Category Archives: Random Blogging

When Did the Conversation Change?

I had breakfast the other day with a good friend who also happens to be an Evangelical Christian pastor. I know that in this era of labels and stereotypes, that descriptor suggests a rigid literalist convinced of his own righteousness, selective in his reading of biblical injunctions and focused on issues like pornography and gay marriage. My friend is a wonderful human being who most emphatically does not fit that picture.

Not surprisingly, our conversation turned to the long lines of self-professed Christians who had just turned out for “Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day,” and we regretfully noted the absence of similar numbers offering to volunteer at area homeless shelters or food pantries. (Eating a chicken sandwich to demonstrate support for homophobia wasn’t my friend’s preferred form of Christian witness.)

As we were talking about the so-called “culture warriors,” and their evident lack of concern for the less fortunate, it occurred to me that callousness isn’t just a phenomenon of self-righteous “religious” figures.  Political discourse around these issues has also changed rather dramatically during my lifetime.

Perhaps my memory is faulty, but when I first became politically active, policy disputes tended to focus on the merits of solutions to agreed-upon problems. Republicans and Democrats alike agreed, for example, that there is a social obligation to address the issue of poverty. The arguments centered on methods to ameliorate the problem–whether particular government programs were effective, whether they had unintended economic or social consequences or were similarly flawed.  I don’t recall anyone saying “Who cares about poor people? They aren’t worthy of our efforts or attention. They’re poor because they’re lazy, or lack ‘middle class values’ or because they’re morally defective.”

Today, we do hear variants of that message.

It isn’t just that “actions speak louder than words,” although there is plenty of that. I hardly need to point out that legislators around the country are competing to see who can offer the most mean-spritited measures–efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and deny thousands of poor women access to breast cancer screenings, efforts to cut food stamps for poor children while protecting obscene subsidies for oil companies, refusal to create health insurance exchanges that would make insurance affordable for those who cannot get it now, and literally hundreds of other proposals that make clear their lack of concern for “the least of us.”

Verbal contempt for the poor has also become an accepted part of political rhetoric.

These days, when people like my friend express compassion and concern for marginalized or impoverished people, the response is frequently hostile and dismissive. The compassionate are mocked as “bleeding heart liberals,” too naive to recognize the lesser value of people who are a “drag on the economy.”

I don’t know when the conversation changed from “what should be done?” to “why bother with losers?” I don’t know when “good Christians” decided to ignore “I am my brothers’ keeper” in favor of “I’ve got mine and I’m keeping it.”

I don’t know when “religion” meant judging your neighbor rather than helping him, but the change might explain why fewer young people are identifying with organized religion these days.

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Quality of Life

Take a break from the battle over chicken sandwiches (and no, people refusing to eat at a fast-food outlet are not attacking the company’s right to free speech–they are exercising their own. Only government can violate the First Amendment!) Read the morning Star if you must (it won’t take long–without reporters, there isn’t much news), but avoid the embarrassing letters to the editor. (Yesterday, two letter-writers insisted that separation of church and state isn’t in the Constitution because, you see, the actual words aren’t there…). Turn off the TV ads for candidates promising to deliver public services with fewer tax dollars.

Instead, read this. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all stopped squabbling, and judging each other and generally acting like spoiled children? What if we actually came together to grow the kind of city that Len Farber is describing?

Maybe if we improved our municipal quality of life, we wouldn’t be so cranky.

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Defining Our Terms

On Mondays, I receive an emailed essay called Sightings from Martin Marty, the eminent University of Chicago religion scholar who distributes his observations and those of others studying or teaching at the University’s Divinity School. This morning, he wrote about a recent article from the Economist on Jews and Israel.

The general discussion was interesting, but the following paragraph struck me:

The editors see reactionary Orthdoxies still winning over moderate movements. No surprise here. In the six-year five-fat-volume study of militant fundamentalisms I co-directed (with R. Scott Appleby) for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,we found everywhere, in all religions, that it was not conservatism that was growing but extremism based less in history-based traditions but in fear, reaction, and aggression. As I read the Economist and other such literature I think of an observation by Harold Isaacs which we paraphrased as we looked at Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Christian and other militancies: “Around the world there is a massive convulsive ingathering of peoples into their separatenesses and over-againstnesses to protect their pride and power and place from the real or presumed threat of others who are doing the same.

I think that’s a perceptive observation, and it applies to more than religious identity.

In America, in our zeal to label rather than understand, we have seen contemporary radicalism confused with genuine conservatism. We have failed to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism. And we have seen “We the People” redefined to exclude “others”–immigrants, GLBT folks, Muslims, “elitists,” even Southerners.  We seem to be growing a variety of fundamentalisms.

Fear, reaction and aggression, leading to extremism and an “us versus them” worldview. Sort of sums up contemporary politics, doesn’t it?

This impulse to label and reject those who do not share our identity may be understandable, but it is deeply corrosive, and it distracts us from the discussions we need to conduct. Distinguishing between mainstream conservatism and liberalism and their extremist manifestations–accurately defining our terms–might be a first step back toward sanity.

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The Art of the Dog Whistle

Poor Mitt Romney. He’s wooden and inauthentic on the campaign trail, and yesterday, his attempt at a ‘dog whistle’ to those uncomfortable with Obama’s “otherness” simply betrayed his very curious lack of self-awareness.

A ‘dog whistle,’ for those unfamiliar with the phrase, is use of language and/or allusions that send a message to a targeted constituency without communicating that message to the public at large. George W. Bush was a master at it: he would use biblical phrases that were familiar and meaningful to evangelical Christians but unfamiliar to most of us to send a signal that he was one of them–without alerting anyone who might have a problem with so explicit a declaration of faith.

In an interview with Larry Kudlow yesterday, Mitt “went there” by opining that Obama’s beliefs are “foreign to American experience.”

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. This might work if you were one of the dramatically declining number of Americans living the life of Opie in Mayberry, but in case you hadn’t noticed, your beliefs and experiences aren’t exactly part and parcel of the “American experience”–whatever that means these days.

Very few Americans are married to someone who drives “a couple of Cadillacs.” Fewer still claim a tax deduction of 77,000 for upkeep of their “dressage” Olympic horse, or install car elevators in one of their multiple homes.

Your devotion to your church probably does reflect American religiosity, but most denominations don’t share a belief that Jesus visited the continental U.S. after he rose from the dead, or that his visit and further instructions were inscribed on gold plates that were subsequently discovered buried in Palmyra, New York.

Let’s face it: neither you nor President Obama are typical Americans. Obama is a member of a racial minority; you are a member of a religious minority. You grew up privileged, he spent a good part of his childhood abroad.  In both cases, your experiences have shaped who you are. In neither case have your atypical backgrounds made you “foreign” to the American experience. Both of you are part of the increasingly diverse fabric of this country.

Dog whistles only work when you are clearly a member of the group you are signaling–and the other guy just as clearly isn’t.

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Southern Electioneering

The other day, I mentioned how few bumper stickers I’ve seen this election season. That observation has held as we have driven south, through Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.

As every academic knows, you can’t draw valid conclusions from an inadequate sample. But a couple of the things I have seen are consistent with a theory–espoused by several pundits and even by John Boehner–that this election is all about Obama. (Boehner, you may recall, was asked by a voter for a reason to like Mitt Romney. Boehner basically responded that it wasn’t’ necessary to like Romney–it was enough to loathe Obama.)

On our drive, we’ve seen signs for a Congressional candidate promising to “Stop Obama Now.” And we’ve seen a couple of “NoBama” bumper stickers. That’s it. Not a single pro-Romney sign or sticker, and very few pro-Obama ones.

To some extent, of course, every election featuring an incumbent is a referendum on that incumbent, but in this election, that truism is super-charged by the incumbent’s complexion. I was stunned by the intense hatred of Obama that emerged the day after the election–well before he was inaugurated, before he had done anything. The emergence of the “birthers,” the crazies who insist he was really born in Kenya, that he’s really a Muslim (with a radical Christian pastor!)–all efforts to avoid using the “n” word–are hard to miss. But it isn’t only the obvious racists. There are a lot of people who are simply uncomfortable with a black President.

Is it possible to simply disagree with Obama’s policy choices? Of course. Will many people vote for Romney because they are good Republicans, because they don’t like the direction the President wants to take the country? Of course. To suggest that all or even most opposition to the President is racist would be ridiculous–just as denying the substantial racism that does exist would be ridiculous.

One way or the other, the “referendum effect” will be particularly potent this year, because as John Boehner conceded, it’s hard to actually like Mitt Romney.

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