Invoke nothing
Everyone’s been talking about Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. My initial response was something like, “Ugh — fine. I’ve got to pick my battles.” It’s troubling, but there are bigger problems out there, even if we just limit ourselves to church-state separation issues, and I can’t get that riled up about this one. To be honest, it sounds to me like a little bit of gloating (remember how the Saddleback debate looked like a giveaway to McCain?) as well as a visible yet ultimately meaningless concession to the Christian Right. It doesn’t set any policy, just allows them to feel a little special. Not so bad.
My real issue is with the idea of an inaugural invocation in the first place. I agree that there’s plenty to be upset about regarding Rick Warren himself, but as has also been pointed out before, this “tradition” didn’t start until 1937 and isn’t an essential part of the inauguration. It’s pretty clearly an inclusion of specific religious statements and viewpoints into state functions, which is supposed to be forbidden. It seems like the only reason we still use it is that, once FDR did it (three times in a row), Truman didn’t look like he was some kind of a godless heathen, and naturally Eisenhower had to show he loved God too, and so on and so forth.
It’s just like the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. People act like there’s something magical about that set of words, but don’t seem to realize they weren’t even written until the 1890s (by a Socialist! gasp!) and that God wasn’t mentioned in it until the 1950s. Some tradition!
The appeal to tradition is a blatantly fallacious argument. If “we’ve always done it” was a good enough reason to do something and never change, we would still be living in caves and gnawing on hunks of raw meat. Worse, proponents of religion in public ceremony aren’t even applying this fallacy well! The older tradition is not to have an invocation, not to mention God in the pledge. (The even older tradition is not to have a pledge at all… or not to have an inauguration at all. Why not go back to the Articles of Confederation, or even to being a British colony? Perhaps we should all pack up and leave the country to whatever Native Americans are left, since the older tradition is for this continent to be undiscovered by Europeans! Or maybe you’d rather the tribes go really old-school and find their way back across the Bering Strait?)
What we ought to do is not to look at what is superficially older (stopping at whatever arbitrary point in time we don’t care to look beyond), but to look at what course of action is best. An inaugural invocation is certainly against the spirit of the First Amendment, and though I’m no lawyer, I think there’s a good argument to be made that it’s against the letter of the text as well. “Invoking” any particular God or gods as part of an official swearing of oaths “[respects] an establishment of religion” unless they have a representative from every existent belief system including atheism, which strikes me as rather difficult as well as time-consuming. It’s better to invoke nothing and no one but the people of this country and the Constitution. Unfortunately, the groupthink of the democratic process is not extremely logical or detail-oriented. As long as people care whether candidates share their religious beliefs, the electoral process is not going to change this practice, and unless Michael Newdow et al. are sucessful in their suit, the judicial branch won’t be much help either.
Separation of church and politics
A week ago, a group of ministers supported by the Alliance Defense Fund (which, by the way, is every bit as idiotic as the vagueness of its name would imply) made political endorsements in their sermons as part of the “Pulpit Initiative”. This is something they’re not allowed to do under the regulations that come with their tax-exempt status. The goal is to create a test case with the standing to challenge the constitutionality of that regulation.
I should say, first of all, that they have a legitimate argument, and I don’t believe the lawyers involved should be punished. Yes, the lawyers told their clients to break the law, but with standing requirements what they are, this kind of thing is common in the US when people want to challenge laws. That’s maybe unfortunate, but as long as the lawyers made very clear to these pastors what it was they were getting themselves into, I have no ethical complaint against them.
That said, it’s pretty clear to me that there is no ground for their suit. Churches are in no way required to have tax exempt status. It would actually be a constitutional violation to single them out for it, as it would be government sponsorship of religious activities. The law ignores whether a given organization is religious. What it does pay attention to is whether it’s a non-profit. Non-profits, because society has decided they are worth encouraging, are given tax-exempt status, and donations to them are tax-deductible.
Non-profits in general, not just churches, are required to live by certain regulations if they want tax-exempt status. One of these is a lack of overt campaign activities and endorsements. (They’re allowed to talk about specific political issues, advocate for a bill, and a variety of other related things.) The main reason for this is that making an organization tax-exempt costs the government money, and the country has decided it doesn’t want to subsidize these activities. Also, allowing this would create a loophole a mile wide in campaign finance reform laws. (And any attempt to add the regulations necessary to prevent that would subject churches to a huge amount of additional regulation.)
So what about free speech? Don’t they have a right to make political endorsements? The individuals do, and the clergy are free to engage in politics in their own time. The organizations also do, but they don’t have a right to tax-exempt status. When the government gives favors, it can attach strings. There are limits of course, but this one is reasonable.
The real point here is a larger one. When religious organizations get favors from the government, they get entangled with the government. The separation of church and state is as much about protecting the church from the state as it is the reverse. As soon as a religious organization becomes accustomed to government favors of some kind, it loses its independence. The government can attach conditions to these favors that it would never be able to impose on the churches directly. Even without the formal conditions, the religious groups have to be wary of doing politically unpopular things, since part of the backlash could be the removal of those favors. If you think it’s important that government not dictate limitations on religious practices, then you should also think it’s important the religious groups get no special favors. And those religious organizations that are so unhappy about the endorsement rules should think twice about demanding a faith-based initiative that allows the government to directly fund may of their activities.
Separation of faith and politics
The joint appearance of McCain and Obama this weekend at the Saddleback Church was fascinating to watch. Both candidates said several interesting things, some of which might well be the topic of future posts. In the end, I felt both candidates did very well, but this was McCain’s audience. This was a religious right crowd. My impression was that Obama probably won respect for his views that many in the audience hadn’t felt before, but that he didn’t actually change any minds. No matter how honest, real, and candid you seem, you just won’t beat the guy who can say he will be a pro-life president.
Rick Warren, though, raised one of the more important subtexts of the night in his introduction. He said, “I believe in the separation of church and state, but not in the separation of faith and politics.” Of course, the whole evening was premised on this belief. It was meant to be a discussion of issues and ideas that were important to evangelicals, which would make no sense as a concept if you didn’t believe that something about being an evangelical Christian changed the way you looked at politics.
It’s also clear that in history, in the current election, and in the foreseeable future, faith and politics have never been and will not be wholly separate from each other. I do, however, believe that a true separation of church and state depends deeply on the separation of faith and politics.
The reason I believe this is that the line between imposing a religious belief and simply passing a normal law is so totally unclear. A law against murder, for example, is clearly fine. A law requiring all businesses to be closed on Sundays is clearly not. Why? Well, because the latter is clearly trying to mandate observance of a religious holiday, while the former is serving a legitimate societal goal. That explanation, though, is much less simple than it sounds. The ban against murder is also a (very prominent) religious tenet. Having businesses close on Sundays could also serve some legitimate societal purpose — say, reducing deaths from traffic accidents or oil consumption. Admittedly, these societal purposes are a bit of a stretch, but other obviously non-religious laws have equally bad justification behind them.
Now the dichotomy above uses examples where common sense clearly delineates the correct conclusion as to whether church-state separation is being violated. There are, however, a lot of much less clear examples. Refusing to recognize gay marriage is a good one. The strong pushback against gay marriage comes almost entirely from the religious right, and the arguments used almost all have strong religious undertones. (Often God is never mentioned, but things like the “sanctity” of marriage are, treating the whole thing as an implicitly religious issue.) This is obviously an attempt to impose religious beliefs on the country as a whole. Nevertheless, the lack of gay marriage isn’t a new thing pushed by the religious right. It’s been the case since the founding of the republic (well, earlier, really). It wasn’t remotely controversial until recently. It was just taken as a given, and wasn’t really thought of as a religious belief being codified so much as just the obvious way things were. The reasons here are complicated, but the main thing to take away from it is that religious beliefs, moral beliefs, and cultural practices are so closely intertwined as to be at times almost indistinguishable.
Politicians, of course, have figured out this formulation. They say things like “I don’t legislate my religious beliefs, but my legislative positions are informed by my morality, and my morality is informed by my religion.” This has become an acceptable formulation. It’s a good sign that Rick Warren had to claim a belief in the separation of church and state. There’s no doubt that he frequently takes positions that conflict with most interpretations of the principle, but he has to endorse it in concept because it has been deeply ingrained in the American psyche as one of the accepted truths of good policy. The alternative formulations, however, allow politicians to endorse undermining the separation of church and state in all but the most technical senses without facing the immediate skepticism that would come from a more direct statement of their beliefs. Religious beliefs should not be imposed on others through law. Saying that you’re just making sure politicians you vote for all agree with the key teachings of your religion and believe laws should be made based on those beliefs is fundamentally trying to impose those beliefs.
This creates an awful situation for any court. How are they supposed to respond to a law that attempts to promote morality rather than religion explicitly, but relies on a belief about morality that is (at least for most supporters) derived from a religious belief? One option is to look at whether furthering the religion is the primary goal and effect of the law. That, however, depends on defining what is meant by “the religion”. A law banning gay marriage is not meant to make more people Christian, and the belief is not even held uniquely by a single religion. It is, however, a belief about personal behavior that is held for religious reasons and is being imposed on others. Does it not forward the religion to force other people to live by its teachings? Wouldn’t that interpretation also outlaw laws against murder, though, if most of their supporters cited religious teachings as part of their argument for the law? There are other ways of testing constitutionality, such as looking for an appearance of government endorsement of the religion. Most of these fall to the same type of problem, though. Does endorsing the idea that gay relationships are immoral count as endorsing a religious belief?
I think we need to create a taboo in our politics against using religious arguments, and against organized religion taking an active role in politics. Only then can we feel assured that the laws we pass are truly not attempting to impose religious teachings on others. If a law truly isn’t being passed in order to force religious practices on nonbelievers, then it can be supported with reason and logical argumentation that’s convincing to everyone. It can be passed without religious groups mobilizing to support it. That’s the difference between murder and Sunday holidays. You can make arguments that are plausible for either, both on religious and secular grounds, but you can only make a truly good secular argument for murder. We can’t ask courts to determine exactly what is a “good” argument for a law. That puts them too much in the position of simply picking what they feel is good policy. This needs to happen in the political arena, and the only way we can do so is by reacting negatively to religious argumentation.
I do take some solace in the fact that this does not need to be perfect. Unlike a lot of constitutional principles, if a little bit of religious argumentation gets by from time to time, we’ll all be fine. We do, however, need to limit it. We need to make sure that religion stays out of politics. (I should say that this is already true in many religious groups. A lot of religious leaders who would face criticism from their congregations if they gave a political sermon.) We can’t expect this of candidates. McCain and Obama, like any other politician, are limited by the political necessities of the time, and as long as there are large, politically active, religious groups, politicians will seek their vote. This criticism of the activity needs to come from outside politics. It also needs to be consistent. Democrats are generally better at keeping faith and politics separate, but have always made an exception for black churches. This can’t be used as a tool for criticizing religious activism you don’t like — it has to apply to everybody.
Of Catholics and crackers
PZ Myers recently called on atheists to steal communion wafers from Catholic churches so that they can be descrated/abused/whatever. This is the result of an incident in Florida where a college student stole one and got in trouble for it. Now, I consider myself an atheist and have a lot of sympathy for PZ’s general position, but this request is idiotic.
If you want to convince people that religion is irrational and they should question the beliefs they were raised with, the first thing you have to do is convince people that it’s not necessary to be religious to be a good person. If people think atheists are evil, they won’t ever give the message a chance. This is counterproductive in the extreme. Ames at Submitted to Candid World has an excellent post on this.
I think there’s a larger point here. Yes, the reactions to the original wafer-stealing were more extreme than can possibly be justified, and it’s tragic when people start getting death threats for things they have every right to do. That said, taking the wafer is wrong. It’s offensive and disrespectful on several different levels.
I first of all think it’s important to have respect for religious beliefs, even if they’re dumb and irrational. In a society that is pluralistic and accepting of various beliefs, there is room for dialogue. People talk about ideas, hear about what others think, and over time the better beliefs tend to win out. This is the rationale for free speech, freedom of religion, and democracy in general. In a society where everyone is hostile and combative towards each other, no dialogue happens. The beliefs that win out are those with the most numerous/powerful supporters. Which situation do you think is better for atheism? It’s not just about the legal rights of free speech. It’s also about the general level of dialogue in society, and actions like this seriously undermine what dialogue exists.
It’s also just offensive because any time a symbol of some faith/group/country is denigrated, it’s offensive. I really don’t think most Catholics, especially in the US, think the wafer really becomes the body of Jesus. I think they just take it as a religious ceremony. Sure, Catholic dogma says it transforms, but Catholic dogma also says the Bible is the literal word of God, which only 23% of US Catholics believe. The thing is, whatever you believe, it’s a religious object. It represents the religion that uses it, and it has meaning to followers of that religion. It has meaning the same way that a US flag has meaning to Americans. (Even those who fight to keep it legal to burn it are generally offended when it’s burnt.) You wouldn’t cover the walls of a synagogue in antisemitic graffiti just because you (correctly) believe that taking all Jewish beliefs literally is irrational.
Think of it this way. Sticking up your middle finger at someone is offensive, but sticking up your pointer finger is just fine. There’s nothing inherent in one finger that makes it more offensive than the other. Noting that believing one to be offensive and the other not is an irrational belief is not reason enough to go outside, stick up your middle finger at someone, and be upset when they’re offended. You know it’s something that they would be bothered by and you did it for no reason other than to bother them. The same goes for stealing the wafer. For whatever irrational reason, lots of people are offended by it. Simple human decency says that if something you consider doing would deeply upset tons of people, and you don’t have some important reason behind doing it, you shouldn’t.
It’s one thing to think that religion is irrational and argue against it. It’s another thing to think that religious people deserve to be harassed because of their beliefs. PZ Myers usually does the former, and I’m all for it, but this is a clear instance of the latter.
What I find at least as upsetting as the post, though, is the comments below it. If you read through the comments you will see several people, Z included, who commented expressing similar reservations. They were called dicks, trolls, and all manner of other names, but were almost never responded to intelligently. For a movement that claims to be based on the willingness to debate logical ideas and rationally defend what they have to say, this whole episode is a pretty embarrassing showing.
Patriotism with a reason
I’ve been thinking about American patriotism, particularly my own. (Blame July 4th.) Americans are obviously very patriotic, especially compared to Europeans, Canadians, and others in what we would think of as similar countries. I don’t believe in blind obedience to one’s country. Maybe “because that’s where I’m from” is a good reason to root for a sports team, and some sort of superficial patriotism can be justified on that ground, but I think deeper patriotism really is irrational without a better reason. There are a lot of things that cause people to be patriotic that I really think are horrible reasons for caring about the US, but I still feel very patriotic, and I’ve been thinking about what exactly makes me feel that way. I would be very interested to hear what other people think of these, or what reasons you have.
First, let me eliminate some things from consideration. There are a lot of good things about the US that aren’t particularly unique. (It’s a democracy, capitalist, has a generally not corrupt government, and so on.) These things are good, but inspire in me more a sense of general satisfaction than real pride. There are also a huge number of admirable historic achievements. These are quite impressive – first modern democracy, moon landing, arguably saving the world in both the second world war and the cold war, etc. I don’t want to downplay these at all. They’re huge. Nevertheless, I’m really interested in what it is about the US as it exists today that makes me proud of my country, and “it did something great a couple decades ago” just doesn’t do it.
That said, there are a couple things (and I could easily be missing some) that I really am proud of. One, overly generalized, is the level of rights given to our citizens. For all the controversy over the Patriot Act and other moves in the opposite direction, the US still has much greater levels of civil liberties (broadly defined) than most places. For example, take the amount of time someone can be held without charges. In the US, it’s 48 hours. In France, it’s 6 days. In Ireland it’s 7. Britain just extended it to 42 days (!!), though there are some extra safeguards after 28 and it’s very controversial. Even with the deep impact of terrorism, the US remains judicious here. (Good analysis here, hat tip to UK Liberty.)
Another good example is freedom of religion. Many modern, liberal democracies still have established religions. I have my problems with the Pledge of Allegiance, and there are plenty of current threats to this, but as it stands the US government is very separate from religious matters. At the same time, the actions that many “secular” governments take around the world (think of things like headscarf bans in France, Germany, and Turkey) would be totally anathema to almost all Americans. This is related to a larger point about social acceptance and a sense in which the government stays out of things in a good way. While France bans headscarves, Britain is having a debate over allowing people to opt into Sharia law. France and Canada use legislation to carefully protect the French language. Other countries seem to be having a lot of difficulty with how to deal with this whole category of issues, while the US seems to have, for the most part, figured it out. General laws and regulations apply to everyone, regardless of culture/religion, and the government generally stays out and lets assimilation occur on its own, gradually, like it should.
Probably the most important thing to me in this category is free speech and political participation. The US respects a level of free speech unheard of in the rest of the world, where hate speech is routinely banned. (The NYT had an excellent article on this.) Extremist political parties are also frequently outlawed. This seems utterly insane to me, but would surprise almost no one anywhere else in the world. In most modern liberal democracies, there is a belief that there are some basic ground rules and foundational beliefs that you have to accept before engaging in political debate – things like the equality of all people and the support of democracy as a form of governance. It’s not that Americans don’t believe in those things being supremely important. It’s just that we don’t believe the way to deal with those who don’t agree is to silence them. We let them speak and then outvote them. This seems clearly better to me. If those who think these crazy things are a small minority, letting them vote doesn’t hurt. If they’re a majority, it just fails to make any sense. The idea of a democracy governing a country where most are opposed to the rules of governance is self-contradictory.
I’ve also decided that I’m pretty proud of our foreign policy. This is obviously going to be a controversial choice. There is no shortage of stupid American foreign policy. It’s important to remember, though, that after the Cold War the US was left as a superpower unrivaled by any other power on earth. This won’t be the case forever. Europe will unify, and China and India will grow. For the time being, though, the US is really alone in this position. The old “power corrupts” saying isn’t totally wrong. A country with the power the US has will always tend a little towards the pushy side. There will always be unnecessary wars. They’re bad, but if they are wars against tyrannical dictators that then establish (or at least try to establish) democracies in their place, there’s at least a bit of silver lining. If you really think having the US as a global superpower is awful, imagine what would have happened if the USSR had won the Cold War or a rising China supplants the US. Extraordinary rendition would be the least of your concerns. For all the shortcomings, I think the US has been a lot more responsible with it’s power than almost any other country on earth would have been. It’s easy to say “Wouldn’t it be great if it was Sweden that had massive power?”, but that power would instantly transform Sweden into a somewhat different country. Given all the corrupting influences and temptations that power has, I think the US has done a pretty good job remaining a responsible international player whose presence benefits the world.
There’s obviously a ton here. Each thing I mentioned really is worthy of at least a full post on its own. I’m also sure I missed some things. Nevertheless, I think this is a reasonably good start. I’d be curious to see what others think.