Religion and Politics Again

"The issue for both sides is not so much what Roberts believes is right or wrong. Rather, it is the degree to which he believes religious morality may be permitted to influence public policy." The Washington Post, September 5, 2005. Here we go again -- confusion about religion and politics in relation to separation of church and state. The quote concerns the likely questioning of John Roberts in his confirmation hearings to be a justice and now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. If John Roberts believes as a Catholic that abortion is wrong, that is fine. But as public policy he must support that view on the basis of the laws, traditions, and values of American history and culture, especially those enshrined in its founding documents. This means that while it is perfectly legitimate to espouse values that are rooted in religion, in terms of law and public policy he must articulate those values in the language common to all Americans.

The most profound understanding of the relation of religion and politics I know of -- except, of course in my own writings! -- is found in a speech by Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York in an address at the University of Notre Dame September 13, 1984. He was dealing with the question as to whether he as a Catholic was bound to adopt a position against abortion in accordance with the teachings of the church. His answer was that he was not necessarily bound to do so. Here is what he says:

"Our public morality, then, -- the moral standards we maintain for everyone, not just the ones we insist on in our private lives-- depends on a consensus view of right and wrong. The values derived from religious belief will not --and should not -- be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus. That those values happen to be religious values does not deny them acceptability as a part of this consensus. But it does not require their acceptability, either. . . . the question whether to engage the political system in a struggle to have it adopt certain articles of our belief as part of public morality is not a matter of doctrine: it is a matter of prudential political judgment.

Yes, we create our public morality through consensus and in this country that consensus reflects to some extent religious values of a great majority of Americans. But. no, all religiously based values don't have an a priori place in our public morality. The community must decide if what is being proposed would be better left to private discretion than public policy; whether it restricts freedom, and if so to what end, to whose benefit; whether it will produce a good or bad result; whether overall it will help the community or merely divide it."

I could not have said it better myself. However, I would stress that any prevailing consensus of values among the American people itself must finally be judged by the founding documents, especially the Constitution.

1. Cuomo clearly recognizes that church and state is not the same problem as religion and politics.

2. He recognizes that religiously-based values have a legitimate place in public political discourse, but they have no privileged status since we have to find a moral consensus in a pluralistic society that includes a variety of religious belief and unbelief.

3. Political policies must be judged by whether they are best for the society as a whole, whether they promote peace, justice, freedom, and equality for all, not by whether they have religious sanction in some specific religion or denomination.

4. Christians as citizens and as public officials have to make an attempt to balance the moral truths they hold against political realities. Pragmatic judgments must be made which may require a compromise of the personal morality they espouse as persons of faith.

If a person running for office believes, e. g., that abortion is wrong because the Bible of the church says so, it is perfectly legitimate for her or him to try to persuade other Americans to oppose abortion. However, --and here is the crucial point -- the persuasion must, or should be, be in terms of values, principles, and beliefs embodied in the secular history of the country, not because the Bible or the Church says so. Religiously-based values should be translated into the language of American history in terms of whether it will further the common good. Appeal to the Bible or the Pope as such is not valid or pragmatically advisable. The Bible and the Pope as such are not authoritative for American political philosophy. If there is a correspondence between what the Bible and the Pope teach, on the one hand, and the laws, traditions, culture, the Constitution, and a consensus of Americans in general based on whatever authorities they follow,on the other hand, fine. But the support in the public realm must be based on the latter not on the former. And a consensus of contemporary values must finally be tested by the Constitution. Segregation was supported -- by some on allegedly religious grounds -- by large numbers of people in 1950, but the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

In short, it doesn't matter what a political proposal is based on, whether the Bible, the Koran, Hindu or Buddhist sources, or an atheistic moral philosophy. The only thing that matters is whether it is acceptable to a majority of voting citizens and can pass the Constitutional test as judged by the courts. Clear thinking may get lost in the heat of battle and succumb to slogans, deep-rooted religious or secular bias, or false premises that ignore vital distinctions. Let us hope, however, that we can at least avoid simplistic generalizations that say we should adopt a policy because the Bible or the Pope or the Koran supports it or reject it for the same reason.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Intelligent Design and Darwinian Evolution

Should Intelligent Design be taught alongside Darwinian evolution in science classes? The issue will finally likely be settled not on philosophical or educational grounds but politically by local school boards, state legislatures, and Congress and then tested in the courts. Cliches, slogans, half-truths, misunderstandings, and a general shallowness will rule the day, generating more heat than light. Nevertheless, an analysis to sort out the issues is worth the attempt.

Many arguments for Intelligent Design that I have seen rely heavily on statistical analyses of probability rather than on detailed empirical refutations of the specifics of Darwinian theory, although this can be found too. The general notion is that random mutation and natural selection cannot account for the "irreducible" (Michael Behe) or "specific" (William Demski) complexity seen in organisms. The chance, for example, that Darwinian mechanisms can explain the marvelous complexity of the eye are such that this infinitesimal possibility cannot be rationally entertained. From the design seen in living things, we can infer an Intelligent Designer. This is the best explanation of what we actually find in organisms and their organs. The theory is objective, rational, based on observation, and is, in fact, scientific, proponents insist.

For a brief introduction see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#Irreducible_complexity

The Darwinists are quick to offer refutations, contending that given the billions of years involved, it is possible to show how minute random mutations could be organized incrementally over time to produce the complexity illustrated in the eye. Likewise, biologists already have elaborated in detail how the intricate processes that produced organisms as a whole can come about along with all the checks, balances, and bio-feedback mechanisms needed to keep them functioning properly . Moreover, Intelligent Design theory yields no empirically testable hypotheses by the usual and ordinary methods of science. Also, not all features seem "intelligent." The retina is backward, necessitating a hole in the back for the transmitting nerves to get through on their way to the brain. The result is the "blind spot." I would also like to know how Katrina qualifies as intelligent if the Designer is also thought to be good.

It interests me that both the Intelligent Design theorists and Darwinians who refute them seem to think of purpose and design in engineering terms. An intelligent agent decides to makes something and figures out how to do it so that the resulting product works. Parts are created and coordinated so that they cooperate in producing the desired ends. In this way they embody the the purposes built in by the designer. This is then applied to the world as a whole resulting in a view of God as the Cosmic Designer, an external, supernatural Agent. I will suggest that a biological rather than a technological model is superior both to the intelligent design scheme or to the biblical political model of God as Creator-King.

The prototype of the intelligent design God can be found in the 18th century philosopher William Paley. He maintains that if you found a watch lying in the sand, you would conclude that the intricate and interworking parts required a clever creator who build the mechanism for a purpose. A watch requires a watchmaker. Likewise, the world with its complex and cooperating parts and laws requires a World Maker, i. e., an Intelligent Designer we commonly call God. David Hume, of course, offered at the time a devastating critique.

Contemporary Intelligent Design proponents think Paley was right, and the strict Darwinists think this is nonsense. Science can account for everything in worldly terms without reference to a Supernatural External Agent, for whom there is no evidence or necessity. More recently the mathematicians have provided new versions of Intelligent Design using theories of probability to show the absurdity of a process operating by law and chance alone producing the complexity we see in organisms, organs,and cells. Lecomte du Nouy, Human Destiny, 1947, is a classic example..

My conclusion is that Intelligent Design is right in seeing purpose in the process but wrong about how it works. The Darwinians are right in suggesting that they can account for the apparent purpose and amazing complexity exhibited by organisms within a scientific framework but wrong in thinking that science tells us the the whole truth about the matter. Science provides a perspective on the objects it studies but within the limits of what can be known by its methods. Hence, it gives us partial but essential knowledge of the evolutionary process. It abstracts from the concrete whole of entities what its observations can discern. This means we need a more comprehensive outlook that specifies what the concrete whole is from which science abstracts what yields itself to its methods. I argue this in the immediately preceding blog and will not repeat it here.

I am convinced by a form of Whiteheadian panpsychism in which the disastrous separation of body and mind in modern science and philosophy is overcome and replaced by a notion of organisms as unitary beings with both physical (body) and mental capacities (mind). The internal mental (but mainly not consciousness) processes operate. at every level of nature from subatomic particles to human beings. Purpose is to be found, therefore, in all nature in ways commensurate with the complexity of the subjects involved. Chance and law are involved in the efforts of primitive organisms at the simplest levels all the way up to human beings in the effort to "live, to live well, and to live better" (Whitehead). The world is made up its entirety of "experiencing subjects" whose internal mental operations exhibit purpose.

Science can discern only that part of the whole that its methods permit and that excludes perception of the internal purposes of these living subjects. Life is the primary philosophical category and is found at every level of nature, and life processes everywhere exhibit purpose guided by an internal mentality that is pervasive. (Note: rocks, computers, oceans, and planets, etc. as such are not subjects but pure objects composed of smaller life-like, purposive subjects. Life may in a narroweer sense be resricted to organisms that require food.) At the base of it all is God -- the All-Inclusive Life whose purposes are universally exhibited throughout the universe. This Universal Life is not omnipotent but limited in power and works in all things persuasively and by law to create life and to increase the enjoyment of life.

I entertain belief in a God unlike the External Designer of the Intelligent Design school but not permitted among atheistic scientists who find no evidence for the traditional God within or beyond science (Steven Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, and Carl Sagan, e. g.). This fragmentary introduction will have to suffice here but is elaborated in my books and in articles on my website. http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Should Intelligent Design be taught in public schools as a scientific alternative to Darwinism. No, because its credentials as science are too minimal to qualify. Science is what the community of scientists currently believe. Today the consensus in favor of Darwinian theory in its main outlines is overwhelming. Only a tiny population of credentialed scientists at the fringe think otherwise. But what is wrong in simply acknowledging briefly in science classes that a large number of Americans do not accept Darwinian reductionism and prefer alternatives, including creationism and Intelligent Design theory, that are outside the current understanding of the biological sciences, except for a small number of dissenters too insignificant to be taken seriously within science itself? The purpose of the public schools is not only to teach contemporary scientific understandings but also to introduce students to their culture. It may be sad, even tragic, but evolutionary theory is held in bad odor by numbers approaching if not exceeding a majority of citizens. A majority want Darwinian alternatives recognized and taught as well. Those numbers are too large to be ignored. In the last analysis what the public schools teach is a matter for the people who pay the taxes to decide, not a scientific elite.

See the following for a summary of numerous recent polls on the subject. http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

In short, the public schools should teach the truth. The truth is that the contemporary community of scientists, without significant exception, hold to a broadly Darwinian view of evolution. That is what contemporary science is. The truth also is that huge numbers of Americans want alternatives presented as well. The schools do not have to settle the question of whether Intelligent Design or Darwinian evolution is true. They just need to teach the truth about these contemporary ways of understanding. By the way, those cartoons that suggest teaching creationism or Intelligent Design alongside Darwinian evolution is like teaching phrenology, flat earth theory, astrology, etc. alongside neurology, round earth, and astronomy are misleading. All these latter theories are now generally discredited but in their time were held by learned scholars as well as by the population as a whole. When only an insignificant number of the population hold to creationism or Intelligent Design, then the cartoon will be relevant but no longer funny.

Science and God

OK, let's get one thing straight: Eminence in science does not automatically qualify one as an expert in religion. Yet such is the prestige of science in our culture that the opinions of scientists are regarded as having a unique credence. What Harry Emerson Fosdick said decades ago still holds, "We have come to the point that the greatest compliment that can be paid to God is that some scientist believes in him!" The opposite is true as well. If a scientist says science undermines belief in God, that is thought to be especially devastating to religion. Nonsense.

The fact is that science as science has nothing to say, absolutely nothing, about God one way or the other, and a scientist as scientist has no more authority on the subject than bar tenders, taxi drivers slightly intoxicated prostitutes. pimps, or Tom DeLay -- all of whom have on occasion. regarded themselves as experts. In fact, most everyone thinks he/she can speak with authority about religion.

When scientists deny the reality of God, they are offering a philosophical overbelief that cannot be tested empirically and yields no scientifically testable hypotheses. It is not a scientific statement. Frequently what underlies scientific atheism is an assumption that can be called scientism. It goes like this: What cannot be known by science is not only unknowable but is not real. This proposition is then fatuously offered as a necessary implication of science in ignorance of the fact that the scientist in question has left science and is speaking as a philosopher. That is fine, but let us not be fooled into believing that this sleight of hand gives scientific credibility to the underlying scientism.

One hears from some scientists that religion is the source of fanaticism, violence, war, persecution, and a host of other evils. Some think we would be better off if we were enlightened enough by science to get rid of it altogether. A few seem reluctant to admit that religion had any role in social progress, e. g., in combating slavery, the oppression of women, and promoting civil rights. No one outdoes me in pointing to the dark side of religion. But what the critics neglect is the ambiguity attached to religion as to all human endeavors. Religion inspires good and evil, compassion and violence. These scientists could look equally to politics and point out the horrors of Hitler and Stalin, e. g., and conclude that we should abolish government.

And what about science? It was not Baptist preachers who gave us nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction. J. Robert Oppenhemier, one of the creators of the first atomic bomb, said if nuclear weapons were to be added to arsenal of usable weapons, "then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima." Again, "the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they cannot lose." He confessed that he had "blood on his hands." Enrico Fermi and I. I. Rabi, themselves notable scientists, wrote that the bomb could not be justified on any ethical ground and added, " It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light." Why not abolish science?

Current research in the life sciences sometimes gets into areas that are morally problematic. Yet, as Robert Pollack observes, ". . . for more than three decades, there have been no reports of any scientist, in any field, precipitating a voluntary moratorium on any line of active basic research in order to establish a regulated system of approval for further work." Robert Pollack, "A Place for Religion in Science"?
Cross Currents (Summer 2005)

What we need is an examination of the scope and limits of scientific knowledge. The resolution of this issue requires philosophical reasoning in which scientists may engage, but let us not be seduced into believing that science as science can resolve it, although it may contribute valuable, even essential, data. Let us note that scientists and philosophers hold a variety of views on the nature, scope, and limits of scientific knowledge. There are realists, idealists, positivists, pragmatists, and so on. Yet they can work side by side in the laboratory doing scientific research that is entirely unaffected by the conflicting philosophies they hold on extra-scientific matters. Likewise, atheists and theists can cooperate in scientific projects without any conflict whatsoever.

If there are realities that scientific method cannot as such discern, then we need other modes of thought to complete our understanding of things. Let us take some easy examples. Science as such cannot give us direct knowledge of pain, consciousness, or purpose. Yet most of us believe they are real. Science cannot observe pain. Scientists can observe the physiological correlates of pain and note the behavior of organisms experiencing pain, but they cannot detect the pain itself. Why do you think doctors ask you for a subjective evaluation of your pain on a scale of 1 to 10? They do not ask you what you think your blood pressure is or what the sodium levels in your blood or your HCT are. They measure them quantitatively with their instruments. Likewise, consciousness cannot be observed by scientific procedures, although the physical processes that underly and are associated with consciousness can. Science studies the brain not the mind. Science cannot observe purpose in organisms. They can only observe behavior that they can infer seems to imply internal purposes. Noting this, psychologist B. F. Skinner proposed simply to devise rules of behavior without any necessary reference to mind, consciousness, purpose, or mental processes. That does not mean that what he excluded is unreal but only that science has limits in what it can directly know. Science discerns only those aspects of reality that are open to inspection by its methods.

Alfred North Whitehead figured all this out long ago with a knowledge of science and philosophy that few in our time or any time have had. I quote from his Modes of Thought: "Science can find no individual enjoyment in nature: Science can find no creativity in nature; it finds mere rules of succession. These negations are true of natural science. They are inherent in its methodology. The reason for this blindness of physical science lies in the fact that such science only deals with half the evidence provided by human experience."

I would just note that what Whitehead means is that science can only deal with that half of the evidence that is provided by observing things from the outside as objects. The half it neglects is the internal experience of organisms as subjects who have purposes of their own that cannot be observed as such from the outside. Some organisms are conscious, and sometimes they feel pain or joy or sadness or love, all of which are as real as the entities entertained in scientific inquiry.

What we need is a philosophy that puts all this together in a coherent manner and that is consistent with all the evidence provided by our sense experience of objects and our internal experience as feeling, thinking, purposing subjects. This philosophy, I believe, has to include a reference to God. Science as science and scientists as scientists can neither confirm or refute the reality of God, although valuable data is provided by scientific inquiry that in our time must be included in a total philosophy that is theoretically cogent and existentially adequate.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Palestinian Violence and Pro-Israel Bias

Much of the condemnation of Palestinian violence against Israel assumes the moral equality of the contending parties. Palestinians, the argument goes, must cease all violence against Israel before meaningful progress can be made toward peace through dialogue. That demand would be justified if the two sides started on a level playing field, but that is not the case. What is forgotten is that Israel is an occupying power, an invader.

Let Israel withdraw to some equivalence of the 1967 borders. Then violence on either side against the other can be rightfully condemned on an equal basis. Until then the demand for the cessation of Palestinian violence against Israel is a moral posture neglectful of relevant facts.

Suicide Bombers and Simplistic Explanations

What motivates the Muslim suicide bombers? Is it their religion? Is it historical, social, and psychological factors like unemployment, fear, resentment, shame, humiliation, hopelessness, social chaos, limited options in new, strange, and threatening environments? Do the actions of the United States and other Western powers in the world in the imperialistic past and self-interested present, especially our one- sided support of Israel and corrupt, tyrannical Arab countries, and our dogged determination to maintain access to oil in the Mideast have anything to do with it? Or is it evil choices made by some individuals in the name of distorted values and extremist religion?

The answer is yes, all of the above, and probably more that requires more knowledge than we have. It is not just the Muslim religion alone, or social and psychological factors generated by the local environment alone, or personal choice unconditioned by history, culture, social location or religion but some complicated combination of all and more working itself out in a variety of configurations in different people but leading to volatile, violent, tragic outcomes for them and others. We need to focus on the Muslim religion in a particular historical, cultural context under certain psychological and social conditions eliciting personal decisions that lead to terrorist acts. Efforts to reduce terrorism must work at all these levels and include all these dimensions.

We cannot avoid the religious dimension by simply repeating the mantra that Muslim means "peace" or "jihad" means personal struggle against internal evil. We cannot escape by saying naively that the Muslim religion doesn't really teach that. There are elements in the Koran and in Muslim history that can be appropriated to justify in their minds their terrorist acts. Similarly Christian Klu Klux Klansmen and Nazis could quote Scripture and employ Christian symbols to support their racist violence. We could refer to the Book of Joshua and Esther 9 as precedents for most any kind of aggression in the name of God we wanted to imagine. Remember the rural Georgia dictum: "You can prove anything by the Bible," and forget all the obscure, thick books by German scholars on hermeneutics.

It is futile in the short run to argue about what the Bible or the Koran or Christianity or Muslim faith really stands for historically if properly understood. These traditions finally mean in practical, experiential terms what somebody here and now believes them to mean, imply, and require. Actual beliefs and practices are what count not some idealized essence of the Koran or the Bible created by scholars and historians. What they "really teach" is operationally a useless category in the immediate situation and in any situation unless somebody's mind is changed in the process.

Social and psychological factors arising out of a particular ensemble of destructive environmental factors do shape and condition minds and lead to destructive behavior. Personal decision and commitment to live, believe, and act a certain way under these social conditions while professing a particular religious faith complete the pattern.

Is it a matter of religion? Yes. It is a matter of environment and culture? Certainly. Does individual choice play a role. Of course. Is it hard to put all this together with more to get a universal, simple explanation? Absolutely. We should resist simplistic explanations, especially those that serve the self-interest or ideology of those putting them forth, e. g., presidents, preachers, politicians, professors, pundits, and prostitutes, to risk redundancy.

Religion, History, Culture, and Choice -- all are involved in various ways and degrees in different inviduals in the production of terrorists who blow up buildings, buses, trains, and people. We neglect any of them at our peril. Propagandists -- politicians, religious dogmatists, pundits, e. g. -- with their own ideologies and agendas are quick to offer trite nostrums. We must resist and condemn them and demand comprehensive analysis and realistic responses if we want to put an end to terrorism while there is still time.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

What the Bible is all About

Implicit in the Bible is a religious and moral vision unsurpassable in excellence. At its heart is the developing story of a Powerful Creative Love at the base of all things whose purpose is to create and to perfect a people and a cosmos. At the end of the drama a community united in the love and praise of God and one another lives in a world free from all suffering and evil, and death is no more.

The Good News is that God loves us and seeks to perfect us in a community of universal justice and joy. The proper human response is to reproduce in our actions toward others the quality (love) and aim (a perfected, evil-free community) of God's action in the whole world. Simply put, the Gospel is this: God loves you. Love God totally and your neighbor as yourself as all together seek a community in which peace and justice reign and all human ills have been abolished allowing the human potential for joy and happiness to be universally and fully realized.

I believe this is the acme of the vision that arises out of the interior logic of the biblical witness as a whole. It took centuries for its fullness to be revealed, and at every stage its purity was obscured by being filtered through cultural understandings that frequently masked and sometimes overpowered its own inner rationale. In the Old Testament, e. g., God is often seen as commanding, approving, and even perpetrating massive violence. Genesis 6, the Book of Joshua, and Esther 9 are prime examples. The text reflects the culture in which it was written, including its prejudices, in ways that often contradict what is highest and best in its own message. The acceptance of slavery, the subordination of women, and the acceptance of the death penalty for a multitude of offenses, some quite trivial (See Leviticus and Deuteronomy) illustrate the adulteration that has to be purged in order to see what is permanently valuable.

The New Testament, including Jesus, teaches an absolute division between the saved and the lost in which the wicked are to be everlastingly punished. Such a rigid separation contradicts the gradations and complexities of human virtue. The same holds for the faith that receives grace, which can be strong or weak, steady or wavering, etc. It is also contrary to the universalism implicit in the logic of the gospel of love that does not rest until all are included. The desire to punish the wicked without limit I suspect originates in the experience of an oppressed people who cannot conceive of a just ending to history that does not involve the utter destruction of their enemies. Making the punishment everlasting is an understandable excess perhaps, but it does not represent the foundational motifs of the Bible itself.

This account of the heart of the Bible is, of course, mine and is viewed through my own set of cultural and personal filters. We have the Gospel only in some version of it. We have the treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor.4:7). Every presentation will always say as much about us as it does the Bible. All the disputes that rage today are conflicts between different versions of what is obligatory for us today in the message of this ancient document. Moreover, novel filters are added as we confront situations never confronted or imagined in the Bible itself, e. g. stem cell research.

What annoys me most is that some parties claim not to have merely a version but the truth about the matter, the real thing, the genuine article. Catholic and Protestant varieties abound. Disappointment lies in the fact that those who are so sure they have the truth straight from God often propose standards of conduct that seem to me not only to be destructive of human well-being. but also to obscure what is highest and best in the Bible itself.

The standard of judgment for all doctrines and moral views is the supremely excellent vision implicit in the received tradition. When I am critical of some things in the Bible or of some interpretations of the Bible, it is because I am convinced that there is something so much better in its witness that is being missed, ignored, or obscured.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Family Values in the Bible

The Evangelicals are right. We need a return to good family values. What better place to look than to the Bible for guidance, as they would certainly agree. Here is a sample:

1. Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. One of them murdered the other. Gen. 4:8

2. Women on earth messed around with some strange mighty men of old, men of renown, (sons of God) and had babies with them. Gen. 6:1-4

3. After the flood Noah took to the wine got drunk and lay naked. One of his sons (Ham) did something forbidden (incest?) and Noah cursed his descendants. (Gen. 9:2-27

4. Sarah had produced no heir for Abraham, so he had a child with Sarah's servant Hagar. Gen. 16:1ff.

5. Lot offered his two virgin daughters to the men of Sodom and told them to do what they wanted. He did this to satisfy them when they demanded to have sex with his male guests, a great act of hospitality in the eyes of all. Gen. 19:4-8

6. Lot lived in a cave with his two daughters. Fearing they could not find a husband, they got their father drunk and had sex with him, and both got pregnant. Gen. 19:30-36

7. Abraham was prepared to stick a knife through his son's heart and set him on fire, i. e., sacrifice his son on the altar, to show his loyalty to God, who had prepared this nifty little way of testing the patriarch's faith. Gen. 22:1-14

Noting that several of these ancient heroes had more than one wife, let us move on to family values in other parts of the Bible.

8. Fathers are authorized to sell their daughters into slavery. Ex. 21:7

9. If you curse or strike your mother or father, you are to be killed. Ex. 21:15, 17

10. If you worship the wrong god or have sex with an animal, you are to be killed. Ex. 22:19-20

11. Stubborn sons are to be stoned to death. Deut. 21:18-21

12. Adulterers are to be put to death, so are people who commit incest and males who have sex with each other. Lev. 20:10-16

13. By now we are getting the picture, so let us move rapidly to David, the Warrior King, who arranged to have a man killed in battle so he could take his wife Bathsheba, with whom he had been intimate, as his wife. II Sam. 10: 11:1-27

14. Solomon, a very wise man, had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines. I Kings 11:3

15. Jesus allows men to divorce their wives on the grounds of adultery but not because of cruelty, violence, abandonment, or voting for Republicans. Matt. 5:31
16. Oops, it seems that Jesus allows no divorce at all, not even for cruelty, violence, abandonment, or voting for Republicans. Mark 10:1-12

17. Women are told to keep quiet in church and ask their husbands later what happened. I Cor. 14:34-36

18. Wives are told as the weaker sex to submit to their husbands, to be subject to them in everything. Ephes. 5:22,24; Col 3:18; I Peter 3:1

19. In these same passages husbands are urged to love their wives and treat them gently, loving them as they love their own bodies. This is good.

20. Households are assumed to have slaves, who are also to be obedient to their masters.

21. Eve was deceived in the garden of Eden, not Adam. Women are not to teach men or have authority over them. They should learn in silence with all submissiveness. I Tim. 2:11-15

With these examples as our guides, we can surely figure the rest out and adapt these ancient teachings to modern conditions. Surely we will be better off if we do so. I am with the Evangelicals on this point.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

The Sin of Inclusiveness

The World Council of Churches is so inclusive that it has to tread softly with regard to the ordination of women and same-sex relationships.

The National Council of Churches is so inclusive that it cannot be inclusive enough. It refuses membership to the Metropolitan Community Church (a refuge for gay people) because the Orthodox Church threatens to leave if they do.

In every main-line denomination in this country homosexuality is debated hotly, and in some the ordination of women is divisive.

Progressive American Baptists want to embrace gay-friendly congregations. Conservative Baptists want to exclude them from fellowship. Progressives pitch the battle on Baptist principles of soul liberty, autonomy of local churches, and the like while conservatives say it is a matter of obeying Scripture, which condemns homosexual conduct.

Inclusion and diversity were highly praised at the school where I taught. But we did not have an biblical inerrantist on the faculty, and I would have opposed hiring one. I liked to make this point. I delighted even more in needling the enthusiasts of inclusiveness and diversity in this bastion of freedom who wanted rules forbidding sexist language and certain moral positions in chapel worship. The point is that even those who love inclusiveness the most have their own rules of exclusion if things get bad enough.

In recent days we have been rightly aghast at the Baptist pastor in North Caroline who wanted to expel members who voted for John Kerry last November. But let us be honest. As much as we may value diversity, pluralism, inclusivity, and tolerance, we all draw a line at some point or ought to. If five people as a group presented themselves for membership in your church making it clear they would be loud and persistent in teaching that God hates blacks, gays, and liberal judges, would you vote to take them in? I wouldn't.

Diversity, inclusiveness, tolerance, pluralism are good things, but they are limited not complete, relative not absolute. Unity of belief and practice in a group is not only valuable but at some level is essential to community morale and effective functioning. Passionate, intense devotion to something important cannot easily coexist with its opposite. It is hard to be tolerant of what is deeply abhorrent to us when something vital is at stake. Breadth of inclusion stands in tension with depth of commitment to a single truth about things. At some point embracing variety in an atmosphere of unqualified tolerance ceases to be a virtue. Too much diversity compromises clarity of witness. Trumpets of uncertain sound prepare no one for battle (I Cor. 14:8).

We generally avoid a stark confrontation on divisive issues by a process based on destiny (the groups we are born into) and choice (the groups we choose). We usually end up with people who more or less share our point of view on doctrine, morals, style of worship, and so on. We can afford inclusiveness and diversity within limits in our habitual environments, especially if there are gains associated with membership in the larger community that outweigh the disadvantages of conflict on some particular points. Obviously, this is what keeps the National and World Councils of Churches together, despite the painful controversies that threaten their unity. Individual denominations can embrace threatening differences and survive for the same reason.

Sometimes, however, a crisis arises that forces us to decide whether the price of inclusiveness is worth tolerating doctrines and practices abhorrent to us. There are no easy solutions or infallible guidelines, only tentative ad hoc adjustments as circumstances merit. Purity of principle is a futile quest. We have to muddle through as best we can. A pragmatic approach seeking the broadest inclusiveness compatible with tolerable diversity under given conditions will serve us best.

Inclusiveness is gained at the expense of diversity on specific points of doctrines and morals. The more inclusive and diverse a group is, the more general must be the principle of union in order to allow for disagreements on subsidiary matters. Sometimes disputes on particulars within the framework of unity become acute and threaten to take precedence over what unites the community at some higher level. An indefinite number of compromises and accommodations can preserve the unity of the whole in the midst of painful diversity.

But we cannot rule out the possibility that the time might come when we need to get out or to throw the offending rascals out if we have the power. And, of course, this is where the agony of decision begins with pain following. In many churches on the gay issue and in some on the ordination of women that is exactly where we are right now.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Saving Social Security

All of Bush's proposals so far are bad. His economic plutocrats will not permit any good ones because raising taxes is by definition bad. They claim it would not be good for the economy. The real reason is that it would cost them some money.

Nevertheless, consider this. The upper limit on incomes subject to payroll taxes today is $90,000. In 1981, 90 percent of the total income earned in wages and salaries was subject to the payroll tax. Income has shifted to those with higher incomes. The result is that only 85% of such income is liable to the the payroll tax today. Hiking the level to 90% again would require that the upper limits would have to be $138,000. This would take care of about 1/3 of the 75-year gap between tax revenues and benefit payments. See the February 18, 2005 edition of The Christian Science Monitor. See: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0218/p01s01-uspo.html

Removing the cap altogether would completely do even more. Why should there be a cap? Low income people pay on all their earnings. Rich folks should too.

We also need a wealth tax and to preserve the estate tax. Finally, we need to roll back the massive tax cuts for the rich that are already sending the deficit soaring out of sight. The justification for raising taxes on wealth and high incomes is simple. The production of income and wealth is a social process. No one can earn money without the functioning of an economic system that requires everyone -- those who clean the bathrooms and the offices of the rich -- as well as the talent and hard work of rich people. The notion that market forces distribute income and wealth in accordance with justice or rationality is absurd, a myth. Consider the fact, e. g., that professional athletes who earn 10 million dollars a year would gladly play for 5 or 2 million, if that is all they could get. Most of them could not earn nearly that much apart from their athletic skills. Nobel prize winning economists could make the case technically for everything I have said. It is ideology and selfish interest that are at the base of the rejection of such ideas, not economic fact or logic.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Assessing Public Discourse in America Today

Here is the way public issues are discussed in our time. A question in dispute arises. Two opposing groups form at the extremes. They are loud, deeply committed, activist in temperament and practice, eager participants in politics and public debate. Each claims to have the full and complete truth without qualification. Each side demonizes their opposite number. Each denies the moral legitimacy and rationality of the other, while expressing bafflement that anyone could be so blind to the obvious facts and values involved.

Exaggerated? Of course, but who can deny that that a point has been made, recognized by all who are alert to what is going on. It is not difficult to find single issue absolutists and extremists about some issue. They frequently have their opposite numbers:

Extremist advocates of unrestricted gun possession for everyone contend with gun control fanatics. The National Rife Association will not tolerate even the most reasonable restrictions, seeing in the mildest of measures a fatal threat to the rights of hunters, sportsmen, target shooters, and even a dagger in the Constitution, democracy, and civilization itself. Gun control advocates tend to exaggerate the importance of the issue, and I wonder if some of them have an elitist bias against hunters and rural folk generally, suspecting they are culturally handicapped,throwbacks to a former era.

Free choice zealots vie in unrelenting fashion with anti-abortion zealots. The former ignore, evade, or downplay the fact that a fetus is a potential person, while the latter assert categorically that from the point of conception on an actual person already exists -- an affront to science, philosophy and reason generally.

Christian fundamentalists attack Muslim fundamentalists.

The American Civil Liberties Union tends to absolutize individual freedom and rights to the neglect of social good. I am a member because I think we need an extremist organization like this, although I cringe at some of the repugnant positions and parties they defend.

Israeli and Palestinian extremists will apparently fight to the death rather than compromise or recognize any validity in their opponents' claims. Actually, Israelis and Palestinians form "two communities of suffering" (Edward Said) whose compassion for the other could surely find a road to peace with approximate justice for all.

The list could go on. A little humility, respect for the integrity of the other side, and a recognition of human finitude and fallibility would do wonders to lift the level of public discourse. So would a recognition that we (all of us, no exceptions) are prone to reason from a limited, often self-centered, selfish, perspective.

Is there any hope for improvement? Not much. Why? Go back to the first paragraph.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

I Fear Absolutism More Than Relativism

Popes and people who write letters to the editor worry about relativism. It is, they lament, a hazard to morality portending chaos and destruction. If truth be told, relativism is a complicated concept with many meanings and ambiguities, but this does not faze the critics, who usually leave the word undefined. Whatever it means to them, it is bad. The surface meaning is that it refers to views they find inferior to their own and hazardous. Meanwhile, they assume or assert in full confidence that they possess the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I have made my defense of a form of relativism (objective relativism, I call it) elsewhere. Here I boldly assert that absolutism is a greater threat to soul and body than all the extant relativisms in the world laid end to end. First, there are so many of them. Absolutists are all around us: Pious Popes, Protestant preachers, and pompous politicians come immediately to mind. Taxi drivers, barbers, free market economists, right-wing think tanks, liberals who want speech or practices offensive to them suppressed, and many people who write letters to editors can be added.

Then there are single issue absolutists, who usually have their opposite numbers: extremist advocates of unrestricted gun possession for everyone contend with gun control fanatics, free choice zealots vie with anti-abortion zealots. Christian fundamentalists attack Muslim fundamentalists. Israeli and Palestinian extremists will apparently fight to the death rather than compromise or recognize any validity in their opponent's claims. Actually, Israelis and Palestinians form two communities of suffering whose compassion for the other could surely find a road to peace with approximate justice for all.

The danger lies in the fact that the certainty of absolutists is a temptation to suppress error. Some extremists use violence without apology. The worst of the absolutists will gladly cut your head off, burn you up, torture you, cut off your testicles or breasts in the name of God if you challenge their assumed prerogatives. We could all make a long list of past examples without breaking a sweat. On a kinder scale absolutists in churches will punish ministerial dissent or practice on the issue of homosexuality.

Yes, there is a form of relativism that may degenerate into nihilism in which might takes precedence over notions of right. In short, the extremes of absolutism and relativism are dangerous. But in a world full of people who are so damn sure they know the truth and you don't, some dissent, some vigorous questioning of authority, some appeals for humility, tolerance, and modesty are healthy. They are, in fact, essential in preventing us from falling into extremes of absolutism which will suppress doubt and punish doubters. In the present world I fear the power of aggressive absolutists more than I fear the nihilism of reckless relativists.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Quasi-Acerbic Oddities for Today

President Bush says his favorite philosopher is Jesus. I suggest he read the synoptic gospels, underlining in red all the warnings to the rich about the dangers their souls are in and in green all the admonitions to feed the hungry and meet the needs of the poor and suffering with dire consequences for those who don't. Then he should compare his findings with his political works that grant huge tax benefits to the rich and cut benefits for the poor and the neediest people in the country, e. g., his latest budget. If only I could remember how to spell hipocracy, hipokrisy, whatever!

One of the biggest problems for the church is that it is tied to the authority of the Bible. The Book contains some awful morality, including the dreadful jihad passages in Joshua and Esther 9, stoning to death disobedient boys, authorizing fathers to sell their daughters into slavery, (they are property), the death penalty for a multitude of crimes large and small, including the command to kill gay men -- just to list a few of the worst. In the New Testament slavery is approved, never condemned, women are admonished to keep their mouths shut in church, made the villain for the primordial sin, forbidden to teach men, made subordinate to their husbands.

Liberals, evangelicals, fundamentalists -- all are burdened with the worst and the best the Bible has to offer. The only distinction in them is that while each group finds ways to take the authority out of what they don't like, they dislike different things. Each, of course, claims to have the right interpretation. The Bible is important in these disputes only as a common point of reference. The crucial point is what is deauthoritized or simply ignored by the disputants.

Equally challenging is the problem of dealing with the highest and best of Scripture, the Sermon on the Mount being the prime example. All regularly ignore, water down, explain away, the hard passages in Matthew 5. Only a few people since 30 CE have consistently loved their neighbors equally with themselves. At last count there were 97.

Yet we all do love our Bibles, praise it, insist it is our authority, while all the time our creativity rises to its acme in figuring out ways to take the authority out of what we don't like, without ever being embarrassed in the slightest by, or even aware of, what we are doing.

If you are a Christian, please tell me how the ministry of raising the dead and casting out demons is going in your church (Matthew 10:8). These are commands of Jesus to his Apostles. Churches claim to continue the ministry of the Apostles. Now tell me how you explain away the fact that you do not take this very seriously in your church, i. e., have no such ministry.

THE TRUTH -- Who holds the franchise?

Tired, old, impatient Baptist that I am, I have had it. During the period in which Pope John Paul II was passing from the scene and a new Pope was being elected and installed, cable news networks needing to fill the airwaves 24/7, presented us with an endless parade of uniformed Roman Catholic priests and professors whose message assumed roughly the following: There is a body of religious and moral TRUTH that has been uniquely bequeathed to the Roman Catholic Church. The two Popes in focus are reliable witnesses to this TRUTH in the face of all the false moralities, relativism, and misguided values our godless and god infused societies espouse in their chaotic, hazardous, brazen disdain of the papal gardens in which roses of TRUTH flourish and exude the odor of Rome. Surrounding these pretentious theological claims totally lacking in modesty and humility were a host of others that have only tenuous claims to historical truth, e. g., Peter was the first Pope in any meaningful continuity with the present holders of that office. The whole ball of wax was taken for granted sometimes apparently by TV hosts as well as by their Catholics guests. We were suffused in and with Catholic doctrine.

If these high claims produced propositions of shining, convincing excellence or generated powerful enlightenment useful for human uplift, it would be more palatable. But when it results in such abominations as the rejection of condoms in a age where millions of dying of AIDS, condemns responsible same-sex love, keeps women and married men out the priesthood, supports the comical casuistry of marriage annulment, rejects effective means of family planning, and the like, it does make one wonder -- and doubt.

Well, I am here to tell you that some of us do more than doubt. We demur. I will not drag out the whole panoply of Protestant objections to Roman Catholic hubris. I will not go into the ensemble of claims erected on dubious historical premises, some as weak as spider webs, although I am sorely tempted to do so. Here I will focus on the question of truth and who has it. The Apostle Paul says that we walk by faith and not by sight, that in this life we see through a glass darkly (or in a mirror dimly). Religious absolutists and fundamentalists, however, in practice ignore or forget this as it applies to them when they speak confidently on matters on which they think their doctrines come straight from God or universal principles of reason. Please, a little humility, a dab of modesty, about our human perceptions of TRUTH, a little recognition of human fallibilities, from which no person or institution, religious or otherwise, is exempt.

So please, professor, potato peeler, pedophile, priest, or Pope, when you speak about relativism, I beg you at least to define your terms. The word has many meanings. I have analyzed them in detail in another place. The vulgar or unthinking sometimes at least, seem to imply that it means that one person's opinion is as good as anyone else's or that there is no truth only conjecture. No serious person really believes this except, as Richard Rorty said, an occasional willing freshman who will believe anything for a day. If this is not what is meant by relativism, what does it mean? I suggest that a persuasive rendering is that we, including Popes, theologians, and taxi-drivers, can justify our claims to truth about God and ethics only by using the resources and norms available to us in our time and place in history and culture. We have no infallible way of determining whether these resources deliver judgments that correspond (in some meaningful or practical sense) with reality when the deeper matters of religious and morality at at stake. That somebody believes beyond doubt that their sources and methods (Bible, reason, experience, church, Pope, tradition, chicken entrails, messages found under rocks, etc.) give them the truth does not make it so.

In some everyday matters everybody believes there is truth and one and only rendering of it. Assume that you are about to open the bathroom door and that you have to go badly, urgently. Someone says, "There is a ferocious, man-eating tiger in the bathroom." Now who at that moment would conclude that one opinion is as good as another, that truth is relative, subjective, that there are no tests of truth that can reliably justify the claim? Granted that the theoretical proposition that a God, good and powerful, exists or the moral judgment that same-sex love is immoral are not subject to that same kind of adjudication yielding equally valid conclusions, theoretically and practically. Such issues are of a different order about which reasonable, equally moral and competent persons may disagree. I would maintain that some tests are available nevertheless, although they rest on assumptions that are more problematic and relative.

Hence, we need methods of acquiring and testing propositions of fact and judgments of value appropriate to the specific issue in question. I have analyzed this matter in great detail in books and web pages and will not repeat the process here. I will merely state the following: 1. Propositions about religion (God) and morality (right and wrong) are not subject to validation yielding indubitable certainties. Few religious and moral claims persuade everyone, except in maybe some few cases such as that gratuitous cruelty to babies is never justified.

2. Hence, we should limit ourselves to confessing our beliefs about such issues, reciting how we came to have them historically and in life experience, and setting forth the reasons for holding them.

3. We should make such confessions in humility and be tolerant within limits of other views, willing to hear them, and be open to changing our minds upon finding grounds sufficient to justify doing so. However, some things are so abhorrent that we can not tolerate them complacently but must oppose them by means appropriate to the occasion, even to the point of violence in some extreme cases in order to protect the dignity of persons and the just interests of the poor, the innocent, and weak in accordance with love and compassion for the suffering.

4. When absolutists claim they state the TRUTH about God and morality, it amounts to their having convictions invulnerable to doubt and not much more.

Our convictions about God and morality, whether based on divine revelation, human reason, or readings of manure piles, change over time and vary from culture to culture. This does not mean there are no objectively valid views but only that we can not be certain who, if anyone, has them. There is no available infallible guarantor of the truth of our moral and religious convictions. We have beliefs, and that is what we deal with in practice in our everyday lives. The claim that our convictions are true adds nothing to their value or validity. It merely means we believe them to be true. They nevertheless function for us as clues and guides to the universe and our place in it and provide useful means of coping with the joys, terrors, and catastrophes of life and the certainty of death.

The Roman Catholic Church has changed its teachings about many things over time. Pope Benedict XVI himself admitted as much in his writings when he was Josef Ratzinger, university professor. The church no longer teachers that sexual pleasure in marriage is sinful or that women are inferior. The new Pope is not opposed to all change. He just wants it to come from the top where it can be controlled and not from everyday Catholic people. i. e., faithful women who feel a call to Roman Catholic priesthood, parents with all the childrent they can afford, or from secular norms. Once intellects the size of his and of Aristotle taught that natural law justified slavery, the denial of the right of women to vote, and other abominations but not any more. The Roman Catholic Church has changed its mind over time regarding slavery, usury and religious liberty, according to John T. Noonan, Jr. (See his "Development in Moral Doctrine," Theological Studies 54 (December 1993), and The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching. We could add capital punishment to this list. This is only to say that church teachings and cultural norms have the marks of humanity, fallibility, and relativity all over them, and some of them change over time. We can only hope that with further reflection and experience our insights can be purified and made more humane and in accordance with dictates of justice and love. But it never ceases to be the case that we see through a glass darkly as we walk by faith and not by perfect sight.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Quasi-Acerbic Oddities for the Day

Ann Coulter on the cover of Time Magazine? They must be desperate for news. Having her around is like visiting the zoo. Everybody likes to have some fun watching the monkeys now and then. But you wouldn't ask them for political advice or invite one home for dinner.

The answer to the moral relativism the new Pope deplores is not Roman Catholic absolutism; nor is it Protestant or Muslim fundamentalism. For absolutists, often relativism means you don't agree with me about issues of right and wrong, and I, of course, posses the truth. Relativism properly defined means that we (Popes pipefitters, Baptists, etc), can justify religious and moral claims only by making use of the approved and available resources (sources, norms, tests) in a particular time and place, i. e., from the vantage point of the claimants in history, culture, etc. With respect to God and morality there is no guranatee that such claims mirror, correspond with, reflect reality, i. e., give us truth that is universal and certain. Believing they are true even while stomping the foot does not make them true. Abolutely believing them and shouting that they are true, TRUE, TRUE does not make them so. Stomping the foot helps only a little. It only mean the claimant has absolute confidence in them invulnerable to doubt.

Pope Benedict XVI has said he is is open to dialogue with other religious groups. e. g., Protestant and other Christians, Jews, Muslims for the sake of improving the human condition on earth. This is highly commendable and welcomed. But on what basis will these discussions take place? Will it assume equality among all with no stated or assumed notion that exclusive or unique truth is held by one of the parties? Until the Pope takes back the notion that we separated folks, e. g., Baptists and other Protestants, have only some but not all marks of the whole, full, complete church and that they cannot have until they are in full communion with Rome, then I don't see how equality can prevail. Will each group secretly hold quietly in its owm bosom the notion that it has more truth than others while being nice, polite, tolerant, open to hear all points of view? What? On whatever basis they are conducted, I guess they can't hurt, but I doubt they will accomplish much either beyond a temporary boost to good feelings and an illusory sense of having done something worthwhile. If these dialogues are for a limited purpose like finding ways to cooperate to feed the hungry, fine. Maybe something worthwhile might happen. But pretty soon the ugly face of sex would emerge, and we will be fighting over birth control control populations growing beyond means to support them, condom to prevent AIDS, so people can live to farm and produce the necessities of life. Dear Pope Benedict XVI, prove me wrong, please. Show me that such diaogue can provide real help to real people suffering from hunger, war, and injustice, and not just make the participants to the conversations feel good for a day.

One solution to the shortage of troops provided by a voluntary army is to stay out of unnecessary wars based on lies, deception, and false premises. Having Sadam out of power is a gain, but the price in money and in American and Iraqi lives has been grossly excessive. A majority of Americans agree that the Iraq war was not worth it, but where was their moral outrage at the president who started it last November? President Bush worries about the innocent deaths caused by abortion, but does he worry about the loss of innocent babies, children, and adults in Iraq because of his immoral war?

Let's get this straight. The major drug problem is this country is not the illegal ones -- marijuana, cocaine, heroin -- but tobacco and alcohol, both perfectly legal.


http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

I was Wrong About Josef Ratzinger

OK, I was wrong about the new Pope.

I was glad at last to see pictures of Josef Ratzinger, whose name in English is Joe Mousezapper. He is actually a nice-looking man with a big smile, shy, generous, gracious. All these years I thought he was a little old man with a hook nose and a pointed chin who lived in the bowels of the Vatican (like the Phantom of the Opera), who never came out except on dark, moonless nights. From these dark recesses with bats flying around he sent missives of condemnation written with poison around the world laying bare the heresies of people who said such nasty things as:

that condoms were ethical to prevent unwanted kids and AIDS,

that the Pill gave women effective, responsible control over the number of children they had and was morally OK,

that married men, like the Apostle Peter, could be good priests,

that women could dispense the body and blood as well as men,

that gay people were not morally degenerate perverts but real nice people just like everybody else whose love was valid and whose erotic deeds are part of the goodness of creation,

that in Latin America it was OK to learn from Marx and that sometimes it might be a good thing to remove by force as a last resort cruel dictators who killed people without mercy in order to get justice for the poor and democracy for all, i. e., those despicable liberation theologians.

Well, I was wrong.

He is really a nice man who from now on from his comfy office in the Vatican will send missives of condemnation wrapped in pastoral velvet dipped in papal honey around the world laying bare the heresies of people who say such nasty things as the aforementioned.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Final Reflections on the Terri Schiavo Case

Now that the hysteria over the Terri Schiavo case has subsided, some final reflections may be in order. It is at heart a simple matter involving only three items. 1. The background is that law and practice for the last decade and more have established the right of patients to control their own medical treatment, to refuse it or to stop it at their will. When the patient is unable to do so, properly instructed proxies may act in their behalf. 2. Florida law provides that the spouses, not the parents of patients, may speak for them when the patient is unable. 3. Florida courts found factually that the husband Michael correct represented his wife's wishes in this case. That is all there is to the case, and the courts at every level, including the Supreme Court of the United States, repeatedly reaffirmed this.

It is unfortunate and a tragedy that the family was divided and became the source of the great uproar, generated largely by the need of cable news stations to fill time 24.7. The drama was ready made for exploitation on all hands, from the media to the fanatics. For TV it was wonderful for ratings: visual, dramatic, emotional, involved conflict, winners and losers, and plenty of people informed and uninformed, wise and foolish, hysterical and rational, eager to claim camera time.

Michael was tragically made the bad guy and had to endure all kinds of lies and irrelevant and factually absurd charges, and the courts sustained him every time. He was deeply in love in with his wife and never ceased to be. He cared for her lovingly and tenderly until the last hour, cradling her in his arms as she died. He sought the companionship of another woman after medical experts had convinced him that the Terri he loved so much was gone and would not come back ever. He maintained that Terri would have approved what he did.

I have some experience here. I cared for my wife after we were divorced and I was remarried until the day she died in a hospice. I sat and held her hand every day during her last days, and we tenderly confessed our love for each other. I was in her room along with our children the day she died and went to the pharmacy to get a prescription the nurses wanted to ease her pain. Eloise would have told you plainly that she trusted me more than anyone on earth -- along with our children -- to take care of her. I was close by and assumed responsibility down to the last detail of planning her funeral, taking the dress she was buried in to the cleaners, and putting a monument on her grave. Michael, I know how you felt. I applaud Michael for having the courage in the face of all the trashing and court suits he faced to insure that his wife's wishes were carried out.

Terri's parents and relatives, on the other hand, were in a state of deep denial for years. Had it not been for the fuss they raised, the case would never come to public attention. Note, the only reason this case claimed national attention was because of the family dispute over her care. Ventilators and feeding tubes are removed from hopelessly ill patients every day in this country by the will of patients or their authorized proxies. They do so by law and standard medical practice and in ways compatible with compassion and love. As a parent, I share the agony of the parents and siblings. But Michael was on the right side of this issue, and the courts rightly confirmed this over and over.

The Congress to its disgrace tried to interfere in areas where they have no business. Most Republican were exploiting the issue politically, and most of the Democrats were moral cowards hiding in caves. Both parties were out of touch with large majorities of the American people who had the good sense to see the issue in a humane way and wanted the Congress to do something about Social Security, Medicare, and health insurance for those without and stay out of the sick room. If members of Congress were ignorant of law and current practice, they should have informed themselves. I don't doubt that some had genuine convictions on the issue, but families not Congress should settle these issues.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Liberal Churches Have Waning Influence in Public Life

Liberal Churches have little influence on public policy debates these days. They are present but well-nigh impotent as a social force affecting legislation for the poor. They are practically invisible when TV news stations seek the voice of religion on hot current debates.

Take the recent Terri Schiavo case. Who were the spokespersons of religion? They were hysterical fundamentalist zealots, reactionary Catholic priests, ignoramuses with heat and no light. Pat Robertson's statement that it was "judicial murder" is representative of the lack of knowledge and insight attributed to religion. There was Jesse Jackson, usually a sane voice for the down and out, right there with the rest of the irrational chorus, ignorant of or ignoring law, standard medical practice, and common sense that gives the right of patients or their proxies the right to refuse or demand cessation of life-sustaining measures.

Time Magazine recently featured the 25 most influential evangelicals. Jim Wallis, who is a voice for the poor and for justice for all, was not among them. When will we expect an issue devoted to the most influential liberal Christians? Don't hold your breath. Many of the featured evangelical do good work with projects to assist the poor and suffering around the world. This is commendable, but the public voice of the religious right, conservatives, evangelicals, whatever, is not for a higher minimum wage, a demand for universal health insurance, environmental sanity, and the like but against abortion, gay marriage, abstinence only sex education, prayer in public schools, "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the like. The voice of Jesus on these issues is mute, but he spoke plainly about meeting the needs of the poor, healing the sick, and relieving suffering. Common sense should teach us that these goals require political,public, and social approaches as well as ministry to individuals.

Liberal churches have been caught up in internal debates that have consumed much of what energy they have left. They have argued over the role of women and whether homosexuals should be welcomed without conditions or ordained. It should have been immediately forthcoming that women and men, heterosexuals and homosexuals, are equal in every ecclesiastical and other respects and should be so treated in church and society. While these are inevitable and important, though regrettable, debates, they do absolutely nothing to help the poor and those those without health insurance. They do nothing to raise wages for the poor and working class. They do nothing to counteract the aim of the Bush Administration to redistribute income away from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. They do nothing to combat the power of huge corporations, polluters, and others to have their selfish way in public policy.

Consequently, there is no loud and effective public voice on matters of global peace, social justice, and the suffering of the masses of people around the world.
All are welcome to refute, modify, and amend as necessary. But I am sure that the final outcome will not be far from the dismal generalizations set forth here in sorrow.

Here is a response from a pastor and a former student of mine.

Ken,

Is it possible that we have bought the rhetoric of the culture that says we're all too busy and too fatigued for anything other than minding our own store? Of all the obtstacles progressive churches face, finding congregational leaders (including pastors and pastoral candidates) who give the church emphasis in their lives is the largest. I think, too, that folks are weary of controversy and incivility. In other words, perhaps liberals like it on the sidelines. __________ Signed _______

Here is my response, slghty modified for public display:

My dear friend,

I am very grateful to you for your response. I don't think it is cynical at all. I think your points are telling, perceptive, and accurate, especially about liberals on the sidelines.

I too am tired of controversy and incivility. Most of the incivility shown to me and a good part of it in public debate is from those who claim to love Jesus and live by the Bible.

I am old, tired, and impatient. Once I was young, enthusiastic, idealistic, committed. I was pastor in the deep South in 1953-55, when race was a hot topic. I bit my tongue when I heard crude racists remarks from good Christians. I put passages in my sermons on race then qualified them to keep from offending the segregationists (99.9% of the congregation), although I offended them often enough as they reminded me. I was patient trying to make a a little gain now and then. At Mercer I tempered the wind to the thin coats of the lambs sitting before me trying to bring them into the modern world by teaching moderate doctrines that their pastors should have taught them, for they were trained, many of them, in the same biblical disciplines as I was. But they kept silent to build bigger buildings, baptize more to get credit, and to move up the church ladder of success and to get a big pastorate in Atlanta. (Don't rock the boat was their motto). They knew better on race but did nothing, nothing, in most cases to disturb the peace of their congregations. The big social issue among Baptists in 1955 in my Association was protesting the teaching of square dancing in the schools. Straining at gnats, swallowing camels.

But now, _______, I am old, tired, and impatient. A college professor said to me, the first time he heard a white man call a black man brother was not in a church but in a labor union. A map of the South showing the percentage of whites and blacks in each county taught me that resistance to racial change varied with the percentage of blacks in the county and state, regardless of church membership, which was largely irrelevant. H. R. Niebuhr taught me that churches are divided not only by doctrine but by race, geography, nationality, class, etc. Liston Pope showed that the reaction of churches to strikers in Gastonia, NC, in 1929 varied by class and culture.

All these things made a deep imprint on me. Yet I stayed in the church, hoping and working. But then I find that about the same % of white Protestants vote for Republican presidential candidates now as when I began my ministry, so I despair. When Jesus confronts culture in the churches, culture wins 80% of the time. I used to find hope in the 20%, but now I am old, tired, and impatient.

I do not want to sit in a church and hear one more time what the Bible says about homosexuality (most of it is awful) or arguments why churches should affirm gay people. I don't want to make those arguments myself one more time. I do so on my web site, which is a form of church ministry for which I get grateful letters from gay people who rejoice to hear a Baptist preacher defend them. How long, O lord, how long?

Progressive churches would do well to ask why some liberals are on the sidelines. Maybe it is because some of them are old, tired, and impatient, and some of them are young and don't think the church is worth the effort.

Now you and I should sit down and talk about all this. Thanks once again for taking the time to make a thoughtful and insightful response to my latest outburst.

To one of my prized students from a teacher who admires what you are doing at __________.

Ken

One more response from a former student.

He asked if I knew what a liberal was. Woe is me! I had to admit I had violated one of my cardinal principles. In class I was a bear for careful, rigorous definition of terms with detailed attention to ambiguities, complexities, and nuances and limitations of same. What do you mean by that word, was one of my trademarks.

My aim was always to keep a proper combination of head (thought), heart (love), and gut (passion, feeling). Guts alone can forsake reason and neglect love. In class, head was the organizing principle, in the pulpit, heart, and in prayer, meditation, and in the psychiatrist's office, gut. You always need a mix of the three appropriate to the audience and occasion.

Now that I am old, tired, and impatient, I find the gut more in evidence. Thus my reference to some of my tirades as outbursts. Nearly 40 years ago a psychiatrist told me I ought to practice deliberately irritating people. Who me? Kind, gentle, non-confrontational, extremely introverted, shy, timid as a mouse ME? Well, I have amessage for that doctor. Hey, remember when you said I ought to practice deliberately annoying people, and I thought you were crazy? Well, doc, you ought to see me now, and I have never felt better in my life!

Now for liberalism. I carelessly conflated a political and a religious meaning. Politically, for me, a liberal is one biased in favor of the poor, the oppressed, the weak, and the unjustly and needlessly suffering. In religion a liberal for me is non-fundamentalist, open to science, the historical-critical approach to the Bible, open-minded, irenic in spirit, and a proponent of the social gospel. An evangelical in theology can be liberal in politics, note, CAN BE! To aggravate the confusion, sometimes I referred to churches and religion generally under the aphorism that the best clue to a person's moral, social, cultural, and political outlook is not church membership but zip code.

There was a lot of gut going in that little diatribe with offense to thought and probably to love.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Quasi-Acerbic Oddities

In exactly 89.463789% of the time, the best clue to the moral, social, and ethical views of Christians is not the Bible but their zip code.

In approximately the same number of cases the clue to the beliefs and practices of Roman Catholics is not what the church or the Pope teaches but their zip code.

As a general rule, the higher the authority attributed to Scripture, the more perverse the ethical views associated with it.

It is important to know what the Bible and the Koran teach. However, for all practical purposes you can ignore all that. What really matters -- and the only thing that finally matters -- is what Christians and Muslims believe and do. For this you need to know their cultural and family backgrounds, where they live, and their social location in their own society.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Pope John Paul II: Blessing and Curse to the World

Amid all the hagiography accompanying the death of Pope John Paul II, perhaps a more balanced assessment is in order. His legacy is mixed, thoroughly ambiguous from my point of view. On war and peace, social justice, capital punishment, special attention to the poor, the dignity of all human beings, and the like, he was consistent and eloquent. On matters of sexual morality, homosexuality, the role of women, a married priesthood, abortion, birth control, and end of life issues, he was a dogmatic traditionalist lost somewhere in the middle ages, totally out of touch with the most humane and rational of policies for today’s realities and needs.

He was pastoral, kind, and compassionate in dealing with individuals, but he could be an angry monarch furious at the disobedience of his subjects, who were expected to submit to his teachings and not think for themselves. Subordination to his will, not collegial dialogue with the faithful, was his insistent and consistent demand.

He was a tender, sympathetic pastor at the bedside of people, including children, dying of AIDS in Africa. But his unrelenting condemnation of the use of condoms even among married people is an inexcusable violation of his own concern for the dignity of all human beings. It represents a shameful triumph of rigid dogma over reason, experience, and common sense. This point becomes even more vivid when we consider that all decent means are needed to curb population growth in some of the developing nations of the world.

Pope John Paul II was a stalwart foe of godless, materialistic communism. He urged people and church to oppose tyranny in his native Poland. It is widely acknowledged that his courage was a factor in facilitating the growing deterioration of the Soviet Union. Thus did he influence politics from above politics say his defenders. He also pointed out the greed, materialism, and consumerism of advanced capitalist societies -- warnings we would do well to heed but won’t. But when liberation theologians in Latin America were calling for political resistance to the excesses of capitalism in creating a wide chasm between the rich and the poor, the Pope was instrumental in destroying the movement because it was tainted with Marxist analysis of material conditions and advocated violent resistance. He urged the clergy to make peace with tyrannical right-wing despots with their death squads. One of these terrorist groups gunned down one of his own. In 1980 while he was saying Sunday mass, Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed for his outspoken resistance to the inhumanity heaped upon the poor people of El Salvador by their government. The Archbishop’s appeal to the President Jimmy Carter went unheeded. The Reagan administration entered into a disgraceful pact with the Pope to combat the liberation movement and the evils of communism. The Pope gradually replaced those in the Latin American hierarchy who sympathized with the liberation movement. He replaced them with traditionalists more obedient to papal directives. While he defended human rights and deplored the plight of the poor, the church, the Pope said, was to be pastoral in this setting not political and activist. He was so afraid of communism, to which he urged resistance, at least indirectly or spiritually, that he, in effect, tolerated an equally despicable right-wing dictatorship. He angrily lectured a trembling, kneeling liberation priest and ordered him to get along with the government. It was not that he approved of despotic regimes but that he disapproved the way liberation theologians wanted to deal with it. He wanted an approach and church leaders under his control. He was generally against violence but supported, ambiguously at least, the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Pope apologized to Jews and to women for past misconduct toward them. He went to a mosque and to a synagogue and made contact with the Orthodox Church. All of this is commendable, and he should be given full credit for this candor and openness. However, he duly noted as dogma dictates, that while individual members of the church had sinned, “the Church” had not, since it transcends the vicissitudes and frailties of merely human agents. This distinction between this inner essence and its human representatives is lost on most of us. Is it unfair to wonder if this demarcation is stressed more when something bad is under discussion than when its representatives speak truth, do good, and mediate divine grace?

One is not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But maybe when a person of such fame, prestige, power, and importance is being evaluated, it may be more important to witness to truth, as one sees it, than merely to be nice. In this light it has to be said that Pope John Paul II was both a blessing and a curse to the world.

For a similar perpective by a liberal Roman Catholic theologian, see http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/12201.html

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Outrages of the Terri Schiavo Case

With some exceptions the media have not served the public interest well in the Schiavo case. Most newspaper and TV reports leave you with the impression that the questions raised sprang to life out of nowhere with the conflict now dominating the news. This is far from the truth. Ethicist have debated end of life matters for many years. A long history of law and practice precedes the current controversies. Two significant cases mark major turn turning points. The Supreme Court of New Jersey granted the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan permission to remove a respirator (1975), and the Supreme Court of the United States allowed the parents of Nancy Cruzan to remove a feeding tube (1990). In 1990 Congress passed the Patient Self-Determination Act. Since then the right of patients or proxies to refuse or demand withdrawal of any kind of life-sustaining treatment or equipment has not been in question. Well established in law and practice, feeding tubes and respirators are removed without question all over the country daily when legitimate conditions are met. It would be helpful to the public debate if only these elementary facts were repeated by news sources as often as the video tapes showing Terri Schiavo in her bed. Viewing them, many lay people and even doctors in Congress have drawn erroneous conclusions about her mental state. Since doctors know better than to diagnose at the distance without having examined a patent, we must assume that the congressional doctors become authorities for political rather than medical reasons. Instead of consistently making clear the historical context, the media have focused on the immediate sensational aspects – the family conflict, who is winning and losing the battle, the protestors, and the zealots who offer much heat but not much light. At best they have attempted to define some medical terminology but have largely failed in illuminating the basic legal and moral issues that are in dispute. The event is perfect for TV. It is visual, dramatic, emotional, and involves conflict, winners and losers. The actions of Gov. Bush, the Florida legislature, President Bush and the Congress were outrageous. They have no business intruding into these intimate family matters where legal and moral guidelines are already in place. The Republicans in Congress are dominated by ruthless zealots, and most Democrats have been moral cowards. Only the state and federal judiciaries have acted with any dignity. When it is over, there will be many losers and no winners, except possibly Terri Schiavo if she is allowed to die in peace. It is a shame the media are not doing a better job of informing rather than just aggravating the public debate.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

A Geographical Theory of Winning in 2008

Look at the electoral maps of 2000 and 2004. The geographical pattern is striking, allowing for minor exceptions. The blue Democratic states are the Northeast, the upper Midwest, and the states bordering the Pacific. The red Republican states are the Southeast, Southwest, lower Midwest, mountain and plains states. A pre-Civil War map showing free (blue) and slave (red) states and territories almost exactly matches the electoral map of 2004. While electoral maps of many other years would not be this striking, a geographical factor is present, except in blowout years like 1936, 1972, and 1984. Look at it another way. Democrats won the large cities, while Republicans won the small towns and rural areas, with the suburbs split. Divisions are also noticeable with regard to income, education,, religion, race and ethnicity, age, marital status, and gender, but geography is relevant to many of these as well. Zip code is an important clue all by itself. Since this is a blog and not a book, what can we learn from this? Geography is a useful clue to many other things -- history, economics, religion, and culture. The geography of the South, e. g., was conducive to cotton growing and therefore slavery, which has deeply affected its entire history. Geographical factors account in part for immigration patterns and the Protestant domination of the South. Geography is a component of, if not clue to, how things worked out in other areas with regard to economics, culture, and religion. So what does this mean for 2008? Assuming that the situation will remain much like it is now in terms of red and blues states as is probable, ask how the blue states can be preserved for the Democrats while reaching out to enough other states that can be likely won to win the election. Some decisions are easy. Massachusetts is probably a safe bet if the Democrats don't do something crazy, but forget Utah for a while. Either Florida or Ohio is probably a must, remembering that a shift of only 70,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have given the victory to Kerry. Looking toward 2008, Democrats live in tension between holding true to their values and getting elected. How to win without losing your soul -- that is the question. With Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, we risk losing our soul. With Sen. Hillary Clinton, we risk losing the election. My sentimental favorites at the moment are John Edwards and Barack Obama, but time may question the wisdom of one or both. But to begin with candidates, issues, and values is to get the cart before the horse. We need to start with geographical, historical cultural factors and make a structural analysis of where enough more votes can come from next time to enlarge the number of blue states. Then we can match messenger and message to that purpose.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Dan Rather, CBS, and Media Triviality

Rivals to CBS in dealing with the Dan Rather story remind me of sharks who have tasted blood circling in for the kill. They repeat the Rather fiasco ad nauseum with a hint of glee. They stubbornly cling to their obsession even when guests remind them that they are obscuring the damaging facts about Bush's military service. They continue to pounce on CBS, neglecting the far more important story about the favoritism showed to George W. Bush because of his name and connections, enabling him to have a cushy National Guard assignment that saved him from Vietnam or more onerous duties. He did not even fulfill the obligations he did accept. That story does not depend on the spurious documents aired by CBS. His less than commendable service record has been demonstrated by major newspapers and numerous Internet sources. This lack of perspective on the part of the media is disgusting. Even more egregious is the way both stories divert attention from the disaster in Iraq and the economic mess at home. The poor and middle class have been sold out to the wealthiest Americans and the giant corporations who get obscene tax cuts from an administration that is a catastrophe for ordinary, working-class Americans. The President has basically turned domestic policymaking over to big businesses who want low taxes, reduced spending for average Americans and the poor, and no regulation of their predations. The Bush Administration beguiles lower-income conservatives with one hand on matters like abortion, gay marriage, and gun control while robbing them with the other hand by failing to provide good jobs at decent wages, adequate health care, and other services to improve their everyday lives. Conservatives want poor mothers to work but are not willing to fund the child care and support services essential to their working full time. The rich get the ham, bacon, and pork chops, while the working poor are lucky if they get the pig's feet and lips. Now that's a story the media ought to be telling instead of narcissistically focusing on the Rather sideshow which, after all, is about themselves.

Faith Based Human Charities and Services

The issue of government support for faith-based human services is full of complications, dangers, ambiguities, and subtleties. The beauty of religiously-oriented social ministries is the potential for dealing with people as whole selves, i. e., giving them food for the soul as well as for the body. But this very unity poses the problem of how it is Constitutionally licit for the government to enable the providing of secular bread without funding sectarian religion. If, on the other hand, the delivery of goods and services to the needy is totally divorced from the religious dimension, in what meaningful sense is it any longer faith-based, apart from merely being sponsored by a religious group? Why shouldn't the government fund a church soup kitchen if all that is dispensed is soup? Because, we say, what the church would spend on soup can now be spent on the church bus. But maybe they would just serve more soup. Maybe the soup itself is a witness to the faith behind it, but if it is, is that not a sponsorship of religion? Would the government discriminate against some religious groups? Would giving government money to churches tend to dull the prophetic urge to be critical of the state? Would the government require conformity to certain rules that would restrict church autonomy? What is a religious group? What does faith-based mean? Can we think our way through this thicket without falling into confusion?

A strict and purist position on these matters is impossible in practical terms. Many lines have to be drawn in shades of gray. We have to do a lot of British "muddling through." Those who look for absolutely clear prescriptions requiring no delicate balancing acts are doomed to perpetual frustration. Or they may be tempted to resort to desperate efforts to find purity of doctrine by suppressing legitimate elements in the total ensemble of principles that govern the nation.

Bush's Supporters Deluded About His Character and Integrity?

A large percentage of Bush supporters consistently give his character and integrity as the primary reason. This is the President who misled us about WMD in Iraq in order to get us into an unnecessary war he had wanted to find some excuse for from the beginning of his tenure. The Washington Post (May 31) documents the claim that Bush is approving TV ads that either lie about or badly distort Kerry's record. Bush has presented himself as a "compassionate conservative" but has already announced proposed cuts in next year's budget that will harm the poor, including nutrition for women, infants and children, and Head Start. He has given huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and run up a gargantuan debt that will hurt Social Security and Medicare. For most Americans the losses from cuts in social programs will outweigh the gains of his tax cuts. The result of Bush's policies will be a transfer of wealth from ordinary folks to the very wealthy. Most Americans will be worse off and the already rich will become even richer, some obscenely so. All thinking people know that you cannot at one and the same time have a war, huge tax cuts, and be "compassionate" toward the poor. Is Bush incompetent and ignorant, or is he a deceiver, a hypocrite deficient in character and integrity? Whatever the answer, it inspires no reason to reelect him in 2004.

See: http://nytimes.com/2004/06/01/opinion/01KRUG.html

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Bush and Prison Atrocities

President Bush says that the atrocities at Abu Ghraid are not representative of America. However, the evidence is that they are not uncharacteristic of what goes on in Texas jails and other states too.

Simply stated, the culture of sadistic and malicious violence that continues to pervade the ... prison system violates contemporary standards of decency.

"That conclusion, written by Judge William Wayne Justice, does not describe Abu Ghraib in Iraq last fall, but the Texas prison system in 1999 when George W. Bush was still governor there." (The Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 2004)

Among more than sixty countries, only Russia has a rate of over 600 incarcerations per 100,000 inhabitants. The US rate in 2002 was 702, with a total prison population of 2,033,331. The top five are:
1 United States 2,033,331
2 China 1,549,000
3 Russian Federation 846,967
4 India 313,635
5 Brazil 308,304

Source: International Centre for Prison Studies, World Prison Brief http://www.prisonstudies.org

Either we are an extremely lawless country, a nation of outlaws and thugs, or there is something wrong here. President Bush should be cautious when he speaks of how unAmerican the events at Abu Ghraib were. The President says Jesus is his favorite philosopher. I suggest he meditate on Matthew 7:1-5. Then perhaps he could rid himself of the pretense of American innocence and proceed to confession, repentance, and a call for a world-wide campaign to humanize prison conditions, beginning with our own. A start would be to do away with the harsh, racially-discriminatory drugs laws that fill our jails, break up families, and set in motion a repeating cycle of tragedy and suffering. Per dollar spent, treatment is far more efficient and effective.