The political expediency of 'culture war'

It's useful to remember, when "culture war" fights reach a fevered pitch, that these conflicts and controversies are stoked and perpetuated in large part by people who don't really care. 

It's politics. And political expediency. 

There are those who do care, of course, and who really are deeply concerned about religious colleges and hospitals, for example, being required to offer birth control as part of their health care plans. But there are just as many or maybe even more who seize on such issues without any convictions except political gain. As much as Republican leaders shouted about "religious liberty," it was fundamentally political "points" that motivated them, not fear of religious exercise being curtailed by a Health and Human Services mandate. 

This is clear in how the issue has been handled after it passed from the headlines. 

As Politico reports:

"But now, with the rule set to take effect Wednesday — part of the 'Obamacare' law the GOP hates so much — the fiery repeal rhetoric has fizzled. In fact, few on Capitol Hill are saying anything about it at all.

"And that House vote to block the rule? Never happened — and isn’t in the works either. A group of die-hards on the issue asked for it again in a closed-door meeting [last] Wednesday with House leadership but said no promises were made.

"Even Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), one of the most vocal critics of the rule and co-sponsor of a bill to eliminate it, has gone quiet now that the rule is about to kick in."

If one actually believed that this mandate is a violation of the free exercise of religion, this isn't how you'd respond. The actual actions of the representatives make it seem like this wasn't seen as a matter of defending the Constitution, but rather rhetoric and politics. The issue is a wedge, which might move some voters right, and motivate others to go to the polls.

There's no evidence, though, the Republican party as a party agrees with those suing the federal government over this birth control mandate that "after August 1, 2012, Plaintiffs will no longer have the right to make health care insurance decisions in line with their Catholic views," because on Wednesday the HHS rule "will go into effect and force Plaintiffs to pay, fund, contribute, or support artificial contraception, abortion, abortifacients or related education and counseling, in violation of their Constitutional rights and deeply held religious beliefs."

It's hard to see how the Republicans' very tactical response is anything other than a betrayal.

Not that there won't be congressmen and women across the country campaigning for re-election on the platform that something must be done on the issue they failed to do anything about.

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Now I'm shifting the square / with the man from ArkansasHe took my rook, oh Lord / My king's about to fall

More Houndmouth

Porter Perkin's write-up: "When Jared told me to check out his cousin’s band, Houndmouth, I was skeptical. Jared’s from Indiana, after all."

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Why do people still not know if Obama is a Christian?

Recent Pew poll results on perceptions of Romney's religion say pretty much exactly what one would expect. More people know he's Mormon than used to, but they're either OK with that or don't care. The poll found "unease with Romney’s religion has little impact on voting preferences."

The more interesting information, here, is that 51 percent of registered voters don't "Identify Obama as Christian."

This isn't because they think he's a Muslim, though. There are some who think he's Muslim, but the number that identify Obama with Islam has been pretty consistent and relatively small, upticking only slightly from 12 percent right before the 2008 election to 17 percent today. 

The big block of registered voters who don't say Obama is a Christian are not saying for sure what his faith is. They're saying they "don't know." Nearly a third say that they don't know, now, a number went as high was 41 percent in 2010. From the looks of the numbers, about 10 percent of voters have, over the course of Obama's first term, gone from thinking he's a Christian to not knowing if he's a Christian to thinking he's a Christian again -- all without ever saying he's Muslim.

It's possible to read this "don't know" as simply the safe version of saying he's Muslim. Some Republican officials have taken this stance of allowing doubt and encouraging distrust without actually saying anything directly. Like, "he says he's a Christian ... (but I don't know)," etc.

There's another way to read this question about Obama's Christianity, though, which has nothing to do with rumors he's a secret Muslim.

It's possible 31 percent of registered voters don't know if Obama's a Christian because they don't know if liberal Christianity is really Christianity.


Consider: a year ago there was an intra-evangelical fight about the doctrine of eternal damnation, after megachurch minister Rob Bell wrote a book questioning some aspects of that idea. The terms of the fight were, to a large extent, could one still be considered a Christian if one did not believe in hell? This is not an exaggeration. Though it was portrayed as a conflict over this doctrine, it was actually about who gets to count as Christian. So John MacArthur wrote, e.g., "Is Rob Bell truly a Christian, or is he one of those dangerous deceivers Scripture warns us about repeatedly (Acts 20:29; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15; Colossians 2:8; 2 Peter 2:1; etc.)? It's a fair—and necessary—question." Kevin DeYoung, who started the extensive attack on Bell, wrote that "At the very heart of this controversy ... is that we really do have two different Gods" and "Bell’s vision of heaven and hell doesn’t work because his vision of God is false."

For people who take this position that Christianity is only Christianity if it includes a strong vision of eternal damnation, Obama's not going to count as Christian.

In one of his more extensive statements on his faith, for example, the then-Illinois state senator said,

"I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. 
I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity.
 That’s just not part of my religious makeup."

DeYoung, and those like him, would not likely conclude from the above that the president is a Muslim, but they wouldn't say he's a Christian, either. Not a "real" Christian, anyway.

Thus: "don't know."

It's a kind of yes and no answer, as in yes he's a Christian in the sense he identifies as such, but no, he's not really a Christian, because he embraces a "phony theology ... not a theology based on Bible." The "yes" is about a descriptivist account of Christianity, which allows that people are as they say they are, and the "no" is a prescriptivist account, which holds there's an essential definition of Christianity, and someone can say they're Christian without meeting the objective theological standards of being Christian.

It's possible that nearly a third of the country's registered voters are just confused and have been tricked by conservative commentators into suspecting the president of the United States is other than what he claims to be. A more reasonable explain, though, it seems to me, is that this 31 percent recognizes Obama is, as he says he is, a liberal Christian, but they don't know that that Christianity is really Christianity.

For them, liberal Christianity is in a confusing neither/nor space that's kind of hard to name, especially when going back and forth between descriptivist and prescriptivist definitions of "Christian," and that's exactly the gray area where Obama and his faith fall.

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Incarnation, in the context of demon possession

A fascinating thing about demonology and explanations of exorcisms is the way theology -- sometimes very abstract theology -- is re-cast in very different terms.
 
So, for example, an anonymous Catholic priest from the Midwest who participates in about three exorcisms a day talked to the Catholic News Agency about the incarnation, as thought about in the context of demon possession. CNA reports:

"The early Church Fathers, including St. Jerome and St. Augustine, speculated that these angels rebelled 'because of the revelation to them of God’s plan of incarnation' and their 'repulsion at the notion that God, who is pure spirit and infinite, should become a man.'

For this reason, the priest observed, they have a 'fascination with physicality' and 'making people suffer.'

'So once the rite begins, normally [the demon] starts to manifest himself in the suffering person different ways - violence, changing of the face, changing of the voice [so it] is different,' he said."

This means, according to the priest, 1) the demon is, from the demon's perspective, slumming; 2) the suffering person is suffering because of the incarnation; 3) suffering is inextricably linked to redemption.

This isn't so different than traditional Catholic theology of incarnation. But when those doctrines are illustrated with the image of a 13-year-old boy who falls down and starts growling in response to a priest's prayer, the context for the meaning of these ideas changes, and some aspects are more notable that they would be otherwise.

The idea that suffering is related to redemption, specifically, looks a lot different in this context:

"'These suffering people are becoming saints (by) the offering of their sacrifices' which God then receives and 'blesses large parts of the Church around the world.'

'When you remind the Devil of that it makes him furious,' because he knows he is losing and hence 'he wants to get what he can, while he can. If he can't win these peoples' souls, he wants to at least make their lives miserable.'"

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When talk of 'religion in politics' goes in circles

In northwest Washington State, where my parents live, traffic engineers have spent the last decade or so implementing their ingenious solution to congested intersections: traffic circles.

Traffic circles, these "roundabouts," are so much better than four-way stops. More functional. More practical. They ease congestion and allow traffic to flow more smoothly. And yet: In practice, what you see is often people stuck driving around and around the roundabouts, stuck going in circles, not sure how to actually use this very useful things. Everyone just goes in circles, the whole region's traffic now a series of crazy merry-go-rounds without the music.

My fear and sometimes my frustration, in talking about "religion and politics," is that this very functional idea ends with everyone stuck going in circles.

I'd like to briefly offer two exits. That is: two different ways out of the circle. Two contradictory correctives to how we get stuck talking about religion and politics and religion in politics in the US.


My first suggestion: More of American politics is religious than we allow.

Second suggestion: Religion is less important in American politics than we allow.

What I mean by the first is, we seem stuck, too often, with only a couple of issues, a couple of topics, designated as "religious." And, many times, too, we seem to imagine the religious position as clear, and not diverse, as definitive, not diffuse and decidedly plural.

Think about health care. We've allowed to the "religious issue" regarding health care to mean strictly statements released by Catholic bishops. That is one aspect, but that's not everything. Ted Kennedy, the late "lion" of liberalism, took a break of cancer treatments to cast a vote to protect Medicare. He spent some time towards the end of his life promoting universal health care, and hoped that health care would form a substantial part of his legacy. Because of his religious beliefs. Kennedy wasn't outspoken about his understanding of Catholic social teaching and his belief that his Catholicism called for certain political action, but when asked he would cite his religious convictions as the source and motivation for his liberalism.

There are other examples. The point is just that one of the things "religion and politics" or "religion in politics" could very helpfully open up for us is the sorts of positions and people and issues that are not typically designated as religious.

The second corrective suggestion, to keep us from getting stuck going 'round and 'round, is that we get off on the other side of the circle, and think about how religion is not as important as it's presented in U.S. politics.

A lot of times what we point to as religious is really just one kind of account or justification or explanation for policies. But that religious discourse isn't necessary to that policy. It might work as rhetoric, politically or practically, appealing to certain segments of the electorate, but it's not quite right to think of the policy or position itself as religious.

As an example of this, think about George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The former was deeply religious, the latter, ambivalent towards religion, unless politics and winning is a religion. But what difference did faith make in the policies of the two men? If the areligious Cheney had taken over for the evangelical Bush, what would have been different? The point at which the two men broke ranks wasn't abortion or the environment or the middle east, or any of these supposed religious issues, but the question of whether or not to pardon political allies who'd broken the law.

So maybe "religion" is a less useful idea for analyzing the Bush administration's policies than has been generally supposed.

It can be quite useful to discuss religion and politics. There's a very functional aspect of this topic. But just as a suggestion, when you find the conversation going around and around, as it does and as it will between now and November, consider these exits off the roundabout.

Ask: is there a way religion's more involved than is being recognized? Or, on the other side, is it possible religion's significantly less important than imagined?

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