Work of Satan revealed

RITN readers, proof of the beguilements of the Dark One have come to light... Check out this recent entry over at Theological Prescripts.

No brainers

Maureen Dowd today offers a punishing NYT op-ed: punishing, that is, to read since it reveals the anti-intellectualism to which America is pressed by the fundamentalist strain of Christianity... Here is a land of evolution denying souls, who find global warming to be a myth and strive to prevent advances in medical science. They do this in spite of high levels of education and significant affluence; these are not the poor and downtrodden.

The most virulent Christian fundamentalism is a modern reaction, with limited roots; it is not, as it claims, the historically deepest form of Christianity. Anyone who reads in the history of Christianity--alas, that is only a few people--knows that Christian thinking has through time wrestled with a range of philosophical, legal, scientific, and social scientific options.

Evangelicalism is considerably broader than fundamentalism, and there are many Evangelicals who are not fundamentalists. In fact, there are many Evangelical scientists who find no real conflict between practicing as a scientist (and seeing a plethora of evidence in support of evolution) and believing that Jesus is Lord, God is creator, and the like.

To be sure, there is a group of current intellectuals who deny that these Evangelicals can live coherently. There is, they insist, a conflict between the findings of science and the demands of faith. Here the fundamentalist Christians and au courant intellectuals agree. Should that not at least give the 'cultured despisers' of religion pause? Should it not equally give pause to fundamentalists?

The End of Tolerance, revisited

In light of President Obama's call for tolerance, I am revisiting an earlier RITN post.

The End of Tolerance

Tanenhaus, Obama, and Religious Change

Sam Tanenhaus opines today in the NYT Week in Review that President Obama, who once seemed capable of leading America beyond its culture wars, is now a party to, if not a hostage of, them. Instead of a president who can speak of faith without alienating the left, we have Glenn Beck denouncing Obama's "version of Christianity."

Obama failed to transcend this ideological struggle, says Tanenhaus, because it was falsely conceived--most memorably by Andrew Sullivan in a 2007 Atlantic essay--in the first place. "In retrospect," Sullivan's analysis

seems not only mistaken, but perhaps misbegotten, for it was premised on a misreading of America’s ideological warfare, in particular the influence of evangelical religion on the tenor of American politics.

Says Tanenhaus, the real ideological divide is not between the Vietnam and post-Vietnam generations but between the Religious Right and the secular naysayers of the left (including the mainline clergy). Obama's religious narrative ties him too closely to the left, with its overly intellectual 'faith.' Beck is simply a mouthpiece for a much broader suspicion of Obama's religious commitments--and those of the left more generally.

Tanenhaus helpfully sketches the larger religious and social context of the Obama presidency: Walter Rauschenbusch, the Social Gospel, Reinhold Niebuhr, liberation theology, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Religious Right, and the mainline churches. Tanenhaus' main point--that Sullivan's portrait failed to understand the power of Evangelical Christianity--is a good one to make. Tanenhaus also illuminates the enduring anger of the Religious Right; they were (and are) ridiculed by the secular left.

It's also worth remembering, however, that there is a growing group of Evangelicals who tilt left in their politics. They believe that the Christian faith demands compassionate politics. And there is among the Evangelicals a group of significant thinkers who know that evolution is not foolish or diabolical and that the Big Bang accounts for the physical genesis of the Universe. And there are Evangelicals whose faith draws from wells that go deeper than the late 70s alliance with political conservatism. This group is frequently chagrined by fellow Evangelicals whose positions are more well known.

The Religious Right (as an element within Evangelical Christianity) needs also to be understood in a broader social, political, and theological context, which would as a minimum include the Iranian Revolution, the rise of 'Islamism,' the fall of the Soviet Union, and (more recently) the emergence of globalization. We live in a time when the most important things seem to be, and are, changing.

The Religious Right was successful because it intuitively grasped--they would say the Holy Spirit revealed--the magnitude of changes that were merely tacit in the 1970s. The changing ethos made their high-octane religion more compelling than the comforting institutionalism of mainline faith. Meanwhile, the mainline churches, and their allies on the secular left, were too busy exercising influence in a world that was making them less and less relevant. (They did not for that reason lack spiritual power. Obama converted to Christianity under their auspices.)

The struggle between these positions, and the mixed types on both sides, continues today. Obama, like Bush before him, is seen through a prism not of his making.

Dialogue and Assembly

Join me in discussion about discussion....Dialogue and Assembly