A Continuing Survey of Religion and Public
Life
Richard John Neuhaus
Copyright (c) 1994
First Things 47 (November 1994): 63-72.
This Month:
Science, Religion, and Volleyball
Science is science and religion is religion and never the twain shall
meet. It is a wondrously convenient formula for not thinking very
seriously about either science or religion. We came across an article a
while back in which a journalist visited with a group of Jesuit
astronomers who man the Vatican observatory in the American Southwest.
How do they square their science with their theology, the journalist
wanted to know. The repeated answer, given with some impatience, is that
the two have nothing to do with one another. The journalist was not
satisfied with that, as well he should not be. Science tells us about
the world, and theology tells us about the God who created and sustains
the world. Therefore science tells us important things about what God is
doing, and theology tells us important things about the source and ends
of the world that is the object of scientific interest.
Nonetheless, scientists and theologians conspire to make sure that never
the twain shall meet. Scientists typically exhibit the greater cognitive
confidence. They are often contemptuously dismissive of theology, while
theologians are frequently glad enough to be left alone, undisturbed by
inconvenient challenges from the scientists. An instance of the
contemptuously dismissive is provided by Dr. David E. H. Jones of the
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, better known by his pen name,
Daedelus. Writing in the British journal Nature in an article picked up
by the science writer of the New York Times, Jones suggests, presumably
tongue in cheek, that it should be possible to weigh the soul.
By attaching piezoelectric transducers and other instruments to a dying
person, it should be possible to measure the direction, velocity, and
spin of the soul as it leaves the body, causing the body to recoil
slightly. The change in body weight would reveal the soul's mass.
"Traditional theology," writes Jones, "is silent on the spin of the
soul, though it may predict that the soul of a sinner would depart
downward, and might weigh less than that of a righteous believer." Soul
measurements could also be helpful with the abortion debate, he
suggests. By applying a soul detector to a pregnant woman, one could
determine when the soul enters the embryo or fetus. "It is clearly
worthwhile," says Dr. Jones, "to establish this moment accurately. If
the soul turns out to enter the fetus quite late in pregnancy, the
religious arguments against contraception and early abortion will be
neatly disproved." He does not say what conclusion should be drawn were
it determined that the soul is there from conception.
But of course all this is as silly as it is contemptuous. Although there
are many people, President Clinton for instance, who continue to speak
of the soul as a bodily appendage, a thing that should not be killed.
Before it is appended to the baby, however, it is permissible to kill
the baby's body. The President says he learned this from his Baptist
pastor and, given the sorry state of catechesis in contemporary
Christianity, that is quite possibly true. It is the case that the
worthy Tertullian (d. 225) seemed to hold to the corporeity of the soul,
and presumably such a soul could be weighed. But traditional theology
has taken the soul to be a spiritual substance. Spiritual substances,
being spirit, cannot be weighed.
But scientists will have their fun. Soul-weighing is but a variant on
the old chestnut about scholastic theologians debating how many angels
can dance on the head of a pin. Any scholastic theologian, indeed any
literate Christian, would recognize that such a debate is utterly
otiose. Being spiritual beings, angels do not take up space and
therefore an infinite number can dance on the head of a pin, or any
other place they fancy. Dr. Jones and his readers have their chuckle,
and theologians take it in good sport instead of pointing out, politely
of course, that such Jonesian bigotry rests upon the foundation of an
ignorance that is quite appalling in an otherwise educated person. Many
theologians, indeed, join in the chuckle, smugly observing that of
course no point has been scored since when theologians talk about the
soul (if in fact they still talk about the soul at all) they are
employing an entirely different "language system," quite unrelated to
the language of scientific discourse.
This ploy achieves self-parody in, for instance, the best-selling
Episcopalian bishop in New Jersey who assures us that, although the body
of the pitiable fanatic Jesus has long since rotted in Palestine, talk
about the resurrection is frightfully "meaningful." Writers of more
scholarly credibility also employ the ploy. They propose a neat division
of labor; the scientists take the "fact" language and the theologians
take the "meaning" language, and neither need step on the other's toes.
Of course the scientists, with exceptions, have not agreed to this
arrangement. And quite rightly so. Meanings are of interest when they
explain the meaning of facts, so those who have been given a monopoly on
the facts will likely end up in charge of the meaning business as well.
Which is pretty much what has been happening in our public discourse
over the last few centuries. Of course this does not prevent anyone from
engaging in the private indulgence of religion, along with other private
indulgences such as a taste for mocha chocolate ice cream or the poetry
of Edna St.Vincent Millay.
Serving into the Other Court
But through the years there has been a small band of theologians and
scientists who have persisted in thinking hard about the hard questions.
On the theological side, one such is Wolfhart Pannenberg, 1994 Erasmus
Lecturer and frequent contributor to this journal. This year
Westminster/John Knox Press has brought out his Toward a Theology of
Nature: Essays on Science and Faith (166 pp., $19.99 paper). This
book deserving of a wide readership is enhanced by a lucid introduction
to Pannenberg's thought on these questions by Ted Peters, a Lutheran
theologian teaching in California.
In the last century or so, says Peters, theologians "have trod lightly
on questions regarding God and the natural world, ceding to the
scientific community the priestly right to dispense the graces of
understanding nature. Now, however, Pannenberg seems to be profaning
what Western Enlightenment culture has held sacred. He is . . .
reentering the epistemological holy of holies and contending that loss
of an awareness of God actually constricts what we learn about the
nature of nature." For scientists who take Pannenberg's challenge to
heart, "it means a return to the laboratory with a reassessment of the
meaning of existing evidence and a posing of new questions for future
research."
Since the consolidation of the natural sciences in the modern
university, the relationship between science and religion might be
pictured in terms of volleyball. On one side of the net is scientism, on
the other religious authoritarianism. Scientism views
religion's claims as pseudo-knowledge, and "fundamentalism"
(whether biblical or ecclesiastical) views the claims of science as, at
best, partial knowledge subject to correction by revelation. In recent
years, a new twist has been provided by scientific creationists
who contend that they are playing by the rules of science, and by those
rules they have determined that the biblical account of creation is more
scientifically convincing than the theory of evolution.
Peters explains how the volleyball game goes on from there, or, as is
usually the case, does not go on from there:
What we would expect to find is a hotly
contested game between the established natural scientists on
one side, and, on the other side, any one of the three: the
ecclesiastical authoritarians, the fundamentalist
authoritarians, or the scientific creationists. What we
would expect to find is a spirited match to settle the
matter, to see who wins and who loses. Surprisingly,
however, twentieth-century watchers have seen very little
competitive volleying across the net. Why? Because the
majority of players on both sides have adopted the two-
language rule. According to the two-language theory,
scientists and theologians work in separate domains of
knowledge, speak separate languages, and when true to their
respective disciplines, avoid interfering in each other's
work. What we end up with are two teams, each sparring with
its own volleyball on its respective side of the net. If the
creationists who reject the two-language rule serve the ball
into the scientists' court, the scientists do not bother to
return it. But when the players of the fourth string made up
of liberal or neo-orthodox theologians take the religious
side of the court, they tout the two-language rule and send
nothing over the net. This has kept the scientific team
happy for most of the present century.
Suffice it to say that Pannenberg and a few others have been serving
into the scientists' court for some years now, and an increasing number
of scientists, especially physicists, have been returning the serves.
There are not yet enough teams to form a league, but that may come with
time. In his Theology and the Philosophy of Science, in his
three-volume Systematic Theology (now appearing in English), and in the
present book of essays, Pannenberg presses the implications of saying
that nature must be understood as history, that contingent events are
temporally unique, and that what we now know of thermodynamics confirms
the irreversibility of time. Theology, Pannenberg suggests, is the study
of the history of God, and Christian theology is such study in the light
of the promised fulfillment of history in Christ and the coming Kingdom.
Such seemingly exotic speculation leads to surprises. For instance, it
may be that when Michael Faraday and Albert Einstein spoke of the "force
field" in physics, they had in mind, knowingly or not, what theology
means by the Holy Spirit.
Of course that way of putting it may suggest another version of the old
two-language game. But this time, at least, scientists and theologians
understand that they are talking about the same reality, how the world
really is and what reasonably can be made of it. In studying the world
scientists are studying God, and in studying God theologians are
studying the world. Since the Enlightenment the studying and talking has
been segregated, each on its own side of the net, each developing a
language and habits of thought apparently incommensurable with the
other. This segregation has everything to do with the marginalization of
religion in public life, since it is assumed that what counts as real
knowledge in public is scientific knowledge, and it is further assumed
that what is scientific is separate from, if not antithetical to,
religion.
Of course Pannenberg is not alone in pressing the cause of
desegregation. One thinks of contemporaries such as Arthur Peacocke,
Robert John Russell, Stanley Jaki, and the many followers of Alfred
North Whitehead. There are big differences among these thinkers, but all
are devoted to resuming a collaboration that was most unnaturally
disrupted by the recent unpleasantness of the secular Enlightenment.
Their project and its underlying assumption that theology and science
are both dealing with the one world of the one God would hardly have
surprised Christian thinkers such as Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, or
Calvin. A good introduction to the current state of the desegregation
movement is Wolfhart Pannenberg's Toward a Theology of Nature.
The Longest War
In the event that some readers have not yet read James Davison Hunter's
Before the Shooting Begins, shame on you. Alright, so you can't
read everything, but this is not just another important book. It is the
best book-length analysis of what is meant by the culture war (the
subtitle is Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War),
and is made the more valuable by viewing the culture war through the
prism of the abortion controversy-the most important single question in
defining the opposing sides in the culture war. That we view the book as
extremely important is evidenced by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's review
essay in the June/July issue and our earlier comment on Hunter's
argument in these pages and elsewhere.
We are regularly asked what we mean by this "culture war" we've been
talking about for approximately the last ten years. The answer
inevitably begins with what is meant by culture, and we will not repeat
what we have said on that so many times before. Rather, let's let James
Hunter take a crack at the question: "Culture is nothing if it is
not, first and foremost, a normative order by which we comprehend
ourselves, others, and the larger world and through which we order our
experience. At the heart of culture is a system of norms and
values, as social scientists are prone to call them. But these norms and
values are better understood as commanding truths so deeply
embedded in our consciousness and in the habits of our lives that to
question them is to question reality itself. These commanding truths
define the 'shoulds' and 'should nots' of our experience, and
accordingly, the good and the evil, the right and the wrong, the
appropriate and inappropriate, the honorable and the shameful.
Accordingly, culture involves the obligations to adhere to these truths,
obligations that come about by virtue of one's membership in a group."
Multiculturalism, as it is called in the academy, and moral emotivism,
as it is found among the hoi poloi, inescapably trivialize culture.
Multiculturalists are a group at war with the idea of belonging to a
group. Hunter writes, "The bottom line is that one cannot hope to
understand culture without understanding its central and commanding
truth claims. But these claims imply standards, and standards imply the
moral judgment that we are not the same and not on the same moral plane.
Such standards and judgments violate the central lesson multiculturalism
wants students everywhere to appropriate-that 'I am as good as you.'"
The framework provided by multiculturalism makes it impossible to engage
in reasoned argument on questions of moral consequence, such as
abortion. "The reason," writes Hunter, "is that multiculturalism denies
the very category of Differences that constitute the friction points
between cultures-the substantive and, in this case, contradictory
imperatives asserted by and embodied within different moral
communities."
Hunter's extraordinary book is weakest when it comes to proposing an
alternative to the culture war in terms of "the renewal of democracy."
One is immeasurably grateful for an accurate diagnosis, even if the same
physician is not so sure about the treatment. Hunter wants to find a
"common ground" for democratic deliberation, debate, and decision that
will replace the polarized and frenzied war of words that now passes for
political discourse. At the same time, he knows that the differences in
the culture war "go all the way down," and democratic renewal might be
possible only at the end of the struggle. It is a little like the
revolutionary maxim that things must get worse before they can get
better. "Through a heightening of the tensions, we are continually
reminded of the limitations of political action. We are reminded that
politics, in the final analysis, is primarily effective in dealing with
administrative tasks. It is not able to deal with the collective search
for shared meanings, the formation of public philosophies of the public
good, or the organic generation of civic obligation, responsibilities,
and trust among the citizens who inhabit a community or society."
A Vision Wan and Wistful
Although it is not clear how that squares with Hunter's enthusiasm for
Benjamin Barber's notion of "strong democracy," it is a sober and modest
understanding of politics. In our political culture, it is usually
conservatives who call for a modest understanding of politics and,
especially, government action. Liberals typically embrace a more
expansive understanding of the political and governmental sphere. (Those
who style themselves radical go further, urging that "the personal is
the political and the political is the personal.") The predicament,
however, is that the larger the sphere of life that is defined as
political the more we must deliberate in public the morality of our life
together-our obligations, responsibilities, and ideas of the good.
Conversely, the more limited the political sphere, the more those
deliberations can be conducted in communities that are, while not
private, certainly not public in the sense of being subject to
government control. It is quite odd. Conservatives are ready, even
eager, to engage in public discussions of morality that would not be
necessary under their ideal of limited government. On the other hand,
liberals are generally hostile to the public discussion of morality that
is inescapable under their ideal of expansive government.
Then one is taken back to the question of whether legal protection for
the unborn is an instance of expansive or limited government. We have
been around that track many times, and will not take another turn now.
For the moment, suffice it to note that one leaves Before the
Shooting Begins and similar analyses with a very dour view of talk
about "the renewal of democratic discourse and decision." Of course that
is what we must continue to hope for and work for, but anything that
resembles renewal will be, it appears almost certain, on the far side of
some kind of resolution of the abortion question. It seems that civil
discussion is precluded by the don't-give-an-inch rigidity of the pro-
choice faction in refusing to acknowledge that there is any great moral
question engaged in the termination of what is unquestionably human
life, and by their adamantine opposition to even the most modest
measures aimed at, for instance, ensuring informed consent by the woman
or respecting the role of parents of minors. They seem to be convinced
that any public admission that there are legitimate questions to be
raised about the existing abortion regime would bring the whole thing
crashing down. Maybe they're right in thinking that. One can understand
why Harvard's Laurance Tribe and other abortion advocates so
relentlessly insist that the public discussion be kept focused on
choice, never on what is chosen.
The "renewal of democracy" part is where James Davison Hunter goes wan
and wistful. Don't blame him; at this stage in the culture war nobody
knows what such renewal might mean. Where there are openings for civil
conversation and mutually respectful argument, we should not fail to
welcome the opportunity. But in our political culture at present, such
openings are few and far between. Nurturing such possibilities for
conversation where they present themselves, and hoping that culture war
may in time be replaced by civil engagement, in the short term we have
no choice but to gird for battle. Battle is not the preferred metier of
those who believe that moral truth can be ascertained through reasoned
reflection. Battle is forced upon them by those who deny the reality of
moral truth, or at least of moral truth that can have public standing.
The culture war was declared by the nihilists, both sophisticated and
raw, who declared politics to be nothing more than the contest of
interests, the will to power. On the axial question of abortion, they
are the ones who divide the world into the defenders of the unlimited
abortion license on the one hand and everybody else on the other. They
permit no consideration of alternatives, nothing that might respond to
the yearning of the great majority of Americans for some kind of
accommodation.
There is the time before the shooting begins and then the time after the
shooting begins, and nobody knows how metaphorical that shooting will
remain. But on the question around which all the other questions of the
culture war gravitate, there is no alternative to continuing to press
ahead on every front-in the parties, in national campaigns, in politics
from counties to Congress, in the churches, schools, professional
associations, everywhere. The defenders of the unlimited abortion
license know that Roe v. Wade is not "settled doctrine" in
American law and life, and it is the business of those who understand
what is at stake to make it more unsettled every day. "Every unborn
child protected in law and welcomed in life." That is the goal. It will
never be achieved perfectly, of course, given the human bent toward
indifference, cruelty, and injustice. But it can be approximated in a
manner that is secured by democratic consent. This may be many years
away. But only when that happens is it believable to think that the
culture war might give way to something like a renewal of democratic
discourse about how we ought to order our life together.
Mr. Rorty's Terrible Uncertainties
Among intellectual celebrities, Richard Rorty's fifteen minutes go on
and on. In a long interview in the University of Chicago
Magazine, he explains how he got to be the way he is. A red-diaper
baby, he had Trotskyite parents who found the meaning of their lives
bestowed by the promise of "come the revolution." Richard, however, was
"a clever, snotty, nerdy only child" (his description), more interested
in orchids than revolutions. Yet he wanted an understanding that was an
understanding of everything. At age fifteen he came across his aim
expressed in the words of Yeats-"hold reality and justice in a single
vision." First in Plato, then in Hegel, then in other systems, he
thought for a time that he had found knowledge that is "beyond
hypothesis."
Later he discovered that there is no such thing, reality is rhetoric,
things are as you describe them to be. This is the consolation and
resignation of the "liberal ironist." Oh, for some people, certainty-
Plato's knowledge beyond hypothesis, beyond doubt, beyond critical self-
consciousness-might be possible. For revolutionaries, for instance, "who
are moved by nothing save the thought of social justice." And for those
Christians. "I decided that only religion-only a nonargumentative faith
in a surrogate parent who, unlike any real parent, embodied love, power,
and justice in equal measure-could do the trick Plato wanted done. Since
I couldn't imagine becoming religious, and indeed had gotten more and
more raucously secularist, I decided that the hope of getting a single
vision by becoming a philosopher had been a self-deceptive atheist's way
out."
He speaks of not being able to become religious in the way that most of
us cannot imagine becoming Mexican. As though "religiousness" is
something that happens to some people and doesn't happen to others.
Moreover, as in his book, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,
religion (in his case meaning Christianity) appears as a guarantor of
certitude, instead of being precisely a reasoned commitment of faith in
a reality that will never get "beyond hypothesis" short of the coming of
the kingdom of God. His flaunted anxieties about the uncertainties of
truth lead him to the convenient but superficial out of deciding not to
worry about truth. In the name of complexity he embraces the simplism of
"redescribing" intellectual sloth as virtue. It is a great sadness, and
a greater sadness that he continues to be a leading retailer of designer
fashions in the university.
Along the way he says, "I do not, however, want to argue that philosphy
is socially useless." He speaks of a number of philosophers who made a
difference, including John Dewey and Sidney Hook. "Had there been no
Dewey or Hook, American intellectual leftists of the 1930s would have
been as buffaloed by the Marxists as were their counterparts in France
and in Latin America." Quoting Richard Weaver, he says, "Ideas do,
indeed, have consequences." The irony does not occur to him that the
Richard Rorty of today would not have been standing with Dewey, and
certainly not with Hook, in the 1930s and 1940s. After all, why make
endless arguments appealing to truth in a tedious struggle against
Communist totalitarianism when it is ever so much easier, as Rortians
have learned, to redescribe tyranny as freedom, and vice versa?
While We're At It
- There is endless dispute over what makes an idea, practice, or
institution "religious." More simply, how should we define "religion" as
distinct from other spheres of human life. Marc Gellman, a friend who
bills himself as the only pro-life Reform rabbi in the country, is a
gifted writer of children's books and is currently working on a book
that introduces kids to the world religions. He thought and thought
about what it is that all religions have in common. He finally came up
with four components. Everything that we call a religion has (1) a story
about how the world came to be and what it is for; (2) a code for living
the moral life; (3) an answer to the problem of death. And the fourth?
Every religion uses candles. We're thinking about it.
- The famed Frankfurt philosopher Jurgen Habermas is asked, "What
remains of socialism?" His unhesitating answer: "Radical democracy." He
expands on that in an interview in the New York Review of
Books: "I would add the rider that one thing we can still learn
from the Marxist tradition today is the critique of capitalism. Indeed,
this may be even more important today since capitalism has experienced a
huge increase in self-confidence, thanks to the collapse of state
socialism. Hardly anyone nowadays would venture to criticize capitalism.
At the same time, we have seventeen million unemployed in the European
Union alone, and no one-and that includes me-has any idea how we are
going to break out of the cycles of jobless growth. In other words, we
need new ideas with which to criticize this system. But the ultimate
criterion must be the creation of a radical democracy, and this of
course includes using welfare state measures to tame capitalism to some
point where it becomes unrecognizable as such." Which being interpreted
means: (1) The failure of socialism does not lead to the approval of
capitalism. (2) State power should tame capitalism to the point where it
is not recognizable as capitalism but is recognizable as socialism. (3)
Socialism has not failed. Take our word for it, Habermas is a very
famous philosopher.
- The late M. E. Bradford was acclaimed by most of those who knew
him as an exemplification of what it means to be a gentleman and a
scholar. His brand of Southern conservatism, however, made him unwelcome
in the more elevated precincts of academic correctitude, and his last
years were marred by resentment of "neoconservatives" who, he believed,
had joined with liberals in denying him the recognition, and employment,
he deserved. It is a long and rather sad story, and we mention it only
as preface to welcoming a revised edition of one of Bradford's very
useful books, Founding Fathers (University Press of Kansas, 222
pp., $14.95). First published in 1981, Founding Fathers
provides something that is not to be found anywhere else-brief
biographical sketches of all those who participated in the Philadelphia
convention of 1787 that produced the United States Constitution.
Bradford clearly has his own very strong views, but he is remarkably
dispassionate in depicting the lives, opinions, and characters of the
founders, and can be admiring of those with whom he disagrees, such as
Alexander Hamilton. He only loses it in discussing James Wilson of
Pennsylvania, who went on to the Supreme Court where he initiated the
mischief of treating the Constitution as a "living document" that need
not be interpreted as its authors intended. In his introduction,
Bradford says of the founders as a group: "They were not men who were
speculative in their politics. With the possible exceptions of Madison,
Hamilton, Wilson, and young Charles Pinckney III, they were prescriptive
Whigs who had made a revolution on the model of the Glorious Revolution
of 1688-in order to continue as they were." He notes that as many as
thirty-five of the fifty-five framers were slave holders. They were, all
in all, men of means, solidly ensconced in the gentry of their own
states and recognized by their neighbors as the kind of "natural
aristocrats" who were best trusted with the responsibilities of
government. With no more than five exceptions, Bradford notes, "they
were orthodox members of one of the established Christian communions."
Bradford sums up his estimate of the founding company in this way: "They
regarded the Union as conditional, an 'experiment' in George
Washington's terms, and knew that it would require work and minor
revision if the fundamental law was to operate as they hoped-but not too
much revision or too often. Nevertheless, they meant for their form of
government to last, and most of them were confident that it would, so
long as it was not manipulated out of shape by ideology or human
selfishness. They were not demigods and they did not 'invent' their
country. But assuredly the passage of time has earned for them the right
to be called a worthy company, a term of praise they would have clearly
understood."
- In the June/July issue we commented on an article in
Harper's on the Pope by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison. (We invited
her to confession, but she has not shown up to date.) Brawn Sullivan of
Marysville, California writes to point out that we did not remark
Harrison's saying that a gay friend who is active in several pastoral
ministries told her that he would go to his cat for moral advice before
he would go to his cardinal. Mr. Sullivan spots what he thinks may be a
trend. He notes that Matthew Fox, the lapsed Catholic priest, says he
has made his dog, Tristan, his spiritual director because the animal
"enters into ecstasy without guilt." Having abandoned God and angels,
mankind-partly angel, partly animal-goes to cats and dogs. We count on
Mr. Sullivan to alert us to further sightings of this phenomenon.
Meanwhile, readers are advised to stick with spiritual directors who
feel guilty about the kinds of ecstasies favored by Matthew Fox.
- "We don't want to be grumpy or just start a fight," said the Rev.
John Rodgers of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. "We are just a
group of faithful Episcopalians who love their church but simply cannot
support some things that have been done and be faithful to our baptismal
and ordination vows." Rodgers chaired a national meeting in Atlanta that
included seven bishops plus prominent clergy and lay leaders from around
the country and produced a covenant titled "Episcopalians in Apostolic
Mission." The signers say they wish to support the Episcopal Church but
cannot go along with "tendencies contrary to official Anglican ethical
standards," even if they are authorized by General Convention. "We will
not conform ourselves to [such actions], we will not directly
financially support them, nor will we permit those who engage in them to
minister regularly within our congregational or diocesan life." The
covenant calls for protection of human life "from conception to natural
death" and affirms that sexual intimacy and intercourse should be
limited to "heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong marriage." For more
information, call Mr. Alfred Sawyer at 800-948-1781 or write St. John's
Episcopal Church, 50 East Fisher Freeway, Detroit, MI 48201.
- A group of Harvard students thought up the most outrageous group
they could imagine and applied for recognition by the student
government. The announcement was carried in the Harvard
Crimson: "We are Students at Harvard Erotically Engaged With Pets,
or S.H.E.E.P. We reject the use of clinical terms such as 'zoophilia'
and describe ourselves as 'theriosexual,' a word which better describes
the wild joy of our way of life.
"Though the bestial community is extremely diverse, embracing
individuals from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds, we
share a common experience of oppression and misunderstanding. We have
been marginalized by an anthroposexist society solely on the basis of
whom we choose to love. Because we refuse to form relationships
according to socially constructed categories such as 'species,' we
represent a fundamental challenge to the institutions and assumptions of
a speciesist, theriophobic Western culture.
"You probably know some of us already. Research indicates that nearly
one out of every ten males and more than one of every thirty females is
theriosexual. Some of us form relationships solely across species lines;
some of us enjoy both human and animal relationships. We are productive
members of society, respected members of the community. And yet our
lives are singled out for brutal repression by the laws of many states
and by the prejudice of those who condemn our love for animals because
they do not understand it.
- "Fear and oppression have kept us silent for too long. It is time
for us to speak out. We love animals. We are out, and proud."
- To date he is unknown here, but in Finland he is a celebrity and
there appears to be a growing number of Americans ready for his message.
Pentti Linkola is a writer who supports himself by fishing in a rustic
region, and lives in order to save the planet by means of annihilating
most of the human race. He proposes ending third world aid and asylum
for refugees, plus mandatory abortions for women who already have two
children. Another world war would be "a happy occasion for the planet,"
he suggests. Humanity is like a sinking ship with 100 passengers and a
lifeboat that can hold only ten. "Those who hate life try to pull more
people on board and drown everybody. Those who love and respect life use
axes to chop off the extra hands hanging on the gunwale." Mr. Linkola's
sworn enemies, reasonably enough, are the Pope and Amnesty
International. He also despises America. "The U.S. symbolizes the worst
ideologies in the world: growth and freedom." In Finland, where he is
described as an "eco-fascist," Linkola is an exceedingly popular author.
This Wall Street Journal story notes that even fellow
Malthusians in this country find Linkola a bit much. "We have many
possibilities that should be explored before we take a strong-armed
approach," says Garrett Hardin, who in 1974 wrote a much discussed
article, "Living on a Lifeboat." Dr. Hardin has never been accused of
squeamishness when it comes to reducing the number of those whom he
views as the parasitical poor, although in his article he stopped short
of chopping hands from the gunwale. Hardin, retired from the University
of California, writes today for Chronicles, a magazine
published in Rockford, Illinois, which champions what it calls "Old
Right" conservatism. In an article in the June issue, Hardin attacks the
notion that we can continue to think that having babies is "a purely
private matter" to be left up to parents. Decisions about what children
should be born and how or whether "abnormal babies" should be cared for
"are best made on the basis of opportunity costs to the community." All
this is in the context of discussing national health care and the need
to ration scarce medical resources. "A national health care system will
be well justified," writes Hardin, "if it reinstates discrimination as a
proper function of the social order." He wants it understood that he
does not mean racial discrimination. The discrimination he has in mind
is that between the fit and the unfit. He is not terribly hopeful that
what needs to be done can be done. He writes, "The final solution (if
there is one) is unknowable." Final solution? Final solution? Why does
that phrase sound so familiar?
- From several places around the country we've been sent clippings
on cases where courts are ordering churches to return money donated by
people who then declared bankruptcy. The question posed is whether this
is a threat to religious freedom. We're not a law firm and of course
each case is different, but it would seem that there are instances in
which churches would rightly be required to return money. Say that Nancy
X owes $100,000 to creditors for services rendered or goods delivered.
Just before declaring bankruptcy, she gives $100,000 to her church. If
she had given it to Uncle Charlie or the United Way, they would be
required to give it back. Why shouldn't a church be similarly compelled?
It would seem to be an elementary question of justice to creditors. The
sticky part comes when Nancy declares that she was not simply
transferring funds but was in fact giving the money to the church in
return for services rendered. Those who are worried about these cases
say the courts have now put themselves in the position of saying
churches do not in fact render services. There may be something, a very
little something, to that worry. The flip side, however, is whether
churches want to put themselves in the position of claiming that they
are selling their spiritual services. Hard cases make bad law and, we
expect, unwarranted worries about religious freedom.
- Arianna Huffington has a nice way of going up against the false
and fashionable, having written devastating books on feminist excesses
and the pretensions of modern art. Now she takes on a really big
assignment, the very meaning of life, in The Fourth Instinct: The
Call of the Soul (Simon & Schuster, 288 pp., $22). Maggie Gallagher
reviews it with some sympathy in National Review, noting that
Huffington raises important questions for a time in which "religion
tends to be viewed by intellectual elites as a kind of poison in the
body politic." But Ms. Gallagher also has her reservations: "For Mrs.
Huffington, all religious truths point to the same truth: 'There is,
however, a fundamental difference between today and other historic times
of spiritual renewal. Ours does not revolve around any one concept of
God or require that we believe in any one set of dogmas, any one
doctrine, any one recipe for redemption.' Well maybe. But then again,
maybe not. Perhaps God-and Mrs. Huffington never seems to have faced
this frightening possibility-actually cares how we envision Him, worship
Him, and regulate our lives in His service. Perhaps in religion, as in
everything else, it's possible to get it wrong."
- Editors like to have at the end of a piece a wrap-up sentence with
a bit of kick, even if doesn't make too much sense. The President of
Harvard, James B. Conant, was heavily involved in, inter alia, the
production of the first atomic bomb. In the New York Review of
Books, Louis Menand examines a new biography of Conant and takes
note of the fact that Conant, thinking nuclear war quite likely, wanted
to preserve, as best as possible, the record of Western civilization on
microfilm and tape. Menand's conclusion: "He had what seems today an
almost naive faith in the virtues of the society for which he fought. It
does not seem to have crossed his mind that the great works of a
civilization that had ended in an act of self-destruction might not be
the first thing the survivors of a nuclear holocaust would think it
worthwhile to have." Menand's premise would seem to be that King
Lear, the Mass in B Minor, and The Federalist all
entailed the inevitability of nuclear self-destruction. Further, one
expects that most of what the survivors would think it worthwhile to
have would be what was left over from the civilization destroyed,
including perhaps the knowledge of nuclear weaponry in order to prevent
further destruction. Especially if the Soviet Union was among the
survivors. But one should not make too much of Mr. Menand's sniggering
at Conant's high estimate of Western civilization. He needed a wrap-up,
and a fillip of multicultural snottiness does the job nicely.
- An Anglican theologian, Andrew Linzey, says it is a "terrible
mistake" for the new Catechism of the Catholic Church to draw
such a sharp contrast between animals and people. The catechism says
that while "it is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer
or die needlessly, it is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that
should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love
animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to
persons." Professor Linzey complains, "A world in which animal cruelty
goes unchecked is a morally unsafe world for human beings." Yes, and a
world in which the singularity of human dignity and responsibility is
not clearly maintained is catastrophic for everyone and everything,
including animals. Professor Linzey holds a research fellowship in
theology and animal welfare at Mansfield College, Oxford.
- Living in Japan, Russell Board gets the international edition of
Time magazine and brings this item to our attention. A story on
decline in Eastern Europe concludes, "Eastern Europe's illness is as
much of the spirit as of the body. Politicians, not doctors, must cure
it." So on that we should offer a comment?
- One article, even an utterly devastating article, does not a hoax
destroy. And so "The Jesus Seminar" is still up to its pranks despite
Richard Hays' authoritative expose, "The Corrected Jesus," in our May
issue. Writing in GQ magazine, Russell Shorto gives a sad-hilarious
account of his experience at one of the seminar's meetings. He is
interested also in Paul Verhoeven's plans to produce a film based on the
seminar's "findings." Those plans were discussed in the gathering of the
seminar fellows. "What would rattle the convent walls is Verhoeven's
intention to depict a solely human Jesus on film, and he is using the
findings of the Jesus Seminar as the basis for this. '"Fully human"
means everything has to be explained on a human scale,' he says. 'You
should certainly acknowledge, once and for all, what that means.' In
other words, no deus ex machina. The exorcisms and miracles his Jesus
performs will lend themselves to more mundane explanations. Assuming it
gets made (he has a producer, but the script is still in the works), the
film will likely raise a fuss that will make Martin Scorsese's The
Last Temptation of Christ seem about as controversial as The
Love Bug. After all, the Jesus of The Last Temptation was
still divine-He just liked girls too. The film session ends with a
flurry of possible movie endings that drive home the mortal nature of
their subject. Mary Magdalene caressing the lifeless cheek of her
teacher. Or what if the body is simply thrown into a pit with others-a
no-name burial, as far removed from glorious Resurrection as you can
get-and we fade to black? When the [Jesus Seminar] gathering finally
breaks up, there is relief on most of the faces. This is hard work, work
with an emotional toll. Many of these men are ministers of one kind or
another who maintain their Christian faith even as they pull the
historical rug out from under it. It's a delicate balancing act, one
that requires a certain amount of energy, not to say soul-searching.
What will the future bring? Will the walls of belief collapse entirely?
Will twenty centuries of Western culture be undone in one smart-alecky
grunt of scholarship? The fellows insist that this is not their purpose
or their desire, that scholarship and religion are two different things
that can remain forever separate. But they say it with a catch of
nervousness in their throats."
- Other journalists have usually been admiring, even reverential,
toward Murray Kempton. Although relatively few people read Kempton, he's
known as a journalist's journalist and his new book, Rebellions,
Perversities, and Main Events (Times Books), has received a great
deal of review attention. Kempton is famous for his long, multi-claused
and multi-conditioned, sentences that some call nuanced and others
convoluted. Kempton has been doggedly, but not uncritically, a man of
the left. Terry Teachout concludes his review in Commentary
with this: "His understanding of the psychology of American radicalism
is profound; his recognition of the complexity of human motivation is
astute. But a commentator who so often chooses to paint the world in
shades of gray constantly teeters on the edge of suggesting that there
is no difference between black and white." Nicely put but not quite
right. One recalls, for instance, the 1968 Democratic Convention. Your
editor was a delegate from New York and Kempton and he hung out together
during those days. Kempton's account of those events, published in the
old Saturday Evening Post, could hardly have been more morally
dichotomous, with bad guys and good guys unambiguously in place (your
editor extravagantly depicted as good guy). The truth is that Kempton
does paint in black and white as well; the grays come in chiefly when he
feels the need to nuance less-seemly aspects of the left to which he was
attached during the "class struggle" radicalism of the 1930s. At least
in the person of Murray Kempton, it was a radicalism with a measure of
intellectual and moral gravitas. W. H. Auden dismissed the thirties as a
slum of a decade, and he was probably right. But maybe that marvelous
phrase should have been reserved for what was to come. Kempton has done
more than his share of slumming, but his prose has always betrayed the
fact that he knew, and knows, he doesn't live there.
- Here's another entry in the growing number of initiatives by black
thinkers who have a quite different take on political responsibility in
America. National Minority Politics is a monthly magazine
advancing a program that includes "strong families," "community-based
problem solving," and "compassionate conservatism." It's definitely
worth a look. For information write National Minority Politics, 5757
Westheimer, Suite 3296, Houston, Texas 77057.
- We note that up in the Midwest this group organized itself as the
Catholic Anti-Defamation League. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith (ADL) protested that they had what is tantamount to a copyright
on the term "Anti-Defamation." The Catholics, not wanting to make
trouble, changed their name to Catholic Defense League. Now maybe
they'll hear from the Jewish Defense League, a far-right group
associated with the late Rabbi Meier Kahane. The better and more
accurate solution would be for ADL to change its name to Defamation
League of B'nai B'rith. At least that is more accurate to the extent
that ADL's tactics are represented by The Religious Right: The
Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America, a 204-page diatribe
it issued a few months ago. The book acknowledges its indebtedness to
such disinterested sources of information as Americans United for
Separation of Church and State, People for the American Way, and the
Coalition for Human Dignity (a homosexual lobby). David Cantor, chief
author of the book, admits that he did not contact Pat Robertson and
other targets of the attack. Columnist Don Feder observes, "The ADL went
to the very people who have the most to gain from a credible smear of
the religious right without giving those libeled a chance to respond."
Of course the ADL is sniffing around for anti-Semitism. And sitting
right there is conservative activist Paul Weyrich. On page 97 it is
revealed that in 1981 Weyrich's organization published a pamphlet, "How
to Become an Effective Grass Roots Lobbyist," written by Warren
Richardson who from 1969 to 1973 worked for the Liberty Lobby, "an anti-
Semitic organization." Feder comments: "In other words, to tar Weyrich,
it uses a brochure produced thirteen years ago by a man who had worked
for another organization eight years earlier. The ADL, please
understand, is fighting bigotry when it employs McCarthyite tactics."
And of course Pat Robertson, despite his vigorous support for Israel, is
suspected of anti-Semitism. Feder writes, "Pat Robertson must be an
entirely new breed of anti-Semite-an anti-Semite who invites an orthodox
rabbi to address his conventions, has a legal action arm (the American
Center for Law and Justice) that filed an amicus brief in support of
Hasidic Jews (the Kiryas Joel case), and employs a Jew as his
chief lobbyist. . . . Here is an anti-Semitism so subtle and insidious
that it actually feigns affection for Jews." It may be too early to say
that the ADL's defamation of politically active conservative Christians
has backfired. But it is noteworthy that Feder is only one of many
Jewish voices raised in protest against the book. The ploy of claiming
that your political opponents are controlled by "religious extremists"
puts you in the difficult position of defining terms in a way that makes
clear you are not attacking people for being Christian and conservative,
which, as it happens, is what most Americans are.
- The indefatigible Paul Kurtz has launched another volume from his
Prometheus Books, Living Without Religion: Eupraxophy. Kurtz is
the nation's foremost self-identified secular humanist, editor of Free
Inquiry magazine, and chairman of the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). The last brings to
mind Chesterton's mot about the problem with those who don't believe in
God. The new name for the belief system that Kurtz insists is not a
religion is, of course, from the Greek eu (good) and
praxis (practice). For some reason we doubt that "eupraxophy" is
going to catch on. The press release accompanying the book refers to his
proposal, in what may or may not be a typo, as "expraxophy." As in exit,
quickly.
- The woman from the network calls and wants to know whether I would
tape an interview on two religious groups, Jehovah's Witnesses and
Scientology. She had heard me say on another network that religion was
scandalously under-reported by the news media, and she emphatically
agreed. "Journalists don't realize how much religion has to do with the
real world," she opined. She knew how to get to me. But why Jehovah's
Witnesses and Scientology, I asked. The answer: Yesterday it was
reported that Michael Jackson and Lisa-Marie Presley, daughter of the
revenant, got married, the one a Jehovah's Witness and the other a
Scientologist. "Viewers would like to know how their religious beliefs
might affect their marriage." Take this as further evidence in support
of the claim that the news media are becoming more attentive to the
importance of religion to "the real world."
- More and more of these stories are coming in. Mr. S. of Baton
Rouge writes that it is putting a serious strain on their marriage.
Apparently Mrs. S. routinely gets to the mailbox first and immediately
settles down with the new issue for as long as five or six hours. Even
more irritating to Mr. S. is his wife's habit of chuckling or making
comments to herself while she is reading the issue, and he hasn't the
foggiest notion of what's so interesting. Mrs. L. of Chicago has it
worse. It seems that Mr. L. not only grabs the issue for himself but he
then wants to discuss items in the issue with Mrs. L. when he knows
perfectly well she hasn't had a chance to read them. "Once a month, at
least for a few hours," Mrs. L. writes, "he is able to gloat that he
knows more than I do." The editors are distressed by stories such as the
above, and we believe we have a solution. Perhaps these marriages can be
saved by getting two copies each month. To give your spouse his or her
own subscription, write First Things Marriage Savers, 156 Fifth Ave.,
Suite 400, New York, NY 10010, and enclose a check for $20, which is $9
off the regular subscription price. Others talk about the alarming
divorce rate. First Things is doing something about it.