Proud to be Abnormal
We’ve seen some stupid stuff in the You-Have-to-Believe-in-God department, but this pile of steaming nonsense in Slate is really – well, hard to believe. Get this part, for example:
But in general, most Republicans and most Democrats are pretty religious. The stark differences are at the extremes of each party, and, as so often is the case, the big question is whether the extremes will define the party as a whole. Most Republicans aren’t conservative fundamentalists, although it sometimes seems that way given the proclivities of the leadership. And the Democrats have their own version of that same dilemma, and it’s affecting the most important arena there is-this year’s presidential race: Will Kerry’s Democrats act like the Party of Secularists even if they aren’t?
See? Catch the sly move there? Define secularism as ‘extreme’ – and bob’s your uncle, the job is half done. This is a very, very popular move in US public rhetoric, of course: invent two ‘extremes’ by deciding in the echoing vaults of your own mind that This is the Polar Opposite of That and that therefore the truth of the matter lies between the two. But of course that’s a ridiculous approach for a lot of reasons – reasons having to do with the arbitrariness and artificiality of the categories, just for one thing. But even more, that idiotic formula ignores the need to examine the issue on the merits – on the truth, and on political questions about secular versus religious government.
Of course, that’s not what the author wants to do with this article. He wants to coerce everyone to avoid ‘extreme’ secularism and head for the safe middle with everyone else. Moral blackmail, is what that kind of thing is. David Brooks went in for the same kind of moral blackmail the other day, and Steven Waldman quotes the very line that I quoted in the News link: ‘New York Times columnist David Brooks (who’s still my favorite conservative)) nailed it precisely when he said of his fellow countrymen, “Their President doesn’t have to be a saint, but he does have to be a pilgrim. He does have to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward God.”‘ But Waldman, of course, quotes it approvingly, whereas I quoted it with disgust. He has to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward a figment of their imaginations. Oh does he. Notice he’s not required to be engaged in a personal voyage toward Zeus, or Athena, or Ganesh, or Ra, or Ashtaroth – and that in fact if he were, that would not go down very well. Nor is he supposed to be on a trip toward Spock, or Hogwarts, or Julien Sorel, or Hamlet. No, there’s just one literary character that we’re supposed to pretend is not a literary character but Really Real and kindly looking after us in spite of all the evidence that nobody at all is looking after us in any way.
But then the article gets even worse.
First, if Kerry’s uncomfortable with religion then he’s uncomfortable with Americans. Media managers love having him photographed riding a motorcycle because it shows he can connect with regular folks, who apparently all ride motorcycles, too. If Kerry’s really secular, he’s abnormal.
Abnormal? Abnormal?? Is that really what he meant to say? Couldn’t he have chosen a slightly better word or phrase? You know – not like the majority, that sort of thing. Non-conformist, non-majoritarian, different. But abnormal? But. Perhaps it’s useful to know what they think of us.
Second, the fact that people view Bush as a man of faith is very much connected to their viewing him as decisive and steadfast, two of his strongest assets. A man of faith is a man of conviction, and vice versa. So, Kerry’s unwillingness to talk about his faith feeds into one of his great weaknesses, his reputation as a waffler.
Well, see, I would put that quite differently. I don’t admire Bush’s decisiveness and steadfastness, because it’s notorious that he’s unreflective and uninformed – that he prides himself on making snap decisions and then refusing to budge. Well guess what – that’s not always the best way to do things, especially not for someone who’s ignorant and unthinking to begin with. Viewed that way, Bush’s ‘faith’ probably gives him far too much confidence in his own judgment. He thinks God is helping him. Yes, but what if he’s wrong about that? Then that conviction is not such a great idea, is it.
Finally, he needs to talk about his faith because it would strengthen him on the most important issue of the campaign—terrorism…when the country is at war, people appropriately look for signs that the president has real strength. Americans believe that one of the most important sources of inner strength is faith.
One, no they don’t, because I’m an American and I don’t. Speak for yourself, pal. Even if 95% of Murkans agree with you, you still don’t get to speak for all of us. And two – inner strength is another one of those dual-edged swords, isn’t it. We can all think of some other people who got a lot of inner strength from their ‘faith’ too, can’t we. Enough inner strength to go to flight school, and buy plane tickets, and get through security with their box cutters, and – you know. No thanks. I prefer the kind of ‘inner strength’ (whatever that really means, in fact) that’s based on open eyes and rational thought.
How old are you, Ophelia? Because I find it hard to believe that an intelligent American past age 20 could be so apparently shocked (shocked!) as you seem to be by the importance of religion in politics. You’ve posted about this subject so many times. Are you really surprised when relgious faith is invoked in evaluations of presidential candidates? That just seems so naive to me.
I think there is a very good chance we will get a black or female president in my lifetime. But America will not elect an openly atheist president in the next 100 years. It won’t happen.
I’m six, Anita, how old are you, and what’s your shoe size?
No, I’m not exactly surprised, I suppose. But I am often shocked (yes, Louis, shocked), disgusted, outraged. Well I am sort of surprised, at least about the depths people will sink to. And I guess I’m something like surprised even at the basic reality. Maybe there’s more than one kind of surprise. It’s not that I’m not aware of the facts, so it’s not that kind of surprise, but I do keep being surprised at the public rhetoric on the subject, and the indifference to issues of truth.
So, fine, that seems naive to you. I can’t say that I care. One of my least favourite lines of argument is the ‘Oh come on grow up that’s reality and you can’t change it so get used to it’ one. As for what will happen in the next 100 years, I submit that you don’t have the faintest idea, any more than I do.
And in any case I’m not particularly advocating that the US elect an atheist president, I’m criticizing the public demands that candidates make public announcements that they are on a personal voyage to god.
Yes, I have posted about this subject many times, and I’m going to go on doing that.
Normalcy is a statistical phenomenon, with no inherent value-judgment. But it seems like hardly anyone remembers that these days.
I feel the same way as you about those who invoke “reality” as a reason to give up rather than fight, and who claim to know what will happen in the next 100 years…heck, minutes!
Don’t ever give up, OB! Despair is not an option!!
And you put it very well about there being more than one kind of shock/surprise. Just when you think you’ve got used to it…
Don’t you have a sneaking suspicion that Waldman is essentially correct in his suppositions about what ‘most’ Murcans want? You may not like them wanting a load of gobmulch, but isn’t he making a valid political point? This is what I find so scary about the politics of representative plutocracy. The world may get stuck with another term of G.W. because Kerry sticks to his principles.
“The world may get stuck with another term of G.W. because Kerry sticks to his principles.”
You’re being too soft on Kerry. He is, just like G.W. Bush, a typical politician who tells others what they want to hear. He strides both sides of an issue so he can maximize his number of votes. So far I haven’t heard anything different from him that the usual platitudes, which makes me despise him almost as much as I despise Bush. And yes, Waldman is making a fundamentally valid political point, which just adds to my despair. Apparently we are going to be stuck with this insanity for many years to come.
I have an inherent distrust of opinion statistics. Personal experience is unreliable as well, mostly due to poor sample size and the unfailing subjectivity. The facts on these matters are simply unknown or unknowable with our current information gathering mechanisms.
Preamble aside, I think the vociferous nature of the irredeemably religious make it seem like the U.S. is more religous than it is. Sure, bona fide atheists are rare, but I think (or perhaps like to think) that most people are just doubtful and default to the safer standard. If most people ‘believe in God’ they also don’t really think about it that much, go to church, or use it as a decision-making tool. Apathists and agnostics outnumber atheists and believers combined.
People who want us to think that whether Kerry ‘is on a personal voyage to God’ matters want us to think religion matters. Squeaky wheels, to be honest. I think the real majority of Americans don’t really give a goddamn what Kerry’s religious leanings are, so long as they are not truly freakish. Of course, by ‘real majority’ I am also talking about a lot of folks who don’t care enough to vote.
Don’t worry, KM, I won’t give up! Not unless someone offers me a really good bribe anyway.
Waldman may be making an accurate descriptive point (or he may not – I think Mark is right about the exaggeration), but the article is also full of normative rhetoric. In fact the more I think about it the more I think he’s only pretending to talk about Kerry, that that’s a disguise for his real goal which is to order everyone to conform and be like the pious majority.
“I think the vociferous nature of the irredeemably religious make it seem like the U.S. is more religous than it is.”
Exactly – which is one reason that, Anita to the contrary notwithstanding, it is worth being just as vociferous (or if possible more so) in response. All this ‘everybody here is a religious zealot’ crap is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Dammit, OB–I thought Butterflies and Wheels was devoted to fighting fashionable nonsense. Religion may or may not be nonsense, but even if it’s statistically normal it surely isn’t fashionable. You know as well as I do that in the US it’s perceived as the last refuge of the working class Americans in fly-over country. How many academics, journalists, entertainers (apart from Mel Gibson) or “public intellectuals” do you think would publicly admit to religious belief? When do you expect the New Yorker to feature reviews of the best churches in NYC?
I really don’t get the animus directed against religious belief, a metaphysical thesis about what there is. It may be false but so what? Lots of people don’t believe in Platonic forms or David Lewis style possible worlds but I don’t know anyone who’s on a crusade against Realism about universals or worlds. Why is Realism about God(s) supposed to be a special case–apart from the fact that secularism along with the other isms that B&W quite reasonably attacks is part of the package of ideological status symbols that wannabes appropriate as credentials for admission to the intelligencia.
“Religion may or may not be nonsense, but even if it’s statistically normal it surely isn’t fashionable. You know as well as I do that in the US it’s perceived as the last refuge of the working class Americans in fly-over country.”
Sorry, H.E., but I don’t know that as well as you do. In fact I don’t think it’s true. Granted that is one way it’s perceived, by some people, but even in fashionable circles that is definitely not the only way it’s perceived. In fact a lot of the disagreement I get on this very subject is argued along, well, very fashionable lines.
“How many academics, journalists, entertainers (apart from Mel Gibson) or “public intellectuals” do you think would publicly admit to religious belief?”
Lots! Far too many. And wait complacently for the round of applause after doing it, too. Though a lot of them would call it spiritual belief instead of religious belief – I’ll agree with you on that much. I wish I had a patent on the phrase ‘I’m not religious but I’m spiritual’ which people like to utter as if they were the very first to do so instead of the seventy thousandth that particular hour.
“When do you expect the New Yorker to feature reviews of the best churches in NYC?”
Never, but then that’s not a good criterion, is it. Does the New Yorker publish a lot of ‘strident’ or ‘aggressive’ atheism? And it was, after all, the New Republic that had a cover story shouting about Dean’s ‘religious problem’ a few months ago. And the article I’m criticizing here was in Slate, a moderately liberal mainstream magazine, and I have seen the same line argued ad nauseam in the American Prospect, also a MLMM.
“Why is Realism about God(s) supposed to be a special case…?”
Are you serious? Just for a start, do people yammer at Kerry about his views on universals? Or argue against teaching evolution by natural selection in schools because of Intelligent Universals? Or discriminate against gays because of universals? Or tell the world that nonuniversalists can’t be good people or patriotic? Or write massive best-sellers about universalists being snatched up into Universaland and everyone else going to hell to burn forever? Or issue instructions that are supposed to be binding on millions of people telling them not to use condoms?
“part of the package of ideological status symbols that wannabes appropriate as credentials for admission to the intelligencia.”
Hmmmm.
I’m religious but, emphatically, not “spiritual” and applaud B&W for trashing New Age nonsense and other forms of “spirituality” that are incoherent or empirically falsified and in any case compete with organized religion. Again, while “spirituality” is fashionable, religion isn’t–you’ve changed the subject.
I haven’t been involved in campaigns against teaching evolution in the public schools or writing best sellers condemning heretics to hell and neither, as far as I know, has anyone else in the Society of Christian philosophers. Where are all these benighted bozos who are? Personally my interest is in logic puzzles posed by the doctrine of the Trinity. So please clarify: are you suggesting that discussion of the Ontological Argument is all of a piece with debates about the interpretation of Nostradamus’ prophecies or speculation about the timing of the Rapture, or are you primarily concerned with attacking the religious convictions of working class soccer moms and Nascar dads in red state fly-over country?
As for the articles in the Slate and the American Prospect, their point wasn’t theological but political. Whether you like it or not, most Americans claim to be religious believers and that the Democratic candidate should not be so eager to play to the secular liberal elite that they alienate the bulk of their constituency. IMHO whatever your religious beliefs, Paris is worth a mass. But I’m just a Utilitarian.
“Again, while “spirituality” is fashionable, religion isn’t–you’ve changed the subject.”
No, I didn’t – not by my lights at least, because I think the inane word ‘spirituality’ is mostly just a euphemism for religion. And even without help from ‘spirituality’ I still think religion is indeed in fashion. Think Cornel West or Stephen Carter.
Or perhaps it’s not exactly religion that’s in fashion – it’s giving religion a free pass that’s in fashion. It’s politely refraining from disagreeing with the truth claims of religion that’s in fashion. Really I think they both are, but I agree that the first is not as in fashion as the second.
“Where are all these benighted bozos who are?”
Uh…in the ‘Discovery’ Institute, at Barnes and Noble, advising the Bush administration, etc. I must not understand your question, because it’s so obvious that such people do indeed exist and are indeed powerful.
“are you suggesting that discussion of the Ontological Argument is all of a piece with debates about the interpretation of Nostradamus’ prophecies or speculation about the timing of the Rapture?”
No, and I didn’t say it was, either. You asked me the question ‘It may be false but so what?’ and that was part of my answer. Another part is that I don’t think it ought to be a matter of public policy to try to order people to believe things that there’s no good reason to believe.
“are you primarily concerned with attacking the religious convictions of working class soccer moms and Nascar dads in red state fly-over country?”
I’m all confused now, I thought ‘soccer moms’ were middle class. At any rate, I never talk about categories like working class soccer moms and Nascar dads – they give me a rash.
But seriously – what is your point? What is the point of all this talk of fly-over country and the working class? What do you want me to do – take a survey in order to find out what all 150 million people (or whatever it is) in ‘fly-over country’ believe so that I can avoid ‘attacking’ it? Are you arguing that I should never say anything that the people in ‘fly-over country’ would disagree with? Don’t you think that might be a tad limiting? If you’re not arguing that, what are you doing? Just some sort of attempted guilt-tripping? It’s a strangely unpleasant tactic, I think.
“As for the articles in the Slate and the American Prospect, their point wasn’t theological but political.”
Well, I disagree with that, at least about the one in Slate. I think that was Waldman’s overt point, yes, but I think his covert point was indeed – not theological, but groupthink-enforcing, majority opinion-imposing. I may well be wrong; that is an interpretation; but much of Waldman’s language was remarkably badly-chosen, at the least.
“Whether you like it or not, most Americans claim to be religious believers”
I’m well aware of that. People keep explaining that to me, and it’s really not necessary, I do realize it.
“and that the Democratic candidate should not be so eager to play to the secular liberal elite that they alienate the bulk of their constituency”
I understand that too. It’s perfectly clear, and I’m not confused about it. But I disagree with it.
P.S., H.E.
Now I see where you’re coming from (as the saying goes). Visited your blog and read post on Tom Frank’s new book. He must talk about fly-over country a lot?
I really, really like Tom Frank – he was a sort of intellectual hero of mine a few years ago, when I first discovered The Baffler via the anthology Commodify Your Dissent which caused me to read The Conquest of Cool. And then One Market Under God came out and only ratcheted up the admiration level.
I haven’t read his new book, but if that’s where you get the stuff about disdain for the working class and so on, I can at least understand why you found it persuasive. But…
“We despised their food preferences and body fat, their fundamentalism, their leisure activities, their grammar and the little boxes made of ticky-tacky in which they lived because those were the things that set them off from us and gave us claim to elite status.”
Sure, maybe – up to a point. I like Veblen, too – but I also keep thinking ‘up to a point’ when I read him.
That kind of argument seems to me to be inherently…well, tricky. Because it is a serious question that I asked – what is one supposed to do? Find out what people in Kansas do and then do likewise in order not to disdain them or irritate them or reject them or reinforce one’s own elite status? And then the question becomes which people in Kansas. Or if for people in Kansas we substitute the working class, the question remains. Ever read Jonathan Rose’s wonderful The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes?
Surely one simply can’t decide what to think on the basis of who might be insulted by one’s decision – not if one is interested in the truth, at least.
But the post on Frank is interesting.
Cripes, I never thought anyone hit my blog–I’m flattered.
I didn’t suggest buying into the mores of Kansans or the working class but just trying to be discriminating, and sort out the substantive issues from disputed questions and class markers. The question of God’s existence is a disputed question about which reasonable, informed people can disagree; questions about evolution aren’t disputed questions: there’s ample empirical evidence.
No “out” atheist could be elected to political office in the US and I agree that’s a bad thing. But there’s no reason to think that Kerry is an atheist who professes religious belief for political purposes.
It’s a stretch to construe the articles cited as suggesting that he get religion or get out. If you read them fairly, the worry is that Kerry is soft-pedaling his religious affiliation and avoiding moral language in order to play to avoid offending secularists. The suggestion is not to worry–most Democrats, like most Republicans, are religious and won’t be offended by religious talk.
And at least be fair about these religious believers. Fundamentalism, even in the US, is not the norm. Barna reckons conservative evangelicals to be 8% of the population and declining. Hoge on the basis of a recent survey, suggests that approximately half of regular church-goers in the US are “lay liberals” who have at best the vague notion that there is some sort of supernatural being or other, believe that all religions are equally edifying and are in substantial agreement with their secular neighbors on most matters. Now I’m intellectually fastidious because that’s my job, and I don’t like it. But however offensive to your sensibilities or mine it’s pretty innocuous–like reading the daily horoscope for fun and NOT like campaigning against GM foods,”liberating” laboratory animals, promoting alternative medicine or pushing cultural diversity programs that do real harm.
Oh yes, I’ve read your blog before. (Speaking of which – I loved your parable or fractured fairy tale in TPM a few months ago. Made me laugh raucously.)
Sure, I agree about separating substantive issues from the other kind. I took myself to be answering the ‘So what?’ question, but I guess that’s because I misconstrued it. And no, I don’t take people to be saying that Kerry is an atheist, or that he should get religion or get out. But I do take the Waldman article, at least, to have a subtext that’s telling all of us to get religion.
“The suggestion is not to worry–most Democrats, like most Republicans, are religious and won’t be offended by religious talk.”
I know. But I think there are huge problems with that idea. I’m going to do another comment on the subject when I get a minute – even if it’s not exactly FN. (Anyway the criteria are looser back here on the blog-like thing. I’m not always absolutely On Topic here. I think I’m usually On Topic in a tangential sort of way, but it’s not as strict as the rest of the site.)
Agreed about the lay liberals. But again, that too is part of the problem with the Waldman view. I’m not a bit convinced that all those lay liberals want both candidates talking about religion. I actually know some believers who emphatically want the public realm to remain secular. Secularism doesn’t equate to atheism – so it’s just never clear to me why some believers think they have a right to demand that religion be made an explicit, not to say noisy, part of all political campaigns.
Well, I’m looking forward to your comment on religion in American politics. I ‘m one of those believers who emphatically wants political campaigns to remain secular. At this point though I don’t care what it takes, as long as Bush gets booted out. But, as I said, I’m just a Utilitarian.
Anyway I am flattered that you hit my blog and will try to be more careful about editing and spell checking in the future. I look forward to your piece.
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