Changing ‘biblical views’ on homosexuality?
The ethics of counseling and freedom of religion
Last week CNN reported on a Georgia graduate student who is suing her university for forcing her to undergo remedial classes or face expulsion from its counseling program.
Jennifer Keeton claims the university violated her right to free speech and practice of religion by forcing her to undergo this extra program of classes, which was largely targeted at improving her tolerance of LGBTQ individuals. Keeton objected to completing this remediation program because she claimed that it would have forced her to alter her religious beliefs. Are Keeton’s objections to the remedial program valid?
Going through a remedial program designed to increase her exposure to individuals who might not share her religious beliefs is not in itself a way of forcing her to change those beliefs. Such a program might bring her to question those beliefs, but equally, Keeton could emerge from this sensitivity training with her religious convictions intact. This is a weak objection to completing the program.
No offense
Isaac Chotiner at TNR.com remarks on the controvery over the mosque construction near Ground Zero:
The New York Times front page story today on opposition to the mosque near Ground Zero has the following comments:
–The mosque would be an “unnecessary provocation.” (Sarah Palin)
–”It’s not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.” (Newt Gingrich)
–Abe Foxman said in an interview on Friday that the organization came to the conclusion that the location was offensive to families of victims of Sept. 11.
Are these not the exact same sentiments that were voiced by people who thought that Salman Rushdie should not have published The Satanic Verses, and that Danish newspapers should not have run cartoons featuring The Prophet Muhammad? The idea that people have some sort of right not to be offended is one the many silly and pernicious things about these arguments
-Jake
Photo by Flickr user pnoeric used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Islamic mosque, Islamist mosque, or extremist mosque?
How appropriate is animus toward the new Ground Zero mosque?
A few months ago, news emerged of plans for a mosque and Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero. In the ensuing and continuing saga, Sarah Palin is but one of the latest to weigh in, tweeting “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand. Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in the interest of healing.”
John Esposito at CNN framed the moral question well: “Why should Muslims who are building a center be any more suspect than Jews who build a synagogue or center or Christians who build a church or conference center?”
What underlies the Palin position is the conflation of Islam, Islamism, and radicalism.
It seems rather improbable that the new mosque in practice will become a magnet for extremists. But the opposition to the mosque is concerned as much with the fear of terror as with the symbolism of a building that represents what is perceived as an alien and hostile culture. Read more
Philosophizing cloth
The Muslim burqa and equal rights
On The New York Times’ The Stone, its new philosophy commentary series, University of Chicago Professor Martha Nussbaum wrote in response to Spain’s recent, narrow rejection of a ban on public wearing of the Muslim burqa. She gives a quick history of what Western political philosophy has said on the topics of equal rights and free exercise before examining five arguments commonly made in support of this sort of ban.
Her responses to the arguments are certainly convincing. Nussbaum effectively demonstrates the inconsistency or hypocrisy in Western resistance to burqas, and anyone who reads the piece is more likely to dislike the idea of banning burqas.
But her most compelling point is also the most unique: Westerners cannot seem to recognize the inconsistency of their arguments against burqas because they are Westerners, burqa-wearing is not traditionally Western, and burqa-wearers are not viewed as traditionally Western.
Islam between democracy and liberalism
Muslim democrats vs. Western liberals
In a recent post, Jake brought our attention to an intriguing article on the politics of Islam, penned by Marc Lynch in Foreign Affairs. Lynch, who is responding to the neo-conservative author Paul Berman, accuses the latter of offering an overly simplistic rendering of the debate over modern Islam and its relationship to the Western tradition. Instead of imagining a continuous Islamist spectrum ranging from shifty but presentable Muslim intellectuals to preachers of hate and terrorists, Lynch argues that we should see the tussle that exists within the Islamic world as one between moderate and radical forces.
Lynch’s take is interesting and provides us with a fertile framework of analysis, but I’d like to indicate a few problems it raises. At the centre of his argument lies a great dilemma for liberalism. On the one hand, it seems to be in the interest of Western liberals to support moderate forces within Islam and side with intellectuals such as Tariq Ramadan in order to defeat the more regressive and violent strands, both on grounds of greater ideological affinity and strategic interest.
Yet, on the other hand, the “moderates” in question reject liberal values and promote views that are hostile – albeit less violently hostile than those of their Salafist opponents – to the West, such that reinforcing them is to work against the long-term interests of Western nations, not only in terms of foreign policy but also in terms of the relationship between Muslims living in the West and mainstream society.
Sacred (but political) texts
The day before the Fourth of July, Tara Rowe from The Political Game offered her readers a guest post on relationship between one’s faith and one’s interpretation of political issues and of the US Constitution. In the end, it is a screed against America’s religious right and people like Glenn Beck, full of generalizations and frustration—but it raises some interesting questions despite all of the arguably unfair assumptions it makes.
Leonard Hitchcock, the guest poster, criticizes many conservatives for concluding “that political issues are really religious ones” and focuses on the religious reverence for the Constitution as sacred, God-given, and therefore immutable Scripture. Hitchcock, then, is working under the assumptions that political issues are not (and cannot be) religious issues and that one’s handling of the Constitution should show no sign of faith.
Are these conjectures correct?
America has had a history of idolization and myth-making when it comes to things like the Founders and founding documents ever since Lincoln’s time, so it might be incorrect of Hitchcock to portray the religious right’s behavior as new or unique.
And if we define one’s political view as part of one’s general worldview, and faith is a part of one’s worldview, then surely politics and faith will talk to each other at least on occasion.
But to what extent should one be allowed to claim the high ground on a political question by pointing to faith—something that does not lend itself to debate in the way politics does?
What happens to political discourse when religion is used as a sort of ‘Win’ button in political arguments?
-Jonathan
Photo by Flickr user kc7fys used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Is it ever ok to discriminate?
The Supreme Court today heard arguments in the case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. In the case, the University of California refused to recognize or provide funding or meeting space to the Christian group because it restricted membership to those who signed a “statement of faith.” The University argued that it had the right to insist that any student group it officially recognized admit any student. The Christian Legal Society challenged this, appealing the case all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Constitutional law aside, should an organization be allowed to restrict membership — that is discriminate — on the basis of an individual’s belief?
Fish on Habermas
Stanley Fish posted an oddly long discussion of the religious turn of Jurgen Habermas. It’s well-worth reading. Let me start by saying that despite reading a bit of Habermas in graduate school, in no way do I claim to fully understand his position. This post should be seen to engage with Fish’s characterization in his article, which is by necessity incomplete.
Habermas’s argument (again, according to Fish), is that a secular liberal state does not have the tools to compel action to desirable ends.
The Liberal state, resting on a base of procedural rationality, delivers no such goals or reasons and thus suffers, Habermas says, from a “motivational weakness”; it cannot inspire its citizens to virtuous (as opposed to self-interested) acts because it has lost “its grip on the images, preserved by religion, of the moral whole” and is unable to formulate “collectively binding ideals.”
I’m surprised this argument has taken such an important turn in Habermas’s thought as it seems to have been widely discredited already. (Again, this might have much to do with Fish’s characterization.) A few thoughts:
- It’s not perfectly clear here why this is a weakness. I don’t think Habermas has identified here any kind of blinding new insight on liberalism. Of course it allows a breadth of possible lifestyles; that’s the idea. It would be interesting to see if Habermas had pointed to examples of failed liberal states, and made explicit how they had failed due to lack of clear moral vision.
- Mores do seem to form quite easily in secular states. France, for example, seems to have a fairly widely-shared view of what their state should look like, despite being fiercely secular.
- This seems empirically false. Even secular states can and do decry crimes like genocide; they don’t let their lack of official faith get in the way of clear moral judgments. The secular state might not be able to distinguish shades of gray the way a theocracy could, but, to paraphrase Leo Strauss, they can distinguish a mountain from a molehill.
-John
Can the Catholic Church sin?
Institutional Responsibility
We’ve learned recently of
more children molested and raped by Catholic priests, and of more cover-ups by Church higher-ups, likely leading all the way to the Pope Benedict XVI. Is it right to scorn the Catholic Church as an institution? When is it right to hold an organization in moral contempt for the actions of an employee or member? There are two main questions.
The first is whether he committed the offense in his official capacity, at least incidentally related to his institutional responsibilities and authority. If a priest killed someone while driving drunk, it wouldn’t impugn the Catholic Church as an institution, at least not directly. It’s a little different for the Church than other organizations insofar as priests have dedicated their entire lives to the institution and its teachings and, as such, everything a priest does in some sense reflects upon the Church. But we can still draw a line between the activities a priest performs though his position as a priest and everything else. And the molestation is a case of the former. The offenders had access to children because they were priests charged with caring for or educating these children, somewhat analogous to a daycare worker; anything they do with these children in their capacity as caregivers or educators qualifies as incidental to their official responsibilities. These molestations and rapes were committed on the clock.
The second issue is the complicity of institutional leadership. The leaders direct the institution as a whole. They speak for the institution. If they decide that the institution will take an action, the institution then stands for that action. If the crime in question is an isolated incident and leadership works honestly to prevent its future occurrence, it seems inappropriate to hold the organization as a whole responsible, or to put the act in question on the organization’s moral ledger.
What to do with clergy who do not believe
Via Sullivan, WaPo has an interesting debate regarding what action clergy must take if they have privately come to doubt God. Clergy that resign face terrible job prospects — older, with no training to do any other job, little personal savings, and having just alienated their personal and professional network.
My own take is that religious leaders play a critical role in maintaining a community, a service that is separate from belief in God. As long as that leader is able to carry out his duties, I see no problem. My view may be informed by a good college friend who, despite his atheism, has been able to become a successful rabbi. (Though one could certainly argue important differences between Judaism and Christianity, the focus of this debate).
-John
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