SCJToday

When the Democrats get religion...

...

...the Democrats get religion. A friend sent me this link to a blog post about Obama. I'm a bit torn by the whole Obama faith factor. On the hand I find it inspiring that a progressive candidate isn't embarrased about his faith, but actually feels comfortable and confident speaking about it. Compare Obama to John Kerry or Al Gore. The difference is remarkable and its a change that I think bodes well for Democrats heading into the general election. There's been loads of ink spilled of late regarding the increasing number of evangelical swing voters. Perhaps a third of that constituency is up for grabs and they might be more inspired by the young, hip candidate who is actually a convert to the faith than by an old school Protestant who likely considers religion to be more of a private affair, something not to be discussed at cocktail parties, let alone on the stump. But after reading Book XIX of Augustine's City of God this week with some folks from Church of The Holy Trinity my feelings about the Democratic party's newfound religious fervor is more mixed. Augustine is writing in the wake of Rome's assault in 410 C.E. Pagans saw the assault on Rome as punishment for turning from the Empire's traditional deities. Some Christians saw it as a sign of the apocalypse. But Augustine was more measured in his response. He reminded his readers that Rome was not the Heavenly City, the hope and telos of God's elect. It was just part of the earthly city, another Babylon in which God's people find themselves exiled.

Rome's status as Babylon ought not to discourage Christians from political activism. This is hardly the case. Augustine quotes Jeremiah's words to the exiles in 29:7.:

Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred writings of the Hebrews say, "Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord." ¹³⁰² Miserable, therefore, is the people which is alienated from God. Yet even this people has a peace of its own which is not to be lightly esteemed, though, indeed, it shall not in the end enjoy it, because it makes no good use of it before the end. But it is our interest that it enjoy this peace meanwhile in this life; for as long as the two cities are commingled, we also enjoy the peace of Babylon. For from Babylon the people of God is so freed that it meanwhile sojourns in its company. And therefore the apostle also admonished the Church to pray for kings and those in authority, assigning as the reason, "that we may live a quiet and tranquil life in all godliness and love." ¹³⁰³ And the prophet Jeremiah, when predicting the captivity that was to befall the ancient people of God, and giving them the divine command to go obediently to Babylonia, and thus serve their God, counselled them also to pray for Babylonia, saying, "In the peace thereof shall ye have peace," ¹³⁰⁴ -the temporal peace which the good and the wicked together enjoy.

The peace of the earthly city is fleeting but real, temporary but of value, to be esteemed but not excessively extoled. When one takes Augustine seriously, one will be a good neighbor and a good citizen, seeking the welfare of the earthly city for the sake of believer and non-believer alike. But one will never confuse the relative good that comes from the earthly city's welfare for the ultimate good that can only come from the welfare that is our inheritance established by God. When one believes that one's city (or country) is more than just a manifestation of the earthly city, when one confuses it with the City of God, then one will use any means, including torture, to protect it. The freedom the Christian has is the freedom which comes with the realization that all goods in this life may be enjoyed, but must be held loosely. Such freedom, which allows us to loosen our grip on the goods of this life comes through being grasped in the grip of grace.

Scott's New Blog

I've taken to blogging regularly again, but most of my posts are over here at a new blog I've set up. I'll probably leave this one up for a while though.

Political Musings

Someone recently posted a question about my long absence from the blogosphere, wondering whether or not I'd weigh in on the current political happenings. I hadn't planned on it because my thoughts are not altogether original or profound, but here goes...

First let me go on record as saying I was an Obama supporter from the get go (http://scjtoday.typepad.com/scjtoday/2006/10/index.html). Call me trendy (I've been called worse), but on this conviction I have not flip flopped. I still stand by Obama for a number of reasons. I think he's the most electable, the most capable of uniting the country after a polarizing eight years, and the best suited to take our country into the 21st century. Our nation seems to be in a pragmatic mood, ready to place results over ideology, which is one reason I think Obama is picking up Republicans as well as independents. And he just might be ready to cash in on that moment. Take for instance his health care plan, which has been heavily criticized by some on the Left. True it does fall a bit shy of the sort of universal coverage the Clinton and Edwards plans offered, and it lacks mandates. But it's those features that might actually make it supportable by some across the aisle, bringing us closer to the sort of universal coverage we so desperately need. Many former Clinton staffers who are now Obama supporters have expressed their appreciation for how Obama sees the world: through complex, nuanced lenses. He likes to see and hear all sides and perspectives. He likes to be argued against, and can see the strength of the arguments of others as well as the weaknesses of his own. They contrast this with Hillary Clinton's tendency to frame things in black and white, adversarial terms.

We now know that McCain is the inevitable Republican nominee. Interestingly like Obama his strength is cross-over appeal. He's won in several states where he didn't get the majority of conservative Republican votes, being pushed over the top by moderates and independents. Conventional political wisdom would say that McCain is destined to lose come November. Republicans tend to win with conservative not moderate nominees...1976...1996. It's the Democrats that do well with moderate nominees like Bill Clinton, not the Republicans. McCain's best hope is Hillary Clinton. Her lack of charisma cancels out his, one of his chief weaknesses. She's perhaps the Democrat with the least cross over appeal in the country, let alone the presidential race. And as many pundits have noted, Republicans are licking their chops at the prospect of getting to run against her because they're stockpiles are already full of ammunition. One party activist and fund raiser said that while he might have a tough time raising money for John McCain, he'll have no problem raising money to beat Hillary.

I think Obama vs McCain will be a tight race, with a slight advantage going to Obama. Experience is a thresh hold issue. People won't vote for you if they think you don't have enough experience, but they won't necessarily vote for you because you're the candidate who has the most. Ask George W. Bush. He learned it the hard way in 1992. Some think McCain picks up a significant edge if national security becomes the issue du jour. This may be the case if there is a terrorist incident. But if Iraq goes sour it helps Obama. If the surge continues to reduce violence, I don't know that McCain is helped, because when things go relatively better in Iraq it tends to become a non-issue, being overshadowed by the economy, rather than a winning issue for hawks. McCain is also hampered by the fact that a vote for him for many Republicans was akin to a vote for "none of the above." He represents compromise and frustration, not consensus and excitement. This doesn't send the base running to the polls in the Fall.

All my musings are assuming Obama can get the nomination. I think he'll do quite well this weekend, but even if he picked up all the delegates at stake (an unlikely scenario given the proportional appropriation in most Democratic primaries), he'd only pick up 223. Ohio and Texas still loom large on the horizon. And while Obama has momentum and a significant fund raising lead, Hillary still leads in these states. And don't think for a second the Clinton's won't get their way with regard to Florida and Michigan. These delegates will count. But if Hillary is the nominee, Obama can eye 2012. I'll still be a supporter.

This Is My Doctrine of Scripture!

"That by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." I don't know about you, but I cling to the hope that the Scriptures give me in days like these. Not only because of the fact that God is and that he loves this desperate world, but because of the way those Scriptures were written and have come to us. It's the story of living, sweating, rejoicing, struggling, dying men and women just like you, just like me. And the story tells of a God not apart from their daily, ordinary lives, but smack in the middle of them. So it's my story, too. And your story. Rejoice in it. Give thanks and sing. For the hope is not fanciful or ephemeral; it is rooted in a God who enters into the dirt and dust and joys of life precisely where you are now. Just like a child in the dust and dirt and joy of a stable.

-Edmund Steimle, From Death to Birth

Mr. Jones Goes to Springfield...

...so I guess this is what I would look like as an extra in the Simpson's movie.

did you ever wonder what happens to stormtroopers after they got shot?

The Injured Stormtrooper

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The Cost of Sacrifice

I came across this piece in The Washington Post.

I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.

In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. His son died May 13 after a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province.

Reflections On The Establishment Clause

Stanley Fish posted an interesting piece on his NY Times blog today. It deals with the history of the interpretation of the establishment clause. His conclusion seems to be that our nation's interpretation of the clause is destined to be as ambigious in nature as the clause itself:

Notice that the cases I have cited in these two columns span more than 50 years and 10 administrations. In that time, the cast of characters on the Supreme Court has constantly changed, and the line dividing the opposing positions (which persist unchanged) does not correlate with differences of religion, politics, interpretive philosophy, seniority or judicial temperament. The arguments that emerged full-blown in 1947 are the arguments that are still being run today. There is no progress to be discerned; no clarity has emerged; no consistency has been achieved. Almost all of the decisions, in whatever directions they tip, are 5-to-4. It’s a mess, and more than once the justices themselves have commented that the jurisprudence in which they are engaged is incoherent and chaotic.

If there is a pattern at all, it is most assuredly not linear. Rather it is a pendulum, or a roller coaster or, at times, a kaleidoscopic fun house, as we are told that a crèche set up in a public sphere with state funds is not an establishment of religion (Lynch v. Donnelly), while the delivery of a prayer carefully denuded of any sectarian content (or any content at all) at a middle school graduation – the very middle school from which I graduated in some other century – is. (Lee v. Weisman, 1992).

That is why I said at the outset that blaming either evangelical ideologues or the administration they may be said to own for this or that decision is an oversimplification. The fault, dear readers, lies not in the players – on or off the Court – but in the enterprise, an enterprise so fundamentally divided against itself, that it will continually reproduce its built-in ambiguities and contradictions no matter what issues are brought to its bar or whose hands are, at the moment, on the wheel.

Conservatism, Fundamentalism And The Difference Between The Two

I'm currently reading Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul. In it Sullivan criticizes a faux conservatism that has led to reckless government action, spending and growth. The contemporary movement masquerading as conservatism lacks what in Sullivan's mind is essentially conservative: a chastened rationality marked by a healthy dose of skepticism. At the root of this decidedly unconservative movement is fundamentalism, something that Sullivan sees as essentially antithetical to all that is truly "conservative". Anyone with moderate political sensibilities will find at least some of Sullivan's thought attractive, and much of it at least palpitable. I know I'm finding his book to be a decent read, except where he waxes on about "fundamentalism".

Sullivan's varied characeterizations of fundamentalism aren't so problematic. Fundamentalists "know" the truth in a manner that precludes guessing, arguing, wondering or questioning. For the fundamentalist truth is not something to be "held provisionally, to be tested by further evidence." Fundamentalists don't separate facts from values. 'The values of the fundamentalist are facts...God has revealed them in a book that is inerrant, whether that book is the Bible or the Koran; or he has entrusted them to a hierarchy whose interpretation of scripture and tradition and history and nature is authoritative and even, in some cases, literally infallible."

One might want to quibble at certain points with Sullivan's definition of a fundamentalist (see Newbigin's critique of the fact/value dichotomy in The Gospel In A Pluralist Society, for instance). But more troubling are some of the specific examples he gives of fundamentalists. Case in point, he cites the current pope who in a Christmas sermon remarked: "Without the light of Christ, the light of reason is not sufficient to enlighten humanity and the world." The larger context of the quote is as follows:

At Christmas, the Almighty becomes a child and asks for our help and protection. His way of showing that he is God challenges our way of being human. By knocking at our door, he challenges us and our freedom; he calls us to examine how we understand and live our lives. The modern age is often seen as an awakening of reason from its slumbers, humanity’s enlightenment after an age of darkness. Yet without the light of Christ, the light of reason is not sufficient to enlighten humanity and the world. For this reason, the words of the Christmas Gospel: "the true Light that enlightens every man was coming into this world" (Jn 1:9) resound now more than ever as a proclamation of salvation. "It is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear" (Gaudium et Spes, 22). The Church does not tire of repeating this message of hope reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council, which concluded forty years ago.

Benedict is not claiming that secular human reason is bankrupt. He is not asserting that science is some spurious discipline to be eschewed by the Church. He is not decrying philosophy or the benefits that Athens can bring to all the world, including Jerusalem. He is simply saying that if the Gospel is true, then human reason is limited, both in its capacity to understand our own condition and our world. The creature's capacity to reason, grand as it is, will always fall short of the the goal it seeks. Knowledge is certainly possible for autonomous human reason, but the truest and deepest understanding we seek can only be received as a gift of divine grace. If convictions like this make one a fundamentalist, then so be it. Count me among the tribe.

The Real Reason To Become Catholic

Much has been made  of the recent number of prominent Protestant theologians who have converted to Catholicism. Stanley Hauerwas has said that every Protestant ought to ask themselves daily, "Why am I not Roman Catholic?" The following video makes the most compelling case for a journey down the Roman Road that I've seen to date: