A Governor, a Cardinal and the Death Penalty -- Sightings

The Death Penalty remains a controversial subject in American life.  A large majority of Americans support it either on the basis of its alleged deterrant effects or on the basis of justice.  This view is held in spite of the fact that it runs counter to Roman Catholic teachings and that of many Protestants as well.  Although capital punishment remains popular there are signs of change -- in part because people in leadership are paying attention to their own faith traditions.  In today's Sighting's posting, Martin Marty interacts with the recent signing of a bill to end capital punishment in Illinois by the Governor, who cites the influence of words written by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.  I invite you to consider these thoughts and add your own.  For my own perspective (I'm a strong opponent of the death penalty), click here.   

***********************

Sightings 3/28/2011

A Governor, a Cardinal and the Death Penalty

-- Martin Marty

“On that decisive morning of March 9, [Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois] laid aside the secular factors and opened his Bible to a passage in II Corinthians about human imperfection,” Samuel G. Freedman wrote in the New York Times. “He prayed. And when he signed the bill striking down the death penalty, he cited one influence by name,” the late Cardinal of Chicago. It was a shock to be reminded that Joseph Bernardin passed away almost fifteen years ago, since he remains such a presence to so many of us and such an irritant to others, including many Catholics who never took to his example and writings on life, peace, and reconciliation.

Freedman, who wrote of this praying and signing, listed as “the several secular factors” some arguments from prosecutors who spoke of the death penalty’s deterrent effect, which is a secular factor, and also of “the grieving relatives of murder victims who saw in it fierce justice,” which Quinn took seriously, aware of their grief and himself a former proponent of capital punishment as “fierce justice.” He knew that three-fourths of polled Americans still favor the death penalty. They lost one favorer, however, after Quinn’s prayer and his reading of Bernardin. Some of us would like to think that his signing is part of a slow but epochal shift away from executing horribly guilty and sometimes utterly innocent Americans.

Empathizing with and supporting Democrat Quinn is not a signal of a partisan commitment. His predecessor twice removed, former Governor George H. Ryan, a Republican now in prison, also made strenuous moves against capital punishment. In an autobiographical address to the Pew Forum at the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2002, Ryan told how as a legislator he had voted for the death penalty but as governor, who quite literally had the power to have over 150 convicts killed, he changed. Religion played a large role in his decision. Be it noted that religion also plays a part in the decision of some civil leaders who continue to support capital punishment.

Where does this leave us? Those of us who observe and comment on our sightings of explicit religion in public life, including in its focused political forms, have to know that there is no neat line to draw as to what is acceptable in a republic which distinguishes between religion and civil authority and what is not. A teachable moment, one of millions since, occurred when President Reagan, televised before the presidential seal, named 1983 “The Year of the Bible” for Americans. Some days later I was one of four guests on a now-forgotten television show hosted by now-forgotten Phil Donahue. We disoriented Mr. Donahue and perhaps some viewers. He had invited an ACLU critic of the President, expecting him to represent hard-line secularist opposition to such blurring of lines—only to find that the guest was a Southern Baptist minister.

I think I was expected to speak against the President, but chose, on James Madisonian grounds, to defend the President’s right, arguing that one does not and cannot and should not leave behind the religious bases of one’s ethics. Next, I got to say, had the Congress voted, as some saw it poised to do, to make that designation legal, hosts of us would have stepped up to oppose it. So now with Governors Ryan and Quinn, influenced by scriptures, church teachings, and in this case by Cardinal Bernardin, they acted out of informed conscience—risking their action in politics. Still and always: handle with care!

References

Samuel G. Freedman, “Faith Was on the Governor’s Shoulder,” New York Times, March 26, 2011.


“Governor George Ryan: An Address on the Death Penalty,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, June 3, 2002.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

----------


Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Disaster and the Rhetoric of Sacrifice -- Sightings

The ongoing disaster in Japan has caught the imagination of the world.  It has given the world a new perspective on Japan and its people.  We see people seem to take things in stride, don't loot, follow directions, etc.  Of course there's another side -- a culture that includes principles of honor/shame has made it difficult for the government and corporate leadership to be forthcoming about the real threat of the damaged nuclear plants.  It goes to show you that cultures are complex!  We've also been watching as a small group of volunteers risk their lives to try to fix the damaged plants.  There is a cultural element to this as well that raises questions of how we understand and honor those who sacrifice their lives for others.   Beyond all of this we've heard words about divine judgment from American and Japanese figures.  Yuki Miyamoto, a Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University helps us understand the complexity of the situation in this Sightings piece.  I invite you to read and respond.

****************************



Sightings 3/24/2011

Disaster and the Rhetoric of Sacrifice

-- Yuki Miyamoto

Nearly two weeks have passed since a catastrophic earthquake and violent tsunami devastated northeastern Japan. Officials are struggling to calculate the still-mounting death toll and to assess the full scope of destruction, while efforts to avert meltdowns at crippled nuclear power plants intensify. Natural disasters, so often worsened by human failures, activate our religious imaginations.

Too often in times of crisis explicit religious expressions are appalling. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina stimulated an outpouring of hateful sentiment; the hurricane was deemed by some to be God’s punishment for homosexuality in New Orleans. In 2010, Pat Robertson infamously attributed the earthquake in Haiti to the Haitians’ “pact with the Devil.” Now, in connection with Japan’s current plight, right-wing firebrand Glenn Beck has speculated that the quake and tsunami were a “message from God.” To this he added, with telling ambiguity, that he is not “saying” that God caused the earthquake, but also not “not saying” it.

Religious rhetoric has also cropped up in Japan. Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara has claimed that the calamity is a “divine punishment.” “Japanese politics,” Ishihara remarked, “is tainted with egoism and populism. We need to use the tsunami to wipe out egoism, which has attached itself like rust to the mentality of the Japanese people over a long period of time.” Ishihara, a conservative politician whose troubling record also includes racist and sexist comments, later retracted his remarks and offered an apology.

More subtle than such explicit remarks, however, is the religious aura developing around the group of Japanese persons working to contain radiation and incapacitate nuclear reactors on the verge of meltdown. Dubbed by the Western media as the “Fukushima 50,” (though the group comprises more than fifty workers), these volunteers are dousing the burning reactors with water at close range. As the Guardian has put it, the Fukushima 50 “are the nuclear power industry's equivalent of frontline soldiers, exposing themselves to considerable risks while about 800 of their evacuated colleagues watch from a safe distance.” Here aptly analogized with soldiers, these volunteers evince a will to sacrifice themselves on behalf of their country.

As Chris Hogg of the BBC notes, Japan is fond of “heroes who sacrifice everything for the greater good,” in this case a country steeped in a tradition that holds the nation as sacred. Dying for the nation thus evokes a religious sensibility. For example, a Japanese newspaper reported that one woman sent a text message to her husband on the team, saying: “Please be a savior (kyuseishu) of Japan.”

The risks of the Fukushima 50 are indeed of heroic proportions, a fact I appreciate all the more from my comfortable vantage point here in Chicago, thousands of miles from the accident site. At the same time, an unsettling feeling has crept upon me—a feeling that recalls the unease I have experienced at the Yasukuni Shinto shrine in Tokyo, where soldiers who died for the “sacred” Japanese nation-state, which emerged in the nineteenth century and is embodied in the deific emperor, are enshrined. Deifying soldiers who have given their lives on behalf of the country, however, has the effect of glorifying and upholding, rather than challenging, the conditions giving rise to the disasters of war.

Within this religio-political tradition, civilians may also be granted the status of deity after death in Japan. For example, in the Saga prefecture of southwest Japan, one shrine is dedicated to police officer Masuda Keitaro, who devoted himself to treating those suffering from cholera in 1895. He himself eventually fell victim to the epidemic he was fighting and passed away. Since containment of the disease coincided with Masuda’s demise, the officer’s death was deemed a sacred sacrifice, and he was enshrined as a protector of the villagers from disease.

The present threat of illness is of a different sort, but like Masuda, the Fukushima 50 are widely hailed as “sacrificial” heroes for their noble and necessary endeavors. Without wanting to diminish the genuine dedication and risk of this group, however, one might call critical attention to the problematic religious underpinnings of the worshipful attitude with which they are being treated, for such attitudes may mask a latent nationalism that sees the nation as sacred and therefore infallible; such attitudes—hardly unique to Japan—may explain in part the Japanese government’s reticence about the full extent of the threat of nuclear disaster.

Whatever the case, the religious tradition and sacrificial rhetoric that inform such attitudes threaten to divert attention from investigations of what “necessitated” the risk, and potential deaths, in the first place. The glorifying rhetoric of sacrifice in service of the greater good potentially deflects attention from the task of interrogating the conditions that gave rise to disaster—in this case, the matter of nuclear power: its threat to individuals, communities, and the global environment.

We do not know, of course, if the Fukushima 50 will someday be enshrined as deities for their sacrifices. But perhaps the best show of gratitude we might now offer would be to turn a critical eye to our own complicity in the disaster to which they respond. Japan has for too long relied on uranium and plutonium for energy, notwithstanding the fact that there is no safe way to dispose of nuclear waste, nor to make the power plants that convert these elements into usable energy entirely secure.

In gratefully considering the risks and efforts of the Fukushima 50, we must move beyond potentially-distracting religious rhetoric and sensibilities to remind ourselves who is accountable for their lives, and why we have so far failed to choose a safer energy alternative that would not require such risks.

References

Max Blumenthal, “Blaming Katrina on Gays, Israel, and Man-on-Horse Sex,” Huffington Post, September 5, 2005.

Nicholas D. Kristof, “Some Frank Talk about Haiti,” New York Times, January 20, 2010.

Elizabeth Tenety, “Glenn Beck: Japan earthquake ‘message’ from God,” The Washington Post, March 15, 2011.

Tania Branigan and Justin McCurry, “Fukushima 50 battle radiation risks as Japan nuclear crisis deepens,” Guardian, March 15, 2011.

Chris Hogg, “Japan Hails the heroic ‘Fukushima 50’,” BBC News, March 17, 2011.

“Tokyo shōbō chō: Hibaku to tatakai hōsui—kazoku ‘kyūseishu ni’” (“Tokyo Fire Department: Watering and battling against radiation exposure—‘be a savior,’ said the wife,”) Yomiuri Online, March 21, 2011.

Komatsu, Kazuhiko. Kami ni natta hitobito: Nihonjin ni totte “Yasukuni no kami” towa nani ka (People who became gods: What ‘Yasukuni Deities” means to Japanese) (Tokyo: Kobunsha, 2006).

Yuki Miyamoto holds a PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School and is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University. Her book Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility After Hiroshima is forthcoming from Fordham University Press.

----------

This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University).

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem -- Sightings

Jerusalem has, like Babylon and Rome and other cities of the ancient world, has long been a metaphor as well as a place in time and space.  Martin Marty shares his response to a new book by James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword, that wrestles with Jerusalem the city and Jerusalem the metaphor, bringing into the conversation Rene Girard's scape-goating theory, in which it is suggested that violence is sometimes tamed by violence -- a perspective that has been used to understand the cross by some theologians.  I invite you to consider Marty's reflections, even as we watch news of military attempts to tame the violence of a petty dictator.  

******************** 

Sightings 3/21/2011

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

-- Martin E. Marty

Jerusalem, Jerusalem is not about Jerusalem the city. Guidebooks abound and histories are plentiful. What author James Carroll was moved to write is a reflection that deals with Jerusalem both as real and as metaphor. He does not exactly do justice to or make much of his subtitle: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World, but his reflections will ignite at least sparks in the minds of readers who want to ponder with him the question: what is it about religion, with all the solace-bringing good its various forms can bring, that also prompts and promotes violence of most barbaric sorts?

I was one of a half dozen respondents to the book at a program at Brandeis University in Boston last Monday. Our panel featured the requisite Jewish, Muslim, and Christian participants—two of each—who could have finished off the guidebook/history approach quite easily. Dealing with Carroll’s chosen plot, however, was demanding. Those of us who count the author a friend, interact with him on occasion—as I do at programs of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute in Grand Rapids—or argued with him over details of his earlier and provocative Constantine’s Sword expect more of him than one more guidebook or history. While his early reviews tend to be positive, some have criticized him for his choice of approach. Thus Damon Linker in the New York Times chides him for using Jersualem in ways which Linker calls “messy.”

Carroll does not pretend to be objective or dispassionate, though he does not side with Christians or Jews or Muslims in the many forms with which they have dispensed violence or told stories about it. So depressing are many of the expressions of Jerusalemitis, that puzzling, disorienting, and often apocalyptic fever which afflicts or is emitted by so many Jerusalemites through the ages, that some of us panelists pondered: what hope is there in dealings with militant people who successively or, worse, concurrently inhabit the sacred and bloody hills. Carroll, metaphorically taking off from Jerusalem’s mountains (as Jesus and Muhammad “really” did, in some cherished texts), was apocalyptic as he envisioned where sacred violence might lead, but let a glimmer of hope shine on the city. People work at peacemaking, he implied, because despite all the warring and bloodshed, “people” overall would prefer peace and more quiet lives.

That kind of warning and dreaming will get you quite far. Carroll is inspired by René Girard’s influential “scapegoat” theory. It suggests, as Linker summarizes, “that human society and culture are shot through with bloodshed that can be tamed only by further acts of bloodshed. The pre-eminent example of violence taming violence, he says, is religion, which arose out of the practice of human sacrifice—a ritual that enabled a community to channel and purge its primitive impulses in a single cathartic act of collective bloodletting.” One need not buy into all details of the Girard speculations to follow Carroll’s theories, which at times sound like cautions against religion and at others as advertisements for some of its forms.

Unfortunately for his own peace and quiet, Carroll writes a weekly column in the Boston Globe. He said something critical of Israel’s recent treatment of Palestinian families on disputed property in eastern Jerusalem. The response from several Israeli voices was instant, vehement, and verbally violent. Whatever else such columns do, they show that violence is still at hand and poised. Monsieur Girard: after the escalations of violence, is there a scapegoat?

References

Damon Linker, “Grappling with Religion and Violence,” New York Times, March 20, 2011.

“Speaking of Faith: Inter-Religious Dialogue in the 21st Century,” Kaufman Interfaith Institute, Grand Valley State University.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

----------


This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University).

----------


Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Newt Gingrich’s Comic Repentance -- Sightings

Generally, Martin Marty stays clear of politics, but Newt Gingrich's recent story of repentance simply had to be addressed.  Newt is going to run for President as a champion of family values, though his own family values are suspect.  He's on wife #3.  He says he's repented, and that he's forgiven (I have no problem with that), but his rationale for his bad behavior is rather bizarre -- Marty calls it comic.  I'm going to leave the rest to you to consider Marty's analysis (including his interaction with Psalm 51).

*************************

Sightings 3/14/2011

Newt Gingrich’s Comic Repentance

-- Martin E. Marty

After a week of tsunamis, earthquakes, Libyan horrors, Philadelphia clerical sex scandal news, National Public Radio disasters, and National Football League lock-out threats, we the people look for some comic relief. Celebrity politician Newt Gingrich provided this as he gave the Christian Broadcasting Network audience a rationale for his having committed a plethora of adulteries with, evidently inter alia, three wives. “[P]artially driven by how passionately I felt about this country. . . . I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” he said. Things didn’t “happen,” everyone but Mr. Gingrich knows; he “happened” them. The rationale, people across the spectrum agree, related to Mr. Gingrich’s political efforts to gain support for a probable—or, at least, once probable—presidential nomination candidacy.

“I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness,” Gingrich said. Had he been talking to God in private repentance, what he said would have been no one’s business except God’s and his. Since he was talking publicly to the media and to the evangelicals he was courting, it is legitimate to note the comic dimensions of what he said. Remember what showman George M. Cohan once observed: “Many a bum show has been saved by the flag.” Mr. Gingrich, in his bum show, reached for the flag and pleaded the patriot excuse.

“Talk about a forgiving God?” he asked, or said, as he shifted into biblical mode. The template for politically-motivated repentance is the story of King David of old, who felt “passionately about his country,” enough to have something “happen in his life that was not appropriate.” That was having his general Uriah killed so that David’s adultery with Mrs. Uriah could be covered up. Serious evangelicals, and there are millions of them, are rightfully offended by this ploy. They may see similarities in the plot of David’s and Newt’s careers. Chapter headings in Steven L. McKenzie’s King David: A Biography include “Holy Terrorist: David and His Outlaw Band,” “Assassin,” “Like Father, Like Son: The Bathsheba Affair and Absalom’s Revolt.” Yes, many things in David’s case, though on a lesser scale, had also happened and were not appropriate.

McKenzie summarizes the record, including: “One of David’s wives is his best friend’s sister and his enemy’s daughter. . . . Some of his brides were new widows whose husbands had very recently died under suspicious circumstances.” We read that he’d “sent for Bathsheba and ‘lay’ with her.” (II. Sam. 11:4. Nothing is said of her feelings.) The King, “feeling passionate about [his] country,” had “worked too hard,” as evidenced when he brought Uriah on the scene. “All David could think to do was ask general questions about the welfare of the army and the war,” questions whose answer he knew.

Evangelicals believe that Psalm 51, a classic, the classic, of repentance literature was later written by David. They take their cue from an ancient subtitle, Psalm 51: “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” The climactic Psalm line, to God: “Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.” The stakes were high, but no match for those today, when a possible candidate has to make his case before a more stern judge: a bloc of voters in an American election. That Mr. Gingrich tried to be forgiven while using the “patriotism” and “overworking” excuses is what leads many to see a usually serious act turning out to have been what we called “comic.” Now, back to the serious matters of the week.

References


Steven L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography (Oxford, 2000).

UPI, “Gingrich: Working Too ‘Hard’ Led to Affair,” March 9, 2011.

Maggie Haberman, “Newt Gingrich: ‘I Was Doing Things That Were Wrong',” Politico, March 8, 2011.

Matt Sullivan, “How Newt Gingrich Misplaced His Member,” Esquire, March 9, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

----------

This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University).

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Hell's Bell -- Sightings

For the past week or so we've been talking a lot about hell and Rob Bell's still unrevealed views on the subject.  There are many assumptions and presumptions, but until the book arrives in our hands, we'll not know for sure!  What we can comment on is the conversation that has been engendered by the publicity releases for the book.  In yesterday's Sightings post, which I'm posting today, so I could post Bruce Epperly's piece yesterday, Martin Marty takes a look at the gap that is emerging within evangelicalism between those who feel it incumbent upon them to preach hell while a growing number of others simply don't find it compelling any longer.  I'll invite your reading and further comments.

******************************

Sightings 3/7/2011

Hell’s Bell

-- Martin E. Marty

Americans may have thought that cracks in the façade and framework of evangelicalism would show up most visibly when serious evangelicals argued whether Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee would be the better presidential candidate. But now we have a chance to see that other divisive issues among evangelicals beg for attention. When one of these, a theological argument, no less, makes its way to the New York Times and other papers plus many blogs, it’s time to pay attention. Bystanders who think they have nothing at stake in the non-political arguments, and who have never heard of Pastor Rob Bell of Grand Rapids, Michigan, or his critic, neo-Calvinist John Piper, may stand by in fascination, but they are likely to be reached this time. The topic? Hell, and a punishing God’s use thereof.

Bell, featured in the Times story, is a star of the emergent middle among evangelicals. He is seen by his enemies as baiting those to his right by writing too kindly about God and the many mortals destined for hell, and they insist that softness has to stop. Pastor Bell is soon to publish Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. His publisher and others have tantalized the public with clips from the book, but the critics did not need to have read it and do not need to know more than that Bell is not so sure that a God of love will condemn those billions who never heard of Jesus Christ, or those millions who have heard but did not recognize him as their Savior, in order for them to fire up their own condemnations of Bell.

The Michigan pastor-author is not alone; Bell’s hell is paralleled in treatments of a whole wing of evangelicals. Some of this group "out” themselves, while others are in a kind of purgatory of inference that they are not quite orthodox on the subject. What this second wing keeps pondering and sometimes proclaiming is that there are ways to witness to the fact that God is holy and just, other than saying that he takes delight in punishing those ignorant of the stakes or those who are players of other salvation games. It is one thing to agree with sophisticated evangelical theologians and their artful articulators who semi-dodge the issue by saying that no one is ever sent to hell and suggesting that she or he chooses to go there.

Publics, including those serious about the Bible, doctrine, and church tradition, have not found ways to accept the teaching which they cannot square with witness to the God of love, so Bell and company would witness positively to them. Formal theologians in the evangelical camp are bemused by the consistent polls in which only a small percent of the clergy are ready to affirm and preach doctrines and threats of hell and the large percent of their followers who are not. They know of the gap, and feel they must close it. Otherwise orthodoxy will disappear and relativism or universalism will win. The evangelical parents whose teenage “good kid” son who has not made a formal profession of faith in Christ and thus will be condemned to hell if he dies, need better reasoning than the dogmatic professors of hell give them.

Otherwise this latest fissure in evangelicalism will grow, and arguments will distract preachers of hell from their tasks and opportunities to win people from its brink, thus swelling its population in the interest of saying the right thing about this form of a holy and just God’s mode of everlasting punishment. Why are they writing editorials and condemnations and attending conferences on hell when they could be out on the street corners, passing tracts and witnessing to hell—and divine love? Bell asks for answers.

References

Erik Eckholm, "Pastor Stirs Wrath With His Views on Old Question," New York Times, March 4, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

----------

This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University). Visit the RCWF at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Liberal Judaism in Decline -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

Today's report from Martin Marty on things religious concerns something we in the Christian Mainline know something about -- decline! In this case the community under consideration is liberal Judaism (Conservative and Reform branches), which are experiencing significant decline and wondering about their purpose as communities of faith. With anti-Semitism much less of an issue today (Putnam and Campbell in American Grace say that we like Jews better than any other faith community), so the question is -- what binds liberal Jews together? If you're not Jewish you may wonder why this matters. Marty suggests it matters to non-Jews because Reform and Conservative Jews are the most likely representatives of this community to engage in dialogue. Take a look and offer your thoughts.

*************************

Sightings 2/28/2011

Liberal Judaism in Decline

-- Martin Marty

“Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink: Struggling for Relevance and Funding” headlined the prime story by Josh Nathan-Kazis, in the newspaper Forward. A prime column follows it a week later, as Dana Evan Kaplan writes on “The Theological Roots of Reform Judaism’s Woes.” Translation of Nathan-Kazis’s headline, for non-Jews: synagogue memberships in Conservative Judaism, a major liberal denomination, “are in free fall.” Since 2001 the decline was 14 percent, while in the Northeast, family memberships dropped by 30 percent. Meanwhile, we read, in the other large liberal group, Reform Judaism, highly-placed rabbis are working to shake things up, to reform Reform, which is also in crisis.

Sociologist Mark Chaves offers perspective but not policy help by reminding Jews that most Christian denominations are also in decline or even in travail, when local congregations progressively, or regressively, drag their feet, close their pocketbooks, and go their own way, often into decline. I could write of counter-signs of vitality in Jewish and Christian directions, but that would be a different topic for a different day. Not being a policy-maker but a reporter on varieties of perspectives, I am doing what I can to discern and describe the trends, observe the statistics and strategies—and hope. Why invest hope on the part of those of us who have no great stake in liberal Judaism?

Many of the reasons are obvious, among co-religionists who wish for the best for fellow citizens and the collegially-religious. Non-Jews who take note of religion-in-public have reasons to care because it is often liberal Jews, not the Orthodox or the non-affiliated or non-practicing, who are their natural partners in dialogue. Robert Putnam in American Grace found strong evidence that non-Jews feel “warmest” to Judaism, among the religious families in America today. (That finding itself may be a sign of the weakening bonds of liberal Judaism after the time when overt and consistent anti-Semitism helped foster cohesion and inspire energies among beleaguered Jews.)

If response to anti-Semitism is less of a binding and energizing force among Jews, many argue that the defense of Israel has its enormous part to play. But observe the polls or listen to reports of especially younger Jews, and you will hear concerns that this will not be enough to keep Judaism strong. Now for that column by Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan, author of Contemporary American Judaism. He notices that “triumphalism,” bragging rights and expressions by Reform as “the biggest” no longer is in place. He argues that the current “organizational malaise” obscures the fact that “the problem facing liberal Judaism is theological.” The pluralism, virtually the “anything goes” approach to liberal belief has replaced classical Reform’s emphasis on “the clear theological formulations of ethical monotheism and the mission of Israel.”

Today as Reform stresses “religious autonomy and the importance of choosing what each person finds spiritually meaningful,” in the words of Kaplan, there are few grounds for forming community and finding commitment. “Benign neglect” of theology and of witness to “the authority of God” have weakened liberal Judaism. After writing this but before you read it, I will have strolled down the block to Chicago’s Sinai Temple to hear a Sunday Sinai Symposium on, you guessed it, “Does Reform Judaism Have a Future?” Five notable and concerned rabbis will provide their answers in the afternoon session. Their audience, including this columnist, will have good reasons to pay attention.

References

Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink, Struggling for Relevance and Funding,” Forward, February 18, 2011.

Dana Evan Kaplan, “The Theological Roots of Reform Judaism’s Woes,” Forward, February 16, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Secular Revolutions, Religious Landscapes

I've found it rather ironic that the same people who complain about the "naked public square" in the US, are among the ones calling for the revolutions in the Middle East to be "secular."  As Shatha Almutawa writes in the Thursday edition of Sightings, while religion hasn't been driving the revolutions, religion -- especially Islam -- has been infused into the revolutions.  Many of the protests have taken place after Friday prayers.  Imams and religious teachers have sought to empower the people to claim their freedoms and rights -- even countering claims by the oligarchs that freedom leads to chaos by pointing out that stability and freedom go together fairly well in the West.   President Bush wasn't wrong about the possibilities of democracy in the Middle East.  He was wrong in his belief that we could impose it from outside through military means.  It has to be homegrown, and the seeds of homegrown democracy are being sown.  Almutawa has written an insightful piece that deserves careful attention and conversation!  

***********************

Sightings 2/24/2011

Secular Revolutions, Religious Landscapes

-- Shatha Almutawa

While the Middle East uprisings have not revolved around religion, faith has not been absent from Arab scenes of protest in the last two months. God and scripture are invoked by revolutionaries and those who oppose them for the simple reason that Arab dialects and ways of life are infused with religion.

To an outside observer the revolts of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain might appear to be entirely secular, but Arabic Twitter and Facebook feeds are brimming with prayers, some formulaic and some informal, asking God to aid protesters and remove oppressors. Qur’anic verses and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad are shared on Facebook walls. One blogger titled his post: “A saying of the prophet about President Qaddafi.” In the quoted hadith Prophet Muhammed warns of a time when trivial men will speak for the people.

After Libyan president Moammar Al-Qaddafi ordered brutal attacks on demonstrators, leaving thousands dead and even more wounded, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi urged the Libyan army to kill Qaddafi. “I say to my brothers and sons who are soldiers and officers in the Libyan Army to disobey when (the government) gives orders to kill the people using warplanes,” the prominent Sunni scholar said, according to UPI. Soldiers have already defected in large numbers, and the pro-democracy army has taken hold of many Libyan cities.

In every part of the Arab world religious spaces such as mosques and churches have been stages for demonstrators as well as opposition. In the United Arab Emirates an activist was arrested after giving a speech at a mosque in solidarity with the Egyptian revolution. In his speech he invited worshippers to join him in performing a prayer for the Egyptian protesters.

In Egypt marches began at mosques after Friday prayers, and inside them imams gave speeches in favor of or opposition to the uprising. Egyptians are donating blood at mosques near the Libyan border. In Bahrain pro-democracy and pro-government protesters demonstrated outside Manama’s Al-Fateh Mosque as well as at Pearl Roundabout.

Even though religion is not the driving force behind the revolutions, religious leaders continue to defend protest in speeches that are disseminated via YouTube. Dr. Tareq Al-Suwaidan, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, gave a speech in which he urged Arabs to continue demanding freedom, human rights and an end to corruption. He challenged the governments’ claim that revolutions will lead to instability and insecurity, and that new freedoms would lead to chaos. “The west is living with these rights in stability and security, and they are making progress,” he said. “Our religion calls for these rights. Our religion guaranteed them to us.”

Al-Suwaidan’s tone is one of disbelief at dictators’ illogical statements and the contradictions in their claims. But his ridicule of government leaders is tame in comparison to the jokes made by Arabs all over the world following Al-Qaddafi’s speech. The jokes, too, involve religion. “Al-Qaddafi’s demands are simple—only that the people should say: There is no God but Al-Qaddafi,” Nael Shahwan tweeted in Arabic. Mohammad Awaad wrote, “Qaddafi ‘the god’ is a natural result of a media that has become accustomed to not saying no to a president, as if he is never wrong.” He continued, “I believe we have 22 gods”—one for each Arab country.

The opposition, too, is armed with religious rhetoric, but mosque, Qur’an, and hadith have been central in the Arab world’s struggle for freedom and democracy. Religious leaders as well as lay people have found that the language of religion is also the language of revolution. After all religion is very often the spirit of Arab life, and the inspiration for most of its endeavors—jokes and revolutions included.

Shatha Almutawa is the editor of Sightings and a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

----------

In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

A Bishop's Defense of Government -- Sightings

Is government the enemy?  In some places, like Libya it probably is, but can we honestly say that government is the enemy in the United States?  It may be inefficient and ineffective at times, but is government really the problem?  And as we answer that question it probably is good to remember that even in a representative democracy, ultimately "we the people" are the government. 

This is the question that Martin Marty raises in today's edition of Sightings.   He makes reference to a Lutheran Bishop in Minnesota who decided to stand up and defend the importance of government, including taxation, as an expression of our existence as a people in compact with each other.  I may not always agree with the government, but I'm not sure that anarchy is better.  I may not like every regulation or tax, but the FDA and EPA provide important services that enhance our lives.  But, I'd like to hear what you have to say in response to Marty's essay.

********************* 


Sightings 2/21/2011

A Bishop’s Defense of Government

-- Martin E. Marty

Belgian sociologist of religion Henri Desroche once observed three functions of religion in society. Religion normally attests a society when it is in the business of “affirming.” There and then it serves an integrating function. That’s normal: think “God bless America.” Next, in a society that is examining its own premises and reorganizing its constituencies, the function of religion is to be contending “within the limit of contesting the status quo.” Think Martin Luther King, Jr. “In a society that is denying, challenging and refusing its own right to exist, religion appears as a function of protesting, revolting and subverting,” writes Desroche. Think recent Egypt.

Beyond these three functions of attesting, contending and protesting are chaotic movements like anarchism, or, closer to home in today’s America, simple “anti-government” actions, expressions, and tantrums. Think of Ayn Rand’s shrugs and the many current declarations in praise of the selfish individual. Now and then religious leaders, themselves aware of the attesting, protesting, and even, though too rarely, the contending functions of faiths, will examine and take on selfish declarations. One whose words reached publics in the Minneapolis StarTribune and subsequently, of course, on the internet, is Peter Rogness, a bishop within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and president of the Minnesota Council of Churches. He had the sense to speak of the obvious to multitudes and the courage to take on the anti-government folk, in a column entitled “Government is not the enemy.”

His question is clear: “Is government us or them?” a question which he follows up with the observation: “With no public announcement, we have changed from a people sharing a common life to several hundred million individuals who happen to live near one another, and we risk losing our soul in that change.” His “we” is “the people” who appear(ed) in so many of “our” founding and later public documents. He adds: “As people withdraw into greater concern for their private welfare, government as public enterprise fades; the ‘we’ becomes ‘they,’ common purpose becomes interference and the poor and vulnerable are left on the margins.”

Government, in our history and for Rogness, is not an “it” or a “them.” “Taxes aren’t theft; they’re the means by which we pool our resources, fairly and with order, to underwrite this common life.” Ready to take on an icon, he looks back to 1981 when an unnamed U.S. President announced, “Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The bishop anticipates legitimate debate over his words “fairly and with order.” No party, no policy, has a monopoly on “fairness” and good “order.” Contesting policies and programs is a right and duty of “we the people.”

Rogness asks, “So why is a Lutheran bishop writing a social and historical critique?” He is not unique. Numbers of other bishops do so, among them Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. They do it because at stake are “values rooted in the faith traditions of the people who make up this state and nation.” And: “A budget is a moral document.” Let debating over budgets continue, something that can’t happen in an “anti-government” moment, which one hopes will not become an era of potential destruction. It would be caused by the “I’s” who, Rogness writes, take care of themselves and do not notice or who do disdain the “others.” These others, the vulnerable and marginal, are prime in the faith traditions of which the bishop speaks.

References

Henri Desroche, Jacob and the Angel: An Essay in Sociologies of Religion (University of Massachusetts, 1973).

Peter Rogness, “Government is not the Enemy,” StarTribune.com, February 6, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

----------

In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

What Were the Ulama Doing in Tahrir Square? Al-Azhar and the Narrative of Resistance to Oppression -- Sightings

It has been a week since the people of Egypt, with the help of the Army, rid themselves of their ruler of 30 years.  Today they stage a victory march in Cairo.  Egypt's revolution came after Tunisia ran off it's dictatorship.  Last Friday we wondered what would happen next.  The answer has been a series of protests in places like Yemen, Libya, and Bahrain.  All three have governments that grant few rights to the people.  At the same time, Iran has cracked down on all opposition.  It appears that something is in the water, and it's not going away soon.  But as we wonder about the future of the Middle East, there is the ever present question of the role of Islam in the future of this region.  The idea that religion will play no role is simply silly.  Islam plays a significant role in these societies, and will continue to do so in the future.  But what will that look like?

Malika Zeghal wrote a piece for Sightings yesterday that offers important insight.  She notes the presence of the ulama or religious scholars from the national al-Azhar University, the leading Islamic university in the world.  These scholars were in Tahrir Square, even though the Grand Imam -- appointed by the Government and answerable to the Government (sort of like the English Bishops) was opposing the protests.  Perhaps Islam isn't as monolithic as some would have us think.  In any case, this is a very intriguing analysis worth our attention. 

*******************

Sightings 2/17/2011

What Were the Ulama Doing in Tahrir Square?

Al-Azhar and the Narrative

of Resistance to Oppression

-- Malika Zeghal

Over the course of the Egyptian uprising, religious scholars in and beyond Egypt have taken positions against or in favor of the revolution. The dividing line between their views depends on the relationship of the ulama with state authorities in the region, which echoes a classical contention in the tradition of Sunni Islam.

The ulama of Sunni Islam have had an ambiguous partnership with the men governing them. The ideal religious scholar is portrayed as a courageous man of learning and piety who denounces injustice and dares to speak truth to tyrants. Nonetheless, pragmatism has also been at the core of the Sunni ulama’s relationship with political powers, along with a deep pessimism about the grim realities of politics, which they often hoped to escape. In the Middle East, modern politics has redefined the ulama’s place in society, causing them to submit to the state and nationalizing their institutions into state bureaucracies.

For example, al-Azhar was nationalized in 1961 by Egyptian president Gamal Abd al-Nasser. Al-Azhar is officially represented by its Grand Imam, who has the rank of minister, is appointed by the president of the Republic and reports directly to him. Given this status, the official ulama usually follow the directives of the regime and have narrow margins of maneuver. Critiques of the regime by Grand Imams are rare and often expressed with enough subtlety so as not to generate controversy. However the domestication of al-Azhar by the state has not prevented less official ulama from playing a significant public role nationally and beyond.

Azharites, recognizable by their white and red tarbushes, white collars, and long gray robes, gathered in Tahrir Square in small groups during the protests, reminding us of the sociological and political diversity of al-Azhar as an academic and religious institution. One day before the resignation of Mubarak, Shaykh Muhammad Jebril, who studied at al-Azhar, led the Friday prayer in Tahrir Square. The Azharite presence, as well as the images of Muslims and Copts protecting each other during prayers, calls to mind the narrative of the 1919 revolution. That revolution was one of the last great public protests in which Azharites participated as a significant body alongside more secular groups, representing al-Azhar as a popular and national institution.

Shaykh Ahmad al-Tayyib, Grand Imam of al-Azhar since 2010, has been cautious in his statements regarding the protests, calling for restraint on the parts of the demonstrators and the regime. He asked demonstrators to go home after Mubarak’s departure, adding that protest is “illegitimate in Islam.” His line of reasoning echoed a classic position in Sunni Islam: namely, that obedience to the state, even to a tyrant, is better than fitna, or dissension.

On the other hand, Muhammad Rafi al-Tahtawi, the official spokesperson for al-Azhar, resigned in order to join the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. When a Saudi Mufti issued a fatwa condemning the Egyptian demonstrators, some Azharites denounced it. They argued that it was irrelevant because it was ordered by the Saudi government and was therefore “tainted by politics” (musayyasa). For their part, the Egyptian “Ulama’s Front” (jabhat al-ulama), a small group of Azharites whose history goes back to the 1940s, launched verbal attacks during the protests against the head of al-Azhar and the Mufti of Egypt, because they appeared to be too close to Mubarak’s regime. This mix of positions shows that al-Azhar is not a homogeneous institution, but rather reflects the range of Egyptian politics.

The anti-regime voices are those of “peripheral ulama,” those Azharite graduates who do not necessarily work in the religious institution but for whom their own identity as Azharites is crucial. One of the most famous of these figures is Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, a graduate of al-Azhar who resides in Qatar. He has gained an international reputation and audience through his television show on al-Jazeera “Sharia and Life.”

Al-Qaradhawi appeared on al-Jazeera early on in the Tunisian crisis. Showing sensitivity to the plight of Muhammad Bouazizi, he declared that self-immolation and suicide in general are contrary to Islam, but that given the circumstances, those who had committed this type of suicide should not be condemned. He encouraged the Tunisian protesters to continue their fight. Later, he made the same appeal to the Egyptian demonstrators, urging them to oust Mubarak. After the fall of Mubarak, Shaykh Ahmed al-Tayyeb declared that he wanted the Grand Imam to be elected by a committee of ulama, and that the independence of al-Azhar should be a constitutional principle.

Religious state and non-state authorities have entered into a discussion about the legitimacy of political resistance. Al-Azhar, through the presence of some of its members in Tahrir Square, as well as through its more peripheral voices and the Grand Imam’s call for al-Azhar’s independence, has shown its relevance to the recent political mobilization and has asserted its role in shaping a narrative of hope, empowerment, and resistance against tyranny.

Malika Zeghal is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life at Harvard University.

----------

In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.



Revolution -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

The Egyptian Revolution is in phase 2.  Phase 1 involved ridding itself of its out-of-touch dictator, now it must create a credible and free nation-state.  That will take time and a lot of hard work, and a great deal of sacrifice on the part of the Military, which has been the foundation of the existing system for nearly 6 decades.  We wonder what the future will look like -- will it be "secular"?  Martin Marty examines these questions, noting with irony that many of this calling for Egypt to be secular are the very ones working to impose their "religion" on the American system. 

Before you read Monday's post here on Wednesday, I want to announce that the Academy of Parish Clergy has officially named Marty's important book Building Cultures of Trust as its Book of the Year at our 2011 Annual Meeting where Marty is speaking to us.  So, yes, I've been in the company of Dr. Marty today.

*************************************************

Sightings 2/14/2011

Revolution

-- Martin E. Marty

“C’est une révolte,” said King Louis XVI to his messenger about events on July 14, 1789. “Non, Sire, C’est une révolution,” the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt corrected him. With this exchange Hannah Arendt pointed to a difference between a revolt—we have seen many of such—and a revolution, which we saw on television and kindred instruments last week in Egypt. The Wall Street Journal was listening, as weren’t we all, to the shouts of protesters in Cairo and elsewhere. “[I]t’s worth noting that the words heard most often . . . have been ‘dignity,’ ‘modernity,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘jobs.’” Words like these “appear to have displaced Allah as the galvanizing ideas for the young in Egypt and Tunisia.”

Add to their words one more, advanced by columnists left, right, and center: it was a “secular” revolution. And millions cheered. They keep hoping that in the chancy post-revolutionary days, Egypt will stay “secular.” Similarly, many have been watching Turkey, as it makes its way among polities and policies. They hope that, however much its people give voice to religious elements, it will also stay “secular.” In Egypt’s case, the hope of millions is that there will be no official religion or that no overwhelming religious voice--in this case the waiting-in-the-wings Muslim Brotherhood—will win at the expense of the religious and other freedoms of others.

One hears first from the talking-heads among some cable TV network commentators and their print-media colleagues, who in the Egyptian case hope for secular resolutions, and then to those same heads commenting on domestic polities where they do all they can to promote legal privileging of one particular religious ethos and framework: theirs. Each month religious newswriters receive dozens of notices that on local, state, and national levels in America there are school-board meetings, legislative proposals and court cases focused on attempts to privilege a particular “God” in salutes, pledges, and tax-supported expressions at the expense of others.

If Egypt succeeds in living with a novus ordo seclorum, that national slogan you can read on your dollar bills, a “new order of ages,” it will match what the American founders succeeded in doing through an article of the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and with which most of us happily lived in less threatening times than our own. Time for a pause. Critics ask: What’s so good about “secular,” whether in Egypt and the Muslim world or in America and the Western-influenced Christian or “Judeo-Christian” world? Not everything by any means is “good.” The “secular” can turn ideological, as in “secularism.” It can represent a beliefless, soulless spiritual landscape that leaves whole publics in the shallows. The downsides are obvious, but . . .

If Europe and North America are turning ever more secular, it is not just because governments are not legally privileging religion. The zones of voluntary expression in life within these spheres are enormous, and the freedom to make use of religious symbols and arguments is almost limitless in those zones. “Secular” in the legal sphere can be liberating. The downgrading of the “religious” in the secular-turning orbits, be it noted, results chiefly from indifference, distraction, spiritual laziness, or godless free choice by citizens. Fearful as we are that Egypt in its post-revolution might turn officially “religious,” one hopes that it can become “secular,” in ways we were intended to be.


References

Hannah Arendt,On Revolution (Penguin Books, 1965).

"Egypt After Mubarak," Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2011.



Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.



----------



In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/


----------


Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/

Immigration and Indigenous Theology -- Sightings

Immigration reform continues to be a contentious and divisive issue, which we have been unable and unwilling to tackle.  Ideology is part of the problem.  Knowing and understanding our history is another.  In this Sighting's essay, Unitarian Universalist Minister Chris Bossen shares his encounter with Indigenous Right's activist and theologian Tupac Enrique Acosta as they were incarcerated for protesting against the Arizona Immigration Law.  Included is a video of Tupac Enrique speaking at a session led by Cornel West.  Watch the video and then read Bossen's essay.  Ponder the contention that the debate is being influenced by a "Christian Doctrine of Discovery" that dates back to 1492.  Consider with me what this issue means for all of us who live within the borders of the nation called the United States of America.

Sightings 2/10/2011

Immigration and Indigenous Theology

-- Colin Bossen

I did not go to jail expecting to meet a theologian. But jail was where I met Tupac Enrique Acosta. Tupac, like me, was arrested in front of one of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s offices for protesting against Arizona's anti-immigrant law SB1070 on July 29, 2010. Unlike me, Tupac had an analysis of the bill's place in history that put it firmly within the context of the ongoing repression of the indigenous peoples of North America.

Tupac, who would probably reject the label theologian, is the leading figure behind the Phoenix-based Nahuacalli, an organization that describes itself as "A Cultural Embassy of the Indigenous Peoples." He is also closely linked with Puente, the grassroots organization behind many protests against SB1070 in Phoenix, and Puente's leader Salvador Reza. Understanding his views on SB1070 illuminates that, for some, the struggle over immigration is about something larger.

In Tupac's view the history of SB1070 does not begin in 2010. It begins in 1492 with Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Western Hemisphere. Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas prompted European political and religious leaders to develop what indigenous activists refer to as the "Christian Doctrine of Discovery." This is the belief that because the lands of the Western Hemisphere were without Christians prior to 1492 they were free for the taking upon "discovery." For activists like Tupac, the issues as stake in SB1070 are not so much political as theological.

Tupac shared his analysis with me as we waited to be processed through the legal system in holding cells and, later, when we were bunkmates in the cell block. More than once our conversations were interrupted when we were moved, it appeared arbitrarily, between cells. They were also interrupted when the Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio came into our cell to "talk" with us. Sheriff Arpaio, who is currently under investigation by the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, runs what he likes to call "America's toughest jail." He is known for his tactics of intimidating and dehumanizing prisoners, including trying to humiliate male prisoners by placing them in pink underwear and pink handcuffs.

Rather than intimidate us, Arpaio served as an unwitting example for our impromptu seminar on the Christian Doctrine of Discovery. Tupac suggested to me that the logical outcome of a legal system grounded in such a doctrine is laws like SB1070 and men like Sheriff Arpaio. SB1070 would not exist without the doctrine. Arpaio exists to enforce it.

As we sat together in jail Tupac traced the history of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery from its origin to its often unacknowledged presence in contemporary debates about immigration. He suggested that the doctrine was first articulated in Pope Alexander VI's 1493 Papal Bull "Inter Caetera" and the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal. Together these documents created a theological and legal framework that justified the expropriation and division of indigenous lands by Spain and Portugal.

In the view of Tupac and many indigenous legal scholars the framework created to facilitate the seizure of indigenous lands continues to form the core of much of federal property law today. This is particularly true as it relates to indigenous property claims. The indigenous legal scholar Steven Newcomb, for example, has found traces of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery within U.S. Supreme Court cases as recently as 2001.

Tupac believes that the principles of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery are operative in SB1070 as well. As he told me, "the purpose of SB1070 was to consolidate the perceptions of some white Americans around the idea of an America that is white in a continent that belongs to them." In his view, SB1070 is just another attempt to assert non-indigenous dominance over the continent. After all, SB1070 is designed to enforce a border that divides not only the United States and Mexico but the indigenous peoples who belong to the Uto-Aztecan language group. They have been moving back and forth between what is now the U.S. and Mexico long before either country existed. SB1070 criminalizes their traditional freedom of movement.

As Tupac understands it, the struggle against SB1070 is the continuing indigenous struggle against colonialism. As he said in a talk, "When we did that marching... we didn't come to legalize ourselves before the state of Arizona. We came to legalize Arizona... Now, let's get this clear, colonization is illegal... If we're going to legalize Arizona we have to decolonize Arizona." Elsewhere he has written that "SB1070 is not a law." He makes this claim because he believes that the entire framework of laws governing immigration rest upon the Christian Doctrine of Discovery. For him, the Mexican and Central American migrants are indigenous and those who would keep them from coming to the United States are the descendants of colonizers.

Tupac and I were briefly reunited when I travelled back to Arizona to stand trial. After a day-long trial which touched on none of these issues the judge ruled us not guilty. Then Tupac set to work again to educate people about the Christian Doctrine of Discovery and passed around a flyer titled "SB1070 is Not a Law."

References

Steven Newcomb, Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (Fulcrum Publishing, 2008).

Vine Deloria, Jr., God is Red: A Native View of Religion (Fulcrum Publishing, 1994).

Watch Tupac Enrique on a panel with Cornell West at North High School in Phoenix on October 2, 2010 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6t2esf1Hgk.

The Nahuacalli official website can be found at http://www.nahuacalli.org//.

Colin Bossen is minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Cleveland. He keeps a blog at http://infidelity.blogsome.com//.

----------

In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Christian Evolutions -- Sightings

Charles Darwin's birthday is on the near horizon, which means that this will be Evolution Weekend.  I'm of the opinion that one can be a good Christian and accept evolution as the scientific description of how things have come to be.  But, is this type of evolution the same thing as doctrinal development? 

Martin Marty takes a look at a debate going on within evangelicalism that involves Brian McLaren.  Marty thinks that McLaren may be unhelpfully mixing the two categories.  Both might be true, but can we merge them into a common framework?  Take a look at what Marty suggests and then offer your thoughts, especially if you're familiar with this conversation.

****************************

Sightings 2/7/2011

Christian Evolutions

-- Martin E. Marty

Ever since 1859 anyone could start fights by breathing a single word: “evolution,” on which Charles Darwin held the patent. The conflicts were billed as “science vs. religion,” but it has been clear for 152 years that some schools of scientists opposed other schools in science and some schools of religion opposed others in religion. The “moderns” advocated syntheses of “science” and “religion,” while conservatives, some of them fundamentalist, opposed them. New controversies keep developing.

If I read the reports accurately, there is one brewing within the ranks of Christians often tabbed as evangelicals. For example, witness a project that brings together leaders in various camps under the rubric “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity.” As Katherine T. Phan reports in the Christian Post, these leaders are trying to change the rules of the game and the contending expectations as to how it is played and who wins.

All this could be easily overlooked or bypassed did it not create shock waves within evangelicalism in the United States and Canada and also did it not involve Brian McLaren. Never heard of him? You had if you tracked trends in the Christian avant-garde; he was named one of the “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” by Time magazine in 2005. McLaren’s mark has been in what he and colleagues call “The Emergent Church,” a hard-to-define, dynamic, fluid movement. McLaren now stepped into it, as they used to say down on the farm, by connecting Darwinian scientific evolution with evolution-as-development in many forms barely related to scientific issues.

McLaren: “Evolutionary Christianity is a fact of history about which a lot of Christians are in deep denial.” He included Darwinian evolution under the Evolutionary Christianity tent, and thus roused suspicion and attracted attacks from anti-Darwinian Protestant conservatives. He described his perspective, which blends two categories of evolution as being a liberator for Christian thought and church forms. Brought up a conservative evangelical, he has now broken from that past. One might ask: could there be a problem here that can fancily be described as ignoratio elenchi, a category error?

When McLaren describes the values in his “Evolutionary Christianity” he is often talking about doctrinal “development,” which he finds even in Catholicism (as did John Henry Newman in the nineteenth century). But the issues raised in the “evolution” in doctrine or in church forms prompts quite different, or wholly different, questions than does standard-brand scientific evolution. His critics think that McLaren has gone over the hill or slid down the slippery slope of “development” into relativism and the abyss of heresy. If he and other panelists on TV and in conferences on Evolutionary Christianity would disentangle one kind of evolution from another, or regard the crossovers as metaphoric, matters would become more clear. He can continue his fight over whether church doctrine and practice have developed in one set of categories, while his openness to scientific, as in biological, evolution could make it easier for others to participate in ways that could be helpful in the academy, the church, and the larger culture.

Otherwise or until then, he’ll be a poster-boy for the heirs of old-school anti-evolutionism to banish. Their heritage dates from 1859 and they now offer little new. The Christian Post is reporting on a conflict whose emergent outlines and battle lines are fuzzy, and often have no use for or bearing on scientific evolutionary thought.

References

R. Albert Mohler, Jr, “Why the Creation-Evolution Debate is So Important,” Southern Seminary Magazine, January 4, 2011.

Katherine T. Phan, “Brian McLaren: Christians in Denial Over Evolution of Faith,” Christian Post, January 27, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

----------

In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.