Campaign 2008 & Progressive Faith Movement & Strategizing Posted by christian h., 07 May 2007 05:40 am

Faith-Based Triangulation in the Political Arena

By Zeus

It has been an interesting spectator sport watching candidates communicate their faith “approaches” in the political arena. Hillary Clinton seems committed to operating upon faith as a kind of demographic variable to be diplomatically embraced with the help of advisers. John Edwards is fairly typical of the liberal politician: Faith is personal, almost wholly personal, an attribute of both a stout and moral leader and a caring Christian man. No atheism or animosity to religion here, whewww, and none of the nasty side effects of authoritarian, conservative pseudo-Christian warmongering. Edwards is religion in its unthreatening glory– personal, friendly, earnest, and (innocuously?) virtuous. We can all dedicate ourselves to the nobler unifying issues, like healing the economic rift between the “two Americas”.

I won’t discuss the Republican candidates because I find them so sanctimonious, monolithic, and calculating as to be boring and strangely agnostic in their presentations.

Barack Obama, I find to be the most interesting, because his engagement of the action side of faith (organizing communities and confronting the injustice of racism) has presented challenges to the gauzy images that many Americans have come to expect from their religiosity. Patrick DeTemple has already discussed from a ground’s-eye view much about the political side of Obama in a recent post, so I won’t spend too much time there, but Obama serves as an interesting case study of a larger dynamic playing itself out on the political stage, a different kind of “triangulation” in which faith plays a kind of litmus role:

  • The negotiation of the dialectical materialist and Marxism-influenced past of the 1960’s, and its own tensions between “opiate of the masses” secularism and liberation theology.
  • The desire for a “mainstream” present in which conflicts and hard choices can be fluffed into non-existence or packaged into comfortable simulacra (think of oddly new-age flavored televangelism).
  • And the opportunity (and challenges) of a progressive future in which faith might act as a verb, helping us to engage, rather than run from the unknown, and having us come to terms with injustice in the service of a renewed spiritual vision which both embraces diversity and empirical truth and points beyond it.

I recommend the recent front page article in the New York Times on Obama to get a first hand look at this stormy love triangle. Obama was mentored by a scion of the 60’s, Jeremiah Wright, a pastor at Trinity Congregational in Chicago. Wright has spoken and continues to speak stridently against “white racism” and “middleclassness” the “selfish individualism” that corrupts people’s abilities to give back to their community. Tough stuff for Middle America to handle if exposed to intensely (which it will be by his Republican opponents, no doubt, if he wins the Democratic nomination). So far, Obama has chosen to strategically distance himself from this pastor and pal up with Jim Wallis (a pretty accomplished triangulator himself), of “God’s Politics” fame and the 2006 election “defeat for the religious right and the secular left” notoriety.

The knock on Obama in some quarters is that he is long on stirring rhetoric and short on details. In his own words, he feels his job is not only to balance idealism and realism, and see the other sides’ points, but “to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised” (p. 42, Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Crown Publishing, 2006). In this Obama has a choice: be “moderate”, deny his radical past and split the ideological divide or be progressive, embrace elements of his radical past and offer a compelling alternative that might challenge the capacities and inspire the best virtues of American citizens.

So far, Obama appears to be playing both sides of this tension, catering to a nostalgic desire for an untroubled centrism and earnestly presenting an image of a new and fresh Kennedy-like advocate of a brave, new, and hopeful world. When Obama suggests “we all take a deep breath” (op. cit., p. 22) in realizing that the present political madness is not as bad as other instances of historical injustice, he seems to be urging us to gloss over present injustice for the the sake of a future so-called “unity”, one based more on amelioration than engagement of the tough issues of the day. Perennially disappointed progressives are trying to decide if he is for real (and if this amelioration is simply the requirement of campaigning). And yet his hidden history points to a very different man, a man whose faith has been based on his engagement with social justice. Will Obama surprise us as did Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the wealthy man branded as a class traitor for casting his lot with the people? At least Obama is engaging the tension, if not always overtly, and that engagement reflects America’s larger struggle. If presidents reflect the mood of the country, Obama, might be the quintessential candidate. Our ugly marks have been revealed, our capitulations (to fear, torture and other abuses of rights, etc.) as citizens and “leaders of the free world” have reflected poorly upon us.

Our leadership has become an evident tragedy. Our self-image has taken a beating. Yet we still have a choice to do what is necessary to regain our esteem honestly and reawaken the potential of the flawed but noble democracy called America. Or we can proceed dishonestly. My own feeling is that this choice cannot ultimately be triangulated, any more than faith can be. It might be possible to reassure people clinging to nostalgia with “calming” rhetoric, but policies are matters of choice, not rhetoric. The question for us and for Obama is will we cling to mere image, and deny yet again, that ugliness that we have hidden, the ugliness that can be redeemed, but
not without both struggle and vision…and a certain kind of faith.

Citizen Zeus

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Responses to “Faith-Based Triangulation in the Political Arena”

  1. on 07 May 2007 at 6:17 am 1. christian h. said …

    Zeus, thank you for this post. In my view, if you are a religious person running for office, you have two choices: your religion may be constructed as something intensely personal, having to do with moral guidance of your own personal behavior; in this case, I’d have to say it should be left out of the campaign, say in the way Edwards does.
    Or, your religious conviction may require (specific) social action, like that of Jeremiah Wright. In that case, you owe it to the voters - and, in the end, to yourself - to clarify this religious basis for your take on society; and you should be specific - a general “well, we should all be good people” won’t do.

  2. on 07 May 2007 at 9:04 am 2. Zeus said …

    Christian, I agree strongly with your observation. How can voters be informed, if they don’t know how you conceive of and intend to use your faith. Much of contemporary politics has been built around not offending or alienating people. Campaigning has resorted to “code” which reassures one’s identity-politics base and/or telegraphs one’s support for special interests in the primaries (where things like “states rights” really mean supporting segregation), while at the same time saying innocuous phrases like “compassionate conservative” to hook the broader public in the general election. Some might say that boldness, actually having enough faith in the American public to be candid about your faith, its forms, and its obligations would be political suicide. I’m not so sure. What if you don’t go merely half way? What if you recall the legacy of progressive faith in advocating for the poor, working for social justice, calling out abuse, opposing wars and slavery, challenging greed, and creating moral leadership and vision? I’d say you have both a timely and persuasive platform.

    Citizen Zeus

  3. on 07 May 2007 at 12:01 pm 3. JP Stormcrow said …

    Here is the quandry that I feel assails any candidate in the current political/social climate vis-a-vis religion. You must “adhere to” an approved religion to be a viable candidate in any but the most special circumstances. The Judeo-Chritian-Islamic religions are all based on full societal control. Most adherents and church organizations have adapted over the years to varying degrees to functioning in pluralistic, secular societies. But to a large degree this has been done by “hollowing out” the core beliefs and tenets of the religion. Per some of the earlier discussions here, I think the overall concept of “faith” and religion in general and their relation to secularism and the “scientific” viewpoint is a complicated and far from settled question. But I think that adherence to the specific religions that are but a pale remnant of those once robust and society-shaping ways of thinking and acting leads to a very complicated dialogue for any political candidate. Exactly what, if anything, of the core tenets of the original religion or religious text do you reject or embrace? If you embace them - do you think they apply only to you? to your “community”? to your congregation? to all adherents of your faith? to everyone in the country? to everyone in the world?
    This complexity comes in to some degree with adherence to any system of thought or belief - but for the specific religions in question, the answers to many of these were (sometimes literally) chiseled in stone during their founding, and are utterly core beliefs. Edwards might be an “its just between you and me, God” kind of guy - and he might have a lot of company in that - but he is framing that stance in a religious system and context which did not accept it as legitimate.

    All of that said, I do appreciate the pragmatic aspects of the religious situation in the US - but am leery of any attempts to use religion in a political context. It is always way too vulnerable to “holier than thou” (or maybe “faithier than thou”) attacks and hijackings from those who are adhering more closely to the “societal control” aspects of religion.

  4. on 07 May 2007 at 12:38 pm 4. spyder said …

    My old mentor in the history of religions suggested that he would prefer to know the religious orientation of the critics of the arts. He felt that, given his own vast knowledge of the world’s religions, and of human religiosity, he could more easily discern and weed out the inherent biases buried within the critics’ commentaries. Is that what we are discussing now in relation to our politicians?

    I, for one, certainly hope not. Why? Because we live in a religiously illiterate nation; one that lacks even the most rudimentary knowledge of the theocratic and dogmatic bases of the very religions with which we are asking our politicos to express their personal orientating relationships.

    In the last few months we have been presented with profound evidence that the current Federal administration has been staffed with religious zealots (intentionally put in place) of the Robertson, Falwell, Kennedy, Dobson strain of fundamentalist (nearly reconstructionist) xTianity. Goodling is being currently investigated for using her own standards to determine civil service placement of low level staffers and assistant attorneys in the Justice Department. Are we to believe that her deep and profound faith (as a graduate of Robertson’s Regent University law program) were her guides???? I think not. I don’t care about the religious orientation of the candidates, i care about that they live up to what they say they are going to do, that they make the honest and forthright effort to be direct and truthful in their visions for this nation, and most of all that they understand, respect, honor, and embrace the Constitution of the US, and all the Amendments, especially the First.

  5. on 07 May 2007 at 1:32 pm 5. christian h. said …

    To be clear: I find it upsetting that some kind of profession of religious “faith” seems to be a necessity for today’s presidential candidates. However, if they do mention it, I’d like to know what it means for them and their vision for this country (well, anyway, if I was a voter I’d want to know). What bugs me, and I think we all agree there, is the reduction of religion in political life to some empty abstraction (”I’m a person of faith”) everybody can interpret into what they want, while - as Zeus mentions - dropping code words to the initiated (or those, like spyder’s old mentor, who know all the religious codes).

  6. on 07 May 2007 at 1:43 pm 6. Oaktown Girl said …

    I agree with JP exactly regarding my frustrations and wariness about religion in politics and the public sphere. But setting aside whatever complaints one might have about that and religion in general, this discussion is so important for anyone who considers themselves to be a progressive/liberal and/or a separation-of-church-and-state-type of any stripe.

    Most of us have been complaining long and hard about how Christianity has been so seemingly un-Christian in its political manifestations, especially in its new wave, grandstanding, post “Reagan Revolution” right wing format that’s been so prominent since the 1980’s. We’ve been crying out for the “Real Christians” to come forth and challenge the Jerry Falwells and his ilk.

    And it’s been especially frustrating lately because we know that Jim Wallis is so clearly NOT the answer. Wallis: the Faith Triangulation King. He’s the most public face of “liberal” Christianity - supposedly posing a Christian challenge to BushCo, but all the while playing exactly into their hands. He does nothing but stab liberals/progressives in the back with his endless parroting of right wing talking points that repeatedly conflate word “secular” with “anti-religion” and “anti-God”.

    So when the voice of real progressive Christianity surfaces (which includes a strong support for the separation of church and state), I feel strongly that we need to embrace and support that voice with everything we’ve got. If we just abandon that huge and massively influential playing field to the “other side”, the “other side” is all there will ever be, and they will continue to wield and swing their huge stick with virtually no constraints.

    It’s definitely a two-way street, and we need to work together. We need Christians and all “people of faith” to come out strongly and support the rights and freedoms of atheists and people who practice religions outside of the Abrahamic ones. And when these Christians, like Zeus and the good folks with whom he’s working do come forth, we need to come out strongly supporting them. To mount a real challenge to the Focus on the Family types that dominate the corporate media, (as well as that supposed “alternative” Jim Wallis), we need to be able to say loudly, “Look – YOU are not THE voice of Christianity”. And like it or not, we need Christians by our side to make that point and to give it real power.

  7. on 07 May 2007 at 2:47 pm 7. spyder said …

    “religious scholars” who know all the religious codes

    Given that there are perhaps 1500 top-tier historians/phenomenologists of religions in the world (in terms of making the effort to really know human religiosity across the world’s religions) with a good many of these outside the US in Asia and Europe, and perhaps another 2000 leading US specialists with sufficient depth and expertise; there really aren’t very many out there at all. I certainly don’t have that expertise (after decades of study), and of the fifteen or twenty i know (knew), all but eight are dead {my mentor is hiding in the woods of Maine enjoying his retirement checks from the UC system}. Indeed one of the bright stars of our discipline was gunned down in a restroom at University of Chicago, a classic victim of political repression and revenge (it can easily be argued as religious oppression too) against a profound thinker and scholar.

    My sense is that (oh gawd i am going to cross the Rubicon here) Israel has been a role model for the neo-cons, particularly those of the PNAC, who see a Christian version of Jewish Israel in the United States. Casting out the illegals, and subjegating the liberals (and smothering intellectuals/academics) under a complete revamping of the US government into a GOP one party apparatus, these visionaries are hell bent (my take) on creating their protestant xTian state to do battle with Islam and Hinduism and the secularisms of China, Russia, and Europe.

  8. on 07 May 2007 at 3:29 pm 8. Zeus said …

    Taking up several points of leeryness as JP’s and Spyder and a note of hope and support in Our Esteemed MOJoer, Oaktown Girl (soon apparently to be promoted to demi-god if word on the street can be believed). The challenge is this: can Christian faith humbly, courageously, and effectively put itself on the line in support of secular causes and the causes of other religions, which align deeply with its progressive core. Yes, it can, and I wouldn’t expect any Jewish person or secular person to be anything other than suspicious otherwise, given the track record especially of late as OG says of “new wave, grandstanding, post “Reagan Revolution” right wing” anti-Christian Christians.

    The solution is not to distance religion from the public square, because you’ll just hand it to the quacks, but to challenge it religiously and create a fearless and compassionate alternative and coalition with people of different faiths or no religious belief at all, which requires no conversion, no attempts to make America a “Christian nation” (read anti-Christian idolatrous theocracy) but rather puts itself at the service of the most risky and progressive spiritual causes. These causes, of course, include secular and interfaith causes that align with the radically inclusive and compassionate example of Jesus). Progressive Christianity ought to prove itself as it did during Abolition and during the Civil Rights movement.

    This past February, I helped make the Christian case with a panel of Christians not only in support of gay marriage, but (here is the real innovation) also by claiming that gay marriage has great and affirmative value to offer spiritually and theologically to Christianity and the wider democratic and secular public. We challenged the other side to “prove wrong” that a loving gay couple who contributes to their community and honors their relationship is NOT godly and Christ-like. We made theological arguments that gay marriage upholds a broadly accepted ideal that sex as primarily about an expression of love and challenged the oppressive patriarchal practices of “gender complementarity” that lead to sexism, among other things. Furthermore we pointed that you can be a serial rapist, pedophile, torturer, and murderer (the most egregious and condemnable violations of relationship) and get married tomorrow and be “qualified” to enter into what many consider the most sacred of relationships, the committed, romantic (and spiritual) coupling of marriage (as long as that other person is of the opposite sex).

    You won’t find triangulators on this turf. You won’t find Jim Wallis here folks. Faith can bring a compelling example and presence to the public square. Faith can strike at the heart of prejudice rather than aid and abet its gross injustices, but I find it hard to believe that one could do this without some kind of strong faith (whether in Christianity, democracy, or some other guiding ideal). For all rational speculation would consider it suicide strategically to make these audacious moves. And yet with a deep conviction and the help of God, this Christian believes and will act upon the conviction that all things are possible and that spirit can part the walls of prejudice, and that this requires a deep honoring of your neighbor and a deep receiving and gratitude for his or her presence. This, as we are brought forth, supported, and joined in a world of justice and love.

    Citizen Zeus

  9. on 07 May 2007 at 3:33 pm 9. Seattle said …

    Has anyone here ever found that the older you get, the more you start to have a sneaking hope that Hell does exist? Heaven…whatever…but Hell has definite possibilities. I may not be able to punish some of the people who deserve it in this life, but I’d be happy just to witness them receiving eternal damnation later on.
    Example: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/americas/06poison.html?th&emc=th

    Ok, so I need therapy. Watching these political candidates twist themselves into pretzles to be all things to all 300 million of us has driven me to it. I wonder how many of them survive with their personal faith intact as they observe the behavior inherent in the election process.

  10. on 07 May 2007 at 10:02 pm 10. spyder said …

    but I find it hard to believe that one could do this without some kind of strong faith (whether in Christianity, democracy, or some other guiding ideal). For all rational speculation would consider it suicide strategically to make these audacious moves.

    Herein lies the problem with your discourse for me. Rational speculation can easily derive appropriate strategies and rationale for such “audacious moves.” It makes no sense to suggest otherwise. The “American Soul” was predicated, not on faith, but on basic rational discourse regarding the respect for others rights and the free exercise thereof. I need only practice vigilance in making sure that i do not interfere with the rights of others while enjoying all of the ones i possess. I don’t need religion or faith to do so, especially some sort of faith in democracy whatever that means? You cannot possibly be proposing that your Christian faith is identical to my acceptance of my responsibilities of being a good citizen of the Earth. I don’t even need you to be a good or moral person, as long as your choices of exercising your rights do not negatively impact those of others including myself.

    If on the other hand you are proposing that the only way to move the pseudo-xtian rabble from the temple of government is to engage them in some sort of faith-based discourse, well then, have at it. Francis of Assisi tried, and he had a fairly captive audience. I have no interest in “service of the most risky and progressive spiritual causes.” And the more you witness from your faith, the less i am predisposed to engage.

  11. on 08 May 2007 at 12:47 am 11. Zeus said …

    Spyder,

    In your own abstract reasoning you betray the practical weakness of your argument. Two problems: 1) We may different understanding of rights. You may think I’m stepping on your toes but I may not, and my understanding may be based upon a rational argument as well. Whose do we use? This is too individualized and disconnected and begs for engagement. 2) Even if we all agreed on what rights mean, if even one person decides they aren’t going to play ball, we have a problem. Are you going to say, “Well you can’t do that, that’s not what we agreed” or “That’s not rational.” And even the law is not a protection. You can have theocrats lawfully taking over school boards and lawfully prescribing “creation science” for the curriculum. Rationality is not an effective counter to injustice. It can help people of ideals more rigorously ground their actions and strategies, but it simply does not contain the requisite motivation, the stirring narrative, the necessary care. Rationality is a framework and a tool, not a reason for being and interacting. It’s necessary but quite insufficient. You can let people like me carry the water for “risky and progressive causes”, but that water has to be carried by someone, and it is not an abstract proposition.

    Citizen Zeus

  12. on 08 May 2007 at 9:34 am 12. spyder said …

    but it simply does not contain the requisite motivation, the stirring narrative, the necessary care.

    I simply do not accept that there is some spiritual quality necessary to comprehend and act in the best interest of alleviating suffering and improving the quality of all of life on the planet. Why do you insist on premising your entire schema on the characteristic you define as “faith?” It seems quite tautological to me to make the claim that the moral high ground comes solely from faith-based spirituality, and therefore to be moral you have to have faith.

    Your perceived dialectic of rational discourse may be valid, but that is the point of rational discourse; taking the time, step by step, to engage and discuss the expressions of rights, and the appropriate strategies to reduce and disentangle controversies and conflict. “Let us pray” ain’t cutting it.

  13. on 08 May 2007 at 10:40 am 13. christian h. said …

    I think my position can be summarized as follows: first, as Oaktown Girl mentions, since religion is, as of this time, a powerful motivator of people - like it or not -, it is important to support the progressive (or revolutionary, as liberation theology) forces within religious groups.
    Second, I disagree that faith of any kind is required as motivator for change - certainly, emotion is, but “rationality” is not excluding emotion.
    Third, I am also extremely wary of fetishized secularism, mostly because it is widely employed as a cover for racist attacks on Muslims nowadays by people like Christopher Hitchens and, sad to say, significant parts of the self-identified liberal spectrum.

    But getting back to the original post, I really wish Obama would listen to Zeus and friends and stand by his convictions (assuming he still has them) - stop “witnessing”, and start acting!

  14. on 08 May 2007 at 10:43 am 14. James Killus said …

    I noticed this on Pharyngula:

    Which God or Goddess are you like? Your Result: You are your own God or Goddess Sorry to say, i have no answer that fits you. You are your very own person, and you like to do things your own way. You have stumped me this time, but i will soon make a quiz that will have your answer, just you wait…Budha Goddess Sekhemet Goddess Bast Satan Jesus God Zeus The Christian God Which God or Goddess are you like?Make Your Own Quiz

    Ah, it looks like the comments filters chop off the graphic. Nevertheless, my numerical scores were

    Me 87%
    Budha 48%
    Goddess Sekhemet 46%
    Goddess Bast 44%
    Satan 44%
    Jesus 44%
    God Zeus 33%
    The Christian God 33%

    For the record, and as I believe I’ve stated before, I think that most people use the word “spirituality” in reference to their own subjective experience in the world, nor do I have much of a problem with the use of the word “faith” as a reference to the belief that said subjective experience matters, that it is real, and that it is worthy of major consideration in the formulation of one’s actions.

    However, when that subjective experience is projected onto the world, when it is made absolute by the insistence that it exists apart from individual experience, in short, when the personal becomes highly depersonalized, so as to remove individual responsibility from ethics and morality, then you have a framework that is tailormade for evils scams and the elevation of prejudice to a moral imperative. “I had no choice!” exclaims the zealot, handing his soul over to the void.

    So I’m quite comfortable looking down on my demi-urges of Jesus, Bast, and Satan, in equal measure, with a laughing Budha and a mispelled Egyptian Goddess of war and vengence cavorting above them in the clouds. Sorry Zeus and the Christian God, I was never one for thunderbolts or the furrowed brow.

  15. on 08 May 2007 at 11:05 am 15. Oaktown Girl said …

    Hey James - I took the liberty of adjusting your Pharyngula link because it was skewing the margings of our “Recent Comments” - hope you don’t mind.

    Yes christian, thanks. I do hope we can find a way back to discussing what we’d like to see the politicians do on their campaings regarding the faith/religion issue if they are going to continue to say it constitutes a major part of who they are as a person. (Not talking about the fun quiz you linked to, James!)

  16. on 08 May 2007 at 12:33 pm 16. Dr. Free-Ride said …

    OK, I’m on record as thinking that matters of faith are primarily personal — that they cannot act as persuasive to others in the same way that shared empirical action does.

    But, that certainly doesn’t mean that faith cannot motivate individuals to act in ways that others can evaluate. What’s the basis for that evaluation? Is it just “I like that!”/”It sucks!”? Or, “What you are doing fits with the kind of regard which, if shown to other human beings, best lets us pursue our own individual projects?” Or, “Your actions are taking the happiness of others as seriously as your own happiness?”

    I am so not a meta-ethicist.

    Back when I was Catholic, there was a hymn about people knowing we were Christians by our love. What you said you were committed to, ultimately, was less important than how you lived your life, and especially how you treated others. It seems to me that there could be many internal motivations that drive people to treat each other with love and respect, to care about each other’s welfare. Whatever those motivations are, if the behavior is robust, I’m inclined to think you have a Good Person.

    In the political arena, talk is cheap. Politicians tell stories about their noble motivations but manage not to live up to them in their actions. For a politician even to give us a reasonably good prediction of how s/he is going to behave with respect to other people — with respect especially to the people must vulnerable to bad policy decisions — would be a big step forward.

    Evaluating the potential consequences of “here’s what I’ll do” may well tell us more of what we need to know than would the back story on whatever personal commitments, faith-based or not, are motivating those promised actions.

  17. on 08 May 2007 at 12:53 pm 17. James Killus said …

    No problem, Oaktown Girl. I’ll try embedding the links from now on.

    (Ah hell, the only thing worse than the way the phrase “embedding the links” comes out is noting the way that it comes out. And that one just there, too. And thus does my brain dissolve into the meta-pool).

  18. on 08 May 2007 at 5:29 pm 18. Zeus said …

    Why is there such resistance to the idea that non-rational faith can do some good things that rationality cannot?

    I think it is, in all probability, impossible to communicate the nature of faith from a strictly empirical standpoint. You can note the effects of faith. You can attempt to describe a person’s understanding and affinity for this thing called faith, just as you can describe “mind” (though there is no tangible “thing” called mind).

    I think a few things can be demonstrated. First, let’s eliminate this notion that faith is always a grandiose subjective projection of the individual (it may be for some, but does not have to be).

    Second, there are good, rationally-based reasons to engage in a faith that can operate outside of reason. It doesn’t seem reasonable to walk non-violently into police clubs at a civil rights march and get your head beaten in, but people do, they have, and their actions have changed the world (empirically).

    From the historical accounts, this decision was not a rational calculation about possible effects of one’s actions. It was a faithful decision to be in solidarity and embody a social and personal gospel that rationalists would be very hard pressed to duplicate. There is a care and a motivating force in this faith and gospel. It can be demonstrated. I doubt anyone goes through a rational calculation, in the canned philosophical example, to determine if they are going to save their spouse or their mother when their house is burning down. In fact if one did, that would appear to be somewhat monstrous.

    The Ayn Rand’s of this world tend to be individualists. Their gods ARE often themselves, which is rather limiting if you ask me. Perhaps this is why “objectivists” seem to be more concerned with establishing their own godhoods than confronting oppression directly and coalitionally. Why is it that the religiously progressive movements in this country have been so successful? Good question. Enough of the “yes, but” look at all the harm religion has done. I’ve already acknowledged that many times and have used that fact as a reason for people of faith to confront the excesses of religion and embody the progressive alternative. That is the practical question. Will our candidates go beyond talk of faith toward acting on justice. Will rationalists? Too often the answer to both is a solid “no.”

    In this vein, why is it so hard to acknowledge the harm or hubris that rationalism has visited (Ayn Rand is a good example), and why is it so hard to acknowledge that faith can do some good things that rationality simply cannot duplicate. I’m not the one projecting faith as the end all and be all. I’m the one observing it can be misused, but also that it can be extraordinary in its manifestations as well. I’ve not attempted to lord that possibility as establishing the superiority of faith. I’m curious why it is being interpreted this way.

    If you want to say, “Well I don’t care what “faith” is, I just care what it does.” Fine. I don’t much care about Fantasy League Football either.

    If there is anything sacred in this world, that is more than a convenience in a life of ennui, I say let us explore it. I’m not brought to faith by a need for comfort, or a need to be right, or a need for superiority, but quite the opposite. Faith has shown all these motivations to be laughable purposes for living. Faith has shown me toward love, care, compassion, courage, all of which have no provable rational origin.

    Citizen Zeus

  19. on 08 May 2007 at 7:09 pm 19. Dr. Free-Ride said …

    I certainly don’t want to say that everything that makes a human life valuable has a rational origin. I just think that those non-rational goodies are hard to convey to someone else who hasn’t “gotten” them, on some level, through their own personal work. While you can describe why you find them valuable, and what they feel like, you can’t make someone else feel them just by describing them. And trying to impose them on others by fiat (as some of our more theocratic politicians would do given the chance) is a very bad idea.

    I guess I think that there’s something to Aristotle’s (or Mencius’s) idea that our communities, and the forms of behavior these communities encourage in us, can shape our inward experience and orientation toward others — but there’s also something very mysterious to me about just how that works, and it’s not clear to me that the outcome is completely deterministic.

  20. on 08 May 2007 at 10:14 pm 20. Oaktown Girl said …

    This doesn’t have to do with Obama, but one of the things that makes me so mad with the politicians who oppose stem cell research on religious grounds is that they’re so half-assed about it. I’m no scientist, but it seems to me that if that’s your position, then you have to advocate for outlawing in vitro fertilization altogether because it creates all those “snowflake babies”,(tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands across the country every year? More?) that will just have to be disposed of, i.e. “killed” in their belief system. Great Gojira! I’d love to see those politicians against stem cell research either come out forcefully to outlaw in vitro fertilization, or say every snowflake baby you make, you are responsible to bring that baby to term (either you yourself or find someone else to help you), or else BOTH parents go to jail. And why not the doctor too. I’d like to see how that flies!

    As for Obama, since he’s made his religion an issue in his campaign, let’s talk about usury. I’d sure like to see him take on the preditory lending industry and the credit card vampires. If you are going to position yourself as someone who truly cares about the “little guy”, this should be near the top of the list because of all the harm and suffering it causes. Frankly, I’m starting to feel the only way to get those credit card bastards is by “playing the religion card”. If enough people screamed about how vile and evil those interest rates are on Judeo-Christian grounds, the Bible thumping politicans might be forced to do something, and that could be the only thing that forces their hand on it until we get Clean Money elections.

  21. on 09 May 2007 at 9:26 am 21. Patrick DeTemple said …

    Thanks for the excellent post Zeus, I think you’ve moved the usual discussion of the issue, especially in the context of Obama, to a useful level. The left has had a remarkably convoluted relationship to questions of faith for a long time. This week, as Benedict returns to Brazil to survey the wreckage of the Church that he wrought back when he was Grand Inquisitor Ratzinger, is a good one to reflect on that topic.

    It seems to me that the broadly defined left still suffers from the delusion of politics as science. I followed that logic all the way through the Althusserian purge of every ‘idealist remnant’ from our discourse only to decide that we’d embraced the shell and left the living core behind. I thought that Liberation Theology had enormous promise, later that broad ecological principles could provide the beginnings of a more Bhuddist like framework within which to articulate people’s faith but in the end I think that unless there is some as yet unseen organic development on the way in this country… some container for the faith that in fact underlies actual social commitment..that any relevant social movement in this country will find its voice in the existing containers of faith, predominantly christianity.

    We appear to be missing the willingness and conviction that was so common in Latin America in the 80s….the willingness to simply say ‘I believe’ and then express that belief through the language at hand. I think that we think of that as somehow phony or manipulative..when in reality the institutional churches, their language, the ‘mask of God’ as Campbell said, is always an imperfect and secondary representation of the religious experience itself.

    How all of this works in a Presidential campaign? Frankly, I’m thankful for the Obama candidacy just for making this a relevant discussion but have no clue about how it will play out. His 45 minute speech on Faith and Politics that you can see on the barackobama.com website is pretty darned interesting. I do believe that the campaign provides a rare vehicle for engaging with the broad public on questions like this.

  22. on 09 May 2007 at 10:59 am 22. James Killus said …

    Why is there such resistance to the idea that non-rational faith can do some good things that rationality cannot?

    Perhaps it has something to do with the way in which you refuse to even acknowledge my argument.

    The non-rational certainly exists, and it is important in individual experience. I not only acknowledge that, I insist upon it. What I have argued (and it appears that I’m not alone here) is that it is personal.

    It is religion that attempts to objectify the subjectivity of faith. Religion places that subjective experience somewhere other than the individual, not in the “objective” but the absolute, in “God” or “the spirit.”

    As for holding Ayn Rand as an exemplar of the “objective,” that’s truly as laughable as considering George W. Bush a “compassionate conservative.” Ayn Rand was many things, but despite her self-labeling, she was not an objectivist; she was an absolutist. There is a huge difference between the objective and the absolute, but most people, especially “people of faith,” seem not to grasp that difference. And you are not proving to be an exception.

  23. on 09 May 2007 at 8:40 pm 23. JP Stormcrow said …

    Has anyone here ever found that the older you get, the more you start to have a sneaking hope that Hell does exist

    Well, at least not the version of Hell put forth by the good folks at Patrick Henry College, where Each trustee, officer, faculty member, and student of the College … shall fully and enthusiastically subscribe to the following Statement of Faith: whose last clause is:

    J. Satan exists as a personal, malevolent being who acts as tempter and accuser, for whom Hell, the place of eternal punishment, was prepared, where all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.

    Remember kids, that’s “conscious” torment - so like no napping or anything.

  24. on 09 May 2007 at 9:26 pm 24. JP Stormcrow said …

    Read through your post again and the comments (including mine) now that I am back among those who have a modicum of control over their own time.

    It is probably not so productive for us (and me) to use a post like this to once more go to the mat on the most basic aspects of the struggle over “faith and religion”. There is a pragmatism in a nation where a large majority self-identify as religious, that calls for helping find a way to forge progressive alliances across faith/secular boundaries.

    However, I will just briefly relate some family religious history that helps illustrate my concern on the vulnerability of any Christian stance from the “faithier than thou” proto-theocrats. I was raised mainstream Protestant. My mother, and a reasonable number in the congregation, could be aptly characterized as “social action Christians”. (aside: my mother is no stranger to Quixotic stances - raised as a “tribal” Republican - she was one of the last liberal Republicans - only came over from the “dark” side in 1984.) In her time at her church she has participated in several different defenses against attempts by pastors and small groups from taking the church to a much more fundamentalist place. (The last was quite pitched, and took place when she was in her late ’60s - the pastor in question finally leaving the denomination altogether, and starting one of the “mega” churches which sprout like so many massive toxic mushrooms in the soil of the late great state of Ohio.) Now I understand that there is a narrative from the other side of these disputes which would cast this as my mother and her allies obstructing the overall church from following a righteous path - but I have never seen one of these political “attacks” come from the progressive side of religion.

    All of that said, I feel that in the inevitable intra-religious wars that will develop in conjunction with the tapping of religion in political campaigns, I should at least offer moral and emotional support for those who I judge to be pursuing political agendas with which I agree. However, I must remain somewhat aloof and cannot become involved directly, as I have removed myself from having any stake in the religious aspects in question. This is similar to my stance with my mother in her various congregational wars - tried to provide a lot of love and support, commiserated over the base tactics of the other side (as related by her at any rate) - but in the end I was not a direct party to the dispute and had no claim to being a legitimate participant.

  25. on 09 May 2007 at 10:26 pm 25. Oaktown Girl said …

    JP - I hear you loud and clear, and what I say here may not differ from your stance. But even though as a non-Christian technically I am “outside” the struggle for the heart and soul of Christianity, I no less have a very large stake in which way those winds are blowing, especially as a woman.

    Therefore, even being the non-Christian that I am, I feel no need to hold back whatsoever from throwing my full and active support to Christians whom I feel best preserve and protect my interests. Strategically, I think there is no choice for the simple matter that the protestations of non-Christians can, have been, and in most cases will be dismissed for the very fact that we are non-Christian. A huge part of staving off theocratic disaster is going to take the “reclaiming” of the relgion by progressive Christians. And given the percentages, and the corporate media echo machine, etc., I honestly don’t think non-Christians have the luxury of “sitting it out”. Or else, we do so at our own peril.

  26. on 09 May 2007 at 10:34 pm 26. Zeus said …

    I feel another post coming on, inspired from the excellent points you have raised. I’ll briefly address your comments, and maybe save some of the points for another full post.

    Dr. Free Ride: Very perceptive observation that “non-rational goodies are hard to convey [great word] to someone who hasn’t ‘gotten’ them, on some level, through their own personal work.” Yes, this is true and it is also true, as you suggest, that mere description won’t do the trick, and imposition will definitely not do the trick. So how does it happen that any of us might receive spiritual insight and how might it be communicated to others? Much of this rests upon an openness about the nature of this experience. You suggest that one factor may be in develop communal norms and opportunities (perhaps like the Greek notion of mimesis [a kind of character and moral role playing]). I agree. But one of the major factors this helps to establish is merely the habit of ‘openness’ to that experience. That is all I’m counseling, despite how badly my ideas have been interpreted. My notion is “be open” to non-rational experience. Be observant of the goods produced by communal spirituality and religiosity. And then question: Where did that come from? What is its nature? The thing that unites useful religion and science is inquiry.

    Patrick: I agree that “the Left has a convoluted relationship to questions of faith” which has over time lent itself to the “delusion of politics as science”. Having lost a compelling narrative, the Left now seems to content itself with “facts” and policy lists, and wonders why no one is listening. As if this democracy was compelled by facts. No, America was, is, and probably always will be compelled by powerful ideals. “Facts” aren’t an ideal, though they can serve ideals. This has had grievous consequences for the efficacy of liberalism, which the secular-dominated Left tries to blame, paradoxically on religion. If only ALL religion weren’t so irrational! Two problems, 1) all religion is not irrational (so you just shot off that foot, rational people of faith), 2) by ceding ideals to irrational religion, one is hamstrung from making any competing moral claims, or guiding visions for the future. One has lost the capacity to inspire and to lead. There IS something compelling about saying “I believe” (as you say) especially if it is belief in an “impossible” ideal like the end of slavery in the 1800’s. Americans have allowed the social gospel of Christianity to be personalized and psychologized on the Left and aggressively corporatized on the Right. It is time to revive the same communal (and spiritual/moral) sensibilities and ideals that guided Chavez and King, abolitionists, Lincoln to be declared, reclaimed, and reawakened in the public realm.

    James: If your argument is that the non-rational exists but that it can only be personal, it is not so much that I am not recognizing your argument as it is that I am disagreeing with your proposition. Faith is not only personal. It can be shared, and must, for a social gospel to have any efficacy. Certainly the locus of faith experience is largely individual, that is, felt by the person, as I would hope for rationality. But like rationality, faith would be hollow if simply limited to individual experience, just like love would be. I hope we all would want to be rational, faithful, loving persons, but this is demonstrated not by satisfying our own individual feelings, but by engaging others. In fact it is precisely radical narcissism that gives rise to misguided applications (i.e. absolutism vs. objectivity) of rationality and religion both (read Ayn Rand and Pat Robertson).

    I’m not asking for adoption of notions of faith. I am asking for inquiry into different possible dimensions of experience (and their implications), the empirical being one of them, the non-rational being another. Skepticism can serve this inquiry well, but it can also shut the door if it simply doubts the possibility of the whole enterprise rather than questioning the various things one comes across. If “religion tries to objectify the subjectivity of faith” and IMPOSE it or use it to dominate others” my argument would be that it is anti-faith, because faith requires uncoerced choice in order to be faith at all. Likewise, if someone tries to impose an idea that faith is nothing more than personal subjectivity (all the while implying that rationality is the only legitimate arbiter of extra-personal or interpersonal truth) one denies a possibility, a demonstrated possibility that religion can also organize and act upon the larger social and moral concerns and evolving ideals of a progressive society.

    Oaktown Girl and JP: No better punishment for our erstwhile sanctimonious anti-stem cell politicians than to give them a genetic disorder and let them pine in Hell for all eternity with the stem-cell cure dangled in front of them just out of reach. Talk about just desserts. (I’m more compassionate than to wish that, but that would be the consequence of their own religious construction.)

    Citizen Zeus

  27. on 10 May 2007 at 7:50 am 27. JP Stormcrow said …

    Via Digby here is an interesting article at beliefnet on The Twelve Tribes of American Politics.

    They have definitions and voting and other data at the link - here are the tribes and % of voting age population

    Religious Right 12.6%
    Religious Left 12.6 %
    Heartland Cultural Warriors 11.4%
    Moderate Evangelicals 10.8%
    Seculars 10.7%
    Black Protestants 9.6%
    Convertible Catholics 8.1%
    Whitebread Protestant 8.0%
    Latinos 7.3%
    Spiritual But Not Religious 5.3%
    Muslims and Other Faiths 2.7%
    Jews 1.9%

  28. on 10 May 2007 at 9:38 am 28. Oaktown Girl said …

    This is an interesting piece entitled, “Questions for Candidate Obama” from the Black Commentator. Check it our before it goes behind the subscription wall, or better yet become a subscriber if you can do so.

  29. on 10 May 2007 at 10:52 am 29. christian h. said …

    I second Oaktown Girl - go read the piece and subscribe. There’s also an important look at the “no snitching” debate in the current issue.

  30. on 10 May 2007 at 12:25 pm 30. James Killus said …

    James: If your argument is that the non-rational exists but that it can only be personal, it is not so much that I am not recognizing your argument as it is that I am disagreeing with your proposition. Faith is not only personal. It can be shared, and must, for a social gospel to have any efficacy. Certainly the locus of faith experience is largely individual, that is, felt by the person, as I would hope for rationality. But like rationality, faith would be hollow if simply limited to individual experience, just like love would be. I hope we all would want to be rational, faithful, loving persons, but this is demonstrated not by satisfying our own individual feelings, but by engaging others. In fact it is precisely radical narcissism that gives rise to misguided applications (i.e. absolutism vs. objectivity) of rationality and religion both (read Ayn Rand and Pat Robertson).

    Zeus, you’d do everyone a great favor if you’d stop using Ayn Rand as a measure of “rationality.” Claiming rationality is no more an indicator of rationality than claiming to tell the truth is an indicator of honesty.

    In any case, “sharing” is a word that is easily miscontrued. We may share an apple, for example, but that does not mean that we both eat the entire apple, or indeed that we both consume any given part; we apportion part of the apple to each of us. People speak of “sharing an experience” but what they are actually doing is participating in an event that may or may not require mutual participation to exist.

    People also speak of “sharing” when they are simply being told about something, or when they are allowed to see the visible tip of the emotions that an experience has created in memory. These interactions certainly do serve to bind people to one another, but they are not the same as the experience itself. To pretend otherwise is to devalue experience.

    Even so simple an action as naming can fundamentally alter the nature of experience. I have known many people who I was reasonably sure loved, or were in love, or infatuated, etc. with someone else without knowing it. Were they to realize that such was the case, their experience of the emotion would change, as indeed it has, in several cases that I’ve seen. Recognizing that one is angry, and why, often mutes the emotion; at other times it increases it.

    It seems to me that somehow you are conflating “personal” with “lonely,” that a belief in the inherent subjectvity of experience somehow precludes mutual interactions, or constitutes a denial of the validity of the experience of others, that unless “sharing love” means that each individual is experiencing the same thing that the other experiences, then the “love” is somehow the worse for it. For my own part, I believe that the reverse is true, that understanding that everyone is the center of an entire universe multiplies the possibilities for human experience and understanding.

    Put another way, whatever anyone’s opinion about tress in the forest, I believe that a sunrise is not beautiful unless someone is there to see it, and that it can become more than twice as beautiful if two are there to see it. It can also be both ugly and beautiful at the same time, to either or both of the observers, depending upon everything else that surrounds it and them.

    Ultimately, however, it seems to me that this is a discussion about something other than epistemology, or what constitutes faith, or the nature of experience. I am not sure of what people are attempting, de gustibus and all that, but it is in my nature to wonder.

    Now, I know that there are snarky liberal elites and sundry rootless cosmopolitans out there who mock certain forms of religiosity, sanctimoniousness, and (especially) hypocrisy, and I know that they sometimes miss their mark and come off as mocking every kind of faith. In fact, snarky liberal elitists and rootless cosmopolitans are some of my best friends! And I know very well that some atheists can get downright annoying in their insistence that they have have objectively demonstrated the nonexistence of God using simple algebra and a household magnifying glass. Fine. I grant these things. But I see no evidence whatsoever that “persons of faith” are discouraged in any way from testifying to their faith in American political life, which is why complaints about Democrats’ indifference or hostility to religion strike me as so very disingenuous. These complaints can’t possibly be about hostility to religion in American politics, I think. And when they come from the left side of the spectrum, they can’t possibly be about trying to win over voters on the religious right. Nor do they seem to be centrally concerned about issues of war and peace — or even the minimum wage. Nor do I see religious progressives arguing for greater discrimination against gays and lesbians. So I’m left to wonder: is this conversation-stopping conversation all about abortion, in the end? Because when political liberals and moderates ask atheists like me to give even more weight to religious beliefs in the public square, I can hardly believe that they’re merely asking me to reply, “gee, I’m impressed — you have a really deep, sincere faith.”
    Skepticism about Faith
    By Michael Bérubé

  31. on 12 May 2007 at 6:18 pm 31. Zeus said …

    James,

    I simply do not believe perception is identical with the whole of experience, especially “shared” experience. Each one of us perceives (and to a certain degree receives) a great work of art differently. However, there is a current of life and spirit and unifying shared experience of the human condition, beautifully rendered that separates good and timeless art from that which is dishonest hackery or a passing fad.

    Of course there are larger cultural influences, but I have been struck almost in a raw way by art that is so overcoming and so alien to my cultural appreciation training that you might say I was inspired. Something leapt from that piece (happened recently in New Zealand with Maori art), that I could more than perceive the message, the intent. That art communicated to me and brought me in, because I was open to it and because I was aware (albeit dimly mostly) of the dimensions of experience through which these things course. It shows me that we can learn. It shows me that there are many domains of experience.

    Even simple deception and lying (including the lie of trying to establish a dominant, eternal, worldly truth), I suppose could be one such domain. It just tends to be harmful to oneself and others and far less fulfilling and adventurous. I am not so much trying for virtue as I am trying for usefulness and fulfillment. Irrationality limits my ability to experience, narrowness limits breadth, and dispersive fantasies limit depth. I look for the kernel of sense, or “compelling narrative” (as I put it) in your story, and sometimes I can make sense of part of it, and I am richer for it.

    Citizen Zeus

  32. on 12 May 2007 at 6:30 pm 32. Zeus said …

    Oaktown Girl, Good eye on this article from the Black Commentator (see above comment). I think it accurately portrays the uncertainty some of us feel about who Obama actually is, even as we admire a great deal about him. That is what I was also talking about in my original post, about the “tension” (will the real Obama please stand up, please stand up). It is hard to know what is strategic and what is real (or if there is any difference in Obama’s mind between them) especially given that some of his positions are ultimately irreconcilable with one another.

    One can’t be pro-justice and simply pro-Israel to the exclusion of Palestine. There is an odd disconnect still between rhetoric and policy. Question… Is the rhetoric and past history with social justice a ploy to get progressive support, which will later by triangulated into “unifying” centrist (read center-right), or the other way around. Is Obama using policy rhetoric which is center-right to comfort people into thinking he is not a militant black guy, so he can get elected and engage in social justice? So far, he has not been bold or detailed in his policy making stances, so it’s hard to tell. I, Christian, and others, suggest he take the leap of “faith” and be clear on his stance.

    This does not have to mean Marxism, but rather pro-social democracy, without the elitist conceits of Marxism (false consciousness, etc.). The poor are blessed, which means they need both a living wage and to be regarded as teachers. Calling us to this regard, might bring the best (and forgotten aspects) of Christianity together with secular social justice. I think he needs to declare this openly. I think Obama needs faith to bring his faith both in the social gospel of Christianithy and in the promise of democracy clearly and confidently forward.

    Zeus

    Relevant excerpts from the article Oaktown Girl cited:

    From: http://www.blackcommentator.com/229/229_cover_questions_for_obama_fletcher_ed_bd.html

    “Questions for Candidate Obama” (by Bill Fletcher, Jr., The Black Commentator Editorial Board)

    “There is a way in which I cannot tell who is the real Senator Obama. For one, he has not carved out—at least as of this writing—any cutting edge issues where he is taking the lead and defining the terrain. Second, and to some extent more troubling, he permits people to see and assume in him what they want to see and assume. I have said to many of my friends that this situation reminds me of an episode from the original Star Trek series where there was a creature that appears to the viewer the way the viewer would like to see it.”

    “So, I think we need to understand the Senator’s thinking. After having what many observers described as a friendly relationship with Arab Americans over the years, the Senator appears to have yelled, “abandon ship” and jumped into an anti-Palestinian and anti-Iranian lifeboat.

    “I am not ready to write off the inspiring Senator from the great State of Illinois, but no matter how hard I try, I keep thinking about that creature from Star Trek.”

  33. on 12 May 2007 at 6:56 pm 33. christian h. said …

    elitist conceits of Marxism

    Grumble. There certainly are self-identified Marxists with elitist conceits. But Marxism(-Leninism) as such isn’t elitist. The notion of false consciousness is not elitist any more than the common liberal complaint that many people are “voting against their interests.”

    In any event, I’d like to see Obama be clear on his convictions not because I have any hope they are like mine, but because I believe it could help move society in (what I regard as) the right direction.