Lookit me, Ma: I'm famous!

As more than 2,000 bloggers descended on Austin on Thursday for their third annual Netroots Nation convention, no small part of the myriad panels and discussions will be focused on religion:

The right to practice it in a hostile secular environment, and how liberal bloggers and can use the language of religion to draw God-fearing Americans to a political movement that has, for so long, been looked upon as Godless.

“Some people think that the progressive side of things doesn’t respect religion too much,” said Dan Schultz, known as “Pastor Dan” and host of “Street Prophets,” a diary on the popular national lefty blog DailyKos. “I think that’s really overstated. What I see as much more of a problem are the conservative types who say you can’t be a Christian if you don’t believe in these 15 different things, most of which come right off the GOP playbook.”

And so's Mrs Robinson and The Red Pen and Chuck Freeman, all of whom are quoted in the article.

You know, I tried to steer the reporter Karen Brooks away from that middle paragraph. I don't anyone who's looked in-depth at the place of religion in the public square in the past twenty years who's concluded that the right to practice it is under any serious threat.

As for drawing God-fearing Americans, well: they're already here. If the hippie freaks gathered at the Street Prophets caucus at Netroots Nation don't convince you, consider this: about 80% of Democrats are adherents of one religious tradition or another. That's lower than the self-described affiliations of Republicans, but it's still an overwhelming majority. So who's Godless?

But I've come to expect this lens for any article on the religious Left. It's nice to see somebody taking us seriously for a change, and nice to see some good quotes from friends.

Advantage: us.

Okay, I'm game for a little tennis. Chris Marlin-Warfield responds to my post responding to his post on the curiously low profile of the religious Left.

Chris is not as convinced as I am that the media hide our light under a bushel. After all, he points out, it's not as though people aren't exposed to non-crazy-right-wing religion in their local settings, and if you ask most religious people, they even hold mostly non-insane political beliefs. So why don't people realize that there is such a thing as religion not subservient to the GOP?

Two reasons come to mind. One is purely mechanical: with the retrenchment of the newspaper business, more and more local outlets depend on wire services for content. This leads to a curious situation where the subject of faith and politics is covered almost exclusively in the political part of the paper, with local coverage reserved for pancake breakfasts and community do-gooding. So the national media have a disproportionate influence in how the conversation goes. And as we know, the national media discourse is pretty much broken.

The other reason is more psychological, and stems in part (but only in part) from the dynamic outlined above. That churches, synagogues, temples, etc., participate in food pantries, ecological advocacy, restorative justice programs, and whatnot is indeed a not-conservative agenda when measured against the right wing obsession with abortion and homosexuality. But for the most part, it bounces off many people as being not particularly political, but just what churches do. So, give away food or collect donations for AIDS relief in Africa: that's religion. Issue bellicose statements in defense of a particular vision of family values: that's politics.

The only exception for this for centrist or liberal churches would be marching against the war, but nobody pays attention to anti-war protesters anyway.

Chris concludes with the thought that

What I want to suggest is not that we on the religious left somehow need to build our own media empires, though utilizing alternative media is good, nor that we should concentrate on delivering votes as Pastor Dan suggests in the first comment on his post. What I think we should do, and what I will begin discussing next week, is build the educational infrastructure necessary to successfully produce political theologies on the left in a democratic fashion and work to alter the sort of conversation that appears on the left when religion is discussed.

I actually am not convinced of the wisdom of becoming a partisan GOTV movement, either. That's Fred Clarkson's position, and he's welcome to it. But given the brass knuckles approach to politics espoused by the Religious Right, a hard-edged partisanship might be what it takes to raise a corresponding profile on the left.

Come to think of it, my most recent position is that we don't need to change the "conversation that appears on the left when religion is discussed" so much as we need to drag the religious conversation leftward. That is, I don't see progressive hostility to or misunderstanding of faith as nearly the problem that having a religious discourse with Jim Wallis as its left-most pole is.

That's by no means a slam at Wallis, only to say that he's really a centrist, even a bit right of center on some issues. So if we want to have a vibrant conversation around religion and progressive ideas, we need to engage actual, you know, progressives.

Perhaps that's what Chris means above, and I'm just misunderstanding him. In any case, I look forward to hearing more from him on the subject. Your serve!

World Net Daily, via the Mad Priest:

A Kansas church well-known for its protests at the funerals of fallen American soldiers plans to picket at this week's funeral of former Press Secretary Tony Snow, declaring that Snow is "a very bad monkey" who is "now burning in hell."

"He had a platform, he was given some small talent by his Creator. He was an unfaithful steward, and is now residing in hell," says a schedule on the website of the Westboro Baptist Church.

"Each opportunity he had to faithfully report what the servants at WBC had to tell this country/world, Tony Snow besmirched and vilified the words of God and the people of God. Thereby being a party to the crime of passing laws to make the preaching of the gospel to this adulterous and sinful generation [equals] criminal activity. That is a very bad monkey!"

This illustrates the other reason - beyond the common decency of allowing the decedent's family to plant him in peace - to moderate comments on the dead. You lay down with pigs, and eventually you become aligned with them, if not actually one of.

That's an easy enough principle to apply in the case of somebody like Tony Snow, who didn't really do much evil beyond the ordinary intellectual dishonesty of a right-wing partisan shill. It might be more difficult with somebody like Jesse Helms, who really was a savage bastard in all ways except the interpersonal. Still, it pays to remember that no matter how bad the dead were, there are always worse people still alive, and usually they're the first to throw stones. Westboro Baptist Church: case in point.

...Adding that appropriate criticism, evaluation, etc., is always fair.

There is a serious point to be made about the gun giveaway mentioned below. This is really a case of "folk religion" more than Christianity. Which is to say, this isn't so much a church as a Christian-flavored social club with a chaplain meant to bless the local folk ways, which in this case happen to include big-ass guns.

It's very difficult to tell apart from authentic religion, but it's how we get crap like this or the military processions into the sanctuary praising God for the Clash of Civilizations.

I'm not usually one for apocalyptic statements or for judging other people's faiths. But it certainly seems possible to describe the current state of American religious affairs as a battle between the patriotic folk religion or its commercial, prosperity-gospel variant and more authentic brands of faith. Much of the mischief stems from this conflict, anyway.

Authentic in this case means something like "allowing one's faith to challenge one's values and practices." That's obviously imperfect in that none of us are able to fully know God's mind or walk his ways. But there are some communities that take that seriously, and some who can't quite see the obvious contradictions between proclaiming the Prince of Peace and giving away an assault rifle.

So to an extent the task for progressive (Christian) faith in this nation is to work toward better faith, that is, toward a faith that is better aligned with the traditional teachings of the church. It's important to remember in that regard that most of the adherents of folk Christianity are well-intentioned if misguided people looking for a little help to get through life. The best strategy then is often not to confront but to invite them to a deeper, down-armored faith.

Last night, a copy of the The American Values Report landed in my inbox. It's billed as

a weekly newsletter from the religious affairs team at Obama for America.  You’ll find information on Barack and Michelle, recent values-related news, spotlights on people of faith, and ways to get involved in our campaign.

I'd try to find a way to share it, but it's a .pdf file. As well, it's actually rather unremarkable: nine glossy pages, and the description above tells you pretty much everything you need to know about this week's installment. If you want to know more about the interns helping run the campaign's faith outreach program, this is your source.

Look, I think the Squid Doctor is a dick. Problem is, Bill Donohue is an asshole, and a malicious one at that:

So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.

Oh, and of course, the university president's office has also received lots of mail demanding my immediate ouster (keep in mind, though…Catholics are no threat to anyone at all.) I don't know how much, but since Donohue published the president's email address and not mine, I imagine it's much greater than what I've seen. Those lovely Dark Age fanatics at the Catholic League have started a write-in campaign to start up an inquisition.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon takes  the right stance here:

The problem that I have with the Catholic League isn’t that they’re offended.  To people who believe in the transubstantion of the Eucharist, declaring it “just a cracker” is offensive.  But the majority of the world thinks that the Eucharist is just a cracker.  If that belief, no matter how strongly worded, is worthy of a jihad against someone’s livelihood and even their life,

Tristero says basically the same thing at Hullabaloo, even better:

BTW, some of you may not like what PZ said; I didn't, either, but that is totally besides the point. PZ's remarks were made in direct response to, and within, a poisonous, fearful atmosphere of murderous threat. PZ's post was written in deeply appropriate anger that a bunch of crazy people were manufacturing a totally idiotic fake controversy over respect for the Eucharist, one which escalated into wildly wrong responses by a college that should have known better, and climaxed, at least so far, in the dangerous insanity of a death threat.

And PZ is absolutely right about this: there is much that is downright offensive, if not hypocritically blasphemous, for people who call themselves Catholics to threaten someone with death because they didn't treat the Eucharist in a proper fashion.

...

It is high time for the mainstream not to take the fake controversies over religion ginned up by the right seriously. PZ's college should entirely ignore Donohue. And it is high time that genuinely responsible religious leaders declare as one, clearly and unequivocally, that threatening others with death is an egregious moral outrage that has nothing to do with being a practicing Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or Jew. Indeed, no great religion, or true religious leader, in the 21st century has the right to call for its followers to threaten those who don't believe with murder.

Indeed, true believers are left with the paradox of proving the legitimacy of their belief by defending somebody who wouldn't validate it on a bet or a dare. The alternative, of course, is to allow religious discourse to sink into straightforward tribal barbarism, where the strong dominate the weak for no better reason than that they can.

Eff that. Follow the Pharyngula link above and find out how you can send a letter of support to Prof. Myers' boss. As Tristero says, it's the Christian (Muslim, Jewish...) thing to do.

And for the record, here's how a real Catholic acts. Christianity - true Christianity - is a religion of the strong standing with the weak, even at great cost to themselves. Bully boys and bashers need not apply.

Update: my letter below the fold.

Like Shuck and Jive, I welcome the new blog Rev's Rumbles:

A warning to conservatives: I tend to be far to the left both theologically and politically. If that annoys you, I invite you to exit my blog right now, and don't let the door hit you in the a-- on the way out! Please don't bore me and what few readers I may have with comments like, "If you don't believe XXX you're not a real Christian," or "How can any real American believe that??? I assure you, I am a real follower of Jesus and I am a real American who believes in the Constitution, contrary to the Bush-McCain crowd who trample that wonderful document underfoot.

Fun, indeed. Plus he's got a nifty quote from Teddy Roosevelt as his motto: "Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong." I dig it.

More important, though, is that the reverend in question promises to be authentic and, yes, forceful in his opinions. I've always been of the opinion that trying to be "Christlike" in conflict often ends up simply making the aggression passive rather than active. It's better to be open about things. Nobody agrees with me. Except Rev. Fred, apparently.

This is good:

A bipartisan group of 200 former government officials, retired generals and religious leaders plans to issue a statement on Wednesday calling for a presidential order to outlaw some interrogation and detention practices used by the Bush administration over the last six years.

The executive order they seek would commit the government to using only interrogation methods that the United States would find acceptable if used by another country against American soldiers or civilians.

It would also outlaw secret detentions, used since 2001 by the Central Intelligence Agency, and prohibit the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture or cruel treatment. The C.I.A. has allowed terrorism suspects to be taken to such countries.

Spencer Ackerman has more details on the signers:

Among the signatories: Bush Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and State Dept. counsel William Taft IV (!); Reagan Secretary of State George Schultz; Clinton Secretaries of State Christopher and Albright; Clinton national-security adviser Tony Lake; Carter/Clinton Secretaries of Defense Brown, Perry and Cohen; and about 200 more. But would torture victim John McCain enact such an executive order if elected?

Spencer also mentions that the letter was "jointly issued by National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Evangelicals for Human Rights, and the Center for Victims of Torture."

Among the religious representatives: Joel C. Hunter and David Gushee, both of whom penned editorials with retired military officers opposing detainee abuse, and the UCC's John Thomas. Of course, with more than 200 signers, there are bound to be a few other names you will recognize on the list.

The span from Joel Hunter to John Thomas ought to indicate just how broad the consensus is when it comes to torture. Of course it's wrong, any religious leader with half a brain understands that.

While I'm pleased that a coalition is opposing torture, I'm intrigued by the coalition itself. Groups like this, containing secular and religious components, are likely to become a staple of politics over the next few years. There is broad agreement on any number of issues out there - and also general consensus that national political leaders aren't doing doodly-squat. That leaves it up to religious leaders to articulate the values, and policy types to suggest the solutions.

In theory, it ought to work pretty well. In practice, I suspect it will depend largely on the performance of a third leg. Which is to say, how well citizens do at demanding that their elected representatives get off their fat asses and do their job.

Marc D. Stern offered up a non-stop moronathon in yesterday's LATimes:

Religious liberty claims rarely, if ever, have prevailed in the face of complaints about racial discrimination. Conflicts about the rights of gays and those of religious believers demonstrate that these are not hypothetical fears. Consider the following:

• A San Diego County fertility doctor was sued for refusing to perform artificial insemination for one partner of a lesbian couple for religious reasons. The doctor referred the patient to a colleague, promised there would be no extra cost and offered to care for her during her subsequent pregnancy. The case is now before the California Supreme Court, and justices seemed hostile to the doctor's defense during oral arguments last month.
• Catholic Charities in Boston and San Francisco ended adoption services altogether rather than be compelled by anti-discrimination laws to place children with same-sex couples. In the Boston case, Catholic Charities was prepared to refer same-sex couples seeking to adopt to other providers, but that was not sufficient.
• A Lutheran school in Riverside County was sued in 2005 under California's Unruh Act (which forbids discrimination by businesses) for expelling two students who allegedly were having a lesbian relationship, in contravention of the religious views of the school. The case was thrown out in Superior Court in January, but the students have appealed.
• Public school officials in Poway, Calif., so far have successfully barred students from wearing T-shirts that register their opposition to homosexuality on campus. One lawsuit made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court before being dismissed (as moot, because the students had graduated), but another federal lawsuit is pending.

This is nothing but fear-mongering. You've got two cases where institutions or individuals are asked to treat all their clients equally, one case that Stern's side won, and one case where schools exercised their right to limit free speech. They can do that with anti-war t-shirts, too.

It is simply a canard that equal opportunity when it comes to marriage will somehow place an undue burden on religious practice. Some believers - some of them - will have accept that their beliefs are not shared by all people and that the government does not owe those beliefs deference in setting public policy. And...well, that's really it.

Removing social and legal protections for discrimination is not the same as burdening belief. It's only taking away an undue advantage. You'd think that conservatives would understand that if their moral positions are worth respect, they ought to be able to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

You'd think wrong, apparently.

Stern and the people he represents are too scared of what might happen if their beliefs were not given preferential treatment by the government. They fear - rightly - that without protection, society might move on beyond them. And so they resort to whining and moaning about how equality is the same as oppression.

Well, tough. They used their power for decades, if not centuries, to harass, marginalize, even institutionalize or murder gays and lesbians. Now the situation has changed, and people of the same gender have the opportunity to call the shots. It may not feel fair to Stern or Daddy Dobson or any of the other Neanderthals, but it's the same rules they've played by, and they lost, fair and square. Too bad.

Update I: Look, obviously same-sex marriage is going to change the landscape, and it might be a rough adjustment. But what nobody ever seems able to explain is why exactly it is that certain prejudices should be privileged and others not. After all, there are plenty of white supremacists who practice an explicitly racist religion. Should we then defer to their beliefs? And where exactly should the line be drawn? Could a ambulance driver refuse to carry a lesbian couple to the hospital? A doctor refuse to treat a gay man on the operating table? Somehow, we're supposed to accept capital-R religion as incontrovertible, without thinking through what that means.

Update II: And just in case you're wondering what kind of savage perverts are forcing their debased way of life on the rest of us:

Via Gil, and I ain't buying it either.

Going back and forth with a friend this morning about the dangers of being prophetic in today's political environment, especially prophetic in the African-American tradition. It's definitely a problem when faithful people rock the boat a little too much. If you ask crazy questions about the role of class or race in letting an American city drown, for example, you're liable to get marginalized or labeled a troublemaker.

But in the midst of the conversation, it occurred to me just how out of whack the public discourse about faith and politics is these days. We spend so much time protecting the easily offended "people of faith" that we can't have a real dialogue about some things. The discourse is structured to minister to the perceived slights and offenses of particular religious demographics that actually turn out to be a small slice of the population. But the more we pay attention to them the more they nurse their grievances, until the conversation is severely distorted. Just like it is today.

Anyway, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of people who can't have their faith challenged or stretched in any way, tired of having to talk about how offended group X or Y supposedly is, tired of the whole thing.

I'm especially tired of Christians whining about getting screwed because people don't agree with their positions on abortion or teh gay or prayer in school. Whatever happened to Christian sacrifice?

Can we please talk about things that matter, like race or class or why we've got a presidential candidate promising 100 years of war and torture?

Please?

It's not usually worth scolding local columnists, but this just seems too damn convenient for words:

After a 25-year love affair between religion and politics, who would've thought it would come to this? In Election 2008, to the surprise of many pundits, religious leaders and politicians appear to be going their separate ways.


Frankly, it's about time. America has too many brands of spiritual beliefs for religion to play a leading role in its politics.


This intertwining of the two was never a match made in heaven. As marriages of convenience go, however, it was a beauty.


From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, religious conservatives have been able to influence national elections in their and the Republicans' favor, while at the same time forcing the Democratic Party to reassess its core values and change the way it attracts voters.

...

I say good riddance to this failing marriage and also to pastors who preach hatred and bigotry, whether it's the Rev. Jeremiah Wright invoking God's damnation on America or the Rev. John Hagee dredging up the old "whore of Babylon" moniker for the Catholic Church.

Isn't that nice? Digby likes to talk about how once Democrats take full control of the government, we'll hear a sudden rush of calls for "civility" and "putting all that nasty partisanship behind us." I'm inclined to think this is thread from the same reel. We're going to be treated to eight years of sanctimonious lectures about the evils of mixing faith and politics, and never you mind the differences between a hateful toad like John Hagee and a tough, occasionally over-the-top advocate for justice like Jeremiah Wright.

To which somebody will no doubt respond in the comments, "But there is no difference!"

And to which I will respond, "People, please! Do the analysis of the power differential before you make half-assed statements!"

Goes for local columnists, too.

It's not often that I say such a thing, but Digby's just plain wrong here. Not about how scary it is to have a true creep with a hard-on for the apocalypse like Hagee messing around in our Middle East policy. It is scary, and any responsible politician or interest group would thoroughly distance themselves from him.

But paradoxically, you can't marginalize bad ideas without entertaining them. I keep dredging up John Rawls' dictum that citizens in a democracy owe to one another good reasons for their positions, but it does apply. It's no accident that Hagee comes from a group previously marginalized in political discourse; because they were allowed to fester in peace without challenge from stronger, more sensible people, they developed unhealthy perspectives under the influence of unhealthy leaders. As it's said, "sunshine is the best disinfectant."

That will require secular folks to put up with and engage ideas they consider weird, boring, or even abhorrent. But what's the alternative? Locking certain people out of the polity, which hardly seems democratic. Letting them get stronger under the rocks without turning them over. Refusing to confront bad ideas and making them better.

I know that calls upon people to wade into conversations they're not familiar with or uncomfortable with, but that's what it takes. And if I may say so, it's why I find it so frustrating that progressive faith ideas get ignored in the wider political discourse. It's like a unilateral disarmament in the battle of ideas. Liberal believers are here, they want to help, there's no reason to ignore them.

One more thing: engaging religious thought does not necessarily lead to the roadblock of absolute principals. What's required in religiously-tinged discourse is to acknowledge others' beliefs as sincerely held, even if you disagree with them, and to acknowledge legitimate interests, where they exist. Part of the problem with positions like Hagee's is that they don't serve anyone's interest in the here-and-now, other than the Likudniks and worse. Hagee should have to answer for that, but of course he can't if his ideas are disallowed out of hand.