Salt

Catholic Neocons Undermine Historic Protestantism

The Rev. Andrew Weaver writes about the Conservative Catholic Influence in the Institue for Religion and Democracy, and its growing influence.  They constitute about a third of the board (about the same proportion of Catholics in the country, I think), but have undermined the general ecumenical work between Catholics and protestants.   What is interesting is how anti-Catholic, also, their theology truly is, especially when it comes to capitalism. 

He writes:  While Father Neuhaus and his Catholic cohorts have built and sustained an organization that has consistently labored to generate suspicion and hostility about mainstream Protestant leaders, not a penny has been spent nor staff member assigned to attempt to change anything about the Catholic Church. This conduct constitutes the single greatest breach in ecumenical good will between Roman Catholics and Protestants since Vatican II.

Weaver quotes a former editor of First Things: The America toward which Richard John Neuhaus wishes to lead us -- [is] an America...in which moral and theological absolutists demonize the country's political institutions and make nonnegotiable public demands under the threat of sacralized revolutionary violence, in which citizens flee from the inner obligations of freedom and long to subordinate themselves to ecclesiastical authority, and in which traditionalist Christianity thoroughly dominates the nation's public life (Linker, 2006).

Is Neuhaus aware that American Idol and Project Runway are more important than church these days, and that young people are simply ignoring adults about sex? 

Weaver concludes:  Imagine the outcry from Catholic leaders, a fully justified response, if a highly influential group of Protestants obtained a million dollars a year from left-wing sources to generate a propaganda campaign against the leadership of the Catholic Church over the issues of the ordination of women and divorce. Moreover, this Protestant-directed group constantly sought to undermine Catholic leaders and missions through twisted and demeaning distortions of what they said, while seeking no reforms in their own communions. This is exactly the situation we have at IRD.

Although I generally think Protestant Christianity has rendered "god-talk" to be redundant, and has not called young leaders of great talent, I do believe that there is a deliberate attempt to destroy the  liberal, magnanimous, social justice tradition that is a crucial part of American culture - via Henry Ward Beecher, Walter Rauschenbushc, Henry Fosdick, William Sloane Coffin among others.  Perhaps protestants were right:  Catholics would undermine the American traditions of sympathy, mutual aid and civil rights. 

Lamont

Ever since Lieberman defeated Lowell Weicker [who gave a 1% chance of running against him again],  I've been a stauch antagonist of everthing Lieberman has said.  Today is the primary. Slate follows the important bloggers.  Lamont is running a strong campaign.  I've mentioned before that I am a Weicker Republican.

And of course, I believe we should get out of Iraq.  Immediately.  Let Iran fail miserably.  As it is, they are the only nation that's succeeded in getting what they want.

Update:  Lamont Won! 

Of course, Lieberman will continue to be the opportunist that he is - move to the right and start scurrilous rumors about his opponent.  He will get a lot of support from the Republican party.

Murray Bookchin, RIP

Murray Bookchin helped me articulate, in my younger days, my libertarian, anti-marxist, social sensibilities.   As a tutor in college [I tutored Eric Fromm, Milton Friedman and the anarchist tradition], Bookchin helped me think deeply about how humans actively create and destroy their environments.  He was, as Brian Tokar notes, "the Last Utopian."   

Although I have personally moved towards a Keynesian understanding of economics, and fluctuate between Burke and Marx [Burke understood the person; Marx understood conflict] in their understanding of culture, Bookchin tried to articulate a coherent form of egalitarian libertarian communalism that challenged the totalitarian and deterministic edge of Marxism.   In the end, I found his discussions of wisdom a bit dissatisfying, finding Christ along the way.   I also ended up taking a softer view of hierarchies, reclaiming my inheritance as an Episcopalian (although I think the Episcopal church potentially has the best balance between hierarchy and freedom).

Much of his prose is a bit turgid, but he resisted the mystification and idealization of ecology, while still affirming local networks, and free associations.  He was relentless in his critique of bourgeois environmentalism.    He had the humility to rethink and reconsider his positions, instinctively resisting  both the dogmatic impulses and the frivilous fads the often engulf left thinking.  Even seven years ago he gave up "anarchism." 

William Wallace on the Middle East

The road to a peaceful Jerusalem does not run through Baghdad, as American neo-conservatives argued in 2001-03 – nor through Tehran or Damascus which, according to hawks in the US and Israel, should be under attack. It runs through Washington. The rhetoric of the war on terror has locked the US into a self-declared “long war”, based on a distorted analysis of the region furthest from North America, in which Israel risks becoming the western front line in a war against radical Islam.

Adele Stan on Religious Liberalism

Adele Stan writes,

Liberal values represent the essence of the world’s great religions. At the root of all of the great faiths are fundamental beliefs in compassion, justice, love, and charity. We have the right — dare I say the duty? — to express ourselves as moral agents without the imprimatur of ecclesiastical authority.

Spoken the right way, arguments for the embodiment of these values in our civic life can ring with the divine provenance granted to them by believers. And indeed, religious activists — especially our ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams — are vital to our movement. But to expect them alone to create a moral counterforce to the destructive fear mongering of the right is not only unrealistic, it’s an expectation rooted in abdication of our own role as moral agents.

Thousands of years ago, the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tse is said to have told his followers: “Religious robes are no more holy than work clothes.” Now, let’s get to work.

I think she is formally correct.  Of course my religious robes are "work" clothes.  My holy clothes are my jeans and my T-Shirt that says "what wouldn't Jesus do?"

Liberal principles to may not be explicitly religious, but they may have [and must have] some implicit foundations.   Religious leaders may help reveal our implicit values in the public sphere; and they also have the calling to organize and gather.  She might be right that the religious left isn't necessary for its own sake - we might not be.  But it would be to her own detriment if she decided that we didn't have skills that would be useful for transforming this country into a compassionate, and responsible place.  I think progressives do themselves a disservice by not working closely with religious leaders.

Where are the young progressive preachers in positions of leadership?   

A little partisanship

Most of you know I am, in fact, a registered Republican [A Chafee and Weicker Republican].   I did find this quite amusing. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) released the following statement in advance of delivery on the House floor:

"Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

"Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.