment, or abortion. The problem is not merely determining or debating the "right" course of action, but more broadly one of fighting the constant temptation to avoid paying the costs associated with doing what is right.
I think that the political Religious Right has many faults, including overlooking many issues of common good, such as the environment and social concern for the poor, that should be priorities in a Christian social ethic. But maybe some of the fervor that the Religious Right brings to an issue like abortion is, as in the other cases above, quite valuable in countering the inertia that keeps us from addressing that moral problem.
Tom B.
Thanks to Larry Solum, here is a link to an interesting looking paper by Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, called "Should Coercive Interrogation be Legal?" Here is the SSRN abstract:
Most academics who have written on coercive interrogation believe that its use is justified in extreme or catastrophic scenarios but that nonetheless it should be illegal. They argue that formal illegality will not prevent justified use of coercive interrogation because government agents will be willing to risk criminal liability and are likely to be pardoned, acquitted, or otherwise forgiven if their behavior is morally justified. This outlaw and forgive approach to coercive interrogation is supposed to prevent coercive interrogation from being applied in inappropriate settings, to be symbolically important, and nonetheless to permit justified coercive interrogation. We argue that the outlaw and forgive approach rests on questionable premises. If coercive interrogation is ever justified, and the benefits outweigh the risks of error and unintended consequences, it should be legal, albeit strictly regulated. The standard institutional justifications for outlaw and forgive - rules/standards problems, slippery slopes, and symbolism - are unpersuasive.
I'd welcome others' reactions. One quick thought that occurs to me: It is not actually the case, is it, that the "outlaw and forgive" approach necessarily reflects a view that coercive interrogation is "justified" in hard cases? Perhaps it reflects the different view that coercive interrogation in usch cases might be "excused"? I realize that "necessity" is generally regarded as a "justification" defense, but maybe that's not what is really going on?
Rick
