The Debatable Land

There Probably Isn't A God But That's No Reason To Make A Song And Dance About It...

Rod Dreher asks:

Why are the New Atheists so preachy

Well that's easy: because, on the subject of religion they are crashing bores. More so, in fact, than their religious counterparts. After all, the latter generally confine themselves to arguing that you are wrong (and, of course, damned) whereas Dawkins et al also demand that you acknowledge they are right. Worse still - and I say this as someone with a faith deficit - they insist upon going on and on and on about it. We get it, chaps.

Blair's Appealling Modesty...

I'd have more respect for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation if it had a different, less egotistical, name. (And, if truth be told, if it were led by a different, less sanctimonious, person). To wit, as he told Time last week:

He can, no question, come across as a bit cocksure in the rightness of his judgments. But he swims in deep waters. He is convinced, he told me, that in the rich world, "without spiritual values, there is an emptiness that cannot be filled by material goods and wealth." He understands that faith is what gives meaning to the lives of billions, and he passionately believes that the world would be a better place if people of faith harnessed their talents together in aid of the common good.

Well, how many people really think that "material goods" replace the consolations of "spiritual values"? Precious few. And why does Blair suppose that these "spiritual values" are somehow necessary for a virtuous, decent life and that those of us who don't troop off to church each week are in some sense deficient? On the other hand, it's by no means an original argument to suggest that billions of people find consolation in "spiritual values" precisely because their temporal circumstances are so miserable. (The United States, of course, is, to some extent anyway, the great exception.) Anyway, does Blair really think Britain would be a happier place if more folk attended church each week? And if so, on what does he base this conviction?

Then again, if Blair is right, then we're doomed:

"Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century."

That's something to look forward to, eh?

Department of Religious Stupidity

According to Mitt Romney, Europe is doomed because we're all a bunch of godless pornographers. Yes, really.

But then, here's what the Church of England has been up to, just today.

Exhibit A: Let there be Darkness.

                        LONDON (AFP) - Two senior Church of England bishops called Tuesday for Britons to cut back on carbon, rather than the more traditional chocolate and alcohol, for the Christian period of Lent this year.

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, and Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, have teamed up with aid agency Tearfund to invite the public to take part in a "carbon fast" for the next 40 days.

During Lent, which starts Wednesday and lasts until Easter, Christians are supposed to fast and pray. In the bishops' green drive, those taking part can choose how they reduce their carbon footprint on a daily basis.

"For example, on the first day, people can take out one of their light bulbs and whenever they go to turn that light on, and it doesn't work, they can remember why they are fasting from carbon -- to help the poor of the world.

"At the end of the fast they can replace it with an energy-saving light bulb," Jones -- who is vice-president of Tearfund -- explained.

Other activities include avoiding plastic bags and insulating the house.

Exhibit B: One law for you, one for the rest of us.

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable".

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

In an exclusive interview with BBC correspondent Christopher Landau, ahead of a lecture to lawyers in London later on Monday, Dr Williams argues this relies on Sharia law being better understood. At the moment, he says "sensational reporting of opinion polls" clouds the issue.

He stresses that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".

But Dr Williams says the argument that "there's one law for everybody... I think that's a bit of a danger".

Granted, the CofE has been a daft institution for centuries. But, really, may the lord save us, so to speak, from the pratlings of  prelates.

 

Merry Christmas Mitt...

Of course, one is supposed to despair at this sort of negative campaigning even when, as in this case, it is directed against a candidate one loathes. But, really, I take my hat off to whomever came up with the idea to send South Carolina Republicans fake Christmas cards purporting to be from Mitt Romney.

The text, taken from the first Book of Nephi (part of the Mormon bible) reads: "And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth, and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin and she was exceedingly fair and white".

Best of all, however, is a line from the Mormon "apostle" Orson Pratt, printed on the back of the card that says:
"We have now clearly shown that God the father had a plurality of wives, one or more being eternity by whom he begat our spirits as well as the spirit of Jesus, his first born, and another being upon the earth by whom he begat the tabernacle of Jesus, as his only begotten in this world."

According to CNN a Romney spokesman said: "It is sad and unfortunate that this kind of deception and trickery has been employed. There is absolutely no place for it in American politics."

Of course not. There is nothing wrong with Mitt Romney's deception and fakery however. That's just standard campaign operating procedure.

For more on South Carolina shenanigans, see this entertaining Mike Crowley piece which begins:

Shortly before a Republican presidential primary debate in Columbia, South Carolina, this last May, several conservative activists in the state received mysterious envelopes in the mail. The letters arrived anonymously, each one containing an eight-page document, a typewritten manifesto with a pseudo-academic title: "Mormons in Contemporary American Society: A Politically Dangerous Religion?" The letters depicted Mormonism as based on "hoaxes" and ridiculed the church's founder, Joseph Smith, as a "gold digger turned prophet. " The mailing also provocatively dubbed Smith "the Mohammed of the West." "Like the prophet of Islam," it said, "Smith founded his religion upon prophecies and revelations which commanded him to become a polygamist and warlord. Many centuries apart, these two men became the focal point of large religions that blurred the lines between religion, war, domestic life and politics."

But - gasp! - this is bigotry isn't it? And anti-Mormon prejudice has to be as pernicious as ant-anything else bigotry? Well, yes of course it is. And yet not all religions are created equal. Or rather there's nothing that requires the outsider to treat them with equal seriousness, respect or reverence. Alas, like Scientology, Mormonism has not been around long enough to divest itself of the suspicion that it began life as an enormous confidence trick and, more importantly, it remains the case that Mitt Romney made his faith part of the campaign, not me or any of his other critics.

[Hat=tip: Eve Fairbanks]

A Picture of Putin

Rod has an excellent and rather moving wee tale about how Time magazine ended up with a photograph of Vladimir Putin not an icon to illustrate its decision to hail Putin as its Person of the Year.

It's a reminder that non-believers can find much to admire in believers. Or, to put it another way, religious devotion that is sincere and modest and personal - and thus the exact opposite of how religion has come to be used in the American political arena - is a tough road to follow but one who's virtues ought to be apparent even to those of us who remain unpersuaded by organised religion. I like to think that if I were more religiously-inclined I would oppose the introduction of religion to public life, not because it would be an insult to the agnostic, but because it would tarnish religion itself. Better, I think, for it to remain something between man and his maker than just another kind of snake-oil.

Hitchens on Huckabee

Hitch gets in touch with his inner Mencken today:

However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like himself is unaffected by my expression of an opinion.

But how can you be sure?

Mitt Romney, leader of men, sage of our time:

"I believe, of course, that there are thousands of people who are not of faith who are moral."

[Hat-tip: Mr Larison, who also points out that a) Roger Cohen has a confused view of history and b) sub-editors at the New York Times know no better.]

Religious politicians: kooks or not?

Rod Dreher asks:

I agree that it was stupid that Romney should have had to have given that speech, but American political culture really left him little choice. As silly as that may seem -- as silly as it is -- is Britain really better off? This, from Jeff Jacoby's column on Romney today:

It was on Sunday that the Romney campaign announced the forthcoming speech, saying the candidate would discuss how his "own faith would inform his presidency if he were elected."

On the same day in Britain, as it happened, the BBC broadcast an interview with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said that his Christian faith had been "hugely important" to him during his 10 years in power - but that he had felt constrained to keep it a secret for fear of being thought a crackpot.

"It's difficult to talk about religious faith in our political system," Blair said. "If you are in the American political system . . . you can talk about religious faith and people say, 'Yes, that's fair enough,' and it is something they respond to quite naturally. You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter."

Apparently that was more than Blair was willing to risk. The fear of being thought ridiculous was why his press secretary had snapped, "We don't do God," when an American reporter asked the prime minister about his religious views in 2003. It was why Blair's advisers vehemently protested when he wanted to end a televised speech on the eve of the Iraq war with the words "God bless you." American presidents routinely invoke God's blessing on the nation, but Blair's spinmasters warned him against annoying "people who don't want chaplains pushing stuff down their throats." (Blair told his flacks they were "the most ungodly lot," but bowed to their demand and ended the speech with a limp "thank you.")

Rod concludes:

Personally, I'd vote for a wise and trustworthy atheist over a brother in Christ who struck me as neither. But I'm in the minority here. Still, I prefer a political culture where politicians are expected to make some kind of respectful gesture toward God than one in which they are afraid to do so for fear of being thought a kook.

Well. There are a number of things here. First, from a political view Blair's press handlers were quite right to stop him "doing God". The consequences would have been calamitous. It is not insignificant that when Private Eye was looking for a successor to its splendid Adrian Mole rip-off The Secret Diary of John Major Aged 47 and 3/4 they settled for lampooning Blair as The Vicar of St Albion. Blair always had this trendy vicar side to him (the sort of vicar, incidentally, that I think Rod would despair of) and it is hard to imagine him failing to make the worst of that had he taken to talking about religion in public.

(As for being a kook: well, the Blairs are a little kooky. Cherie believes in crystals; they go in for re-birthing and spiritually cleansing mud-baths and all the rest of it. For a particularly mean  - vicious in fact - compendium of Cherie's eccentricities see this Daily Mail piece subtly headlined Is Cherie Blair Misunderstood or Bonkers?)

More importantly, however, Blair was only the hired help. Who is he to proselytise in this or any fashion? The only non-ordained person in Britain who can invoke God without fear of ridicule is Her Majesty herself. Her Christmas message each year frequently touches on religious themes and always ends by asking that "God bless you". The Queen can get away with this not just because she's the Head of the Church of England, but because when she does talk about religion she does so in a way that is modest and unassuming and, above all, transparently sincere (a trick, frankly, Blair could never have managed). She has the authority to do this, but also the sense to know her limits: Britain has no desire to see a televangelist in Buckingham Palace.

Then again, other politicians have found it possible - even in modern Britain - to talk about faith-based issues without seeming kooky.  People, I think, generally accept Gordon Brown's Church of Scotland background, just as they did Margaret Thatcher's small town Methodism. (Which reminds me of that famous old line about how the British Labour Party owed more to Methodism than Marxism: true.)

But Brown and Thatcher had the good sense to keep their religion private. In part this is simple good manners. Religion, after all, is one of the three subjects you're not supposed to talk about at table. But it's also a recognition that religion is easily counterfeited and never more so than when it enters the public realm. At that point - as, surely, the American political system helps demonstrate - religion easily becomes just another form of advertising. Worse still, it's cheapened by the campaign process and, surely, risks seeming little more than a perjurous character-witness for shameless hucksters peddling the latest miracle cure.

Give me the modesty and sincerity of private worship over that.

PS: Blair's handlers were also right to prevent him signing off a war address with the words "God Bless You". Given that Blair was suspected, however unfairly, of being in George Bush's pocket, the last thing any sensible, non-crazed Prime Minister would do is start importing American religio-political rhetoric on the eve of war. To do so would have risked people assuming that he and Bush had indeed agreed that th ewar was God's wish and all the rest of it.

You mean Jesus lived here in America?

The nice folks at Comedy Central email to say they've put a whole bunch of South Park Does Mormonism cartoons online. Just the ticket to entertain you on a cold winter afternoon.

See the rest of them here

What an embarrassment!

Mitt's Mightiest Fan, K-Lo, on the speech:

I think a non-talking-head American watching the speech might be embarrassed at the thought that any American might be asked to prove he's qualified to be president despite his religion.

Really? What if the candidate were a Scientologist? Or a Jehovah's Witness? Or, shudder, a Muslim? I think most Americans would demand to know more about that candidate's religious views in those circumstances. I think Kathryn would too. Equally, it seems entirely proper that Huckabee's belief in Creationism be weighed when assessing his candidacy.

If you believe religious faith is a necessary condition for the Presidency - and clearly many people, including K-Lo and Romney, do - then that faith must be a matter for discussion. Otherwise it's rather like demanding that the GOP nominee be a conservative but then ruling off-limits any discussion of his type of conservatism.

The liberty to believe anything - so long as you believe

No religious test? No of course not. Who would dream that there could  - let alone should - be such a thing?

Oh, hang on. Here's Mark Levin at The Corner:

Now that Mitt Romney is giving a speech about faith, I'd like to hear speeches from all the candidates on faith. There seems to be general agreement here that a candidate's faith is relevant to how they may govern, so we should encourage the other candidates to do the same. I'd love to hear how Rudy's faith influences his decision-making (if indeed it does) — same with John McCain, Fred Thompson (although he has provided some indication), and so forth. And I'd like to know more about Mike Huckabee's religious beliefs as well. And as for the Democrats, it seems to me they want to have it both ways. On the one hand, they say religion ought not influence their governance (it's a private matter, separation of church and state, etc.). Yet, they can't wait to be seen in public at large religious gatherings where they invoke the name of God while talking about their policy agenda. I actually think Romney's on to something. And he might want to challenge the other candidates to be as forthcoming as he is.

No surprise that a) The Corner is besotted by Brother Mitt today and b) Andrew Stuttaford is the exception to this, bringing reason to the party and a proper English skepticism about this entire absurd spectacle:

Good heavens, Mark (so to speak), America is electing a president, not a bishop. If a candidate is making a big deal about how his or her faith is important to his or her political decision-making (you may remember that, as governor, Mike Huckabee appeared to think that he reported to God rather than the electorate) then it's relevant, otherwise it's not unless, I suppose, 'external' matters, like (as Romney has, effectively and rightly, conceded) the prejudice against Mormonism make it politically necessary. More than that, a candidate's faith, or lack thereof, ought to be a private matter and it should be kept private, if only to spare television viewers an endless series of sacharine and largely meaningless displays of public piety. We have enough of those already.

Quite so.

Romney's Unsurprisingly Terrible Speech

Mitt Romney's "Mormon" speech must have been awful; Chris Matthews loved it. Clearly, I'm not the target audience for this sort of thing so it's perhaps unsurprising that I found it entirely unpersuasive and, in places, quite appalling. Some immediate thoughts...

It was nice of Governor Romney to concede that jihadist terrorists are "worse" than Europeans who don't share the American brand of religion, but really it's insulting for him to even make the comparison. I didn't know we were also the enemy. Even if the terrorists are "infinitely worse" it's significant that the two be bracketed together as examples of the twin perils facing America.

Others are better placed to comment upon the theological aspects of this speech, but Romney's apparent belief that all religions are just the same here does endorse an odd element of the modern day American religious experience: doctrine is immaterial, all that matters is that you believe in God.

"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings.

But at some point this happy-clappy sentiment must curdle into nonsense: when did choosing a religion become no more significant than choosing a football team? At some level protestants have to believe that Roman Catholics are seriously misguided, otherwise there's precious little point in being, well, a protestant. Unless one is of the view that Mormonism involves the hoodwinking of 12 million people who've signed up to follow what was originally a lunatic personality cult, then the true Mormon must, at some level, believe that protestants and catholics are followers of an incomplete faith. If that's not the case, then whats the point of Mormonism?

As for a religious test? Well, please. Romney clearly believes there is one: you could not, reading this speech, be an unbeliever and run for President. Again, Romney's insistence that all faiths be admitted into what he grandiosely termed a "symphony of faith" leaves no room for the skeptic or the unbeliever.

Then there's this, taken from the excerpts released in advance of his speech:

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

This is nonsense on stilts, as even a cursory examination of Saudi Arabia or the Netherlands might reveal. But again, it's interesting to note that Romney must - if there's any logic or consistency to his views - believe that freedom is withering in Europe. Yet it's also the case that many, perhaps most, American conservatives believe that Europeans are far too tolerant of religion - at least when that religion is islam. So which is it?

Then there's this terribly confused passage:

“We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Well, since polls show that an atheist has no chance of becoming President I think we may say that the threat posed by a militant secularism is over-played. But if religion has a place in public life - by which one may fairly mean the affairs of state - it is hard to see quite where Romney plans to divide church from state. Then again, he can't: after all this speech was supposed to convince skeptics that everything Romney does is motivated by his religious convictions (you just shouldn't ask him what those convictions are: that would be mean and unfair and un-American, you see. though if you think Romney would extend that courtesy to, say, a Muslim candidate then you're a generous person...)

Anyway, if secularism is a religion then apparently it's the only one that isn't welcome to play in the symphony of faith.

O tempora, o mores of course: not for the first time, one pines for Ronald Reagan's speeches. The Gipper of course wasn't much of a believer himself - though he said the right words - but he never thought he had to compensate for this by demanding a religious test for candidates for office the way Romney has done this morning.

I fear, mind you, that Romney may benefit from this speech even as I rather agree with those who said he should never have given it.

Romney's Faith-Based Problem

What should Mitt Romney say in his impossible-to-live-up-to-the-hype speech in Texas tomorrow? Noah Millman puts some fine words into the governor's mouth here:

“This is the place.”

That’s what Brigham Young said when he came to the valley of the Great Salt Lake for the first time. I don’t know if he heard him say it, but my grandfather’s grandfather was there, so he might have. The man who had led his people through the wilderness had come to the spot where he, and they, would build their permanent homes.

It’s a great American story. A group of hardy pioneers, setting off westward to find a place where they could live according to their consciences and reap the fruit of their own labor. But it’s a unique story, too, because my ancestors weren’t leaving Europe to make their new life. They were leaving America.

Forty nine years – seven weeks of years – after Brigham Young spoke those words, when the Utah territory became the state of Utah, my grandparents’ generation became fully party of the United States of America again. And that’s another great American story: how a group of people on the margins of society were welcomed back into the bosom of the land that gave them birth.

I have been asked, more times than I can count, by more people than I can remember, as I’ve crossed and re-crossed this great country on my campaign, what do I believe? Well, there are a lot of ways I could answer that. I could talk about the power of prayer, to heal broken bodies and broken marriages. I could talk about my wife of thirty-seven years, and the love and devotion we share. And those answers would be absolutely true, and would tell you a lot about me. But there’s a more important answer, just as true, that matters much more to this campaign.

I believe in America.

Count me among the people who need no anti-Mormon prejudice for their dislike of Romney. I mean, really, it's harsh to blame him for something he can't do very much about when there are so many other perfectly sound reasons for being creeped out by his robotic phoneyness.

It's Romney's misfortune that the personality cult to which he subscribes is only 170 years old, a sort of 19th century Scientology that, rather unfortunately, sometimes seems to be the sort of thing that could have been made up by Monty Python. What, you mean John Cleese didn't narrate the audiobook version of The Pearl of Great Price? And don't even get started on the underwear... 

How the Elector of Saxony Created Osama bin Laden. Or Something.

So it's all-Corner all the time here today. Next up is the never-knowingly-undersold Mark Steyn:

The Islamic "reformation" is, in a sense, the opposite of Christianity's. The Saudis have used their vast oil enrichment to promote themselves as a kind of Holy See for Muslims, and the Wahhabization of previously low-key syncretic localized Islams in almost every corner of the planet is testament to their success. I look at the gazillions of dollars tossed into the great sucking maw of US "intelligence" agencies and I wonder why somewhere in the budget we couldn't put something aside to promote a bit of covert ideological rollback in Chechnya or Bosnia or Pakistan. But we're not that savvy, and God knows what unintended consequences would blow up in our faces.

And at one level the Islamist "reformation" makes perfect sense. After all, they look at Christianity's reformation and see that everywhere but the United States it led to the ebbing of faith and its banishment to the fringes of life. The jihadist reformation is, as they see it, a rational response to the Christian one.

You what? The Reformation led to the "banishment" of religion "to the fringes of life"? Crikey. This would have been news to Calvin, Knox, Zwingli et al. but perhaps Steyn really does mean that if we were all still Roman Catholics we'd all still be good, observant believers?

I suppose you could make a case that absent the Reformation, the Enlightenment might have been rather different but does it really need to be said that if Protestantism (and religious schism and war) "led to the ebbing of faith" this was a tide that slipped away extremely slowly? As in, taking 400 years to ebb. And frankly if you want to find a reason for the decline of religious fervour in western Europe I'd suggest that the trenches of the Western Front have more to do with it than Martin Luther.

Still, Steyn is right that, for sure, there are radical Islamists who don't like the idea of reform. In other news, Pope Still Catholic.

Mitt's Mormon Moment

Daniel Larison explains why Mitt Romney's speech on "religious liberty" on Thursday is going to be a tricky balancing act:

His speech will have to go something like this: “My faith, which is very important to me and has made me who I am, should not be important to you, but it is important that we have a person of faith leading this country, and that person happens to be me.”

It is Romney's misfortune that many Americans wonder if he actually belongs to a cult. Doubtless he feels this is unfair, but he could comfort himself by reflecting that he could be labouring under a much more grievous burden: he could be an atheist*.

Besides, Romney has no-one to blame but himself. When a candidate declares that "We need a person of faith to run this country" it is entirely reasonable for the public to ask, "Well, mate, what do you believe in then? And why?"

*Or a smoker**

**I had a higher opinion of Obama before he decided to quit tobacco...