Spotty updates this week as I'm traveling to visit family for Thanksgiving.
I'm taking some time out of cooking--well, time out of helping my partner cook--to post a bit. To revisit briefly what I was writing about last time, though, just to complete a thought: Say what you will about or against the Manhattan Declaration (the right-wing Christian statement recently released), but it's not, as some have suggested, an unfair or illegitimate use of rights discourse.
For instance, the Declaration's authors to claim that their right to free expression of religion trumps the gay or lesbian person's right to have their unions recognized as marriage or to be free from discrimination on the basis of their orientation. The authors would argue, for instance, that a tax-exempt, faith-based charity ought to be able to refuse service or hire to a lesbian since non-closeted lesbian identities violate conservative Christian precepts. To forbid the charity from making such decisions in the name of non-discrimination policies is, in the Declaration's logic, to violate the charity-workers' rights to free expression of religious conviction.
The authors apply similar logic to the case of a physician or pharmacist faced with a patient or client who wanted an abortion (or "the morning-after pill"). The physician or pharmacist must, in the authors' eyes, be allowed to deny service in such cases. One can imagine (and the Declaration itself suggests) other cases where professional or governmental duties interfere with a person's perception of religiously mandated acts. The recent news I mentioned briefly about military personnel proselytizing overseas, much to the embarrassment of the military and US foreign policy. In these and other situations, the Declaration insists that the right to religious liberty--the freedom to express and live by the dictates of (conservative Christian) conscience must remain paramount.
Critics have countered that the authors have a warped view of the right to religious expression. Yes, Christians may privately believe that homosexual behavior is wrong, that abortion is immoral, or that the gospel needs to be spread in every situation. The US guarantees that people may believe these things and that people may act on these beliefs. But the Declaration's critics would argue that these rights obtain within strict boundaries, in relationship to other rights, and--crucially--in relationship to the rights of others. A religion might insist that its adherents kill anyone with a ponytail, and adherents are completely free to believe that. They are not, however, free to act on that belief. The ponytailed person's rights to life--to not be murdered--overrides the other person's right to religious expression.
Of course the Declaration calls for no one's death. But insofar as the authors maintain a right to (for instance) discriminate against GLBT people, critics make a similar argument: your religious freedom cannot override equal protection under the law. To claim otherwise, to claim in fact that First Amendment freedoms guarantee a right to discriminate against GLBT people--these are for critics spurious claims. They "hijack" the liberal discourse of rights.
But the problem is that liberal discourse does not provide a specific definition of rights to hijack. This is a persistent and powerful fiction of human rights language. We hold certain truths to be self-evident, that all people are endowed with natural rights--but in practice rights don't exist apart from active recognition by a community (specifically by a state). I can believe with all my heart that I have a natural right to yell fire in a crowded theatre, but unless the authorities agree with me, or unless at least a sizable group of people agree with me, then my right exists as a subjective opinion and little else. This is not to say I don't have that right; perhaps I actually do. But rights are primarily matters of practice and common recognition, not transcendent self-evidence or personal conviction.
As such, no one's claim to a particular human right can ever finally be proved or disproved, only fought for and agreed to by a critical mass of society's members--or not. I may take issue with the Delcaration authors' claim that they have a religious right to employment discrimination, but my disagreement can't consist simply of pointing to some list of self-evident rights and saying, "See? Not there!" After all, in the Declaration, GLBT people are the ones claiming a false right, a right to have their private sexual proclivities validated as "normal."
Because rights have no final content, situations in which rights appear to conflict or in which there's a disagreement about what rights exist are particularly vexing.
More tomorrow,
JF
Showing posts with label manhattan delcaration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manhattan delcaration. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Phantom Menaces and Rights Squabbles
I'm afraid I let loose a bit too much yesterday, knocking down (well, as much as one can on a short blog) some of the logical/theological inconsistencies riddling the "Manhattan Declaration"--the recently released salvo by a group of Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical conservatives.
In the interests of critical generosity, I should note one piece of rhetorical ground on which I think the Declaration isn't as vulnerable as some of my liberal-progressive comrades seem to believe. One site I viewed gave a fairly thorough rundown of the Delcaration's many problematic features. The commentary led, however, with an allegation to the effect that the religious right was once again "hijacking" civil rights language. While I have a lot of problems with their stances, I don't think that they're misusing civil rights language--at least no more than any liberal-progressive group does.
I assume that the reviewers meant the Declaration authors' section about "Religious Liberty." That section, the third major point (after the "culture of life/anti-abortion" section and the "marriage culture/anti-gay" sections), begins with a brief reaffirmation of the wrongness of religious coercion. The point, however, isn't "don't force conversions" but "government shouldn't prevent people from expressing disapproval of abortion and glbt identities." The authors castigate "those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a
right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated
around these practices be recognized and blessed by law" (6). Mind you--this bears repeating--the Declaration offers no proof that anyone seriously asserts a right to kill the aged and disabled. These are phantom menaces, conservative-Christian boogie-men lumped together with doctors who endorse a woman's right to choose in order to make abortion (all abortions, apparently, performed for any reason, even to save the life of the mother) seem horrible.
The authors go on to cite several anecdotes that purport to illustrate a general decline in religious liberties--mainly religious organizations who have their tax-exempt status threatened for not complying with anti-discrimination statutes. Against such a threat, the authors promise civil disobedience, a la Martin Luther King, Jr. "Unjust laws degrade human beings," write the authors. Thus laws that are unjust must not be obeyed.
Of course, by "unjust laws," the authors mean "laws that remove the privileged status granted to religious organizations when said organizations choose to claim exceptions to the rules everyone else has to follow." To receive tax-exempt status, a charity organization must not, for example, refuse to serve members of a particular race, religion, creed--or (in some instances) sexual orientation. A private charity is of course free to follow the dictates of its conscience and not serve, say, communist Baptists. It cannot, however, claim federal recognition or receive the unearned privileges regularly extended to faith-based organizations if it does so.
Thus there is a bit of, well, disingenuousness in the Declaration's claim to being discriminated against because of their choice to discriminate. Tax-exempt status is always already a special regard, not an essential right of religious organizations. If it were a right, then religious organizations would be able to discriminate against anyone for any reason.
Clearly, though, the Declaration's authors consider the removal of tax-exempt status for, specifically, discriminating against heterosexual-only policies as of the same species of oppression as prosecuting people for expressing disagreement with pro-gay-inclusion policies. Again, the authors cannot point to any kind of grand campaign to force pastors to marry gays or lesbians; none exist. Another phantom menace. The authors' bold statements that they will not be forced to bless homosexual unions, then, strike me as so much hot air.
Nevertheless, beneath the big read devils they put on display, the authors do locate a legitimate conflict. They are correct, for instance, in framing their disagreements as a conflict of differing conceptions of civil rights. The state's protection of the right to religious expression does conflict with other rights--the right to equal treatment under the law, for example, or the right to autonomy of self. For instance, were the state to declare (as it has not in most cases) that same-sex couples have the same set of rights as married couples, this declaration--this new definition of rights--would in fact violate the religious convictions of many people. Moreover, by recognizing the right of same-sex couples to be married, the state basically prioritizes the protection of that right above the hetero-only conviction.
To be sure, making same-sex marriage legal does not mean that rights to religious expression are therefore nullified; people who believe in hetero-only marriage do not face the choice of ceasing that belief or being prosecuted. What such people lose is instead the expectation (which they may have thought of as a right) that the state match their faith-based convictions about sexuality. Expressing their beliefs may not win them a night in the Birmingham jail, but neither will it win them approbation from government. Indeed, if they want to access government funds or if they wish to serve as a representative of the state, they must set aside their faith convictions insofar as those convictions violate the government's official stances.
Example? If the government recognizes same-sex marriages as equivalent in every respect to heterosexual marriages, then no judge or justice of the peace (or clerk granting marriage licenses) has the right to deny same-sex couples the documents or recognitions heterosexuals enjoy. The civil servant in question loses the right to both be employed and express their religiously based discrimination at the same time.
In this sense, then, the government's establishment or recognition of some rights (e.g., a woman's right to choose abortion, same-sex couples' rights to marriage protections) does result in a practical reshuffling of rights priorities. Religious convictions may not prevent the state or its representatives from enacting its protection of other rights. A conflict does in fact exist.
The easy response to this conflict--the response taken by the liberal-progressive reviewer I mentioned above--is simply to say that the Declaration's authors are simply misusing the whole notion of rights, fabricating some fake right to have the state endorse their anti-gay or anti-abortion attitudes.
I disagree.
More tomorrow,
JF
In the interests of critical generosity, I should note one piece of rhetorical ground on which I think the Declaration isn't as vulnerable as some of my liberal-progressive comrades seem to believe. One site I viewed gave a fairly thorough rundown of the Delcaration's many problematic features. The commentary led, however, with an allegation to the effect that the religious right was once again "hijacking" civil rights language. While I have a lot of problems with their stances, I don't think that they're misusing civil rights language--at least no more than any liberal-progressive group does.
I assume that the reviewers meant the Declaration authors' section about "Religious Liberty." That section, the third major point (after the "culture of life/anti-abortion" section and the "marriage culture/anti-gay" sections), begins with a brief reaffirmation of the wrongness of religious coercion. The point, however, isn't "don't force conversions" but "government shouldn't prevent people from expressing disapproval of abortion and glbt identities." The authors castigate "those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a
right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated
around these practices be recognized and blessed by law" (6). Mind you--this bears repeating--the Declaration offers no proof that anyone seriously asserts a right to kill the aged and disabled. These are phantom menaces, conservative-Christian boogie-men lumped together with doctors who endorse a woman's right to choose in order to make abortion (all abortions, apparently, performed for any reason, even to save the life of the mother) seem horrible.
The authors go on to cite several anecdotes that purport to illustrate a general decline in religious liberties--mainly religious organizations who have their tax-exempt status threatened for not complying with anti-discrimination statutes. Against such a threat, the authors promise civil disobedience, a la Martin Luther King, Jr. "Unjust laws degrade human beings," write the authors. Thus laws that are unjust must not be obeyed.
Of course, by "unjust laws," the authors mean "laws that remove the privileged status granted to religious organizations when said organizations choose to claim exceptions to the rules everyone else has to follow." To receive tax-exempt status, a charity organization must not, for example, refuse to serve members of a particular race, religion, creed--or (in some instances) sexual orientation. A private charity is of course free to follow the dictates of its conscience and not serve, say, communist Baptists. It cannot, however, claim federal recognition or receive the unearned privileges regularly extended to faith-based organizations if it does so.
Thus there is a bit of, well, disingenuousness in the Declaration's claim to being discriminated against because of their choice to discriminate. Tax-exempt status is always already a special regard, not an essential right of religious organizations. If it were a right, then religious organizations would be able to discriminate against anyone for any reason.
Clearly, though, the Declaration's authors consider the removal of tax-exempt status for, specifically, discriminating against heterosexual-only policies as of the same species of oppression as prosecuting people for expressing disagreement with pro-gay-inclusion policies. Again, the authors cannot point to any kind of grand campaign to force pastors to marry gays or lesbians; none exist. Another phantom menace. The authors' bold statements that they will not be forced to bless homosexual unions, then, strike me as so much hot air.
Nevertheless, beneath the big read devils they put on display, the authors do locate a legitimate conflict. They are correct, for instance, in framing their disagreements as a conflict of differing conceptions of civil rights. The state's protection of the right to religious expression does conflict with other rights--the right to equal treatment under the law, for example, or the right to autonomy of self. For instance, were the state to declare (as it has not in most cases) that same-sex couples have the same set of rights as married couples, this declaration--this new definition of rights--would in fact violate the religious convictions of many people. Moreover, by recognizing the right of same-sex couples to be married, the state basically prioritizes the protection of that right above the hetero-only conviction.
To be sure, making same-sex marriage legal does not mean that rights to religious expression are therefore nullified; people who believe in hetero-only marriage do not face the choice of ceasing that belief or being prosecuted. What such people lose is instead the expectation (which they may have thought of as a right) that the state match their faith-based convictions about sexuality. Expressing their beliefs may not win them a night in the Birmingham jail, but neither will it win them approbation from government. Indeed, if they want to access government funds or if they wish to serve as a representative of the state, they must set aside their faith convictions insofar as those convictions violate the government's official stances.
Example? If the government recognizes same-sex marriages as equivalent in every respect to heterosexual marriages, then no judge or justice of the peace (or clerk granting marriage licenses) has the right to deny same-sex couples the documents or recognitions heterosexuals enjoy. The civil servant in question loses the right to both be employed and express their religiously based discrimination at the same time.
In this sense, then, the government's establishment or recognition of some rights (e.g., a woman's right to choose abortion, same-sex couples' rights to marriage protections) does result in a practical reshuffling of rights priorities. Religious convictions may not prevent the state or its representatives from enacting its protection of other rights. A conflict does in fact exist.
The easy response to this conflict--the response taken by the liberal-progressive reviewer I mentioned above--is simply to say that the Declaration's authors are simply misusing the whole notion of rights, fabricating some fake right to have the state endorse their anti-gay or anti-abortion attitudes.
I disagree.
More tomorrow,
JF
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Manhattan Declarations and Ruminations
News about the "Manhattan Declaration," the manifesto signed by representatives of conservative evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox faiths, continues to spread through the liberal blogosphere. I got a chance to read over the whole thing. There's nothing terribly new or surprising here. The manifesto has three main sections: Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty. Each section begins with a general scripture and goes on to outline a conservative Christian consensus stance on those issues. Of course, each section frames its issue in terms of a growing threat from a secular world.
The "Life" section, for example, laments the continued acceptance of abortion as a legal medical procedure, linking "the killing of the unborn" with the killing of the elderly or disabled (i.e., euthanasia). Thus does the Manifesto conjure a dark but amorphous group of forces actively calling for the murder of unborn, aged, and/or handicapped individuals.
Who are these people? Who's advocating that the elderly get killed off? Apparently the "ghosts" of the "intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe" during the 1920s who (apparently with one unified, elite-intellectual-salon voice) called for the killing off of those unfit for survival. The "horrors of the mid-20th century" had buried these eugenicist ideas and their advocates, but "they have returned from the grave," costumed in the rhetorical clothing of liberty and choice.
In other words, "death panels," those physicians or caregivers who would dare to broach the subject of a person's being able to control how strenuously or for how long or under what conditions doctors may prolong that person's life. Here I thought it was reasonable, moral people thinking about living wills, do-not-resuscitate orders, or the plain old desire to let life end when every moment is agony. But instead I find it's Nazi eugenicists cleverly tricking people out of planning ahead for the inevitable.
As for who's thinking about killing of disabled people--who knows? The Manifesto is silent, assuring readers only that whoever these phantom murderers are, the Church stands ready to combat them.
Strangely absent from the Manifesto's talk of the culture of life is any mention of the death penalty or military action (such as the preemptive invasion of a country that never attacked us). While I do not agree with their stances on reproductive issues, I have to admit at least that Catholics are quite consistent in resisting the death penalty as much as they resist abortion. That the Manifesto is silent on such an issue puts the lie to its "culture of life" rhetoric.
The next section, "marriage," features a similar cavalcade of horrors stemming from the weakening of the institution of heterosexual marriage--or, more specifically, the weakening of "marriage culture." After some mention of the tragedy of divorce and infidelity, the marriage section devotes most of its space to an attack on the idea of non-heterosexual marriage. The authors argue that heterosexual marriage is uniquely blessed because only it involves the "sexual complementarity" of man and woman who "become one flesh" through the miracle of procreation. As if detecting the inevitable rebuttal (i.e., what about heterosexual marriages that do not aim at procreation?), the Manifesto specifies that the necessary component is the husband and wife "fulfilling the behavioral conditions of procreation."
Oddly, the authors follow that qualification with this statement: "That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility,even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation."
Huh? I call non-sequitor. If possibility of procreation gives heterosexual marriage it's monopolistic claim to morality, then you can't simply say that non-procreative marriage is just as good. That's not even Biblical! Look at what Abraham did when it looked like Sarah wasn't going to conceive: he took himself another woman (Hagar, whom he abandoned once Sarah got pregnant). Clearly, for Abraham, the lockbox of heterosexual monogamy just didn't cut the mustard if procreation wasn't happening.
A host of other problems crop up in this "marriage culture" section (among them: the historical amnesia about the gender inequalities that defined marriage for centuries; the encomium on polygamous marriages evident in Bible stories of Abraham, David, Solomon, and many others; the parallels between hetero-only marriage arguments today and same-race-only arguments of the early to mid 20th century; etc.).
The last section, "Religious Liberty" begins with the venerable argument against religious coercion before quickly turning into a "they're out to get us!" bit of breast beating about how put upon religious (i.e., conservative Christian) people and institutions are by a government that apparently punishes them for expressing their faith. The argument here--the government won't let us discriminate!--is as full of holes as the marriage-culture argument, but considering these holes is the work of another day.
More tomorrow,
JF
The "Life" section, for example, laments the continued acceptance of abortion as a legal medical procedure, linking "the killing of the unborn" with the killing of the elderly or disabled (i.e., euthanasia). Thus does the Manifesto conjure a dark but amorphous group of forces actively calling for the murder of unborn, aged, and/or handicapped individuals.
Who are these people? Who's advocating that the elderly get killed off? Apparently the "ghosts" of the "intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe" during the 1920s who (apparently with one unified, elite-intellectual-salon voice) called for the killing off of those unfit for survival. The "horrors of the mid-20th century" had buried these eugenicist ideas and their advocates, but "they have returned from the grave," costumed in the rhetorical clothing of liberty and choice.
In other words, "death panels," those physicians or caregivers who would dare to broach the subject of a person's being able to control how strenuously or for how long or under what conditions doctors may prolong that person's life. Here I thought it was reasonable, moral people thinking about living wills, do-not-resuscitate orders, or the plain old desire to let life end when every moment is agony. But instead I find it's Nazi eugenicists cleverly tricking people out of planning ahead for the inevitable.
As for who's thinking about killing of disabled people--who knows? The Manifesto is silent, assuring readers only that whoever these phantom murderers are, the Church stands ready to combat them.
Strangely absent from the Manifesto's talk of the culture of life is any mention of the death penalty or military action (such as the preemptive invasion of a country that never attacked us). While I do not agree with their stances on reproductive issues, I have to admit at least that Catholics are quite consistent in resisting the death penalty as much as they resist abortion. That the Manifesto is silent on such an issue puts the lie to its "culture of life" rhetoric.
The next section, "marriage," features a similar cavalcade of horrors stemming from the weakening of the institution of heterosexual marriage--or, more specifically, the weakening of "marriage culture." After some mention of the tragedy of divorce and infidelity, the marriage section devotes most of its space to an attack on the idea of non-heterosexual marriage. The authors argue that heterosexual marriage is uniquely blessed because only it involves the "sexual complementarity" of man and woman who "become one flesh" through the miracle of procreation. As if detecting the inevitable rebuttal (i.e., what about heterosexual marriages that do not aim at procreation?), the Manifesto specifies that the necessary component is the husband and wife "fulfilling the behavioral conditions of procreation."
Oddly, the authors follow that qualification with this statement: "That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility,even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation."
Huh? I call non-sequitor. If possibility of procreation gives heterosexual marriage it's monopolistic claim to morality, then you can't simply say that non-procreative marriage is just as good. That's not even Biblical! Look at what Abraham did when it looked like Sarah wasn't going to conceive: he took himself another woman (Hagar, whom he abandoned once Sarah got pregnant). Clearly, for Abraham, the lockbox of heterosexual monogamy just didn't cut the mustard if procreation wasn't happening.
A host of other problems crop up in this "marriage culture" section (among them: the historical amnesia about the gender inequalities that defined marriage for centuries; the encomium on polygamous marriages evident in Bible stories of Abraham, David, Solomon, and many others; the parallels between hetero-only marriage arguments today and same-race-only arguments of the early to mid 20th century; etc.).
The last section, "Religious Liberty" begins with the venerable argument against religious coercion before quickly turning into a "they're out to get us!" bit of breast beating about how put upon religious (i.e., conservative Christian) people and institutions are by a government that apparently punishes them for expressing their faith. The argument here--the government won't let us discriminate!--is as full of holes as the marriage-culture argument, but considering these holes is the work of another day.
More tomorrow,
JF
Friday, November 20, 2009
Two Moments of Christian Dismay
Sometimes, it's too much.
In my research on conservative evangelical outreach, I have to keep in mind most of the time that I'm writing for an academic/artistic audience that is, in general, vaguely hostile to evangelicalism or conservative thought. I do my best in such cases to practice "critical generosity," a term coined by performance scholar David Roman. Among other things, critical generosity means doing your best as a critic to understand the mindset, the world view, of the subject you're investigating or writing about, being extra careful not to let your own personal biases color the presentation of the subject.
In Roman's case, as he wrote about fund-raising performances and cabarets produced in the early part of the AIDS epidemic, critical generosity meant suspending standard critical evaluative criteria--is this a good piece of art?--in favor of exploring and appreciating what it was that the performances were trying to do on their own terms.
I try to apply a similar kind of critical generosity toward conservative-evangelical (or even fundamentalist) worldviews that seem very far from my own. I find it challenging and productive to force myself to get into the head space of, say, Fred Phelps, Ray Comfort, or the ex-gay ministries (and I emphasize that these are radically different entities--I mean to emphasize a diversity of evangelical beliefs, not suggest that these are variations of the same thing).
But every so often, I run into a product of evangelical (or more broadly "Christian") culture that snaps me out of critical generosity and into Christian dismay. I had two such moments today, alas.
The first involves the "Manhattan Declaration," a longish statement by a diverse (relatively speaking) collection of Christian conservatives. Alas, I have yet to read it (tomorrow's work), from the executive summary it appears to be standard religious-right culture-war boilerplate with a civil disobedience twist. That is, the declaration makes amorphous statements to the effect that Christians (by which they mean their kind of Christians) are going to stand ready to disobey laws that force them to kill unborn babies, murder disabled people, recognize homosexual marriages, or tolerate limitations on the expression of (Christian) faith.
That's right--this powerful, signed-by-125-Christian-leaders, news-media-attracting statement by "Christianity" says that the main issues facing the people of God today, the key areas of life with which they should concern themselves--are no abortions, no gays, and you'd-better-say-Merry-Christmas!
Of course things are more complicated than that, but pardon me for a moment while, sans critical generosity, I just shake my head. Really? This is the witness of transformative, saving love you want to make to the world? "Here's what we're against (by the way--all of these are in that evil old health care bill that will extend insurance coverage to more people)."
Good job, Christianity. Another winning witness. Because people are falling away from the church because it's insufficiently clear about it's dislike of abortion, gays, and other religions.
Second dismay moment: My partner's on his way to my place, traveling from Illinois all the way down to me, a journey that takes him through the hinterlands of Mississippi. On the way, he listens to talk radio, where (on NPR apparently), he heard a story about this outfit: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. This group, from what I can gather, agitates for soldiers' and officers' rights to practice their faith (read: proselytize conservative evangelicalism) no matter where they're serving. There was apparently a Harper's story about them in May (which the MRFF proudly displays on its site). Among the anecdotes gathered by the magazine? Parading through a middle-eastern town with "Jesus Killed Mohammad" being proclaimed in Arabic and English...
Ugh... (shakes head).
Well--my partner just arrived! Nothing brightens up evangelical dismay like a loved one.
More tomorrow,
JF
In my research on conservative evangelical outreach, I have to keep in mind most of the time that I'm writing for an academic/artistic audience that is, in general, vaguely hostile to evangelicalism or conservative thought. I do my best in such cases to practice "critical generosity," a term coined by performance scholar David Roman. Among other things, critical generosity means doing your best as a critic to understand the mindset, the world view, of the subject you're investigating or writing about, being extra careful not to let your own personal biases color the presentation of the subject.
In Roman's case, as he wrote about fund-raising performances and cabarets produced in the early part of the AIDS epidemic, critical generosity meant suspending standard critical evaluative criteria--is this a good piece of art?--in favor of exploring and appreciating what it was that the performances were trying to do on their own terms.
I try to apply a similar kind of critical generosity toward conservative-evangelical (or even fundamentalist) worldviews that seem very far from my own. I find it challenging and productive to force myself to get into the head space of, say, Fred Phelps, Ray Comfort, or the ex-gay ministries (and I emphasize that these are radically different entities--I mean to emphasize a diversity of evangelical beliefs, not suggest that these are variations of the same thing).
But every so often, I run into a product of evangelical (or more broadly "Christian") culture that snaps me out of critical generosity and into Christian dismay. I had two such moments today, alas.
The first involves the "Manhattan Declaration," a longish statement by a diverse (relatively speaking) collection of Christian conservatives. Alas, I have yet to read it (tomorrow's work), from the executive summary it appears to be standard religious-right culture-war boilerplate with a civil disobedience twist. That is, the declaration makes amorphous statements to the effect that Christians (by which they mean their kind of Christians) are going to stand ready to disobey laws that force them to kill unborn babies, murder disabled people, recognize homosexual marriages, or tolerate limitations on the expression of (Christian) faith.
That's right--this powerful, signed-by-125-Christian-leaders, news-media-attracting statement by "Christianity" says that the main issues facing the people of God today, the key areas of life with which they should concern themselves--are no abortions, no gays, and you'd-better-say-Merry-Christmas!
Of course things are more complicated than that, but pardon me for a moment while, sans critical generosity, I just shake my head. Really? This is the witness of transformative, saving love you want to make to the world? "Here's what we're against (by the way--all of these are in that evil old health care bill that will extend insurance coverage to more people)."
Good job, Christianity. Another winning witness. Because people are falling away from the church because it's insufficiently clear about it's dislike of abortion, gays, and other religions.
Second dismay moment: My partner's on his way to my place, traveling from Illinois all the way down to me, a journey that takes him through the hinterlands of Mississippi. On the way, he listens to talk radio, where (on NPR apparently), he heard a story about this outfit: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. This group, from what I can gather, agitates for soldiers' and officers' rights to practice their faith (read: proselytize conservative evangelicalism) no matter where they're serving. There was apparently a Harper's story about them in May (which the MRFF proudly displays on its site). Among the anecdotes gathered by the magazine? Parading through a middle-eastern town with "Jesus Killed Mohammad" being proclaimed in Arabic and English...
Ugh... (shakes head).
Well--my partner just arrived! Nothing brightens up evangelical dismay like a loved one.
More tomorrow,
JF
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