I read a disturbing opinion piece today from George Will in which he calls for the US to remove birthright citizenship. In Will's view, altering the laws so that one's birth in the US does not automatically confer citizenship would accomplish two (in his view) admirable goals.
First, it would correct what he sees as a pervasive misreading of the 14th Amendment, which reads in part, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The key here, for Will, is the middle phrase, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." This phrase, according to Will, conveys the authors' intention that birthright citizenship only affect the children of people over whom the US has proper authority. Native Americans, for example, were originally not understood as covered by this clause in that their allegiance was not directly to the US government (this changed in 1924--thanks, Wikipedia!).
Why does Will think correcting (what he sees as) a misreading like this is so important?
The answer lies in the second and greater benefit he sees in his proposal. Removing birthright citizenship (or, as it's known, jus soli) would, Will argues, nearly solve the problem of illegal immigration in the US. Will cites congressional testimony (without citation) that alleges that up to ten percent of all births in the nation are to parents who are in the country illegally. Because these children are by birth US citizens, the question of what to do with or to their undocumented parents becomes quite difficult to address.
In the comments, the supporters of striking jus soli (and there are many of them represented in the comments) mention a variety of other countries (e.g., Canada, the UK, Australia) who have rescinded birthright citizenship. They ask why the US would cling to what they consider an ill-conceived and outdated criterion for granting the rights of citizenship.
The idea of removing birthright citizenship makes me queasy. I must admit my initial reaction was doubtless colored by the fact that I heard it from George Will, whose opinions I often find unpalatable (but who generally makes a cogent argument for them). All my talk and writing about conversion and proselytization, however, pushes me to question my own prejudices. So--prejudice aside, does removing jus soli make sense? Is Will making a good argument?
He's right, on one level. Though I find the anti-immigrant epithet "anchor baby" offensive, the problem it names--what to do when a parent here illegally has a baby on US soil?--does present a conundrum. Rescinding birthright citizenship would take an Alexandrine sword to that Gordion knot of a problem.
One wonders, then, exactly how citizenship would be conferred if not by birth. The alternative to jus soli, historically, is jus sanguinis--citizenship as an attribute of blood. If your parents are US citizens prior to your birth, then you are. I can see how such an alternative would appear attractive to a number of groups. People strongly opposed to illegal immigration (and to the people who immigrate illegally) would be able to push for a harsher (though still impractical) policy of deportation to rid the US of such groups.
Further to the right, nativist groups (I would include paleo-conservatives like Patrick Buchanan here) would find in jus sanguinis an effective bulwark against what they see as the dilution of US culture. Given that, as of this year, the majority of babies born in the US will be non-white, people who feel strongly that US is culturally and historically Anglo-Saxon (a belief not, they would insist, the same as outright racism) have reason to be worried. If as Will asserts a significant percentage of those non-white babies are being born to undocumented persons, then jus sanguinis would allow whites to maintain a majority for a bit longer.
Of course, Will does not tap into such rationales himself. But it's difficult for me to see the right-wing push to abolish jus soli as occurring independently of a rising nativist sentiment in which "native" means "mostly white, with a certain acceptable percentage of blacks and other races."
Thus my queasiness with the anti-birthright citizenship movement. It's not that I think that there's anything magical about US soil that grants special powers to those born on it. Citizenship is a discursive construct, not an essential attribute. Tying it to birth or to blood (or, as many countries do, and as the US to a certain extent does, a combination of both) doesn't functionally change what citizenship confers. The question at stake here isn't definitional-- what is citizenship, really? what does it mean to be a citizen? Citizenship, however it is determined, remains as ever the right to have rights within a particular polity.
No, the birthright debate raises a basically political question: Who counts? And beneath that--how does other people's counting affect how I am counted? Behind calls to limit citizenship hides a tightfistedness about the rights that citizenship grants access to and a fear that giving those rights to others spreads liberty too thinly. Now, I must concede that this proprietary attitude towards citizenship rights has a practical element: the state has only so many resources. Ministering to everyone within its borders regardless of status means that everyone gets a little less.
True enough. But could it be that I already enjoy too much? Through no effort or agency of my own, I enjoy a whole host of rights actively denied to others--all by accident of birth, blood, location, history, culture, language--whatever. It bugs me, therefore, when nativist advocates and their more moderate allies paint citizenship debates as instances of righting a criminal injustice. Was it illegal for this or that person to flee economic disenfranchisement by crossing the border illicitly, circumventing the proper (though lengthy, uncertain, and expensive) channels? Yes.
But such illegality is an order of magnitude different than a criminal act like robbery. The latter implies taking from me something I have worked for and earned a right to have. I did not work for my citizenship. My right to be a citizen flows from something as arbitrary as my birthplace and my parents' status (parents who also did nothing to earn their citizenship). If we're asking who worked harder to earn access to the rights of citizenship, my bet's on the people who risked life and limb to get into this country and make a better life for themselves and their families. Where's the justice in punishing people who work so hard for something most of us US citizens blissfully take for granted? Moreover--where's the justice in punishing the children of such people?
It may be, at the end of the day, that limitations on citizenship are necessary given limited resources. But let's not fool ourselves that these limitations flow from some higher ethic of citizenship. They flow from the need to keep US as the ones who count.
For that reason, high-minded calls to restrict citizenship rights--or any of the blessings of liberty--strike me as the worst kind of selfishness.
More later,
JF
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Health Care, Faith, and Kengor's column
In the wake of the Healthcare Reform victory (hurrah), I found a curious response from conservative Christianity, an opinion piece by Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College. It's reprinted here on Warren Throckmorton's blog.
Kengor bemoans the fact that so many on the partisan left have invoked Christian themes in their pro-Reform Bill rhetoric, asserting in his view that this bill was God's own bill, affirmed by Christ himself. Kengor contrasts that embrace of Christian rhetoric with the "eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith" leveled by those same liberals. The left's mobilization of Christian "social justice" rhetoric is all the more galling, continues Kengor, in that it includes provisions for abortion coverage, which Kengor sees as a disqualification for the bill's having anything at all to do with achieving Christlike goals. His piece concludes thus:
First, as a left-leaning Christian, I've not been shy about citing my faith as the grounds for my support for the health care reform (i.e., steps toward socialization of health care--and I reemphasize that the bill that just passed is nothing like the full-scale socialization I think ought to happen). I think it's unconscionable that our society makes health care--even and especially life-saving (or quality-of-live-saving) health care--contingent upon a patient's ability to pay for it. My convictions regarding love for the neighbor over love for oneself, the proper ethical treatment of the poor and the sick, the skeptical attitude toward worldly wealth accumulation expressed in the gospels--all of these move me to resist a society where profit for a very few outweighs the good for a great many.
To affirm that my faith inspires me to support this bill, however, is something utterly different than asserting that God personally supports this particular piece of US legislation. I understand God as imposing upon Christians certain ethical guidelines to be applied (in the rich sense of checking in with, thinking deeply about, wrestling with) to life in general. I do not see God or Christ as writing (via verbal inspiration or by proxy) specific laws to be passed. Nor have I ever heard any health care supporter assert anything of the sort. Nor does Kengor cite a single politician, theologian, or social group who asserts anything of the sort.
Kengor charges the liberal left with unfairly castigating George W. Bush with religious fanaticism every time he so much as mentioned his prayer life, even though practically every president before him and Obama after him invoked Christian-religious themes in a variety of circumstances. Now, I believe one can study how and to what extent Bush II mobilized Christian rhetoric (and the kind of Christian rhetoric so mobilized) versus how and to what extent Obama mobilized it and conclude fairly that some stark contrasts separate how each used Christianity and to what ends.
But, insofar as critics decry Bush's (or any politician's) mention of his religious faith in the public sphere as inappropriate, I can agree. I've argued before against the idea that faith is purely private and must remain segregated from public stances. Rather, one's faith (in the broad sense, not just a religious sense) inevitably plays a role in the dynamics of one's positions and arguments. Banning faith from public sphere discourse only drives complicates the democratic process of exchanging ideas and fighting for/against/about different ideals. We need to become more adept at discussing faith-based stances, not less.
Problems arise, however, when faith gets played not as one factor in a decision-making process but as the only factor, a debate-stopper. The battle over abortion provisions in the health care bill,and the related struggles by many faith-based opponents of abortion over whether or not to support the bill illustrates this distinction. For Christians undergoing this struggle, their faith moves them to consider prenatal life as invested with personhood, generally from conception onward (not at all my own conviction, for the record). A bill that refuses to ban abortions in the strongest, most stringent terms, then, is from this perspective, a bill that tolerates medical murder. Yet so much of the rest of the bill moves in directions that do good--that provide coverage for the uninsured, that prevent companies from denying coverage for specious reasons, etc. And proponents of the bill strove mightily to craft policies that limited abortion provisions. The result? Some pro-life advocates ended up supporting the bill; others did not.
This was, I offer, a political struggle in which dynamic conversations about a faith-based conviction played a large role. At the fracture point were people--some people, at least--on both sides who understood and respected the faith convictions of their opponents, even if they disagreed with them.
I detect none of that respect in Kengor's column. For him, the abortion issue in the context of the health care bill isn't a difficult ethical issue that people of good faith--people within the overall Christian pro-life community--can disagree on. Rather, in Kengor's argument Christian faith emerges as a black-and-white stance against abortions (apparently, all abortion, anywhere, at any time, in any conceivable circumstance). Faith doesn't foster debate or conversation; it's instead an end to conversation, a shutting of the books that brooks no nuance or disagreement. Moreover, it wipes away any possible consideration of other things the bill in question might accomplish.
This stance of Kengor's I submit, is as contradictory as the stance he attributes to the liberal left. Faith can and should be part of the public debate, he argues, but apparently only when that faith matches his own exactly. Bush II's faith was fine, for Kengor, and any disagreement with it was just liberal grousing. But Obama's faith, Pelosi's faith, and the faith of other bill supporters (Christian and otherwise, pro-choice and pro-life)--this faith is a fraud. It's illegitimate. Why? Because it isn't his own.
But if you argue, as Kengor does, that faith can and should play a part in the public sphere and in political debates, then you must accept that faith itself--what it is, what it's not; what it enjoins, what it prohibits--becomes an object for debate, a thing contested rather than simply and homogenously affirmed. I suspect that Kengor and other religious right pundits who call for faith in the public sphere don't actually want to talk about faith; rather, they want their own specific faith to end all talk. Because once you start talking about faith, then you have to acknowledge a plurality of faiths, even and especially within your own faith community. This, I submit, has never been a strength of organized Christianity, especially not in its Protestant evangelical iterations.
More later,
JF
Kengor bemoans the fact that so many on the partisan left have invoked Christian themes in their pro-Reform Bill rhetoric, asserting in his view that this bill was God's own bill, affirmed by Christ himself. Kengor contrasts that embrace of Christian rhetoric with the "eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith" leveled by those same liberals. The left's mobilization of Christian "social justice" rhetoric is all the more galling, continues Kengor, in that it includes provisions for abortion coverage, which Kengor sees as a disqualification for the bill's having anything at all to do with achieving Christlike goals. His piece concludes thus:
I want to make several quick observations here.
It’s a quite radical departure from eight years of scourging George W. Bush every time he confessed he prayed. At long last, there is room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior “supports” a certain agenda. Who says conversions don’t happen?
First, as a left-leaning Christian, I've not been shy about citing my faith as the grounds for my support for the health care reform (i.e., steps toward socialization of health care--and I reemphasize that the bill that just passed is nothing like the full-scale socialization I think ought to happen). I think it's unconscionable that our society makes health care--even and especially life-saving (or quality-of-live-saving) health care--contingent upon a patient's ability to pay for it. My convictions regarding love for the neighbor over love for oneself, the proper ethical treatment of the poor and the sick, the skeptical attitude toward worldly wealth accumulation expressed in the gospels--all of these move me to resist a society where profit for a very few outweighs the good for a great many.
To affirm that my faith inspires me to support this bill, however, is something utterly different than asserting that God personally supports this particular piece of US legislation. I understand God as imposing upon Christians certain ethical guidelines to be applied (in the rich sense of checking in with, thinking deeply about, wrestling with) to life in general. I do not see God or Christ as writing (via verbal inspiration or by proxy) specific laws to be passed. Nor have I ever heard any health care supporter assert anything of the sort. Nor does Kengor cite a single politician, theologian, or social group who asserts anything of the sort.
Kengor charges the liberal left with unfairly castigating George W. Bush with religious fanaticism every time he so much as mentioned his prayer life, even though practically every president before him and Obama after him invoked Christian-religious themes in a variety of circumstances. Now, I believe one can study how and to what extent Bush II mobilized Christian rhetoric (and the kind of Christian rhetoric so mobilized) versus how and to what extent Obama mobilized it and conclude fairly that some stark contrasts separate how each used Christianity and to what ends.
But, insofar as critics decry Bush's (or any politician's) mention of his religious faith in the public sphere as inappropriate, I can agree. I've argued before against the idea that faith is purely private and must remain segregated from public stances. Rather, one's faith (in the broad sense, not just a religious sense) inevitably plays a role in the dynamics of one's positions and arguments. Banning faith from public sphere discourse only drives complicates the democratic process of exchanging ideas and fighting for/against/about different ideals. We need to become more adept at discussing faith-based stances, not less.
Problems arise, however, when faith gets played not as one factor in a decision-making process but as the only factor, a debate-stopper. The battle over abortion provisions in the health care bill,and the related struggles by many faith-based opponents of abortion over whether or not to support the bill illustrates this distinction. For Christians undergoing this struggle, their faith moves them to consider prenatal life as invested with personhood, generally from conception onward (not at all my own conviction, for the record). A bill that refuses to ban abortions in the strongest, most stringent terms, then, is from this perspective, a bill that tolerates medical murder. Yet so much of the rest of the bill moves in directions that do good--that provide coverage for the uninsured, that prevent companies from denying coverage for specious reasons, etc. And proponents of the bill strove mightily to craft policies that limited abortion provisions. The result? Some pro-life advocates ended up supporting the bill; others did not.
This was, I offer, a political struggle in which dynamic conversations about a faith-based conviction played a large role. At the fracture point were people--some people, at least--on both sides who understood and respected the faith convictions of their opponents, even if they disagreed with them.
I detect none of that respect in Kengor's column. For him, the abortion issue in the context of the health care bill isn't a difficult ethical issue that people of good faith--people within the overall Christian pro-life community--can disagree on. Rather, in Kengor's argument Christian faith emerges as a black-and-white stance against abortions (apparently, all abortion, anywhere, at any time, in any conceivable circumstance). Faith doesn't foster debate or conversation; it's instead an end to conversation, a shutting of the books that brooks no nuance or disagreement. Moreover, it wipes away any possible consideration of other things the bill in question might accomplish.
This stance of Kengor's I submit, is as contradictory as the stance he attributes to the liberal left. Faith can and should be part of the public debate, he argues, but apparently only when that faith matches his own exactly. Bush II's faith was fine, for Kengor, and any disagreement with it was just liberal grousing. But Obama's faith, Pelosi's faith, and the faith of other bill supporters (Christian and otherwise, pro-choice and pro-life)--this faith is a fraud. It's illegitimate. Why? Because it isn't his own.
But if you argue, as Kengor does, that faith can and should play a part in the public sphere and in political debates, then you must accept that faith itself--what it is, what it's not; what it enjoins, what it prohibits--becomes an object for debate, a thing contested rather than simply and homogenously affirmed. I suspect that Kengor and other religious right pundits who call for faith in the public sphere don't actually want to talk about faith; rather, they want their own specific faith to end all talk. Because once you start talking about faith, then you have to acknowledge a plurality of faiths, even and especially within your own faith community. This, I submit, has never been a strength of organized Christianity, especially not in its Protestant evangelical iterations.
More later,
JF
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Health Care Reform Day
Ugh. I'm so nervous about the health care reform vote today, but I can't stand to look at/listen to any news about it. I'm for the reform vote, just in case that was unclear. Like most everyone else, I can't claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of its every provision. Nor am I 100% pleased with those provisions with which I'm familiar.
But the key features that attract me are its move away from profit-based health care insurance to a more socialized care. I just don't think that someone's ability to receive necessary medical care should be contingent upon their ability to pay. Health care ought to be a right to be enjoyed by all, not a privilege to be bought by a few. I should think that was implicit in the spirit of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" (yes, yes--that's from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, but we're talking spirit of laws, not the letter, right?).
Will this plan cost money? Well, the Congressional Budget Office's report suggests it will cut the deficit, but frankly I don't think there's much of a way around the fact that a less-for-profit system will inevitably impose more social cost in the short term than a for-profit one.
And I'm OK with that. I hear so much now from folk like the Tea Partiers about how angry they are that government is daring to suggest that they pay for this or that social service. For them--I should say, for some of the people identified as their spokespeople ('cause there's really no leaders, right? It's an authentic grassroots movement that's somehow unified but not responsible for maintaining its unity, right? Thus, Tea Partiers can claim at once that they represent the true, authentic will of the people and still get to act wounded when media organizations call them on the racist/xenophobic sloganeering at some Tea Party functions. It's rhetorical having your cake and eating it, too: "You'd better listen to us! Except when we say embarrassing things!")--
Sorry. Parenthetical rant. For those Tea Party officials I've heard who have cogent quotes, the anti-health care bill bias seems to stem from at least two sources: 1) Health care reform is necessary, but not right now (i.e., not in a time of financial crisis); and 2) Health care simply isn't a right, and to try to make it so (a.k.a. "health care for all") is un-American.
Now, while I disagree with both arguments, the first seems at least more sensible to me. It would take a great deal of argument, for instance, to suggest that the current system is working as-is and that reform of some sort isn't eventually necessary. The question for the first line of thinking seems to be "when is best to institute reform?" They suggest "later." By way of disagreement, I note that throughout most of the last two decades (i.e., between the early nineties recession and the Great Recession now), the US enjoyed a fairly prosperous economy as well as mainly Republican-controlled congressional houses. How much health care reform happened then? Zip. Nada. [Edit: Well, that isn't quite true. Republicans did pass some reforms, such as expansions to Medicare's prescription drug benefit, which as many point out indicates how popular government-run health care programs are once adopted] To my mind, Republicans have signaled as clearly as they can that they are simply uninterested in comprehensive reform. Ever. [Edit: This statement, however, seems to remain true...]
The second argument, though, worries me, as it bespeaks a much deeper divide regarding the purpose of government in general. For some of the Tea Partiers I've heard on TV and radio, the US government exists primarily to protect individual rights, especially when those rights come into conflict with governmental or general-social interests. This isn't wrong so much as it is incomplete. It neglects the complementary purpose of government "to secure the common defence" and to "promote the General Welfare" (from the Constitution's Preamble). In other words--yes, defending the rights of the individual is important, but those rights and that defense must exist in concert with provisions for the General Welfare of society at large.
Perhaps the quotes from and interviews with Tea Party members and other anti-health-care-reform advocates I've heard are incomplete, but too often I hear the "protect individuals from tyrannical government" argument without any mention of the fact that government exists for the good of individuals. For all its limitations on government, the Constitution is not purely a check on government's power but also an imperative that directs that power toward positive ends. Democratic governments work of, by, and for the people.
Sometimes the work for the people in general trumps the will of the individual. I may dislike paying taxes when part of those taxes go to fund roads I never use or civic services I may never need. But taxes aren't about me as an individual any more than roads or fire departments or coast guards are dedicated to only my needs. Similarly, I may never have need of catastrophic health care insurance myself (lord willing). But I still fully support the notion that part of my tax burden needs to be making sure that such insurance is available for those who need it regardless of their ability to pay. Why? Because making sure people don't suffer an die just because they're poor is foundational to the mission of a government charged with promoting the General Welfare.
And, to speak more specifically to the Christian p.o.v., I have trouble seeing the Christ-like rationale behind making health care a commodity rather than a human right. I'm sorrowful that the Christian church in its various forms--particularly its Protestant forms--hasn't been more vocal in supporting health care. I in no way support the Catholic Church's extreme (I do think the word is appropriate) stance against abortion, but at least the various factions within the Church--pro- and anti-health care reform--have been part of the conversation. Moreover, the articulated stances--both the "we can't support it because of the abortion provisions" of the Council of Bishops and the "it does too much good not to support" of the group of 59,000 nuns--both of these exemplified how faith and theology can inform and animate a debate.
Where is the Protestant church? Where is the evangelical church? Within these sectors of Christianity I detect terrible discourse of silence or, worse, a call to resist initiatives for making society more just if those initiatives dare impinge upon the individual's profit margin. I'm hearing more and more references to the very few verses in the Bible that seem resigned to poverty (e.g., "the poor will always be with you"), as if these trump the overwhelming number of verses calling on Christians and Jews to fight poverty, to resist the lures of material wealth, and to put the needs of the neighbor above the profit of the self.
And the hair-splitting rebuttals I hear from some evangelicals--"Yes, but there's a difference between individual charity and governmental thievery"--cuts no mustard with me. Evangelicals more than anyone else have been arguing persuasively for the place of faith as motivator for political stances. More conservative evangelicals are hardly shy about citing faith as a reason for opposing abortion, reproductive rights, and gay rights. That so many of them now seem distanced from or utterly opposed to the expansion of health care for people otherwise unable to afford it reeks of selling out. One can oppose gay marriage without cost. But ask someone to pay more in taxes so everyone can get life-saving treatments (not just "emergency room" care--how sickening that argument is!)--then you ask for an actual sacrifice, an actual cross to take up, an actual delay on one's journey to dirty yourself to help a neighbor in need.
To be clear: I think health care reform (expanding benefits to more and more people regardless of profit motive) makes sense even from a non-faith-based perspective. But my personal support of health care stems from my faith, from the imperative from Lord Jesus to help those in need, to love neighbors as ourselves, to lay down our lives for others.
I hope it passes. [Edit: It did! Hurrah!]
More later,
JF
But the key features that attract me are its move away from profit-based health care insurance to a more socialized care. I just don't think that someone's ability to receive necessary medical care should be contingent upon their ability to pay. Health care ought to be a right to be enjoyed by all, not a privilege to be bought by a few. I should think that was implicit in the spirit of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" (yes, yes--that's from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, but we're talking spirit of laws, not the letter, right?).
Will this plan cost money? Well, the Congressional Budget Office's report suggests it will cut the deficit, but frankly I don't think there's much of a way around the fact that a less-for-profit system will inevitably impose more social cost in the short term than a for-profit one.
And I'm OK with that. I hear so much now from folk like the Tea Partiers about how angry they are that government is daring to suggest that they pay for this or that social service. For them--I should say, for some of the people identified as their spokespeople ('cause there's really no leaders, right? It's an authentic grassroots movement that's somehow unified but not responsible for maintaining its unity, right? Thus, Tea Partiers can claim at once that they represent the true, authentic will of the people and still get to act wounded when media organizations call them on the racist/xenophobic sloganeering at some Tea Party functions. It's rhetorical having your cake and eating it, too: "You'd better listen to us! Except when we say embarrassing things!")--
Sorry. Parenthetical rant. For those Tea Party officials I've heard who have cogent quotes, the anti-health care bill bias seems to stem from at least two sources: 1) Health care reform is necessary, but not right now (i.e., not in a time of financial crisis); and 2) Health care simply isn't a right, and to try to make it so (a.k.a. "health care for all") is un-American.
Now, while I disagree with both arguments, the first seems at least more sensible to me. It would take a great deal of argument, for instance, to suggest that the current system is working as-is and that reform of some sort isn't eventually necessary. The question for the first line of thinking seems to be "when is best to institute reform?" They suggest "later." By way of disagreement, I note that throughout most of the last two decades (i.e., between the early nineties recession and the Great Recession now), the US enjoyed a fairly prosperous economy as well as mainly Republican-controlled congressional houses. How much health care reform happened then? Zip. Nada. [Edit: Well, that isn't quite true. Republicans did pass some reforms, such as expansions to Medicare's prescription drug benefit, which as many point out indicates how popular government-run health care programs are once adopted] To my mind, Republicans have signaled as clearly as they can that they are simply uninterested in comprehensive reform. Ever. [Edit: This statement, however, seems to remain true...]
The second argument, though, worries me, as it bespeaks a much deeper divide regarding the purpose of government in general. For some of the Tea Partiers I've heard on TV and radio, the US government exists primarily to protect individual rights, especially when those rights come into conflict with governmental or general-social interests. This isn't wrong so much as it is incomplete. It neglects the complementary purpose of government "to secure the common defence" and to "promote the General Welfare" (from the Constitution's Preamble). In other words--yes, defending the rights of the individual is important, but those rights and that defense must exist in concert with provisions for the General Welfare of society at large.
Perhaps the quotes from and interviews with Tea Party members and other anti-health-care-reform advocates I've heard are incomplete, but too often I hear the "protect individuals from tyrannical government" argument without any mention of the fact that government exists for the good of individuals. For all its limitations on government, the Constitution is not purely a check on government's power but also an imperative that directs that power toward positive ends. Democratic governments work of, by, and for the people.
Sometimes the work for the people in general trumps the will of the individual. I may dislike paying taxes when part of those taxes go to fund roads I never use or civic services I may never need. But taxes aren't about me as an individual any more than roads or fire departments or coast guards are dedicated to only my needs. Similarly, I may never have need of catastrophic health care insurance myself (lord willing). But I still fully support the notion that part of my tax burden needs to be making sure that such insurance is available for those who need it regardless of their ability to pay. Why? Because making sure people don't suffer an die just because they're poor is foundational to the mission of a government charged with promoting the General Welfare.
And, to speak more specifically to the Christian p.o.v., I have trouble seeing the Christ-like rationale behind making health care a commodity rather than a human right. I'm sorrowful that the Christian church in its various forms--particularly its Protestant forms--hasn't been more vocal in supporting health care. I in no way support the Catholic Church's extreme (I do think the word is appropriate) stance against abortion, but at least the various factions within the Church--pro- and anti-health care reform--have been part of the conversation. Moreover, the articulated stances--both the "we can't support it because of the abortion provisions" of the Council of Bishops and the "it does too much good not to support" of the group of 59,000 nuns--both of these exemplified how faith and theology can inform and animate a debate.
Where is the Protestant church? Where is the evangelical church? Within these sectors of Christianity I detect terrible discourse of silence or, worse, a call to resist initiatives for making society more just if those initiatives dare impinge upon the individual's profit margin. I'm hearing more and more references to the very few verses in the Bible that seem resigned to poverty (e.g., "the poor will always be with you"), as if these trump the overwhelming number of verses calling on Christians and Jews to fight poverty, to resist the lures of material wealth, and to put the needs of the neighbor above the profit of the self.
And the hair-splitting rebuttals I hear from some evangelicals--"Yes, but there's a difference between individual charity and governmental thievery"--cuts no mustard with me. Evangelicals more than anyone else have been arguing persuasively for the place of faith as motivator for political stances. More conservative evangelicals are hardly shy about citing faith as a reason for opposing abortion, reproductive rights, and gay rights. That so many of them now seem distanced from or utterly opposed to the expansion of health care for people otherwise unable to afford it reeks of selling out. One can oppose gay marriage without cost. But ask someone to pay more in taxes so everyone can get life-saving treatments (not just "emergency room" care--how sickening that argument is!)--then you ask for an actual sacrifice, an actual cross to take up, an actual delay on one's journey to dirty yourself to help a neighbor in need.
To be clear: I think health care reform (expanding benefits to more and more people regardless of profit motive) makes sense even from a non-faith-based perspective. But my personal support of health care stems from my faith, from the imperative from Lord Jesus to help those in need, to love neighbors as ourselves, to lay down our lives for others.
I hope it passes. [Edit: It did! Hurrah!]
More later,
JF
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Precision-Engineered Evangelism? The Camel Method
For the most part, I restrict my research on evangelicalism's outreach techniques to the US context. But the question of proselytization--its propriety, its status as a human right, its place in a regime of pluralization and tolerance--has taken on a new charge in international venues.
Case in point: Robert Wright's "Opinionator" blog in this week's New York Times online, "Christian Soldiers." There Wright riffs on a Times article chronicling increased resistance to (US-based) Christian proselytizing by Islamic nations. In particular, some of these nations object especially to a tactic innovated by evangelist Kevin Greeson known as "the Camel Method." Aside from its cringe-inducing racist overtones (which appear to be unintended), the "camel" here functions as both an acronym (Chosen Angels Miracles Eternal Life) and as a reference to the proverb that once a camel gets its nose under or into a tent, the rest of the camel is sure to follow.
Geeson's technique is basically in line with the worldview apologetic approach I've written about previously. It involves getting to know the "Islamic worldview" and equipping Christians to engage Muslims on their own terms, in non-threatening ways. The key? Greeson recommends highlighting the commonalities between Christianity and Islam, primarily that, as Abrahamic faiths, they worship the same God. From there it's a matter of appealing to Muslims' reverence for Jesus ("Isa"--whose story the Qur'an relates and parallels the Christian gospel narratives in some respects) and suggesting that, if they really revere Isa/Jesus, then they should take a look at just how unique he was. Moreover--eventually--the evangelist will suggest that Muslims investigate the claims Jesus made about himself, i.e., that he wasn't merely God's prophet but God's son, the Messiah.
This isn't a unique approach, certainly not as unique as the Times pieces suggest. Greg Stier's Dare 2 Share program, for example, espouses a similar technique for talking to Muslims (as well as Hindus, Mormons, Wiccas, Atheists, and anyone else not Bible-believing evangelical). It's grounded in the worldview assumptions that traditional proclamation simply won't work for people living within whole other worldviews. Christians have to meet people where they are, resisting the urge to "close the deal" in the first five minutes by hitting people over the head with Hell-Sin-Salvation (contra Ray Comfort's Way of the Master). Additionally, the trans-worldview conversation techniques encouraged by the Camel Method direct Christians not to attack Islamic beliefs but rather to "raise up Jesus."
For many Muslims whose countries and populations the Camel Method targets, however, the Camel Method seems dishonest and exploitative. Many Muslims scoff at the idea that their Allah is at all the same as the Christian Godhead. Critics quoted in the Times article point to instances of evangelicals "going undercover," effectively pretending not to be Christian, so as to make having a theological conversation easier.
The article dwells especially on resistance by other Christians--other Baptists, to be specific--to this method. One prominent Baptist theologian, Ergun Caner, recently and publicly called out another, Jerry Rankin, for Rankin's support of the Camel Method. Caner is just as resistant as some Muslim critics to the suggestion of identity between the Christian God and Allah. Wright seizes upon this critique from Christians, lamenting that it stems not from a conviction that undercover proselytizing is wrong but from a proprietary shock that their God could be confused with another faith's deity.
Wright, in his opinion piece, warns that the Camel Method and other such Christian proselytizing techniques often get taken by Muslims in other countries as "cultural aggression." Muslims do not proselytize in the same way as evangelicals do, he argues, and they view leaving Islam as a very serious affair. Wright goes on to suggest that such proselytizing may contribute to heightened tension between Christians and Muslims in places like Nigeria, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. "[M]y guess," he writes, "is that [proselytizing] pretty consistently falls in the 'not helpful' category from the point of view of world peace and, ultimately, American security. And some of it — e.g., the 'Camel Method' — is particularly antagonistic."
As I've written on here before, while as a researcher I find proselytizing fascinating, as a Christian I'm turned off by it. But Wright's suggestion that proselytizing constitutes a form of cultural aggression seems, at least, tendentious. At what point does any focused (dare I say "precision-engineered") mode of persuasion that seeks to create converts from one worldview to another cross over into "aggression" towards the original worldview? If I devote focused energies to convincing you to change your mind about something, I do so because I disagree strongly with your original opinion or stance on that thing. But calling such an act "aggressive" in the absence of forced coercion seems unwarranted.
It's seems--again--that the "cultural aggression" argument holds different rules for how religious beliefs may operate versus how political or cultural convictions may operate. I wonder what Wright would think of a "precision-engineered" technique that aimed to get Muslims in certain countries thinking about, say, adopting Western-style attitudes towards women's rights? What about CIA operations to encourage Western-style liberal democracies in countries whose cultural and political traditions resist democracy? Or what about the US culture industries who actively seek to create interest in and markets for Western commodities and the lifestyles/values that go with them?
What renders these acts of attempted conversion allowable (invisible, necessary, or even laudable) while designating acts of attempted religious conversion verboten? I have no interest in apologizing for "the Camel Method"; I have considerable ethical and theological qualms with it.
But I dislike this growing sense that of all the various ways that people holding one set of values attempt to influence people who hold different values, religious modes of persuasion somehow cause unique or special harm. Bolstering such a belief is the present-day assumption that faith is ultimately a private affair, a feature of identity that can and should be compartmentalized away.
It's this assumption, I argue, that really promises to exacerbate Islam/Christian tensions. Because right behind the gripe Can't those Baptists just keep it to themselves? is the gripe Can't those Muslims just keep it to themselves? Do they have to pray in public five times a day? Do they have to insist on the exclusivity of their faith? Do they have to build those minarets?--and so forth. Misconstruing faith as an I-can-keep-it-to-myself affair hinders a clear-eyed understanding of how and why faith cultures produce fields of tension in the first place, and it certainly puts us at a disadvantage for suggesting ways to ameliorate that tension.
More later,
JF
Case in point: Robert Wright's "Opinionator" blog in this week's New York Times online, "Christian Soldiers." There Wright riffs on a Times article chronicling increased resistance to (US-based) Christian proselytizing by Islamic nations. In particular, some of these nations object especially to a tactic innovated by evangelist Kevin Greeson known as "the Camel Method." Aside from its cringe-inducing racist overtones (which appear to be unintended), the "camel" here functions as both an acronym (Chosen Angels Miracles Eternal Life) and as a reference to the proverb that once a camel gets its nose under or into a tent, the rest of the camel is sure to follow.
Geeson's technique is basically in line with the worldview apologetic approach I've written about previously. It involves getting to know the "Islamic worldview" and equipping Christians to engage Muslims on their own terms, in non-threatening ways. The key? Greeson recommends highlighting the commonalities between Christianity and Islam, primarily that, as Abrahamic faiths, they worship the same God. From there it's a matter of appealing to Muslims' reverence for Jesus ("Isa"--whose story the Qur'an relates and parallels the Christian gospel narratives in some respects) and suggesting that, if they really revere Isa/Jesus, then they should take a look at just how unique he was. Moreover--eventually--the evangelist will suggest that Muslims investigate the claims Jesus made about himself, i.e., that he wasn't merely God's prophet but God's son, the Messiah.
This isn't a unique approach, certainly not as unique as the Times pieces suggest. Greg Stier's Dare 2 Share program, for example, espouses a similar technique for talking to Muslims (as well as Hindus, Mormons, Wiccas, Atheists, and anyone else not Bible-believing evangelical). It's grounded in the worldview assumptions that traditional proclamation simply won't work for people living within whole other worldviews. Christians have to meet people where they are, resisting the urge to "close the deal" in the first five minutes by hitting people over the head with Hell-Sin-Salvation (contra Ray Comfort's Way of the Master). Additionally, the trans-worldview conversation techniques encouraged by the Camel Method direct Christians not to attack Islamic beliefs but rather to "raise up Jesus."
For many Muslims whose countries and populations the Camel Method targets, however, the Camel Method seems dishonest and exploitative. Many Muslims scoff at the idea that their Allah is at all the same as the Christian Godhead. Critics quoted in the Times article point to instances of evangelicals "going undercover," effectively pretending not to be Christian, so as to make having a theological conversation easier.
The article dwells especially on resistance by other Christians--other Baptists, to be specific--to this method. One prominent Baptist theologian, Ergun Caner, recently and publicly called out another, Jerry Rankin, for Rankin's support of the Camel Method. Caner is just as resistant as some Muslim critics to the suggestion of identity between the Christian God and Allah. Wright seizes upon this critique from Christians, lamenting that it stems not from a conviction that undercover proselytizing is wrong but from a proprietary shock that their God could be confused with another faith's deity.
Wright, in his opinion piece, warns that the Camel Method and other such Christian proselytizing techniques often get taken by Muslims in other countries as "cultural aggression." Muslims do not proselytize in the same way as evangelicals do, he argues, and they view leaving Islam as a very serious affair. Wright goes on to suggest that such proselytizing may contribute to heightened tension between Christians and Muslims in places like Nigeria, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. "[M]y guess," he writes, "is that [proselytizing] pretty consistently falls in the 'not helpful' category from the point of view of world peace and, ultimately, American security. And some of it — e.g., the 'Camel Method' — is particularly antagonistic."
As I've written on here before, while as a researcher I find proselytizing fascinating, as a Christian I'm turned off by it. But Wright's suggestion that proselytizing constitutes a form of cultural aggression seems, at least, tendentious. At what point does any focused (dare I say "precision-engineered") mode of persuasion that seeks to create converts from one worldview to another cross over into "aggression" towards the original worldview? If I devote focused energies to convincing you to change your mind about something, I do so because I disagree strongly with your original opinion or stance on that thing. But calling such an act "aggressive" in the absence of forced coercion seems unwarranted.
It's seems--again--that the "cultural aggression" argument holds different rules for how religious beliefs may operate versus how political or cultural convictions may operate. I wonder what Wright would think of a "precision-engineered" technique that aimed to get Muslims in certain countries thinking about, say, adopting Western-style attitudes towards women's rights? What about CIA operations to encourage Western-style liberal democracies in countries whose cultural and political traditions resist democracy? Or what about the US culture industries who actively seek to create interest in and markets for Western commodities and the lifestyles/values that go with them?
What renders these acts of attempted conversion allowable (invisible, necessary, or even laudable) while designating acts of attempted religious conversion verboten? I have no interest in apologizing for "the Camel Method"; I have considerable ethical and theological qualms with it.
But I dislike this growing sense that of all the various ways that people holding one set of values attempt to influence people who hold different values, religious modes of persuasion somehow cause unique or special harm. Bolstering such a belief is the present-day assumption that faith is ultimately a private affair, a feature of identity that can and should be compartmentalized away.
It's this assumption, I argue, that really promises to exacerbate Islam/Christian tensions. Because right behind the gripe Can't those Baptists just keep it to themselves? is the gripe Can't those Muslims just keep it to themselves? Do they have to pray in public five times a day? Do they have to insist on the exclusivity of their faith? Do they have to build those minarets?--and so forth. Misconstruing faith as an I-can-keep-it-to-myself affair hinders a clear-eyed understanding of how and why faith cultures produce fields of tension in the first place, and it certainly puts us at a disadvantage for suggesting ways to ameliorate that tension.
More later,
JF
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Christianity as the Rough Life Religion
My ambitions to post more regularly are being challenged by a generally rough patch in my life currently. But then, I suppose ambitions to strengthen or re-establish disciplines--mental, physical, and spiritual--often do face early challenges by life's general roughness.
I think it's often forgotten that one of Christianity's longstanding strengths is its willingness to openly and often acknowledge life's rough spots. I suppose the over-exposure of word-and-faith, prosperity gospels that cast Christianity as a naive set of beliefs about how good life is (or should be) if only you trust in Jesus. At best, such pie-in-the-sky Christianity seems willfully blind, creating churches full of dupes all to eager to dump "seed" money into the pockets of hungry charlatans. Religion becomes, in the eyes of skeptics, a "stupidity tax"--like lotteries--catering to the gullible.
The darker side of this image, of course, is the Pat Robertson-esque (or Fred Phelps-esque) drive to explain natural disasters, ill health, poverty, or personal tragedy as some directly God-ordained punishment for individual or communal sin. Ugly Christianity has few nastier faces than the well-ya-shouldn't-have-sinned rationale.
In my experience, though, few Christians, be they mainline, liberal, Catholic, or evangelical, actually espouse such balderdash. Sure, the idea of a fallen world (whether literally or figuratively due to to the Edenic Fall) gets a lot of play, but--and this is a fine nuance often lost in communication--invoking the Fallen World is of a different order of explanation than the Robertsonish cause-and-effect narratives used to, for example, blame AIDS on homosexuals. The fallen world--or as I like to think of it the broken world--doesn't assign direct blame; it's not a juridical rationale. It's a way of describing the sick, sad, fact that s--t happens.
I find that assessment of life, frankly, throughout the gospels. "It rains on the just and the unjust," Christ tells us. Or (in Luke--and I paraphrase), "Don't go thinking that those people Pilate had killed or those folk who died when that tower collapsed were any more or less righteous or guilty than you were." Yes, you should repent of your sins, Jesus insists; but your repentance or lack thereof doesn't cause disasters to happen. Mortal life is full of suffering and disease. Paul has a thorn in the flesh that doesn't leave no matter what his prayers. Sometimes healing happens. Sometimes it doesn't. That's just life.
Heck, we have (from our Jewish cousins-in-faith) the book of Job, where God's puzzling, frustrating answer to Job's all-too-human question of why, God? is basically, "you're better off not asking."
Much of the skepticism I hear directed at religion, and Christianity especially, castigates it for its inability to deal with the reality of pain and suffering--the fact that life sucks sometimes. But (and this echoes a rebuttal voiced by critics like Stanley Fish and Terry Eagleton) Christianity itself has a rich history of reflecting on how life does in fact suck, asking why it must suck ("why have you forsaken me?" our own Lord demands of God), and--most of all--demanding that we attend to each other as neighbors, as sisters and brothers, in the midst of the suffering.
I would never want to be seen as asserting that pain occurs simply to remind us of our own shared mortality; that'd be like saying that tornadoes happen to remind us of the need for storm shelters. I don't think most pain comes to us with lessons hidden within it, bundled away for us to unpack. To affirm the world is fallen or broken isn't to ameliorate the frustration that it is so. But, sometimes, we can create of pain an occasion do what we can to make the world less broken.
Judaism has a great phrase, tikkun olam--"repairing the world." Generally, as it was introduced to me, the phrase describes how certain good or ethical acts should be done not because of their direct or indirect benefit to the doer but because, in general, they contribute to the betterment of the world at large.
I am drawn to the idea of "repairing the world" as a way to describe our joint endeavor with Christ in this broken, fallen world where bad things happen. It is because the world is broken that we can (and should) decide to act in ways that repair it, in ways that make the suffering of life less for our neighbors.
Lord, help me, in this rough spot of this rough, broken life to remember to do your work of repair and to receive with grace the repairs you may grant to me.
More later,
JF
I think it's often forgotten that one of Christianity's longstanding strengths is its willingness to openly and often acknowledge life's rough spots. I suppose the over-exposure of word-and-faith, prosperity gospels that cast Christianity as a naive set of beliefs about how good life is (or should be) if only you trust in Jesus. At best, such pie-in-the-sky Christianity seems willfully blind, creating churches full of dupes all to eager to dump "seed" money into the pockets of hungry charlatans. Religion becomes, in the eyes of skeptics, a "stupidity tax"--like lotteries--catering to the gullible.
The darker side of this image, of course, is the Pat Robertson-esque (or Fred Phelps-esque) drive to explain natural disasters, ill health, poverty, or personal tragedy as some directly God-ordained punishment for individual or communal sin. Ugly Christianity has few nastier faces than the well-ya-shouldn't-have-sinned rationale.
In my experience, though, few Christians, be they mainline, liberal, Catholic, or evangelical, actually espouse such balderdash. Sure, the idea of a fallen world (whether literally or figuratively due to to the Edenic Fall) gets a lot of play, but--and this is a fine nuance often lost in communication--invoking the Fallen World is of a different order of explanation than the Robertsonish cause-and-effect narratives used to, for example, blame AIDS on homosexuals. The fallen world--or as I like to think of it the broken world--doesn't assign direct blame; it's not a juridical rationale. It's a way of describing the sick, sad, fact that s--t happens.
I find that assessment of life, frankly, throughout the gospels. "It rains on the just and the unjust," Christ tells us. Or (in Luke--and I paraphrase), "Don't go thinking that those people Pilate had killed or those folk who died when that tower collapsed were any more or less righteous or guilty than you were." Yes, you should repent of your sins, Jesus insists; but your repentance or lack thereof doesn't cause disasters to happen. Mortal life is full of suffering and disease. Paul has a thorn in the flesh that doesn't leave no matter what his prayers. Sometimes healing happens. Sometimes it doesn't. That's just life.
Heck, we have (from our Jewish cousins-in-faith) the book of Job, where God's puzzling, frustrating answer to Job's all-too-human question of why, God? is basically, "you're better off not asking."
Much of the skepticism I hear directed at religion, and Christianity especially, castigates it for its inability to deal with the reality of pain and suffering--the fact that life sucks sometimes. But (and this echoes a rebuttal voiced by critics like Stanley Fish and Terry Eagleton) Christianity itself has a rich history of reflecting on how life does in fact suck, asking why it must suck ("why have you forsaken me?" our own Lord demands of God), and--most of all--demanding that we attend to each other as neighbors, as sisters and brothers, in the midst of the suffering.
I would never want to be seen as asserting that pain occurs simply to remind us of our own shared mortality; that'd be like saying that tornadoes happen to remind us of the need for storm shelters. I don't think most pain comes to us with lessons hidden within it, bundled away for us to unpack. To affirm the world is fallen or broken isn't to ameliorate the frustration that it is so. But, sometimes, we can create of pain an occasion do what we can to make the world less broken.
Judaism has a great phrase, tikkun olam--"repairing the world." Generally, as it was introduced to me, the phrase describes how certain good or ethical acts should be done not because of their direct or indirect benefit to the doer but because, in general, they contribute to the betterment of the world at large.
I am drawn to the idea of "repairing the world" as a way to describe our joint endeavor with Christ in this broken, fallen world where bad things happen. It is because the world is broken that we can (and should) decide to act in ways that repair it, in ways that make the suffering of life less for our neighbors.
Lord, help me, in this rough spot of this rough, broken life to remember to do your work of repair and to receive with grace the repairs you may grant to me.
More later,
JF
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Phelps Counter-Rallies and Tolerance Fads
Back from some time away due to sickness and a conference. Now I'm on the long, slow climb back to being caught up. Part of the catching up process involves re-establishing my habit of regular postings. Thus--
It seems none other than the Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps will be protesting here in my own town soon. A local high school is doing The Laramie Project, Tectonic Theatre's documentary play about the aftermath of Matthew Shepard's murder. The play itself features an extended scene that references Phelps's protest of Shepard's funeral and of the trial of his killers. One of the characters (based, of course, on a real person) responds to Phelps's protest by staging a counter-protest of people dressed as angels. As Phelps and his crew yell anti-gay invectives, the angels stand in front of him and raise their wings, blocking him from the funeral (or from the cameras).
Since then, Phelps and his Westboro Baptist church regularly choose to protest various productions of the play, which in turn inspires large counter-protests along the lines of those represented. Given that Laramie Project has become something of a high school staple (low tech requirements, large cast, easy-to-prove liberal credentials), Phelps is rarely at a loss for some site to protest, and communities are rarely at a loss for occasions to prove how liberal they are in response.
Don't get me wrong. I think it can be admirable to organize and stage a counter-protest. I've participated in some counter-protests against him myself. Certainly Phelps's message merits a counter-statement...
...or does it? Something about the formula of "Phelps comes/counter-protest staged" makes my alarms go off.
His ministry depends upon people at least seeing his bright neon signs. As I've written before, he's not so interested in creating converts; his hyper-Calvinism leads him to see most everyone else as hopelessly non-predestined anyway. Phelps's demonstrations function more as God's pointing finger of judgment, a conduit of divine disapproval for the nation's refusal to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. (One wonders if they believe in positive reinforcement, traveling to Uganda, perhaps, to praise legislators there for considering a death penalty measure for homosexual acts).
But, as just about anyone who's seen Phelps in person knows, the Westboro presence is generally anticlimactic. There's generally a handful of protesters, like a smallish family on vacation, waving their admittedly eye-catching signs. It's sort of pathetic, really--so pathetic that I wonder honestly whether they would continue at all were it not for the fact that their well-publicized presence guarantees a massive counter-reaction from the community.
More disturbingly, and with all due respect for the good intentions of the organizers: what is the point of the communal counter-reaction? It certainly won't convince Phelps et al. that their cause is hopeless or wrong-headed. Quite the contrary--the more resistance they inspire, the more the Phelps crew become convinced of the meaningfulness of their action. Doesn't the counter-reaction itself give Phelps just what he wants, i.e., proof that his righteous condemnation is making waves with the heathen? Could it be that the automatic counter-reactions by communities that Phelps visits have the unintended side-effect of encouraging Phelps to continue?
The stronger argument for counter-protests, of course, is that they aren't for Phelps's benefit but for the community's. A strong counter-rally against Phelps demonstrates to that community that his level of intolerance is, well, intolerable. I suppose that community audience has a number of sub-divisions. There's the GLBT sub-community, for whom their community's gesture of support could be a meaningful counter-message to Phelps's "God Hates Fags" rhetoric. I can see, also, how a communal counter-rally could encourage connection and mutual awareness within the left-liberal-activist sections of that community. I could even see how the occasion of a rally in contrast to Phelp's message might push some otherwise stand-offish (or apathetic) "moderate" folk to make an active choice. The rally re-casts Phelps's visit into an either-or melodrama, forcing the audience of the community to take sides.
But if I might play devil's advocate: speaking as a GLBT member of my community, it's nice that my city wants to rally to say that, at the end of the day, gay people shouldn't be called fags and given the death penalty. But I would hope that my community thinks that in any case. More directly, there's lots of ways I can think of for my community to express support for me that I'd rather see happen than a one-time counter-rally against a fire-and-brimstone caricature like Phelps. How about a non-discrimination policy? How about domestic partner benefits? How about health care for GLBT couples? (how about health care for everybody, come to think of it)?
I'm sorry, but I'm incredulous toward the notion that my civic community has my back, as demonstrated by a one-off reaction to the cartoon-level intolerance of Phelps, when that same community fails consistently to enact the day-today recognitions of equality that would make a material difference in my life and in the lives of other GLBT people.
That, I think, is the danger of Phelps and Westboro--not that they will actually inspire people to adopt their wacko beliefs but that they give people who otherwise do little or nothing for GLBT people a chance to acquire pro-tolerance credentials simply by standing up and saying, "You know, it's wrong to call those people fags and say they should all die and burn in hell." Phelps makes tolerance easy, a matter of standing up against him. If tolerance within a pluralized democracy means anything beyond beautiful phrases, surely it means an ongoing work of standing up for the rights and equality of people unlike you.
Now, if a counter-Phelps rally represents for some people a first step toward a broader perspective on what tolerance means--then super. But the danger I fear is that Phelps can just as easily be an occasion to participate in a facile fad of tolerance chic.
More soon,
JF
It seems none other than the Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps will be protesting here in my own town soon. A local high school is doing The Laramie Project, Tectonic Theatre's documentary play about the aftermath of Matthew Shepard's murder. The play itself features an extended scene that references Phelps's protest of Shepard's funeral and of the trial of his killers. One of the characters (based, of course, on a real person) responds to Phelps's protest by staging a counter-protest of people dressed as angels. As Phelps and his crew yell anti-gay invectives, the angels stand in front of him and raise their wings, blocking him from the funeral (or from the cameras).
Since then, Phelps and his Westboro Baptist church regularly choose to protest various productions of the play, which in turn inspires large counter-protests along the lines of those represented. Given that Laramie Project has become something of a high school staple (low tech requirements, large cast, easy-to-prove liberal credentials), Phelps is rarely at a loss for some site to protest, and communities are rarely at a loss for occasions to prove how liberal they are in response.
Don't get me wrong. I think it can be admirable to organize and stage a counter-protest. I've participated in some counter-protests against him myself. Certainly Phelps's message merits a counter-statement...
...or does it? Something about the formula of "Phelps comes/counter-protest staged" makes my alarms go off.
His ministry depends upon people at least seeing his bright neon signs. As I've written before, he's not so interested in creating converts; his hyper-Calvinism leads him to see most everyone else as hopelessly non-predestined anyway. Phelps's demonstrations function more as God's pointing finger of judgment, a conduit of divine disapproval for the nation's refusal to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. (One wonders if they believe in positive reinforcement, traveling to Uganda, perhaps, to praise legislators there for considering a death penalty measure for homosexual acts).
But, as just about anyone who's seen Phelps in person knows, the Westboro presence is generally anticlimactic. There's generally a handful of protesters, like a smallish family on vacation, waving their admittedly eye-catching signs. It's sort of pathetic, really--so pathetic that I wonder honestly whether they would continue at all were it not for the fact that their well-publicized presence guarantees a massive counter-reaction from the community.
More disturbingly, and with all due respect for the good intentions of the organizers: what is the point of the communal counter-reaction? It certainly won't convince Phelps et al. that their cause is hopeless or wrong-headed. Quite the contrary--the more resistance they inspire, the more the Phelps crew become convinced of the meaningfulness of their action. Doesn't the counter-reaction itself give Phelps just what he wants, i.e., proof that his righteous condemnation is making waves with the heathen? Could it be that the automatic counter-reactions by communities that Phelps visits have the unintended side-effect of encouraging Phelps to continue?
The stronger argument for counter-protests, of course, is that they aren't for Phelps's benefit but for the community's. A strong counter-rally against Phelps demonstrates to that community that his level of intolerance is, well, intolerable. I suppose that community audience has a number of sub-divisions. There's the GLBT sub-community, for whom their community's gesture of support could be a meaningful counter-message to Phelps's "God Hates Fags" rhetoric. I can see, also, how a communal counter-rally could encourage connection and mutual awareness within the left-liberal-activist sections of that community. I could even see how the occasion of a rally in contrast to Phelp's message might push some otherwise stand-offish (or apathetic) "moderate" folk to make an active choice. The rally re-casts Phelps's visit into an either-or melodrama, forcing the audience of the community to take sides.
But if I might play devil's advocate: speaking as a GLBT member of my community, it's nice that my city wants to rally to say that, at the end of the day, gay people shouldn't be called fags and given the death penalty. But I would hope that my community thinks that in any case. More directly, there's lots of ways I can think of for my community to express support for me that I'd rather see happen than a one-time counter-rally against a fire-and-brimstone caricature like Phelps. How about a non-discrimination policy? How about domestic partner benefits? How about health care for GLBT couples? (how about health care for everybody, come to think of it)?
I'm sorry, but I'm incredulous toward the notion that my civic community has my back, as demonstrated by a one-off reaction to the cartoon-level intolerance of Phelps, when that same community fails consistently to enact the day-today recognitions of equality that would make a material difference in my life and in the lives of other GLBT people.
That, I think, is the danger of Phelps and Westboro--not that they will actually inspire people to adopt their wacko beliefs but that they give people who otherwise do little or nothing for GLBT people a chance to acquire pro-tolerance credentials simply by standing up and saying, "You know, it's wrong to call those people fags and say they should all die and burn in hell." Phelps makes tolerance easy, a matter of standing up against him. If tolerance within a pluralized democracy means anything beyond beautiful phrases, surely it means an ongoing work of standing up for the rights and equality of people unlike you.
Now, if a counter-Phelps rally represents for some people a first step toward a broader perspective on what tolerance means--then super. But the danger I fear is that Phelps can just as easily be an occasion to participate in a facile fad of tolerance chic.
More soon,
JF
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