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Conservative Christians, Jews—and Muslims: A Question of Equity

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Reading about the shush-the-victim philosophy that’s reigned within some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects in New York, I’ve been impelled to think more broadly about religious tolerance in the U.S.—and the glaring exception, which is Islam.

The U.S. has a history of accommodating dissenting sects, many of which have been given the legal space to live in virtually self-governing enclaves where women’s rights, to cite a common aberration, are systematically abused and where science dare not contradict the sect’s interpretation of scripture, be it Biblical or from texts of equivalent age or sanctity. Christian and Jewish sects have thrived in this atmosphere. 

Consider the Amish, Again

The Amish are a non-controversial case in point. Their horse-drawn buggies, almost invisible at night, needn’t carry lights or license plates.  Picture a two lane highway with no street lamps and black buggies with no headlights or taillights. Would you like to be driving along that road after dark? 

Other exemptions from state and local laws have also helped the Amish to preserve their pre-modern way of life. Long before home schooling became legally accessible to other families, Amish parents were allowed to opt out of the public education system, lest their children be contaminated with alien ideas.  They also didn’t have to vaccinate their kids. 

To this day the Amish live in a time-warp cocoon, rigorously enforcing internal conformity to keep change at bay.  Should any members of the community be so misguided as to reveal doubts, ask awkward questions or act out of sync, the Amish have a social-purification device.  This is called shunning, a form of social death.  Parents, siblings, spouse—none of them may speak to the offender, who has little choice but to move away.  Do not underestimate the agony involved in this process.

Mormons and Christian Scientists

Mormons, who profess a heretical form of Christianity, have also been able to perpetuate their hermetic traditions (traditions so totally shielded from public view that Anne Romney’s non-Mormon parents were barred from the wedding when their daughter married Mitt, leading me to wonder if this cruelty ever pricks Anne’s conscience).  Yet Mormons have multiplied mightily thanks to high birth rates and vigorous, wholly legal proselytization.  Of course, there was a price to pay for tolerance. Polygamy had to be renounced.  Even so, at this moment, in several states of the U.S., some Mormons are practicing polygamy. Living largely in close-mouthed, remote enclaves, they are mostly left in peace, unless it can be proven that seriously underage girls are being forced into marriage. 

The Line that Can't Be Crossed

So there are some lines that can’t be crossed when it comes to freedom of religion in the U.S.  To a very large extent those lines have to do with how children are treated.  Christian Scientists and adherents of other heterodox sects may not deny life-saving medical care to their children, even if parents and other adults are religiously obliged to let themselves die for lack of it.

The Koran Burning Episode: Negligence or Stupidity?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

In Afghanistan (and Pakistan) even locals can lose their lives for mishandling a Koran, which mostly they don’t do, although accusations of Koran abuse occur with some regularity.  The best way to carry out a land grab is to accuse a landowner of mishandling a Koran.  If you are lucky, the accused will get lynched and you can snatch the land with little futher ado.  If you aren’t lucky, the accused will end up with a long prison sentence, but the land might still end up as yours.

An American contact was annoyed with me recently.  I’d declared that anyone and everyone serving in the U.S. Army (or with any of the allied forces) should know that Afghans are pretty touchy about how Korans are treated.  Ordinary American soldiers aren’t going to know that, he said.  Even if they’re told, it won’t make any impression.  They won’t remember.

I don’t think American troops are stupid.  I don’t believe that they are incapable of learning respect for local custom.  It’s far more likely that their commanders and their commanders’ commanders haven’t done a very good job of providing the cultural sensitization that (we’re told) is routine.  Maybe sensitizing is on the syllabus, so to speak, but carried out so badly, so offhandedly, with so little sense of urgency, that anyone in the audience would fall asleep. Or maybe it’s done in an off-putting preachy way. Sermons do get boring.  How clearly are the troops taught that Koran handling is a life and death matter?  Your buddy could die.  Your vehicle could get blown up.  Etc

Like many observers, I was pretty outraged by this unnecessarily provocative act, but it may be that I’m even more puzzled by it.  Nowhere in my reading have I found any reference to clear cut, codified procedures for handling Korans, step by step procedures to be followed without fail.

Unintended Consequences of Running for President, the Religious Righteous – and More on Elections 2012

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Running for president can be detrimental to a Republican candidate’s political health – at least this year.  

Look, for instance, at a recent poll in Texas.  It showed that Rick Perry’s failed bid for the US presidency simultaneously weakened his standing at home as the state’s governor. Perry’s bid for that ultimate national crown of thorns simultaneously exposed his many faults to a prime time national audience as well as depicted a display of arrogance, ignorance, memory lapses and mishaps which nearly half of his fellow Texans found embarrassing and detrimental to the state’s image.

This poor showing won’t help a possible Perry re-election bid for governor in 2014 either.  So wealthy Perry backers – mostly Texans although none surnamed Bush – who chose to finance this horse’s non-victory race out the starting gate and now off the national track have just poured millions down the drain.  Most of it will have enriched the coffers of the “hated” lamestream media (their words not mine) because that’s where most campaign money is spent.   

The poll of likely voters supported by the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express News and other media outlets published on January 26 reported that 56% of those questioned said that Perry should not stand for reelection in 2014 (worst showing among registered voters ever). 47% said that their opinion of him had declined whereas only 9% said it had improved. 48% of those surveyed said that his run for the presidency had made Texas’ image among other Americans worse (33% said it had not changed) and a small margin 43% versus 42% said that they disapproved of his job as governor.

Meanwhile, far too much of the pettiness and vindictiveness of the Republican presidential campaign enacted and reenacted on our television screens ad nauseum since the debates began in, what seems, to have been an eternity ago, continue unabated.

Debate after debate after debate

Yes, it’s political theater. The Republican primary debates are also cheap advertising for the Party of No – just add the word absurd – and you’ve called it right.  Or maybe it’s America’s brand of Kabuki Theater.  Anyway, I’ve never watched anything like the displays of petulance, and often ignorance especially in foreign policy, over the many years that I have been an observer of US politics.  Huntsman excepted. Do Republican leaning Americans seriously think these candidates are ready for the big time or should be given access to this country’s nuclear trigger? 

Last week I attended an afternoon symposium at Rice University cosponsored by the university, the Baker Institute and the Texas Freedom Network entitled “Religion in the 2012 Elections.”  The purpose of the symposium was to help an educated audience better understand the influence of religion on American voting behavior. 

I doubt there were many, if any, white Evangelical Christians among the several hundred people who braved the torrential downpour to attend but if so, they would have learned that of all religious and non-religious groups surveyed by Pew, the white Evangelical Christians are the most likely to vote Republican and also the most likely to give the right wing, expansionist Israeli government their unconditional support.  

The Mormons are next in line to vote for Republican candidates.  No surprises then when we look at the candidates who ran or are still running for the party’s nomination:  two Mormons and the rest who claim to be born again or redeemed Christians of one kind or another (yes, Newt’s conversion to Catholicism counts).  The only misfit was Herman Cain – and it didn’t take the party long to decide he wasn’t their kind of candidate.  Tea Party darling Michelle Bachmann, the lone female, was soon to bite the dust, too. 

The least likely to vote Republican?  Black Evangelicals.

These voting patterns, according to Pew polling data, have existed for more than two decades.  Akron University’s John Green pointed out at the symposium that there are strong correlations between religiosity and the Republican Party and the less religiously observant and the Democrats (except for the Black Evangelicals).  Mainstream Catholics, Protestants, other religions(Jews, Hindus, Muslims)  and the unaffiliated, fall somewhere in between.

If you have the time, watch the video of the first panel.  It’s long – this is not your average four minute YouTube train station or shopping mall flash-concert fix - but at the Baker Institute session itself, time seemed to fly by. I took some notes – but didn’t begin to capture all that was said.  For those visually oriented, at least watch long enough to look at the graphs that Green used in his presentation (he was the first of the three panelists) to show the stark pattern that emerges.

 

Basically, there’s only a small number of swing voters that determine an American presidential election’s outcome.  They’re unlikely to be Evangelicals regardless of ethnicity or race.

The good news, I guess, is that Evangelical leaders and preachers are not in lockstep – it just seems that way to those of us outsiders. But I’m not sure it’s good news that far more influence on the movement’s foot soldiers comes from wealthy religious 501(c) (3) organizations like Focus on the Family.  This, according to D. Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College, who wrote his dissertation on the religious right  tracing the movement’s political origins to Pat Robertson who years ago encouraged his followers to enter the electoral fray to give political heft to issues like anti-abortion.

But wait a minute.

Of the Bishops’ conscience, Real Politik, and the rapid implosion of Labour in the dis-United Kingdom

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

24 Jan 2012. Westminister.  It is High Noon for two major Coalition policies, the “reform” of Welfare and the “reform” of the National Health Services. As the week began, both bills faced major tests in a rebellious House of Lords. 

This drama provides a study in contrasts between the stands of conscience of the nations’ Bishops on Welfare Reform (and rebellious Social Democrats among the Liberal Democrats on NHS Reform) and the real politik of the nation’s Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders.  

The drama may also seal the deal for Labour’s current leadership.  It comes at a time Labour appears to be imploding rapidly, at least in terms of electorate support, due, it is widely argued, to a right turn in its leaders’ rhetoric, if not their actual policies. 

Of the issues, the reform of the National Health Service (NHS) is probably of most interest to (and most easily understood by) most Americans. The United States is itself struggling to define the appropriate boundaries for government involvement in the provision of care.   Some have looked to the NHS as a model alternative system.  So the debate over NHS strengths, weaknesses, and affordability would be of great interest and an easier connect.

But for those very reasons, the NHS debate deserves a focused article. This I will undertake another time. I raise the issue now only to flesh out the drama that this week represents.

Turning to Welfare Reform

Turning to Welfare Reform, the Tory led Coalition government has introduced several initiatives to dramatically cut the costs of benefits.

The packaging rhetoric is a social conservative attack on the “something for nothing culture.”  Welfare recipients are widely portrayed as “scroungers” who do not deserve the support.  The Coalition argues that benefits should not pay more than work. It is not “fair” for a taxpayer earning less than a welfare recipient to pay taxes toward that benefit.

Fair enough, but the Coalition is not seeking to increase wages or harmonize tax levels to welfare levels. Far from it.  The coalition simply seeks to diminish benefits and force recipients onto an already glutted labour market.  

Moreover, the Coalition sweeps together what Americans would recognize as Welfare (support to families with dependent children) together with what Americans would regard as Social Security (recipients of “incapacity benefit” who paid into the equivalent of Social Security while they worked but became permanently or temporarily disabled from performing the work for which they trained or in which they were experienced).   Both groups now must make efforts to secure a job or face sanctions. Even failing to accept a “voluntary” unpaid position can lead to loss of benefits for an entire year.  

This, in a job market where there are already between 5 and 200 able bodied applicants for every job.  Not counting the welfare recipients, most observers project that the ratio of seekers to jobs will only worsen as the UK slips once again into recession.  Which employer, given the choice, is going to pick a person with a history of disability when given the option of 5-200 able-bodied and qualified applicants?

The Homily for St. Paul's

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent 

Spare a prayer for the authorities of St. Paul's.   Protestors invoke the church's duty to the poor, coupling the duty with their choice of method.   The authorities understand the duty but also understand that the duty does not necessarily settle the question of the appropriateness of the underlying methodology of the protestors.  Maybe as important, they face the spectre of a “split” church, that nightmare of all church administrators. Every side of the debate pulls. Every side of the debate will be unforgiving of the church for failing to follow their side's programme.    In the broad sense of the term, a political no win situation. As of 31 Oct, three of St. Paul's clerics have resigned. 

Behind the political no win is a more serious crisis of conscience.  The underlying dilemma is how the church's actions, as much as their words, reflect on St. Paul's discharge of the church's religious standards.   (Photo left of St. Paul's Cathedral and Millenium Bridge from Tate Modern by PHKushlis, August 2010).

The applicable standards are clear. * They are set out at Matthew 7:21, Isaiah 1:11-17, and Matthew 25:34-45.    The last passage sets out the only inflexible “acid test” of the professed follower of Jesus purportedly expressed by Jesus himself.   As a lawyer it is striking to me how similar the format of these standards is to that of a contract, a feature consistent with Biblical standards.   The second standard demonstrates the continuity between the so-called “first covenant” and “second.”   Notice the striking similarity in emphasis. The first passage reemphasizes just how inflexible these standards are and settles (for those who will take it in) the old debate between justification based on faith and justification based on works. It is a distinction without a difference.   

When St. Paul's confronts the underlying issues the protestors protest, as opposed to the method the protestors have chosen, there is no real room for debate.  But the officials do not want to be leveraged into supporting the method. As importantly, siding with the protestors against the interests of the government, many members of the congregation and the responsible lay boards, invites a split church, a disaster for the survival of the institution. 

The resignation of Dean Knowles appears to have cleared the way for the Bishop of London, Bishop Chartres, to stand the church down from the pending eviction action and into dialogue.  City of London followed suit as Archbishop Williams, speaking for the entire Church of England, closed ranks behind Bishop Cartres' actions.

Their quagmire brings back bad memories.  My father, great uncle, 2 of my great uncle's sons, a first cousin, at least one other 2d cousin were ordained ministers. My uncle and grandfather were lay preachers.  I was a lay preacher. In fact, I have documented a train of such ancestors back to 1329 and maybe before. But I have not felt their dilemmas like I feel those of the clerics at St. Paul's and felt those of my more immediate family.  

The conflict between these baseline and inflexible standards of righteousness, on the one hand, and the impact of a “stand” on the minister and his family is as traumatic as it is inevitable.  I know it is the reason my great uncle and two of his sons left the ministry.  I suspect it is the reason I did not follow in my father's footsteps.  It is no less serious because it ordinarily goes on mostly behind closed doors without the general public knowing. The clerics at St. Paul's face a special kind of torment. 

But the standards are clear and as unyielding as the inevitability of such a conflict and the polarization it produces.   As the clerics know, it doesn't matter how many words they honey and marshal. G*d knows.  And there is the rub.  The choice is between faith, because faith means consistent and dependable behaviour not words, and career and comfort of oneself and one's family.   

I have my own view as to whether Giles Fraser or Fraser Dyer or Graham Knowles, now all resigned, had the better of the argument. No doubt you have your own.   No doubt you know mine simply from how I have structured the standards.  But the purpose of this little “Homily” is not a message about the politics but a message about the nature and human cost for each of the players in the tragedy.   
 
 

Proms, Protesters and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra – Where Culture Meets Politics

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Last week 30-some, well- organized pro-Palestinian protesters effectively disrupted the Israel Philharmonic’s popular summer Proms concert at Royal Albert Hall in London four times in two hours prompting the BBC to cut off its live broadcast.  Whether one agrees or disagrees with the protesters’ motives or behavior, their actions are just the most recent example of people using culture to send political messages that are otherwise being ignored by the government in question.

Yet it wasn’t just the protesters – some of whom were themselves professional musicians -who were in the hall that night to send a political message:  their actions were in direct response to the Israeli government’s decision to send its premier orchestra to London to perform as a cultural ambassador in the first place.  Here’s what Zubin Mehta, the orchestra’s Indian born and raised conductor, told the media in anticipation of the concert and possible protest according to John Burns of the The New York Times:

 “The IPO is a cultural ambassador for Israel, and it is not “whitewashing Israel’s crimes,” Mehta said quoting a pro-Israel boycott campaign. “People who make music have to be politically aware; we have to know what’s going on.  We have to bring people together.  In Israel, Arab and Jewish audiences, and on quite a few occasions every year, at least for two-and-one-half hours, there is some sort of peace in the hall.”

I think that’s about the best explanation Mehta could have given in the orchestra’s and the Israeli government’s defense. Music should and often does bring people together and, as Mehta pointed out, the Israel Philharmonic does just that for a few hours several times a year in Israel.

Music and the Beast

Remember the old saying: “music soothes the savage beast.” It may well but it also depends upon the kind of music and the beast’s mood. The wrong music at the wrong time can enrage the beast as well.   

Throughout the eons, music is, and has been used as a terrific unifier – but it has equally been a horrific divider that brings out the worst.

The use and misuse of the emotions that music engenders are legion.  Just think of Hitler's use of Richard Wagner’s operas in inciting the Holocaust against Europe’s Jews – powerful music, that I believe is still not performed in Israel. 

Or consider the proud nationalism encapsulated in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture which depicted Russia’s defeat of Napoleon’s Army or Jean Sibelius’ soaring Finlandia composed and performed in the years leading up to Finnish Independence in 1917.  Or the singing of equally nationalistic choral music by the Estonian independence movement prior to 1991 poignantly depicted in the film “The Singing Revolution.”  These are but a few examples of music as politics.

The Archbishop and the Prime Minister: When the game's afoot, principle moves the momentum

By John Dyer, UK correspondent 

It is axiomatic that one should never talk religion and politics with friends.  So much for axioms.   The week of 6 June the archetypical Archbishop of Canterbury altered the rules.  The New Statesman published the Archbishop's thoughts on the Coalition’s “Austerity Programme.”   Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote one of those “refreshingly frank” sermons for which Methodist ministers are so famous and Methodist congregations so familiar, but for which Archbishops of the Anglican Church are less noted. 

During the same week an unidentified source leaked papers written in 2005, papers once in the possession of Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.  These papers, published in The Telegraph, embodied a plan to push former Prime Minister Tony Blair out of office and put Gordon Brown in Blair's place.  In case one did not “get” the implications of the documents themselves, scribbled on the documents in Gordon Brown's handwriting were the colourful and memorably worded then-Chancellor's disparaging opinions of his Prime Minister. 

Within 48 hours The Guardian had another major exposé. The Guardian released a draft of the speech Labour Leader Ed Miliband's brother, David Miliband, would have made if he, not Ed, had been elected Labour's leader.   There are those who would argue that David Miliband planned to out-deficit-reduce the Coalition.  Certainly he sounded like that in the draft speech.  The Telegraph quickly picked up on the news. 

These three events make for one interesting clinical study of political statesmanship.   

The Archbishop delivered a castigation of both the austerity programme itself and the method by which it has been communicated to the British electorate.  He argued that no one had voted for the agenda and that the whole deal was terrifying the nation.  

Not unsurprising, the Coalition and its media supporters responded, beginning with Prime Minister David Cameron.  What was surprising is that their arguments did not even seem to have internal traction.  They more spluttered than reasoned, reduced in one of the responses to attacking the venerable Archbishop's marvelous eyebrows and in another to suggesting the Archbishop's attack would give the Roman Catholics a fab marketing opportunity.  Sexy. Or not. 

The Way We Look When We look at Them

Patricia Lee Sharpe

Two thoughts come to mind: anti-democratic; simplistically reductive.

Have you noticed how American journalists and policy makers keep looking for some sort of know-it-all, I’m-in-charge supreme leader/sole source as they seek to interact with what’s happening in the Arab world? 

On the American side, there’s plenty of talk about democracy, which vests power in the citizenry, who rule through their elected representatives.  In many so-called advanced countries, including our own, this frequently gives rise to confusingly divided government.  Even deadlock.  As now in Washington.  But do-nothings can be voted out.  Interestingly enough, throughout the Arab world, one theme has sounded loud and clear recently: we the people must have a voice.

Getting there from Here

Yet there’s already, in the U.S., it seems, more than a little nostalgia for the good old days when the Arab power structure was a simple pyramid with the bottom having no say about who gets to the top—and the top dictating the nature of reality (like the Bush administration).  Seems the cynical expectation is dictator-out/dictator-in, as if a few days, weeks, months of uncertainty are evidence of hopelessness so far as the state formation process goes.  Even in Pakistan America clearly prefers to deal with the army.  As a result, the U.S. further undermines the very civilian system Americans like to complain about. As we formulate our policies toward current events in the Middle East, we should remember this. And avoid it, if we want to end up with a better working relationship than we have with the Pakistan we love to hate.

So, as we look toward the Arab world, we observe a multiplicity of voices, considerable inconsistency of demands, and lack of clarity as the exact shape of the end state in the countries undergoing revolution.  Of course, if the situation were otherwise, there would be no true revolution, which generally calls into question institutions as well as individuals. 

Let’s look closer to home to regain some perspective. How long did it take for the congeries of potential American leaders during the revolutionary period to get it together, before, during and after the revolutionary war?  The competition was fierce.  There was even one “failed state” experiment, under the Articles of Confederation, which had to be junked.  And getting all the states under one umbrella wasn’t exactly easy.  The necessary compromise was so vile that a dreadful civil war eventually had to be fought to end slavery once and for all.  So why should we expect Egypt or Tunisia, let alone the rebels in pre-modern  Libya, to come up with a perfectly formed government and a harmonious cadre of leaders in less than a year?

How Many Kinds?

Actually this preference for the simple over the complex but far more interesting actuality is not a new phenomenon when it comes to America’s dealing with the Muslim world, where an idiotic paradigm has long reigned—there are two types of Muslim: the America-hating fundies and the simpatico Moderates.  Outside the neurotic American imagination, of course, neither exists.  In fact, for the most part, the existence of America is irrelevant to the formation of Muslim character.
 
I got to thinking along these lines when I was reading S.A.A. Rizvi’s follow up to A.L. Basham’s classic The Wonder That was India.  Basham dealt with pre-Muslim Indian history.  Rizvi’s volume of the same name plus II, takes on the next 500 years of predominately Muslim rule.  It’s not an easy read, but the long chapter on religion rang more than a few bells.

Although too many Americans think of Islam as some sort of monolith, the truth is that schism has dogged Islam as persistently as it has dogged Christianity.   Most everyone is aware of the bloody Shi’a-Sunni split, which continues to this day, although both sects have themselves undergone further splintering.  There are disagreements over what Muslim law should be, over theological questions like free will, over the nature of the Koran itself.  Is it truly the word of God transmitted unaltered via the Prophet or must it be interpreted like any other historical document?   There are puritanical sects and there are secularists.  There are narrow minded bigots and strong believers who are tolerant of other faiths.  And, oh yes, there are the mystics, too.  Plus the eclectics always ready to borrow good ideas.  All these orientations come to light as Rizvi discusses the Kubrawiyya, the Qalandar and the Mahdawi, plus the many Sufi orders, including the Shattariyya, the Qadiriyya and the Naqshbandiyya, to say nothing of the Bohra, Ismaili and other branches of the Shi’i.  Not only did the exponents of these various approaches to Islam vie over minds and souls; they fought over political power.  Which would have the allegiance of the ruler?  Which would serve as the foundation of law?   A theologian close to one emperor might be put to death by his successor.  And so on.  What’s more, the picture in other countries would differ only in detail:  A great variety of approaches to Islam, sometimes co-existing peaceably, sometimes contesting violently.

We Should Try the Shoe

Today, the complex, many-sided  wars of religion within Islam continue, as we naively sort Muslims into those agin us and those fer us.  Imagine if some Arab state decided to get involved in the abortion debate in the U.S. Or presumed to tell us how we should resolve our loudly-contested, religion-based culture wars?   Suppose Muslims presumed to tell us what kind of Christianity is acceptable to them.  Probably not the kind that vigorously supports an expansionist Israel.  We would not be well disposed toward such meddlers, would we?  So why is it so hard to imagine how that shoe would feel if it were on the other foot?