Sago Boulevard

William Lobdell, a reporter who covered the “religion beat” for the LA Times, writes about how the stories he covered influenced his personal religious journey and how they eventually turned him away from Christianity (via Jill). The article’s well-written and I appreciate his candor in discussing what originally drew him to religion and the kind of theological questions that ultimately led him to reject it. (more…)

There’s something deeply troubling the the political conversation surrounding Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. When politicans and pundits lament the fact that Romney’s faith is a campaign issue, they insult and trivialize religious faith on a much deeper level.
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Leo Strauss in “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy”:

When we attempt to return to the roots of Western civilization, we observe soon that Western civilization has two roots which are in conflict with each other, the biblical and the Greek philosophic, and this is to begin with a very disconcerting observation. Yet this realization has also something reassuring and comforting. The very life of Western civilization is the life between two codes, a fundamental tension. There is therefore no reason inherent in the Western civilization itself, in its fundamental constitution, why it should give up life. But this comforting thought is justified only if we live that life, if we live that conflict, that is. No one can be both a philosopher and a theologian or, for that matter, a third which is beyond the conflict between philosophy and theology, or a synthesis of both. But every one of us can be and ought to be either the one or the other, the philosopher open to the challenge of theology or the theologian open to the challenge of philosophy.

David Klinghoffer asks whether God is a Republican (via Hirhurim). He begins the piece by describing the rituals surrounding tum’ah and taharah (ritual purity and impurity, respectively), as explained in Vayikra. There nothing particularly remarkable about his treatment of the subject. He correctly explains that “a key to cleansing out impurity is ritualized immersion in water.” He also points out a common gloss on ritual contamination - tum’ah resembles death and taharah, life. So far so good. Then Klinghoffer starts talking about the great 19th-century German Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Charles Darwin. It’s all downhill from there. (more…)

This New York Times article about Hispanic immigration and secularism is misleading (as I see Keith Burgess Jackson points out). It claims to describe the phenomenon of Hispanic immigrants rejecting the religion of their country of origin. Hence the title: “For Some Hispanics, Coming to America Also Means Abandoning Religion.” Yet, the instances documented in the article imply that while Church membership and attendence may fall among immigrants, belief in God doesn’t. Consider a few of those interviewed. (more…)

Bill Vallicella explores three concepts of salvation and argues that “religious salvation” cannot be either merely physical or merely mystical. I think he’s basically right and, although he deals specifically with orthodox Christianity, the idea he develops can be applied, at least generally, to Judaism as well. In fact, Judaism probably emphasizes bodily resurrection even more than Christianity.

Religious salvation is not a mere physical salvation. But I doubt that it can be identified with what I am calling mystical salvation: it is not (though it may involve) a transformation of consciousness in which the apparent meaninglessness and evil and vanity of life is redeemed. Religious salvation seems to involve both elements. Or at least this is the case in orthodox Christianity which preaches the resurrection of the body. The Christian does not look forward to existence as a pure spirit after death, but to an embodied existence. Thus he looks forward to having his individual physical life saved. Saved, but also tranformed, since the post-resurrection body will be a body not heir to the usual fleshly incapacities and debilities.

David Van Biema makes a compelling case for teaching the Bible as literature in public schools in last week’s Time Magazine. The article does a good job of going over arguments for and against, reviewing some of the constitutional issues involved, and the impact such classes may have on upcoming elections. It’s obviously a very thorny issue and I appreciate the sentiment that, in a largely Christian country, it would be difficult to maintain objectivity. But the Bible a simply too important to leave out of school curriculum completely. And I say this knowing full well that much of what’s discussed here is only applicable to the Christian Bible. The fact is that Christianity has played and continues to play a major role in shaping American culture and politics. I went to a Jewish high school and, in 10th grade, my English teacher spent a few classes going over some basic Christian themes so that we could identify them in our reading. I wrote a paper for that class on references to the Trinity in Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

[W]hen your seventh-grader reads The Old Man and the Sea, a teacher could tick off the references to Christ’s Passion–the bleeding of the old man’s palms, his stumbles while carrying his mast over his shoulder, his hat cutting his head–but wouldn’t the thrill of recognition have been more satisfying on their own?

If literature doesn’t interest you, you also need the Bible to make sense of the ideas and rhetoric that have helped drive U.S. history. “The shining city on the hill”? That’s Puritan leader John Winthrop quoting Matthew to describe his settlement’s convenantal standing with God. In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln noted sadly that both sides in the Civil War “read the same Bible” to bolster their opposing claims. When Martin Luther King Jr. talked of “Justice rolling down like waters” in his “I Have a Dream” speech, he was consciously enlisting the Old Testament prophet Amos, who first spoke those words. The Bible provided the argot–and theological underpinnings–of women’s suffrage and prison-reform movements.

And then there is today’s political rhetoric. For a while, secular liberals complained that when George W. Bush went all biblical, he was speaking in code. Recently, the Democratic Party seems to have come around to the realization that a lot of grass-roots Democrats welcome such use. Without the Bible and a few imposing secular sources, we face a numbing horizontality in our culture–blogs, political announcements, ads. The world is flat, sure. But Scripture is among our few means to make it deep.

Paul Horwitz, guest-blogging at Volokh Conspiracy, writes on the Religious Test Clause in Article V of the Constitution (”[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”) in the context of recent judicial nomination hearings. (more…)

David Hazony, editor of Azure Magazine, writes an interesting critique of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in light Gibson’s other religiously-themed moves. The article’s two years old but worth reading anyway.

In other news, I’m in Israel for my vacation from school. Normal blogging should resume next week; that is, if law school doesn’t get in the way… again.

The greatest Jew in Great Britain, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reviewed Richard Dawkins’ most recent rant, The God Delusion (via Hirhurim). He begins with the following brief dialogue:

“DO YOU believe,” the disciple asked the rabbi, “that God created everything for a purpose?”

“I do,” replied the rabbi.

“Well,” asked the disciple, “why did God create atheists?”

The rabbi paused before giving an answer, and when he spoke his voice was soft and intense. “Sometimes we who believe, believe too much. We see the cruelty, the suffering, the injustice in the world and we say: ‘This is the will of God.’ We accept what we should not accept. That is when God sends us atheists to remind us that what passes for religion is not always religion. Sometimes what we accept in the name of God is what we should be fighting against in the name of God.”

It’s important to recognize how brilliantly R. Sacks undermines the main thrust of Dawkins’ argument. Dawkins emphasizes the cruelty and injustice perpetrated in the name of God as a way of undermining religion. R. Sacks uses those same facts to promote ethically sensitive religion. By forcing believers to distinguish more sharply between “what passes for religion” and genuine service of God, the atheist critic does religion a tremendous favor.

If I remember correctly, Rav Kook develops a similar idea regarding secular Zionism. Would anyone care to dig up the reference?

Law professor Geoffrey R. Stone makes the following observation in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune:

Perhaps you noticed an interesting confluence of events on July 19. On that day, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have authorized the expanded use of federal funds for stem-cell research, the House of Representatives voted to enact legislation depriving the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear any case challenging the constitutionality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the House voted to purchase a municipal park in San Diego on which a 29-foot-high cross stands.

What these three acts have in common is a reckless disregard for the fundamental American aspiration to keep church and state separate

To be sure, I’m all for keeping church and state far away from each other but one of the three examples Stone points to doesn’t belong. The phrase “under God” has, at least, religious connotations, as does a giant cross standing in a state-owned park. But the ethics of stem-cell research? (more…)

Rav A. J. Heschel in Man is Not Alone:

To have no faith is callousness, to have undiscerning faith is superstition. “The simple believeth every word” (Proverbs 14:15), frittering away his faith on things explorable but not yet explored. By confounding ignorance with faith he is inclined to regard as exalted whatever he fails to understand, as if faith began where understanding ended; as if it were a supreme virtue to be convined without proofs, to be ready to believe.
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Those who are sure of their faith often tumble under their own weight, and, when overthrown, they fall on their knees, worshipping, deifying the snake that usually lies where flowers grow.
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It is tragically true that we are often wrong about God, believing in that which is not God, in a counterfeit ideal, in a dream, in a cosmic force, in our own father, in our own selves. We must never cease to question our own faith and to ask what God means to us. Is He an alibi for ignorance? The white flag of surrender to the unknown? Is He a pretext for comfort and unwarranted cheer? a device to cheat despondency, fear or despair?

From whom should we seek support for our faith if even religion can be fraud, if by self-sacrifice we may hallow murder? From our minds which have so often betrayed us? From our conscience which easily fumbles and fails? From the heart? From our good intentions? “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26).
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Individual faith is not self-sufficient: it must be counter-signed by the dictate of unforgettable guidance.

Significantly, the Shema, the main confession of Jewish faith, is not written in the first person and does not express a personal attitude: I believe. All it does is to recall the Voice that said: “Hear, O Israel.”

Not the individual man, nor a single generation by its own power, can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of ages, an effort accumulated over centuries… There is a collective memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory of which we partake in our faith.

In response to David Klinghoffer’s call for Mexican immigrants to assimilate, Charlie Hall correctly notes the double standard on display. Klinghoffer, who not only identifies as an Orthodox Jew but also tries to ground his argument in the biblical story of Ruth, would never suggest that religious Jews abandon their traditional customs in order to be good Americans. I would go further and say that Klinghoffer’s comparison of the current immigration dilemna with the religious conversion of Ruth stems from a deep misunderstanding of both citizenship and religious identity.
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Pascal in Pensees #425 (via Jeremy):

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

Ruchira Paul believes that George W. Bush claims direct personal communication with God. This, of course, cannot be tolerated because

Those who claim direct communication with other worldly forces for their earthly actions are either lying or deluding themselves. In both cases, it is dangerous to vest extraordinary powers in such unreliable hands.

Paul finds evidence for her claim in remarks Bush made “to a business group in Irvine, Ca.”:

“I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true,” he said. “One, I believe there’s an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody’s soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

“I believe liberty is universal. I believe people want to be free. And I know that democracies do not war with each other.”

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Jewish Atheist quotes Carl Sagan as saying “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” This statement by a well-known atheist struck me as strange. What definition of “spirituality” could Sagan have in mind that would comport with naturalism? The simplist definition that comes to mind is “concerning things of the spirit”. In response to my comment asking for a “working definition of ’spirituality’”, JA writes:

[I]t’s simply the feelings of wonder, of flow, of awe, of transcendence, etc. etc. Basically, the same thing it means for religious people, except without the supernatural explanations.

First of all, that doesn’t capture what a typical speaker of English generally means by “spritual” and most dictionaries explicitly identify spirituality with God. I’m particularly struck by JA’s usage of “transcendence”. What exactly, in Sagan’s physicalism, are we supposedly transcending?

Amba offers a sneak preview of a book she’s writing, tentatively entitled OUTSIDE: Spiritual Nomads and the Way Beyond Religion. She discusses the practical and spiritual advantages of being an outsider of any particular religious tradition while using the tools of religion and modern science to construct faith anew.

Amba tries to straddle a middle ground between denying religion and professing loyalty to a specific tradition. The advantage to this approach is obvious:

When you swear exclusive allegiance to no one tradition, their multiplicity is… a vast resource: the record of over 10,000 years of research, a grand reference library for the study of reality.

But there’s a contradiction here. As Amba notes earlier in her post,

When you live inside a tradition… you agree to view life through its window — an outlook, a way of framing reality, carefully preserved through time.

This point can’t be easily dismissed. Judaism, for example, commands the believer to view the world through a rabbinic lense. Christianity, the lense of the Gospels and Islam, that of the Koran. To step outside, as Amba recommends, is to deny all of them.

Amba suggests that every religious tradition could be a “vital tributary” in the search for “insight and direction as we find our way through a radically reconfigured reality”. But this is impossible. One cannot deny the basic tenent of a particular religious tradition while simultaneously claiming to incorporate it into a new one. And Amba admits to denying religion’s central claim, which is looking at the world through the eyes of prophets (whomever you believe the genuine prophets to be).

Responding to Amba’s post, Seth makes an important observation:

The truly pious are also open enough to be able to explore the world through their own traditions for their entire lives, without running into limits beyond which they may not look. The truly pious don’t fear knowledge.

In “Jerusalem and Athens”, Leo Strauss offers a model of someone standing in Jerusalem, looking outward at Athens (the city representative of philosophy and modernity), studying it, learning from it, and using its methods to illuminate those aspects of his own city that lend themselves to such analysis. Not only is this a legitimate approach but one championed by the giants of Jewish tradition themselves. Amba, though, calls on us to leave Jerusalem and look at both cities from the outside. Leaving Jerusalem, in this model, is denying Judaism. Once having denied it, you have neither the right nor the ability to eat the fruit its wisdom. “Etz hayyim hi lemahazikim bah,” the Torah is a tree of life, not to anybody, but to those to hold onto it. That is, those who keep it.

As I’ve said before, the popular mantra that God belongs in the home and not in government is a slap in the face to religion everywhere. It unfairly holds religious ideas to a different standard than the various political, social, and moral ideologies regularly paraded into the public sphere. The uproar over the Danish cartoon is yet another example of how poor Western secularists understand religion. Stanley Fish makes this point in today’s NY Times:

The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously. This is managed by the familiar distinction — implied in the First Amendment’s religion clause — between the public and private spheres. It is in the private sphere — the personal spaces of the heart, the home and the house of worship — that one’s religious views are allowed full sway and dictate behavior.

But in the public sphere, the argument goes, one’s religious views must be put forward with diffidence and circumspection. You can still have them and express them — that’s what separates us from theocracies and tyrannies — but they should be worn lightly. Not only must there be no effort to make them into the laws of the land, but they should not be urged on others in ways that make them uncomfortable. What religious beliefs are owed — and this is a word that appears again and again in the recent debate — is “respect”; nothing less, nothing more.

The problem, as Fish exposes, is that public ambivalence toward religion is not only condescending, but self-refuting. Insofar as this attitude resembles a religion of its own, it’s a completely inadequate response to the Muslim world.

The argument from reciprocity — you do it to us, so how can you complain if we do it to you? — will have force only if the moral equivalence of “us” and “you” is presupposed. But the relativizing of ideologies and religions belongs to the liberal theology, and would hardly be persuasive to a Muslim.

This is why calls for “dialogue,” issued so frequently of late by the pundits with an unbearable smugness — you can just see them thinking, “What’s wrong with these people?” — are unlikely to fall on receptive ears. The belief in the therapeutic and redemptive force of dialogue depends on the assumption (central to liberalism’s theology) that, after all, no idea is worth fighting over to the death and that we can always reach a position of accommodation if only we will sit down and talk it out.

But a firm adherent of a comprehensive religion doesn’t want dialogue about his beliefs; he wants those beliefs to prevail. Dialogue is not a tenet in his creed, and invoking it is unlikely to do anything but further persuade him that you have missed the point — as, indeed, you are pledged to do, so long as liberalism is the name of your faith.

R. Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man, p. 171:

The realization of the dangerous greatness of man, of his immense power and ability to destroy all life on earth, must completely change our conception of man’s place and role in the divine scheme. If this great world of ours is not a trifle in the eyes of God, if the Creator is at all concerned with His creation, then man - who has the power to devise both culture and crime, but who is also able to be a proxy for divine justice - is important enough to be the recipient of spiritual light at the rare dawns of history.

From Rav J. B. Soloveitchik’s Out of the Whirlwind:

[Man’s] position in the world, his existence, his worth and destiny, his duties and prerogatives can all be seen in two perspectives - either in light of the event of creation or in relation to the event of the God-man confrontation. Neither experience must be rejected.
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Can a complete harmony be achieved? Certainly not, since the natural and the covenantal belong to different and incommensurate orders! They must engender in man conflict and strife… Yet this schism in the personality is indicative not of a sick soul but of a great one that sees God in both the flames of the rising sun and the fire of the Sinai apocalypse.

In a comment to Jewish Atheist’s post, Esther writes:

I don’t understand why religous fundamentalists feel the need to impose their beliefs on other people.

Eric adds:

I’ve asked that same question on my blog, and I’ve yet to hear an explanation that wasn’t rooted in a religous tautology. The most frequent answer I’ve heard to your question is that your ’sin’ affects others. The fallacy of this argument is that it’s one religon’s belief that sin affects others. Deriving laws based on that belief flies in the face of the establishment clause.

This subtle dismissal of religion and religious beliefs is common and I don’t mean to pick on either Esther and Eric. It’s just the most recent place I’ve seen this kind of argument. I say, “subtle dismissal” because neither of them say outright that they think religion is garbage and ought not to be taken seriously. Instead, the claim is simply that one should neither “impose” his or her beliefs on others nor “deriv[e] laws based on that belief”.

But why not? Every political group, by its nature, seeks to impose its set of values on everybody else. Feminists want to impose the ideal of equality between the sexes on others and support legislation to do so. Environmentalists want the law to prevent others from poluting and legislation to teach about Earth Day in schools. Abolitionists wanted to impose their value that blacks are in fact people. Civil rights activists, a century later, tried to get the law to require everybody to embrace that value.

In suggesting that religious individuals kindly keep their values to themselves, you imply that somehow religion isn’t worthy of the consideration we afford other ideologies. Of course, you may in fact think the religion is wrong, harmful, and stupid but it’s a step further to suggest that their opinion isn’t welcome in public.

Many may respond as Eric did, that “deriving laws based on that belief flies in the face of the establishment clause.” This is entirely wrong. We’re talking about specific religious positions, not religious institutions. The Constitution protects against the government recognizing religion as having any authoritative power. So arguments along the lines of “well, the Pope said so” don’t belong in government. But, “well, the Pope said so and it’s a good idea for reasons x, y, and z” is perfectly acceptable. What’s unacceptable is, “why can’t you religious people just keep your opinions to yourself”. And that’s what Eirc and Esther mean.

About a month ago, Godol Hador directed me to this article by Stephen Barr on the so-called conflict between religion and science. I printed it out with the intention of reading it eventually. In part because of a conversation I had over the weekend, I finally sat down to read it. It’s really an excellent article and it gets at some of the difficult yet important issues that many writers on the subject avoid. It also doesn’t overstate its point. Barr knows what he can prove, what he can disprove, and what he can merely suggest. What he suggests is this:

After all the twists and turns of scientific history we look around and find ourselves in very familiar surroundings. We find ourselves in a universe that seems to have had a beginning. We find it governed by laws that have a grandeur and sublimity that bespeak design. We find many indications in those laws that we were built in from the beginning. We find that physical determinism is wrong. And we find that the deepest discoveries of modern physics and mathematics give hints, if not proof, that the mind of man has something about it that lies beyond the power of either physics or mathematics to describe.

So concludes a survey published in the latest Journal of Religion and Society:

The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of “popular religiosity” and various “quantifiable societal health” indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States. He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

As you can probably guess, the logic here isn’t exactly ironclad. Particularly telling is Paul’s already-skewed version of religion from the outset:

Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services.

Notice how none of the criteria for what qualifies as “religious society” has anything to do with morality. But, as everyone knows, all major Western religions (probably all world religions but I can only talk about what I know) stress giving charity, helping the less fortunate, honoring parents, and respecting fellow human beings. If those were added to the criteria, I suspect the results would look a quite different. What Paul may conclude, if he wasn’t already bent on religion-bashing, is that mere ritual observance and proclamations of faith don’t correlate with such “quantifiable societal health indicators” - but that’s nothing new. The Prophets of the Bible condemn ritual observance that isn’t accompanied by ethical behavior over and over again.

Rosa Brooks, the article’s author, predicts “that right-wing evangelicals will do their best to discredit Paul’s substantive findings.” Or maybe they’ll just point to the Bible and say “yeah, we already knew that.”

(via Jill)

The term “Judeo-Christian” seems a bit redundant. Insofar as Christianity sees itself as the legitimate heir to Jewish religion, to be Christian is to properly understand and carry out the covenant between God and the Jewish People. The term “Judeo-Christian” merely makes this position explicit. When people talk about “Judeo-Christian values”, they mean Christian values and simply wish to add that such Christian values stem from properly understanding Judaism.

As I fully reject that Christian claim, I find the expression annoying. For one thing, Judaism and Christianity have a lot less in common than many seem to believe. Despite sharing a fundemental text, we read it through a very different set of lenses than Christians do. For traditional Jews, at least, the biblical text is understood in the larger context of the rabbinic tradition. (I realize this is a bit of an oversimplification but I don’t want to dwell on it for now). Fundamentalism, as refering to the literal rendering of the biblical text, doesn’t make sense to even the most right-wing of Orthodox Judaism - which advocates reading the Bible in rabbinic perspective.

That said, it boggles my mind when Jews adopt the very Christian jargon that undermines them. In this article by Dennis Prager, “Judeo-Christian” appears 11 times. (He also refers to the Jewish Bible as “Old Testament” - a term that carries connotations of being outdated). He proceeds to quote verses as if they weren’t accompanied by a 2000-year-old rabbinic tradition. I’m picking on Prager somewhat arbitrarily; he’s not alone. It’s become somewhat of a trend for right-wing Jewish thinkers to try to sound Christian. Traditional Jewish treatments of “social conservative” topics marshal in the revelent rabbinic and halakhic material and thus, present a more nuanced and sophisticated view.

When Christians present a Christian view of the Bible, well, that makes sense. I realize that guys like Prager are trying to make themselves credible to a greater religious audience but I still don’t like it.