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The Problem of Intent

Even though I grew up in deeply religious east Tennessee, I never understood why people want mandated school prayer. It seems to defy the entire point of Protestantism's dogma of personal relationships with God: If people are forced to pray, well, what's the point exactly? There are no rules in schools that prohibit prayer, so why should there be rules to mandate it? People are always free to say personal prayers to themselves. Even the Bible declares good Christians should retreat to pray in private rather than making a public display of one's supposed holiness.

Kate Sheppard explores a new Illinois law that mandates not prayer per se, but that weird "moment of silence" thing I grew up with part of the time:

It's an interesting case, because it's not requiring students to pray. Well, not exactly. While they're not mandating that the kids pray to any particular god, they are requiring religious observation (even if it's the religion of your choosing) in schools. This is dangerous for precisely the reasons we separate the two in the first place. Kids who don't pray, or whose religious observation might seem weird to other kids, will be ostracized. And teachers are role models, and having them take part in this as classroom leaders will undoubtedly influence children.

Moments of silence aren't exactly dangerous, except in their intent: No one would be so passionate about the issue if it was "just" a moment for silent reflection. Moments of silence are to mandated school prayer what intelligent design is to creationism. I'd actually be pretty behind a secular moment of silence without such an intent. People could pray if they like or simply sit quietly. Public schools aren't the most calming places, but they should be considering their purpose is to educate and create social ties. A mandadtory Everyone Calm the Hell Down Moment wouldn't be half bad.

But this ain't that, which is why it's a bad idea.

Catholicism's Evolution Non-Problem

"I think there's more evolution taught in Catholic schools than in public schools." -Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, at a lecture titled "Creationism and Evolution: A History" at Hampshire College earlier tonight.

Blasphemy in Context

Andrew Sullivan criticizes an advertisement by San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair recreating the Last Supper as, apparently, a gay bondage scene:

Utterly unnecessary, I'd say, and counter-productive to ensuring that events like Folsom can continue to thrive. And not even ballsy. Next year, guys: do a similar parody on a sacred Muslim scene, if you have the balls. Easy, cheap blasphemy impresses no one.

Unnecessary? Well, sure. But while I can understand why a lot of people would take offense, it makes sense for the Fair participants to parody a sacred Christian scene because they live in a predominantly Christian country. A similar parody of a sacred Muslim scene would be the actual "[e]asy, cheap blasphemy" because it wouldn't be responding to anything directly involved in the lives of the participants, but would rather be a broad shot at an entire religion that they have no direct involvement in. The degree to which Sullivan and others (James Kirchick comes to mind) include their distaste for Islam in seemingly unrelated issues is kind of obnoxious.

Fact of the Day

"There may be more evangelicals at Harvard today than at any time since the seventeenth century" -- and more and more of them are Asian American, not white. At Yale, for example, 90 percent of the Campus Crusade for Christ members are Asian American (it was entirely white just two decades ago). I'm not entirely sure what this means for, say, politicized (white) evangelicalism, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Dear James Kirchick,

Not, in fact, everything is a chance to talk about how much you resent Muslims. Kathy Griffin had no reason to reference Muhammad at her speech, which is why she referenced the God of her personal Catholic upbringing instead. Bill Donahue did not make "aa salient point," even by accident. If Griffin had said "suck it, Mohammad," it would have gone over even less well because that wouldn't be funny or culturally relevant.

How Kathy Griffin Destroyed Catholicism

Bill Donahue is not happy with Kathy Griffin. Apparently after My Life on the D-List won an Emmy, Griffin remarked:

"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus," an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. "Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now."

To which the generally anti-humor Donahue replied, "It is a sure bet that if Griffin had said, 'Suck it, Muhammad,' there would have been a very different reaction." The Catholic League convinced E! to cut the remark from the show and now they want an apology from Griffin (not likely).

Besides the general silliness of the Catholic League's protest, what really strikes me is Donahue's invocation of Muhammad in some wild attempt at making a point. It would be a good point -- but only if athletes, politicians, and actors in this country regularly thanked the Muslim "Allah" rather than the Christian "God" in their public declarations, speeches, and off-cuff remarks. But they don't. And Griffin is in no way associated with Islam. She instead was raised a Catholic and was invoking Catholicism even in her edgy humor. It's not an uncommon (or frankly particularly offensive) style of comedy, and the Muhammad reference says a lot more about Donahue than it does Griffin.

In Case You Forgot Mark Steyn is an Idiot

"If Senator Craig had gone into the stall, rolled out his prayer mat, yelled 'Allahu Akbar!' and been observed attempting to weaponize the ballcock, the undercover cop would have shrugged, 'Do I really want to get stuck with another four-week stint in Sensitivity Training hell?' and gone about his business." -Mark Steyn. Apparently literally anything is a good excuse for mentioning how much you hate Muslims.

Politics, Religion, and Culture

Andrew Sullivan is getting at something similar to what I had in mind here when I was discussing the cultural context of Christianity. He writes:

Now, of course, American political rhetoric has been much more saturated with religious imagery and idiom than British or much European discourse since the Enlightenment (though not before). Some of this, as the theocons keep reminding us, has been to the good - abolitionism and the civil rights movement spring to mind. What they're less likely to say is that the institutional core of today's Christianism was on the wrong side of those struggles (SBC anyone?) and that these two Christianist movements emerged to undo the Christianist impulse to enslave, torture and then segregate a race that God had allegedly set apart. It's in the Bible! And much of the rest of Christianist campaigning over the centuries has also been for the bad - Prohibition, anti-miscegenation laws, vicious persecution of homosexuals, etc. The difference between the good and the bad in Christianism is that the good was also often framed in terms of secular, non-sectarian arguments, while the bad, having much less logic to stand on, was more reliant on pure Biblical authority. The more explicitly Christianist you get, in other words, the worse the abuse to human dignity and individual freedom.

In other words: Progressive social movements steeped in Christianity  were often relatively secular or ecumenical (broadly defined), whereas regressive backlashes steeped in Christianity were often quite closed off to people not like them. The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in part because it appealed to basic Christian goodness, but it would not have been as successful had it not also appealed to basic American goodness. Christianity was used to unite, not divide. Division necessarily implies regressive politics when religion is involved.

Evangelicalism and the Death Penalty

As Michael Westmoreland-White points out, "Texas is the capital punishment capital of the USA, which makes it one of the most pro-execution places on the planet, since the U.S. trails only China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and the Sudan in numbers of executions in 2006." And while I suppose it isn't terribly surprising to anyone with a passing knowledege of demographics, it turns out evangelicals provide the base of support for the death penalty in the Lone Star State:

Like his predecessor, Governor Perry is a devout Christian, highlighting one key factor in Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty that many outsiders find puzzling -- the support it gets from conservative evangelical churches.

This is in line with their emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation, and they also find justification in scripture.

"A lot of evangelical Protestants not only believe that capital punishment is permissible but that it is demanded by God. And they see sanction for that in the Old Testament especially," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Texas also stands at an unusual geographical and cultural crossroads: part Old South, with its legacy of racism, and part Old West, with a cowboy sense of rough justice.

Westmoreland-White's thoughts are apt:

A global view is helpful:  Around the world most evangelicals (and other Christians) are against the death penalty.  The current campaign in Italy (which abolished the death penalty long ago, as with most of Europe) to spread death penalty abolition throughout the world was started, not by Italian Communists or secularists, but by Italian Christians. It began in the evangelical Protestant community, although the campaign was quickly endorsed by the Vatican and spread rapidly through Italy’s much more dominant Catholic community.  If any politician in the UK or Australia or Canada or Europe or South Africa tries to drum up support for a “bring back the death penalty” campaign, their pastors or bishops rebuke them publicly and they get angry letters from Christian constituents–the exact opposite of what happens in the U.S...It is also clear that we will never abolish the death penalty in the U.S. without the support of the churches. So, how do we grow abolitionist Christians–in Texas and throughout ever pro-death penalty state in the U.S.

It's a tough task. I hesitate to say it's impossible, but it's clear the cultural contexts of American Christianity in the South especially are markedly different than the cultural contexts of European Christianity. Successful American social movements are often religious in nature -- Civil Rights Movement, anyone? -- but unfortunately so, too, are American regressive backlashes -- post-slavery support of Jim Crow, for example. To tell the truth, I'm not especially optimistic about the emergence of an abolitionist Christianity in places like Texas.

The Creationist United States of America

Yesterday, Eric Kleefeld wrote:

Think about this.  The combined vote total at Ames for Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo — the three candidates who have professed to not believe in evolution — was 47.1% among these core GOP activists in Iowa.

Sure, there must been some science-based people who voted for these faith-based candidates. But there were probably just as many creationists, if not more, voting for the publicly evolutionist candidates.

Today, Matthew Yglesias writes that he is "consistently taken aback by how unaware people are of the popularity of creationism." Same here. For the uninformed, Wikipedia tells us:

* A decade ago, 44% of the public believed in "young earth creationism" -- i.e., a biblically literally understanding of the planet's development.

* This year, 43% of the public believes "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

* In 2005, "70 percent of evangelical Christians felt that living organisms have not changed since their creation, but only 31% of Catholics and 32 percent of mainline Protestants had the same opinion."

* And speaking politically, in 2005 "63 percent of liberals and 37 percent of conservatives agreed that humans and other primates have a common ancestry," although that is technically a different question than age of the earth stuff.

Creationism is as American as  baseball and apple pie, especially in the South and Midwest.