Two articles -- they're really too substantial to be designated as "posts" -- from Mahablog.
The first, published on the anniversary of Hiroshima, is a good look at the moral questions of the decision to drop The Bomb.
And it goes on from there.
The second -- well, the title says it all: Will Evangelicals Rediscover Religion?
I am reminded of the state legislator in Louisiana who was a big supporter of Bobby Jindal's school voucher program, which allowed "religious schools" to apply -- until two Muslim schools applied to the program, at which point she did a 180. Her reason for the switch? "I thought 'religious' meant 'Christian'."
This is, as far as I'm concerned, the key observation:
She does make one comment that stopped me for a moment:
This is certainly true in contemporary terms, but if you look at history, religion is tribal: Vine Deloria pointed out, in God is Red, that religion is a key factor in group identity -- they all started off as tribal, as a way of differentiating "us" from "other". My own conclusion is that attitude -- the cultural take on "other" -- is a key factor in whether the tribalism of religion leads to the kind of aggression that she notes: in pre-Christian Europe, for example, religion tended to be syncretistic. The Romans are perhaps the best example: one of the major cultural thrusts of ancient Rome was expansion and assimilation, one result of which was that the gods of neighboring peoples were taken as counterparts of the Roman gods. The Greek pantheon was almost identical to the Roman, save for the names (and if you think about the plethora of epithets attached to the Greek gods, take it as evidence that the Greeks had been doing their own assimilation of deities), but we find that the Romans were also eager to fit the ancient Irish and British gods into their existing roster. The ancient Israelites, on the other hand, weren't interested in including anyone else in their club. Given their history, that's not such a surprise, but it's indicative of a cultural mindset that seems to have carried over -- or been revived -- in modern evangelical Christianity, which doesn't even consider the Pope to be Christian (although they don't tend to say that out loud these days -- the enemy of my enemy, etc.) and seems to focus more on the Old Testament than on the Gospels.
At any rate, both are worth reading -- just pour yourself another cup of coffee and hunker down. And if Mahablog is not on your bookmarks, I suggest you rectify that asap.
The first, published on the anniversary of Hiroshima, is a good look at the moral questions of the decision to drop The Bomb.
In Rethinking Religion I have a section on “moral clarity,” defined as “a state of mind achieved by staking a fixed position on a presumed moral high ground and then ignoring the details of human life that fog the view.” My primary example of “moral clarifying” are the anti-abortion activists who argue incessantly for the sacredness and rights of the fetus while barely mentioning the woman carrying the fetus in her body.
Appy, and many other liberals, try to pull something like that with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They stake the moral high ground that dropping the bomb was absolutely evil, and then revise history six ways from Sunday to “prove” that the men who chose to drop it were just evil and callous and had some nefarious end other than the stated one, which was to end the war quickly and avoid a ground invasion of Japan.
And it goes on from there.
The second -- well, the title says it all: Will Evangelicals Rediscover Religion?
A big part of the problem with our definitions of religion stems from the fact that most of us have had a very narrow exposure to religion. This is doubly true in the U.S., in spite of the fact that we may be living in the most religiously diverse nation in human history. Somehow, in mass media and in the public hive mind, the default definition of “religion” is “conservative evangelical Christianity.”
I am reminded of the state legislator in Louisiana who was a big supporter of Bobby Jindal's school voucher program, which allowed "religious schools" to apply -- until two Muslim schools applied to the program, at which point she did a 180. Her reason for the switch? "I thought 'religious' meant 'Christian'."
This is, as far as I'm concerned, the key observation:
In other words, religion is something you do, not something you are, or believe, or something to adopt as part of your tribal identity. And as something you do, it should not necessarily be easy, or be a socially enforced norm. And it’s that last part that’s hard for conservatives to accept.
She does make one comment that stopped me for a moment:
The worst thing that can happen to religion, IMO, is to become entangled with ethnic and national identities, and thereby with politics. That’s where religious violence comes from; it’s the confluence of ethnic and racial bigotries and political power with conservative religion that drives the worst of what is called “religious” violence.
This is certainly true in contemporary terms, but if you look at history, religion is tribal: Vine Deloria pointed out, in God is Red, that religion is a key factor in group identity -- they all started off as tribal, as a way of differentiating "us" from "other". My own conclusion is that attitude -- the cultural take on "other" -- is a key factor in whether the tribalism of religion leads to the kind of aggression that she notes: in pre-Christian Europe, for example, religion tended to be syncretistic. The Romans are perhaps the best example: one of the major cultural thrusts of ancient Rome was expansion and assimilation, one result of which was that the gods of neighboring peoples were taken as counterparts of the Roman gods. The Greek pantheon was almost identical to the Roman, save for the names (and if you think about the plethora of epithets attached to the Greek gods, take it as evidence that the Greeks had been doing their own assimilation of deities), but we find that the Romans were also eager to fit the ancient Irish and British gods into their existing roster. The ancient Israelites, on the other hand, weren't interested in including anyone else in their club. Given their history, that's not such a surprise, but it's indicative of a cultural mindset that seems to have carried over -- or been revived -- in modern evangelical Christianity, which doesn't even consider the Pope to be Christian (although they don't tend to say that out loud these days -- the enemy of my enemy, etc.) and seems to focus more on the Old Testament than on the Gospels.
At any rate, both are worth reading -- just pour yourself another cup of coffee and hunker down. And if Mahablog is not on your bookmarks, I suggest you rectify that asap.
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