Tariq Aziz, Iraqi foreign minister under Saddam Hussein, sentenced to hang - latimes.com

The LA times reports today that Tariq Aziz, Iraqi foreign minister under Saddam Hussein [has been] sentenced to hang. Unlike the other Sunni members of Saddam Hussein's government, Aziz is a Christian. Aziz was like them, however, in his persecution of Shiite Muslims. The court found evidence that Aziz played a significant role in executing a large number of people.

It's worth pondering Aziz, and the world events that shaped the life he lived, gave urgency to the orders he followed, and justified heinous acts (at least in his own mind). Also worth pondering is the world that exists today, in which Aziz is likely to die by hanging. Max Stackhouse, Christian ethicist at Andover Newtown Theological School and later at Princeton Theological Seminary, used to quote James Luther Adams, to the effect that 'we should cultivate the capacity to be astonished.' The trial of Aziz provides an occasion for astonishment.

The trial--however foregone its conclusion may seem and may have been--was a trial under rule of law. It was not merely a staging to justify blood feud. Here is a Christian being tried in a country whose Shiite majority had been oppressed and abused a secular Sunni government, in which this Christian played a key role. In spite of these strange 'plot twists,' there is a reasonable measure of justice in the process and outcome.

On a larger scale, Iraq is a different country, top to bottom. However poorly executed the war under President Bush initially, and in spite of the fact that many mistakes were made, the surge appears to have worked, and the country is slowly beginning to move forward. It may, of course, still lapse back into chaos, but there is a chance that the country will move to legitimate self-rule. In thirty or forty years, if not sooner, Iraq may be a booming, cosmopolitan center.

Iran and Afghanistan represent deeper problems at this point, and it may well be that the global circumstance has been destabilized for years to come. It may also be that significant terror cells have been destroyed or neutralized in Afghanistan. The larger scale is impossible to fathom, but Aziz brings to light what is clearly the case: the history of the world, as it will be reviewed and known by future generations, is laying bear before us now. So close are we to it that we cannot quite bring it into focus.

The proposal of this blog is that we can gain some sense of perspective by paying attention to religious elements of history, as they give rise to profound acts of healing and love, and as they occasions wanton violence and bloodshed. Aziz is likely to die at the crossroads of these religious potencies; we should learn from them, and him.

Christine O'Donnell's separation anxiety

Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party candidate vying to be elected senator for Delaware, again makes news, this time by questioning whether the Constitution includes the ‘separation of Church and state.’ The charitable interpretation is that she meant these actual words do not appear in the Constitution; she’s right about that. Her detractors insist that she doesn’t even know that the concept is enshrined in the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What’s more likely, I think, is that O’Donnell agrees with those who believe that this concept has been misapplied, and overextended, by the courts over the years. There are many people in this category, and many of them are not fools. This group holds that American history has a deeply religious—primarily but not exclusively Christian—dimension. And they also think that this religious history has been ignored or obscured, misunderstood and falsely maligned, by prominent secularists and elite members of society, the judiciary and Congress.

The media pounces on statements of this sort, hoping to gain a market share of the viral news climate. Thankfully, much of this reporting includes some analysis, but very little of it seems to be aware of the larger conflict brewing just under the surface. Whether it’s Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, and Christine O’Donnell, on the one side, or Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, on the other, interpretations of their statements and actions are situated within a conflict about the very basis of the American experiment. We disagree about our past and present, and we disagree about the future we should be seeking. The recession is lingering, in part, because we have not developed a consensus about our future.

O’Donnell represents the possibility that the two dominant political parties will be viewed as too similar to address the real crises and issues that we face—among the most problematic that we have become addicted to spending money we do not have. We want everything, except for the bills to become due. We want health care, but we are unwilling to pay for its true costs. We are unable to form a consensus on how to contain its wildly accelerating costs. We want absolute security but complete freedom. We want a free press and free speech, but never to be offended. Alas.

O’Donnell’s statement about the separation of Church and state may be most revealing for how it situates her within the religio-conservative base of the Republican Party. It will be interesting to see how O’Donnell continues to be received; it will be more interesting to see whether a fundamentally novel political approach is developed, if not by her and the Tea Party, then by whom.

The Politics of Sex and Salami

Generalizations aren’t easy to make in the world religions. For example, some religions encourage adherents to pray to God; others deny that God exists. Some religions honor scriptures; some don’t. Some see nature as guide; some see it as morally fallen and whorish.

Here’s a generalization that, while not universal, is broadly applicable. The world religions teach that homosexuality is morally and religiously wrong—or, at the least, not helpful. Here’s another: the world’s religions tend to find sexuality problematical even when it is played according to Hoyle’s rules. Here’s a third: all religions have gay members, and each also has members pressing the case for equal treatment for gays. And finally, a fourth: many people caught in the moral eddies and currents of these disputes find themselves being inconsistent. They say one thing in one context, and then something opposed to it in another. Such is the case, apparently, of New York gubernatorial candidate Carl P. Paladino. Elizabeth Harris reports for the New York Times that Paladino denounced gays when he spoke before an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, being supported there (and in his gubernatorial bid) by Rabbi Yehuda Levin.

Later, under the media glare, Paladino recanted. Rabbi Levin, the more consistent of the two, was outraged and claimed that Paladino “folded like a cheap camera.” The rabbi’s endorsement of Paladino’s bid for governor also is off.

Sex and politics are strange but frequent bedfellows, and religion is the anxious innkeeper. One of the reasons for this is their centrality to life—personal/familial organization on the one side, collective organization on the other, separated and joined by the religious intermediary. In today’s political discourse, sexuality is often viewed or treated as a trope of the political. Have a nation under siege and threat? Author a defense of marriage act! See anomie as a problem? Seize upon homosexuality as especially wanton morally! Want to show you are a political straight shooter? Denounce gays and lesbians and reprehensible and vile.

Each day it seems that someone puts a strategy like this in play. Paladino and Levin are only the most recent. The rabbi’s own statements suggest a profound homophobia, rooted in what, one can only wonder. Upon hearing the news of Paladino’s political flip-flop, the rabbi said “I was in the middle of eating a kosher pastrami sandwich [when the news was announced]…. I almost choked on the kosher salami.”

Guilty nation?

Check out this reflection on national guilt over at Creedible.com