Well let's see. The sheriff of Polk County declares that anyone on his arrest list better not show up in a hurricane shelter, 'cause that person's gonna be hauled off to jail; so we can presume that minor offenders will die in flooded homes rather than seek shelter. Meanwhile, the sheriff's men, needed in this violent storm, will be going from face to face for a match with wanted posters, and then, presumably, manning a makeshift jailhouse in the shelter basement, or hauling prisoners on flooded roads, or just shooting people who try to swim away. Meanwhile the storm rages on. This effort will be greeted by evangelicals as the model of law, order, and God's Work. You watch.
3
It's good you're a religious journalist who advocates policies that stomp on peoples' lives. Bless you.
5
Far too many humans give humankind a bad name;
far too many religious people give religion a bad name;
far too many atheistic people give atheism a bad name.
The most common element in the universe isn't Hydrogen, it's Ignorance.
Apparently Cromartie tried to shed light and not obfuscate or take advantage of people.
Some litmus tests for anyone who takes a leadership or other community role:
1. Do they bring out the best in people as individuals and as a group?
2. Of whom, of what and how are they taking advantage, if any? Apply those questions to Hitler, Falwell, Pence, Clinton, Gandhi, MLK, your selfish neighbor and your kind neighbor and see the differences.
far too many religious people give religion a bad name;
far too many atheistic people give atheism a bad name.
The most common element in the universe isn't Hydrogen, it's Ignorance.
Apparently Cromartie tried to shed light and not obfuscate or take advantage of people.
Some litmus tests for anyone who takes a leadership or other community role:
1. Do they bring out the best in people as individuals and as a group?
2. Of whom, of what and how are they taking advantage, if any? Apply those questions to Hitler, Falwell, Pence, Clinton, Gandhi, MLK, your selfish neighbor and your kind neighbor and see the differences.
Amen.
1
Seems some Christians "know" Jesus for the radical
that he was. A man, a strict Hippy, who would have despised designer churches, the Prophets of Profit. Cromartie seems closer to the real thing, a risk taker, unafraid of opposing opinions, willing to argue without self-righteousness. Guess
he was, o my, an intellectual.
that he was. A man, a strict Hippy, who would have despised designer churches, the Prophets of Profit. Cromartie seems closer to the real thing, a risk taker, unafraid of opposing opinions, willing to argue without self-righteousness. Guess
he was, o my, an intellectual.
1
The late Mr. Cromartie and those like him are the source of much of the social turmoil that today is dividing our society. One of the root causes is the ongoing crusade by ideologues, including Messrs Cromartie and Douthat, who believe in some incomprehensible and self-contradictory "moral" code, and wish to legislate the behavior of the rest of the world to conform to their nonsensical strictures.
4
"The administration of George W. Bush was trying to use an evangelical-Catholic alliance to ground the G.O.P. in an ecumenical and morally serious conservative religiosity." That's just the problem The government, whether Democratic or Republican, has no business being religious. Any effort to make it so will be rejected by people who are not religious. I don't think religious people are generally more moral than non-religious people, and, for that reason, I find this column offensive.
5
Many men and women start out at one end of the political spectrum, and then some traumatic experience has them go to the other, or at least end up somewhere on the other side. I think it is fair to ask how deeply understood were BOTH sets of beliefs. Perhaps, Cromartie's later views were more accurately come to by him. And then one might ask whether the second set was just some too-quick atonement for the first set.
To me the essence of most present-day conservatism is: I got mine and I want to keep it and the heck with you or as the British say: I got min,e Jack.".
The patent dishonesty of this view, despite all the fakery, is that rich people very often did not earn their wealth, it is very often built on the exploitation of other men and women's ideas and lives.
To me the essence of most present-day conservatism is: I got mine and I want to keep it and the heck with you or as the British say: I got min,e Jack.".
The patent dishonesty of this view, despite all the fakery, is that rich people very often did not earn their wealth, it is very often built on the exploitation of other men and women's ideas and lives.
When Religions use their dogma to condemn human beings who are different than they are where is the Christianity in that. If you believed what Christ taught then you are also to live it. It is called the Golden Rule. Too many Religions use their Dogma to persecute those who are different than they are. And they use politics to this end. So far, most Religions have divided us not brought us together
I think Jeff Sessions personifies this. His Religious beliefs are going to destroy our Justice system
Divide and conquer is now what politics and religion are about
I think Jeff Sessions personifies this. His Religious beliefs are going to destroy our Justice system
Divide and conquer is now what politics and religion are about
1
Nope. Sorry. Not gonna trust the mythology based groups to contribute useful policy. Lotta overlap between the faithful and science deniers and "clean-coal" mythologists. You got your "trickle down" mythologists heavily represented in churches. They believe in their invisible friend for adults, but don't trust climate scientists. Trump voters? Yup -- heavy on the mythology, those types. Not all Trump voters are christians. But nearly all evangelists were Trump voters. Stay inside your churches, please. We secularists have enough of your damage to undo, for now, thanks.
3
I was mugged once and lost a lot more than $33. Somehow the experience did not reverse my belief that a woman has sole sovereign right over her own body.
7
You have long flirted with alt-right pre-modernism. Christianity should value what the Aufklärung brought the world, just as materialists must value the Christian lineage of the West. There were many Christians, not simply Socinians, who fought for Moderate Enlightenment. Not all Christians were inelastic elements of Counter-Enlightenment.
The biggest enemy of Christianity is perhaps other "Christians." The triumph of anti-intellectualism, of the prosperity gospel, of "Jesus for Trump," is a tragedy both for Christianity and for our society. The supremacy of such Christianity in America has assisted the assembly of anti-Christian zealotry. Coming to a truce will take more than attacking liberalism.
Not every answer is found at First Things. You could stop subtly assaulting the bedrock of modernity (Is 'Game of Thrones' a Dystopia?). The premodern world was odious. Know that, as Jonathan Israel writes, "All sweeping legal reform programmes of the Enlightenment era stemmed from proposals drawn up by high-level officials, often acting in relative isolation and adopting solutions urged by 'philosophy' in response to long-standing social problems."
Non-Christian philosophy has done so much that is good. It's for those who profess Christ to decide how to be a Christian. Going to war with modernity and ignoring its blessings is perilous. The Left's intolerance and inconsiderateness does not excuse the fact that our religious leaders have done a sorry job of shepherding the flock.
The biggest enemy of Christianity is perhaps other "Christians." The triumph of anti-intellectualism, of the prosperity gospel, of "Jesus for Trump," is a tragedy both for Christianity and for our society. The supremacy of such Christianity in America has assisted the assembly of anti-Christian zealotry. Coming to a truce will take more than attacking liberalism.
Not every answer is found at First Things. You could stop subtly assaulting the bedrock of modernity (Is 'Game of Thrones' a Dystopia?). The premodern world was odious. Know that, as Jonathan Israel writes, "All sweeping legal reform programmes of the Enlightenment era stemmed from proposals drawn up by high-level officials, often acting in relative isolation and adopting solutions urged by 'philosophy' in response to long-standing social problems."
Non-Christian philosophy has done so much that is good. It's for those who profess Christ to decide how to be a Christian. Going to war with modernity and ignoring its blessings is perilous. The Left's intolerance and inconsiderateness does not excuse the fact that our religious leaders have done a sorry job of shepherding the flock.
3
I am sorry for your loss. It sounds like he was a graat and good person.
i am sure that he was significant to you and others,
But I think that as you feared, you have yielded to temptation. I look at today's America and find his influence, as you describe it, as a few pieces of flotsam and jetsam in the mighty wave of rightist bigoted evangelicals. His disciples won't win, or even influence, Republican primaries, much less general elections.
i am sure that he was significant to you and others,
But I think that as you feared, you have yielded to temptation. I look at today's America and find his influence, as you describe it, as a few pieces of flotsam and jetsam in the mighty wave of rightist bigoted evangelicals. His disciples won't win, or even influence, Republican primaries, much less general elections.
1
I'm reading Neil Degrasse Tyson's "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry". The only reasonable philosophical position for us mortals is secular humanism. It is absolutely wacko to believe in the Christian god or any other. We can use science, reason, common sense and observation to come to that conclusion.
7
"Meanwhile, my own Catholicism was pulled back into its 1970s-era civil war ..."
-------
Whenever Mr. Douthat talks of a "civil war" in the Catholic Church, I stop reading. There are certainly disagreements in the Church, but there is no war.
The fact that Mr. Douthat persists in using that language severely undercuts his credibility. Unfortunately, many of his readers probably don't realize that.
-------
Whenever Mr. Douthat talks of a "civil war" in the Catholic Church, I stop reading. There are certainly disagreements in the Church, but there is no war.
The fact that Mr. Douthat persists in using that language severely undercuts his credibility. Unfortunately, many of his readers probably don't realize that.
2
First, let me say, that this article about a person I didn't know made me curious to know and read more about him, so that is a testament to how well-written it is.
I just need to address the phrase "secular backlash" because (per the author) it seems to be a pretty serious contributor to the current polarized stalemate we are living in.
Who exactly is being grouped under this "secular" label? There are many, many people who belong to a church, who practice a religion, who cling to traditional beliefs, but abhor what goes on in far right evangelical sects, especially those populated by wealthy folks seeking to take control of the behavior of the rest of us. We find ourselves and our personal faith scorned with this "secular" label which seems to imply that we worship things, passions and pleasure rather than God and family. Nothing could be further than the truth.
The backlash was the natural reflex of freedom-loving people for whom "religious liberty" means total freedom to believe what we want, worship whom and how we please, and live unfettered by the religious beliefs of the guy down the block. The backlash happened when certain ultra-traditional, orthodox or extreme Christians left the sphere of their churches, got super involved in politics, and tried to impose on us their anti-LGBT, anti-reproductive rights, anti-immigrant, racist, xenophobic, anti-public school, climate change denying, anti-Obamacare policies which are an affront to our religious beliefs.
I just need to address the phrase "secular backlash" because (per the author) it seems to be a pretty serious contributor to the current polarized stalemate we are living in.
Who exactly is being grouped under this "secular" label? There are many, many people who belong to a church, who practice a religion, who cling to traditional beliefs, but abhor what goes on in far right evangelical sects, especially those populated by wealthy folks seeking to take control of the behavior of the rest of us. We find ourselves and our personal faith scorned with this "secular" label which seems to imply that we worship things, passions and pleasure rather than God and family. Nothing could be further than the truth.
The backlash was the natural reflex of freedom-loving people for whom "religious liberty" means total freedom to believe what we want, worship whom and how we please, and live unfettered by the religious beliefs of the guy down the block. The backlash happened when certain ultra-traditional, orthodox or extreme Christians left the sphere of their churches, got super involved in politics, and tried to impose on us their anti-LGBT, anti-reproductive rights, anti-immigrant, racist, xenophobic, anti-public school, climate change denying, anti-Obamacare policies which are an affront to our religious beliefs.
5
Cromartie sounds like a good person, but his role sounds like it was part of the evangelical machine. Influence journalists. Gain power. Improve the image. All very corporate stuff. That was part of the problem.
The other part of the problem is that while he may have had some good influence on the leaders in evangelicalism and in peacemaking, that influence never made it to the average person in the pews or the average pastor. The evidence of this is that 80% of them voted for the current president, a person not only unqualified and unfit to serve, but morally and spiritually deformed.
People like Cromartie are admirable, but their task was doomed before it began. There's an element of inevitable tragedy to it all, like a person trying to steer the train back after it's already off the rails.
The other part of the problem is that while he may have had some good influence on the leaders in evangelicalism and in peacemaking, that influence never made it to the average person in the pews or the average pastor. The evidence of this is that 80% of them voted for the current president, a person not only unqualified and unfit to serve, but morally and spiritually deformed.
People like Cromartie are admirable, but their task was doomed before it began. There's an element of inevitable tragedy to it all, like a person trying to steer the train back after it's already off the rails.
1
One of the main reasons Evangelicals struggle with pluralism is that they are by doctrine and attitude aggressively bent on conversion and proselytizing. They care deeply how other people are living their lives and want to control those around them whether Christian or not. This attitude and philosophical position does not lend itself to pluralism. There are plenty of other Christians that are very good at pluralism, I live amongst many of them, and love them. But Evangelicals are generally not good neighbors in the philosophical sense.
4
Ross, the house is on fire. When are intelligent people (Yes, I'm including you) on the religious right going to challenge the "Christian" values of your brethren who back Trump? You aligned with a group who overwhelmingly voted for the mess in the Oval Office. Your energy should be spent helping to put the fire out, by unequivocally challenging the thoughts, the methods, the morality of your brethren. How any "Evangelical" could vote for Trump is beyond hypocritical. It's a disgrace, a blot on Christianity, and I know many devout Christians on the left who have rightfully called out the Abomination that is Trump. There remains plenty of space for dialog between all of us, Ross, true Evangelicals included, just not those who have aligned with the Orange haired menace. Btw, the guy couldn't look more like the Devil, could he?
2
To God diversity is fun,
Creating millions of species, not one.
To the church diversity is a foe,
The Book is the way we must go.
But thinking we versus they, it is God that we actually shun.
Creating millions of species, not one.
To the church diversity is a foe,
The Book is the way we must go.
But thinking we versus they, it is God that we actually shun.
4
Devoted to an ideologue of winners without losers, victimized by the prize of a stolen nomination, depressed by pluralists that can't find their place, and afraid that the next round of pledge-keeping correspondance will not make the round trip, and yet a faith in non-polarizing and non-desperate possibilities prevails. A triumph for "good" does matter,
Republicans are one half of a 2-party democracy. Would the plucky friends left behind to manage a disaster recovery effort deign to take advantage of that knowledge?
I knew nothing of Michael Cromartie before Mr Douthat's appropriate tribute, but I leave with a sense of the potential that he built and left behind for, what can be one purpose, a greater good to come.
Republicans are one half of a 2-party democracy. Would the plucky friends left behind to manage a disaster recovery effort deign to take advantage of that knowledge?
I knew nothing of Michael Cromartie before Mr Douthat's appropriate tribute, but I leave with a sense of the potential that he built and left behind for, what can be one purpose, a greater good to come.
"The administration of George W. Bush was trying to use an evangelical-Catholic alliance to ground the G.O.P. in an ecumenical and morally serious conservative religiosity." Surely, you jet. W took pride in his deliberate ignorance and paraded it around as much as he could to get votes. He was no Christian in the true sense of the word.
I'm sorry for your loss.
But as a Catholic, you should know: Jesus was a lefty, through and through. He was against the then established order, and he was about extreme sharing.
The reason the left fails when in power is the same reason the right fails when in power: greedy men are in power, on one side or the other. It's not the systems, it's there shepherds.
Oh, they irony!
But as a Catholic, you should know: Jesus was a lefty, through and through. He was against the then established order, and he was about extreme sharing.
The reason the left fails when in power is the same reason the right fails when in power: greedy men are in power, on one side or the other. It's not the systems, it's there shepherds.
Oh, they irony!
2
Myths can be beautiful, and they can certainly also be inspiring. However, it is still crucial to the survival of humanity that, in the end, a myth be understood to be a myth.
6
ROSS DOUTHAT Writes movingly to honor the memory of his mentor, Michael Cromartie, He describes Cromartie as being able to assemble people of widely varying views and to get them to talk to each other. In our balkanized culture, where there are so many parallel universes that do not acknowledge the existence of any others, where polarized thinking is heightened by the mass media, especially social media, we need thoughtful leaders to confront us with the fact that we are all on the same lifeboat, the planet Earth. We've got to find a way to get along, to coexist and to support each other. The alternative is the destruction of our planet.
1
Believers or not, each of us holds some things sacred: and what we hold sacred will inform the politics that each of us supports.
In a democracy where separation of Church and State is among the fundamental laws, the point is that nothing automatically becomes law just because one or another group of citizens believes that it should; rather, it is what is believed by the majority that is likely to become law.
There is no way to avoid our laws and thus our society from being shaped by our morals, and there is no fundamental way for anyone to prove that their morals are objectively correct: objective studies cannot establish moral and ethical values.
Rather, in this democracy where we are pledged to maintaining individual freedoms as much as is consonant with the functioning of the whole, we will always have the task of doing our best to convince the majority of our fellow citizens, of whatever established faith or no established faith, that our own moral and ethical values are at least optimal, at most indispensable, for the continuation and evolution of our entire society -- while maintaining the maximum possible freedom of the individual.
In a democracy where separation of Church and State is among the fundamental laws, the point is that nothing automatically becomes law just because one or another group of citizens believes that it should; rather, it is what is believed by the majority that is likely to become law.
There is no way to avoid our laws and thus our society from being shaped by our morals, and there is no fundamental way for anyone to prove that their morals are objectively correct: objective studies cannot establish moral and ethical values.
Rather, in this democracy where we are pledged to maintaining individual freedoms as much as is consonant with the functioning of the whole, we will always have the task of doing our best to convince the majority of our fellow citizens, of whatever established faith or no established faith, that our own moral and ethical values are at least optimal, at most indispensable, for the continuation and evolution of our entire society -- while maintaining the maximum possible freedom of the individual.
2
I wonder how varied Cromartie's "practioners of varied faith" have been? Have there been Hindu? OrZorastarians or Taoists? Or simply different denominations of Judeo-Chritianity? Athiests? It's all good. I'm just curious. Because the bottom line is that there is a real desire on the part of conservative Christianity to impose its sense of patriarchal order on all the rest of us in this country. There's a significant faction that believes it is being oppressed and discriminated against because they have not been able to go as far as they want to when it comes to legislating their morality.
Live your faith, Ross. Just don't expect all the rest of us to fall in line, much less codify it for us.
Many of us live by Christian values even if we have no faith.
Live your faith, Ross. Just don't expect all the rest of us to fall in line, much less codify it for us.
Many of us live by Christian values even if we have no faith.
13
I often wonder if Mr. Cromartie and others like him ever came to the realization that when you mix religion with politics that eventually you get politics? Said another way, do evangelicals ever think that the GOP is shaping them instead of the other way around?
For example, climate change. Do evangelicals not believe in man made climate change, because it is in their theology to do so (which it isn't), or is it in their belief system, because the GOP put it there?
Finally, what is a more virtuous way to live - a life based on science and burden of proof, or one based on faith? And, perhaps what is quixotic is not our vocations, but our very faiths.
For example, climate change. Do evangelicals not believe in man made climate change, because it is in their theology to do so (which it isn't), or is it in their belief system, because the GOP put it there?
Finally, what is a more virtuous way to live - a life based on science and burden of proof, or one based on faith? And, perhaps what is quixotic is not our vocations, but our very faiths.
9
"Do evangelicals not believe in man made climate change because it is in their theology to do so (which it isn't), or is it in their belief system because the GOP put it there?" Why not say that the evangelicals put climate change into the GOP? James Inhofe said, did he not, that God was "still up there," implying that the climate and the weather, which people conflate, were in His hands.
Have a look: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/education-climate-change-science-c... "He had chosen the video, an episode from an Emmy-winning series that featured a Christian climate activist and high production values, as a counterpoint to another of Gwen’s objections, that a belief in climate change does not jibe with Christianity."
Fossil fuel interests, libertarians, and fundamentalists produce a potent syncretic synergism. Not every Christian thinks this way, of course, but fundamentalists overwhelmingly reject climate science for explicitly religious reasons.
Have a look: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/education-climate-change-science-c... "He had chosen the video, an episode from an Emmy-winning series that featured a Christian climate activist and high production values, as a counterpoint to another of Gwen’s objections, that a belief in climate change does not jibe with Christianity."
Fossil fuel interests, libertarians, and fundamentalists produce a potent syncretic synergism. Not every Christian thinks this way, of course, but fundamentalists overwhelmingly reject climate science for explicitly religious reasons.
About climate change ... many, maybe most evangelicals hold the belief that is summarized in the bumper sticker: "Relax. God is in charge." They believe that God controls everything that happens in the world, down to small everyday matters, like selling a house or having a safe car trip. You'll hear plenty of evangelical preachers in the media declaring that natural disasters are God's punishment for this or that evildoing.
So it is no surprise that they believe that God is in control of the climate, and that human actions have little or no effect. It's built in to their theology.
So it is no surprise that they believe that God is in control of the climate, and that human actions have little or no effect. It's built in to their theology.
2
"the secular backlash was intense"
Tendentious at best but even if true it is likely because Bush the 2nd was a God awful president.
Nothing stains everything it touches like failure, and once Dubya's Hee Haw schtick started to wear thin even his good ideas had no leg to stand on. After that it was only a short span before the religious, instead of continuing to make quite valid moral arguments against, say, laissez-faire abortion, reverted to their my-God-says-you-shall-not default stance. And that, we know, spikes resistance and goes precisely nowhere.
Tendentious at best but even if true it is likely because Bush the 2nd was a God awful president.
Nothing stains everything it touches like failure, and once Dubya's Hee Haw schtick started to wear thin even his good ideas had no leg to stand on. After that it was only a short span before the religious, instead of continuing to make quite valid moral arguments against, say, laissez-faire abortion, reverted to their my-God-says-you-shall-not default stance. And that, we know, spikes resistance and goes precisely nowhere.
8
"Say not the struggle nought availeth.
The labor and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not nor faileth
And as things are they will remain."
I think Churchill sent the entire poem to Roosevelt. Back during the dark days of World War II.
And I send it to YOU, Mr. Douthat. Thanks for a wonderful column. Your friend sounds like a wonderful man.
I was struck by your mention of the word "liberalism." No histrionics! No tub thumping. Red faces--angry fingers pointing to "the LIBERALS!" "You LIBERALS!" "Well, you know the LIBERALS!. . . . ."
The word (of course) is Latin--liberalis. Closely related to "free." As in "liberal arts." The arts worthy of being studied--nurtured--loved by a free man or woman. The generosity--the open mind--the open hand worthy of a free man or woman.
And now! A word reviled, spattered with mud by Ms. Ann Coulter. And others. Many others. Oh so many.
So am I a liberal? No. Not altogether. Not quite. Which is why I hear you, Mr. Douthat. Really. I do. Your desire for a conservative culture--yes! but a broadminded, generous, understanding conservatism. Oh Mr. Douthat! I type out these words--and I see the dream dwindling into nothingness. Like Tennyson's Holy Grail. Or El Dorado. Or the Fountain of Youth. Or . . .
No no! Stop. Let's both repeat those stirring words together, Mr. Douthat:
"Say not the struggle nought availeth. . . . . "
Thanks again! Great column. Great man.
The labor and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not nor faileth
And as things are they will remain."
I think Churchill sent the entire poem to Roosevelt. Back during the dark days of World War II.
And I send it to YOU, Mr. Douthat. Thanks for a wonderful column. Your friend sounds like a wonderful man.
I was struck by your mention of the word "liberalism." No histrionics! No tub thumping. Red faces--angry fingers pointing to "the LIBERALS!" "You LIBERALS!" "Well, you know the LIBERALS!. . . . ."
The word (of course) is Latin--liberalis. Closely related to "free." As in "liberal arts." The arts worthy of being studied--nurtured--loved by a free man or woman. The generosity--the open mind--the open hand worthy of a free man or woman.
And now! A word reviled, spattered with mud by Ms. Ann Coulter. And others. Many others. Oh so many.
So am I a liberal? No. Not altogether. Not quite. Which is why I hear you, Mr. Douthat. Really. I do. Your desire for a conservative culture--yes! but a broadminded, generous, understanding conservatism. Oh Mr. Douthat! I type out these words--and I see the dream dwindling into nothingness. Like Tennyson's Holy Grail. Or El Dorado. Or the Fountain of Youth. Or . . .
No no! Stop. Let's both repeat those stirring words together, Mr. Douthat:
"Say not the struggle nought availeth. . . . . "
Thanks again! Great column. Great man.
2
Male and female created He then. Gen. 3,5. The Nashville statement is the only way conjoining reality and common sense.
1
Awhile ago I shared a thought with a friend and after a short time he said I might be right. The thought was that religions and gods die when they are no longer profitable to the living. The Egyptian god Amun was worshipped for millennia and the priestly class that kept the religion going controlled about half of the money in the society of Pharaonic Egypt. Today for the few that even know the name, he or it is just a myth. At the time Amun was worshipped the followers believed in hime just as fervently as people believe in Jesus today.
In spite of all of the revelations about Jimmy Swaggert he's still raking in a tidy living peddling his brand of christianity.
Religion offers me nothing of value, but for anyone who does find something of value then I think that's wonderful for them. If they insist that I must believe what they believe we will have a problem.
In spite of all of the revelations about Jimmy Swaggert he's still raking in a tidy living peddling his brand of christianity.
Religion offers me nothing of value, but for anyone who does find something of value then I think that's wonderful for them. If they insist that I must believe what they believe we will have a problem.
8
The Nashville Statement is exactly what has driven me from the Republican Party, which is really where I belong, my politics being slightly right of center. These religious people (and BTW I am a man of great, deep faith) hold huge influence over the social politics of the Republicans. Until the Republican Party can make peace with the idea that the US is not a theocracy and never should become one, hordes of us will abscond to the Democrats. I am Gay, and expect a full range of citizen's rights. I am also (as a man of faith) Pro Life, but with the belief that Roe v Wade must remain part of the laws of the land to protect those who might not agree with me. Michael Cromartie, no matter how good a man he was and no matter how much he tried to make peace between warring political sides was totally unsuccessful in reigning in the Evangelicals whose main desire is to control the lives of everyone around them.
65
One may respect your loss and your hope, Mr. Douthat, and still say that maybe it would help if you found a way to argue your case without backhanding such cartoon villains as "the left," and "the sexual revolution," every five minutes.
Sorry, but Noam Chomsky and Mary Daly didn't force a fair chunk of your side of the equation into its current fanaticism, gun-waving, and what looks a lot like fascism.
Sorry, but Noam Chomsky and Mary Daly didn't force a fair chunk of your side of the equation into its current fanaticism, gun-waving, and what looks a lot like fascism.
13
Sorry for your loss. However, I think the most accurate display of current Christian values is our government. The new Congress is overwhelmingly Christian. 99 percent of Republicans in the House and Senate are Christian and conservative. Prominent in this group are Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and Mike Huckabee. Trump’s Cabinet is packed with Christians―Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, Rick Perry, Betsy Devos – who gather weekly for Bible study. In SCOTUS the most conservative are Christian: Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito; three of them are Catholic. And let’s not forget the late Antonin Scalia, another conservative Catholic. The names listed here are a rogue’s gallery of hypocrisy and self-interest. Like Ted Cruz’s Pentecostals, they all speak in tongues. You would think that such a Christian assembly of individuals would act in a Christian manner. Instead we get dysfunction and mean-spiritedness; we get a consolidated effort to take people’s health insurance away, guided by the very unchristian principle that healthcare is a privilege, not a right. I think Jesus would be surprised. And he would be surprised at the effort to eliminate Dreamers from our midst and to build a wall on our border. The “Christians” in our government attempt to enact the most draconian, inhuman policies imaginable. If you want to know the state and spirit of Christianity today, look no further than our Christian government.
17
Male and female created he them. Gen., 5. The Nashville statement is the only way by nature or common sense.
1
There would be no need for work like Cromartie's if it weren't for the Moral Majority and evangelicals' endless political activity.
And by the way, the media is not hostile to religion or in need of an apostle. A quick look at any Southern newspaper will tell you so.
And by the way, the media is not hostile to religion or in need of an apostle. A quick look at any Southern newspaper will tell you so.
9
As with so many of Ross Douthat's columns, a beautiful, loving intention - a eulogy for his mentor Cromartie - ends up in a facile denunciation of non-religious liberals. He cannot glibly pronounce that the "Bush project failed" because of "secular backlash" or the "sexual revolution."
The "Bush project" seemed less concerned with fusing an evangelical-Catholic alliance, and more concerned with funneling public funds to well-connected evangelical groups. If the Bush administration had really been interested in a serious conversation about faith, and in faith's moral foundations, than it might have used the opportunity afforded by 9/11 to discuss our nation's role in the world, the importance of national unity during a time of crisis, and the tenets of Judeo-Christian thought - caring for the poor and the sick, welcoming the stranger, and the dignity and equality of all men and women. Instead, they used 9/11 as a cudgel: ramming through vicious tax cuts to aid the wealthy at the expense of the poor, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a fictional war that might have been spent on urban areas that needed the most help, justifying the torture of prisoners of war, and enabling and encouraging a nasty right-wing media to impugn the motives of those who disagreed as "unpatriotic" and "un-American." The so-called "Bush project" failed because the only project Bush and Cheney ever really cared about was the uninhibited exercise of power.
The "Bush project" seemed less concerned with fusing an evangelical-Catholic alliance, and more concerned with funneling public funds to well-connected evangelical groups. If the Bush administration had really been interested in a serious conversation about faith, and in faith's moral foundations, than it might have used the opportunity afforded by 9/11 to discuss our nation's role in the world, the importance of national unity during a time of crisis, and the tenets of Judeo-Christian thought - caring for the poor and the sick, welcoming the stranger, and the dignity and equality of all men and women. Instead, they used 9/11 as a cudgel: ramming through vicious tax cuts to aid the wealthy at the expense of the poor, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a fictional war that might have been spent on urban areas that needed the most help, justifying the torture of prisoners of war, and enabling and encouraging a nasty right-wing media to impugn the motives of those who disagreed as "unpatriotic" and "un-American." The so-called "Bush project" failed because the only project Bush and Cheney ever really cared about was the uninhibited exercise of power.
13
I hope Ross' concern over losing this friend will lead Ross to examine his own beliefs through his friend's eyes. I see little in Ross' writings to suggest this re-examination will be comfortable for Ross.
3
"The administration of George W. Bush was trying to use an evangelical-Catholic alliance to ground the G.O.P. in an ecumenical and morally serious conservative religiosity."
As opposed to the "godless" opposition which was appalled by the W's manufactured Iraq war killing thousands of innocent people.
As opposed to the "godless" opposition which was appalled by the W's manufactured Iraq war killing thousands of innocent people.
4
Why is it that every piece written by a conservative evangelical seems to drip with the self pity that would seem tolerable if Christians were still hiding from Nero in the catacombs instead of leading the parade with Constantine?
Conservative Christians have perhaps shown their true colors by tying themselves so closely to the three republican presidents that have done the most to destroy what remains of our democracy. And our decency.
Sexual morality seems to be the only morality of importance to these people; lying, stealing, cheating, starting illegal wars, suppressing the votes of African American communities, and imposing martial law on those communities do not seem to find a place of moral value in the modern republican or their supporters in these churches.
Many of these people wouldn't know Jesus if they were pounding nails into his hands. After all, one of Catholicism's favorite images was the Bleeding (Sacred) Heart of Jesus. Remember that Jesus was a revolutionary and a liberal, who according to your book, really never talked about sex.
Conservative Christians have perhaps shown their true colors by tying themselves so closely to the three republican presidents that have done the most to destroy what remains of our democracy. And our decency.
Sexual morality seems to be the only morality of importance to these people; lying, stealing, cheating, starting illegal wars, suppressing the votes of African American communities, and imposing martial law on those communities do not seem to find a place of moral value in the modern republican or their supporters in these churches.
Many of these people wouldn't know Jesus if they were pounding nails into his hands. After all, one of Catholicism's favorite images was the Bleeding (Sacred) Heart of Jesus. Remember that Jesus was a revolutionary and a liberal, who according to your book, really never talked about sex.
16
Evangelicalism and anti-intellectualism are conjoined twins. The evangelical support of the Trump Candidacy put the exclamation point on that fact.
8
A resounding "Amen" to your closing prayer for Mr. Cromartie. More inquirers and doers like him are in short supply. You are one of the few.
Until we can look at the Sneech across from us, and remove the Starz emblem as the badge of discourse.....until we can remove the "beam out of our own eye, so we can see clearly enough to remove the speck out of our brother's eye," until then, rapprochement and collaboration will never happen.
Until we can look at the Sneech across from us, and remove the Starz emblem as the badge of discourse.....until we can remove the "beam out of our own eye, so we can see clearly enough to remove the speck out of our brother's eye," until then, rapprochement and collaboration will never happen.
7
Thank you for that. It's encouraging to me to continue believing that it is possible for people with very diverse views to discuss controversial topics with civility and grace. I am particularly impressed and surprised that a man with evangelical perspective would make the effort that he did to make that happen.
Please add my voice to those of the many other commenters who find this column offensive. Mixing religion and politics in a democracy is always dangerous. Those evangelical leaders' continued support for Donald Trump, a contemptible, completely immoral person, should demonstrate that danger to everyone, even other evangelicals. I hope Mr. Douthat can accept that many people share this same commitment to the wisdom of our Founders to reject the influence of any church in the operation of our republic.
12
I'd say the abandonment of any pretense of "just war" theory in pursuit of war on Iraq was a pretty huge flaw in the Bush project-showed that neither his evangelical or Catholic allies took the teachings of Jesus at all seriously.
5
Christians, like all other humans, are vulnerable to being seduced by power. It might be the power of money, or political power, or the power of patriarchy. When any people, including Christians, get access to power, some of them will abuse it. The advantage Christians ought to have in resisting the temptation to abuse power is the Gospels, because they show Jesus being crucified by those in power—an alliance of those with religious, social, and political power—for the crime of insisting that ordinary people should be treated decently, lovingly. This idea, the core Christian idea, is inherently incompatible with power and privilege. Yes, we Christians should certainly be involved in politics. But we must keep in mind that if we are not using politics to reduce the privileges of power, to protect people from exploitation by the powerful, then we are destined to fail at either politics or Christianity. Perhaps to fail at both.
5
If only evangelicals would preach just to their choirs.
If only they didn't try to foist their version of the religious myths onto those who don't believe any of it. If only religious voices weren't so often just so much mumbo-jumbo.
If only the religious weren't so convinced of their superiority. If only they weren't hateful of the other, those outside, those "heathens devils".
If only religion didn't drift into politics, into misshaping peoples lives, into fear mongering, denigration of those who don't live by some misbegotten code of behavior.
There would be a lot less uncertainty, misery, death and destruction. A lot less pain and punishment. What a wonderful world it would be.
If only they didn't try to foist their version of the religious myths onto those who don't believe any of it. If only religious voices weren't so often just so much mumbo-jumbo.
If only the religious weren't so convinced of their superiority. If only they weren't hateful of the other, those outside, those "heathens devils".
If only religion didn't drift into politics, into misshaping peoples lives, into fear mongering, denigration of those who don't live by some misbegotten code of behavior.
There would be a lot less uncertainty, misery, death and destruction. A lot less pain and punishment. What a wonderful world it would be.
12
I think Douthat is clinging to a fantasy. One of the most important groups supporting 'white' grievances, and expressing this in blatantly racist terms, is the Christian Fundamentalist bloc. I've no doubt that decades of Republican dog whistles captured these people for the party long ago. It is certainly as important a driver for these people as abortion, homosexuality, etc., etc. And only a few quick side steps were required to get on board with Trump's narrow-cast, overtly racist outreach.
8
Ross makes mentions of "religious believers and professional media elites...locked in a cycle of misunderstanding and mistrust." If only religious believers did a little groundwork in understanding their religions! That's what's been missing for 2,000 years for Christians and 1,500 years for Islam. Pity. They believe, but they haven't a clue where their religious tenets come from. They have no idea how much of the interesting stuff in the Old Testament comes from Babylonia; and they have no idea how much of the interesting stuff of the New Testament comes from Egypt. They also don't have any idea that Catholicism and Christianity were built by Constantine as a tool to consolidate power--and it has been used for power purposes ever since. All they know now is how to use their religious texts to hate other people. "Evangelicals" is a specious term that Republicans spout, but no one defines clearly and therefore no one's allowed to object to the "higher purpose" of these evangelicals. If your Church were anything near to the gospel of love (the one truly new addition to civilization from early Christianity), it would NEVER have condoned Donald Trump--at any cost. Of course, it would never have condoned Charlemagne or the Crusades, either. Ah, but a recognition of Christianity's true history might be too heavy a cross for all the "believers" to bear. Somehow, though, that cross of hypocrisy doesn't seem to weigh on them at all.
11
The passing of anyone seriously engaged in community development--dialogue between media and religious--is truly a loss for all of us.
Unfortunately truth, decency and caring are being overwhelmed by a craven White House and its facilitators. And foremost among facilitators are Evangelicals whose votes put Trump in the White House and whose support, according to Fox News's latest survey, continues largely unabated. Trump is no prodigal son with a few bad habits and promise of returning to the fold with Evangelical guidance. This is a mean, evil person hurting people and hurting America. Threatening to break with Trump is the only leverage Evangelicals have.
Mr. Cromartie clearly would not approve of Trump. And his mission was to encourage dialogue, understanding, compassion. Blessed are the community developers. We and especially Evangelicals need to pay heed to his legacy, listen and act accordingly. Unfortunately at the moment a large plurality of Evangelicals are still MIA --prodigal sons and daughters who must return to the Word. We need Mr. Cromartie's message more than ever if this is to come to pass.
Unfortunately truth, decency and caring are being overwhelmed by a craven White House and its facilitators. And foremost among facilitators are Evangelicals whose votes put Trump in the White House and whose support, according to Fox News's latest survey, continues largely unabated. Trump is no prodigal son with a few bad habits and promise of returning to the fold with Evangelical guidance. This is a mean, evil person hurting people and hurting America. Threatening to break with Trump is the only leverage Evangelicals have.
Mr. Cromartie clearly would not approve of Trump. And his mission was to encourage dialogue, understanding, compassion. Blessed are the community developers. We and especially Evangelicals need to pay heed to his legacy, listen and act accordingly. Unfortunately at the moment a large plurality of Evangelicals are still MIA --prodigal sons and daughters who must return to the Word. We need Mr. Cromartie's message more than ever if this is to come to pass.
1
I do love your work, but please help me understand the meaning of
"the air of defensive irony that many of us weave around our unfashionable morality and metaphysics".
"the air of defensive irony that many of us weave around our unfashionable morality and metaphysics".
2
Funny how many commenters focus on the separation of church and state as fundamentally preserving state from church- "keep your religion out of my laws"- when the original idea was primarily to protect churches and religious institutions from state interference (1st amendment free exercise clause)- "keep your laws out of my religious practice".
Are the folks advocating for former just as happy to advocate for the latter? If Christian practice is denied or discouraged in public school, Catholic hospitals have the same right to deny insurance that covers contraception. You can't have one side without the other.
Are the folks advocating for former just as happy to advocate for the latter? If Christian practice is denied or discouraged in public school, Catholic hospitals have the same right to deny insurance that covers contraception. You can't have one side without the other.
1
There will never be pluralism in our country as long as you are right and I am wrong prevails.
3
You seem to assume that Christianity is by nature conservative, ignoring the Social Gospel movement and Catholic Worker's movement among others. In the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest US denomination, Jimmy Carter and moderates and conservatives like him were hounded out by fundamentalist conservatives to make religion into a conservative political force. The loss of Cromartie's voice is a blow to needed conversation in the US, but the greater need may be for a prophetic voice for compassion in American Christianity.
1
"and in the [post-Bush] Republican Party ethno-nationalism replaced religious conservatism as the coalition’s strong cement." Ross, I realize that you are mourning your friend, and I am sorry for your loss, but you really need to take a course in American history. Ethno-nationalism has always been a feature of the Republican party. The anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know Nothing party was one of the many coalitions that comprised the original GOP, though they were overshadowed by Lincoln's Whigs. That strain of Know-Nothingism nonetheless intensified as conservatives arose and finally defeated the Whig-Progressive wing of Lincoln/Theodore Roosevelt Republicans in the 1980s. You seem oblivious to the ways the process of transforming the GOP into an exclusively conservative party has undermined its moral underpinnings. Conservatism (including the old conservative Southern Democrats) has an ugly, unedifying, deeply bigoted history. Ethno-nationalism and "separatism" lie at the heart of conservatism historically. Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act; Nixon's "Southern Strategy;" Reagan's "coded messages" and pilgrimage to Neshoba County have led inexorably to Trump's Birtherism. Abandoning the conservative tradition weakened the Democratic party electorally but liberated them morally, now it's your turn. The conservative revolution destroyed the Republican party morally, but it has been very strong electorally where separatism and ethno-nationalism reign supreme.
4
Ross - After reading his obituary, here's a question I would have liked to pose to him and you as well.
Why is it reasonable to reject liberalism and gov't programs aimed at alleviating social ills based on the supposed failure of the Great Society to eliminate poverty and it's pathologies but not reasonable to reject conservatism and religion because of their failures to create just societies? Surely you would acknowledge that religious belief has made some forms of misogyny, discrimination and intolerance much worse, and terrible crimes have been committed by the Catholic Church. Why do you continue to identify with groups/movements that have had historic flaws, but cannot look past imperfect realities in the Democrats/progressives visions?
Take a look around the world Ross. There are plenty of liberal, secular democracies that have had relatively greater success than us at addressing inequality, and who, thanks to their investments in the safety net, have far lower incarceration rates, and healthier populations, while maintaining high quality of life. Can you name any deeply religious and traditional countries that have achieved a similar measure of success at reducing poverty? Have charity and church-going done a good job of addressing the legacies of poverty and racism in the bible-belt?
What part of the attempt to eliminate the estate tax was grounded in a morally serious conservative religiosity? How is celebrating corporate greed an embodiment of religious values?
Why is it reasonable to reject liberalism and gov't programs aimed at alleviating social ills based on the supposed failure of the Great Society to eliminate poverty and it's pathologies but not reasonable to reject conservatism and religion because of their failures to create just societies? Surely you would acknowledge that religious belief has made some forms of misogyny, discrimination and intolerance much worse, and terrible crimes have been committed by the Catholic Church. Why do you continue to identify with groups/movements that have had historic flaws, but cannot look past imperfect realities in the Democrats/progressives visions?
Take a look around the world Ross. There are plenty of liberal, secular democracies that have had relatively greater success than us at addressing inequality, and who, thanks to their investments in the safety net, have far lower incarceration rates, and healthier populations, while maintaining high quality of life. Can you name any deeply religious and traditional countries that have achieved a similar measure of success at reducing poverty? Have charity and church-going done a good job of addressing the legacies of poverty and racism in the bible-belt?
What part of the attempt to eliminate the estate tax was grounded in a morally serious conservative religiosity? How is celebrating corporate greed an embodiment of religious values?
26
Ross,
What a beautifully articulated tribute, but I am confused as to the multiple sects and labels of Christianity. Wouldn't it be easier if we just all stuck to the Bible? The divisiveness that comes from being classified as liberal or conservative is man made and devilish. At the end of the day the Bible tells us that the wheat and the tare must grow together and he will do the separating. The politicization of Christianity is tainting who we are in Christ Jesus and anyone who continues to attach themselves to a party in the name of Christianity is blind. What happened to "he without sin cast the first stone?" What happened to "God is no respector of persons?" To simply embrace," love your neighbor as yourself" would fix all of the divisions in our country today. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy and is laughing because of the misplaced order of country over our Heavenly Father and party over our Heavenly Father. We need to get back to the basics....the book of John is a great place to start.
What a beautifully articulated tribute, but I am confused as to the multiple sects and labels of Christianity. Wouldn't it be easier if we just all stuck to the Bible? The divisiveness that comes from being classified as liberal or conservative is man made and devilish. At the end of the day the Bible tells us that the wheat and the tare must grow together and he will do the separating. The politicization of Christianity is tainting who we are in Christ Jesus and anyone who continues to attach themselves to a party in the name of Christianity is blind. What happened to "he without sin cast the first stone?" What happened to "God is no respector of persons?" To simply embrace," love your neighbor as yourself" would fix all of the divisions in our country today. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy and is laughing because of the misplaced order of country over our Heavenly Father and party over our Heavenly Father. We need to get back to the basics....the book of John is a great place to start.
2
I knew Cromartie in his early days. I was a critical peacenik, he hoped could be turned into a neo-con; didn't happen. Cromartie soldiered on; he & his ilk believed their "intellectual evangelicals" were the true vanguard of the "Christian" takeover/renaissance they were confident was about to arrive.
Now their vessel has come in. But with few exceptions, Cromartie's elite evangelical passenger list is missing from the crowded decks of a roaring ship of fools, knaves, mountebanks and monsters.
All the evangelical image burnishing that Cromartie had so long and doggedly pursued went up in the smoke on November 8.
Ever since, alumni of Cromartie's sessions like Ross Douthat, have been flailing, trying to cover their tracks, explain (away?) their multiple prophetic and political follies His work led them into, and make sense of the bigotry and bloodlust their favored movement has suddenly loosed upon the culture--exactly none of which Cromartie's gatherings prepared them for.
Cromartie was a decent fellow. His career ended somewhere between tragedy & bathos, and the wreckage continues to pile up.More: http://wp.me/p5FGIu-2qJ
Now their vessel has come in. But with few exceptions, Cromartie's elite evangelical passenger list is missing from the crowded decks of a roaring ship of fools, knaves, mountebanks and monsters.
All the evangelical image burnishing that Cromartie had so long and doggedly pursued went up in the smoke on November 8.
Ever since, alumni of Cromartie's sessions like Ross Douthat, have been flailing, trying to cover their tracks, explain (away?) their multiple prophetic and political follies His work led them into, and make sense of the bigotry and bloodlust their favored movement has suddenly loosed upon the culture--exactly none of which Cromartie's gatherings prepared them for.
Cromartie was a decent fellow. His career ended somewhere between tragedy & bathos, and the wreckage continues to pile up.More: http://wp.me/p5FGIu-2qJ
8
I really doubt Cromartie bought into the "blood/soil" neo- paganism apparent in resurected remnants of white supremacist Naziism.
I know Colson didn't.
Defining "liberal," or "conservative," is a much more difficult process, and Cromartie's soulful attempt at creating spaces for dialogue remains courageous and commendable.
Best intentioned religion is hemmed about by hijackers, detractors, cynics, populizers, fundamentalists, psychopaths, merchants, extremists, haters, manipulators, bullies, and hypocrites.
It's also graced by Saints, who are that way because they know the temptations to devolve into the aforementioned behaviors, attitudes.
Hats off, and wings on to Comartie as he ventures forth. Like Luther on his own deathbed, who was reported to comment in some of his last mortal words, "We're all begars," I bet Comartie felt the same way before he shed earthly existence.
I know Colson didn't.
Defining "liberal," or "conservative," is a much more difficult process, and Cromartie's soulful attempt at creating spaces for dialogue remains courageous and commendable.
Best intentioned religion is hemmed about by hijackers, detractors, cynics, populizers, fundamentalists, psychopaths, merchants, extremists, haters, manipulators, bullies, and hypocrites.
It's also graced by Saints, who are that way because they know the temptations to devolve into the aforementioned behaviors, attitudes.
Hats off, and wings on to Comartie as he ventures forth. Like Luther on his own deathbed, who was reported to comment in some of his last mortal words, "We're all begars," I bet Comartie felt the same way before he shed earthly existence.
Republicans have both used and turned their politics into a perverted evangelical faith. From my youth I recall the periodic nationally televised preaching of Jerry Falwell Sr. Even then there was a Republican leaning to these broadcasted religious national camp meetings. And it makes sense; Republicans who only pretend compassion and empathy need the smoke of religion to hide their hard hearts.
The two national parties have morphed and exchanged identities over the centuries. Republicans are now Democrats of old; Democrats are now Republicans of old. Lincoln belongs to the Democratic Party; Jackson belongs to the Republican Party. Republicans are today's states rights, weak federal government proponents, with the fanaticism of evangelical faith.
I know nothing of Cromartie. I only pay cursory attention to the hypocritical religious-inclined, like the Nashville cult. Watching Jerry Falwell Jr. turn into a logic-pretzel defending Trump's response to torch-carrying white supremacists in Charlottesville was a reminder of why religion is not the answer, religion is the problem.
The two national parties have morphed and exchanged identities over the centuries. Republicans are now Democrats of old; Democrats are now Republicans of old. Lincoln belongs to the Democratic Party; Jackson belongs to the Republican Party. Republicans are today's states rights, weak federal government proponents, with the fanaticism of evangelical faith.
I know nothing of Cromartie. I only pay cursory attention to the hypocritical religious-inclined, like the Nashville cult. Watching Jerry Falwell Jr. turn into a logic-pretzel defending Trump's response to torch-carrying white supremacists in Charlottesville was a reminder of why religion is not the answer, religion is the problem.
12
Religion if not perversely used is not the problem, it should be the answer that makes people realize that White Supremacy and Nazism are wrong.
" The administration of George W. Bush was trying to use an evangelical-Catholic alliance to ground the G.O.P. in an ecumenical and morally serious conservative religiosity. " -RD
Say what? Morally serious? By whose definition of morality and whose definition of seriousness?
It's hard to conceive of a more amoral, cynical, and openly manipulative administration than 43's. At least it was until the current administration came into office.
The "Brain" of the Bush administration, after all, was Karl Rove, who was openly unreligious and invariably willing to compromise on principal and use any means to achieve the desired end.
Karl Rove helped to set the "moral" tone of Bush administration. His "apostles" included the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Woo, John Bolton, to name a few.
These apostles repeatedly lied to the American public and conducted a war of choice---an illegal war---which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands, the displacement of literally millions, and created the fertile ground on which ISIS grew.
If this is an example of "Christian morality," I can't think of a better reason for becoming a secular humanist. Which, come to think of it, is why I am one.
Say what? Morally serious? By whose definition of morality and whose definition of seriousness?
It's hard to conceive of a more amoral, cynical, and openly manipulative administration than 43's. At least it was until the current administration came into office.
The "Brain" of the Bush administration, after all, was Karl Rove, who was openly unreligious and invariably willing to compromise on principal and use any means to achieve the desired end.
Karl Rove helped to set the "moral" tone of Bush administration. His "apostles" included the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Woo, John Bolton, to name a few.
These apostles repeatedly lied to the American public and conducted a war of choice---an illegal war---which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands, the displacement of literally millions, and created the fertile ground on which ISIS grew.
If this is an example of "Christian morality," I can't think of a better reason for becoming a secular humanist. Which, come to think of it, is why I am one.
12
Hope is not completely lost, Ross. Feminism, or as you call it “the sexual revolution,” hasn’t completely prevailed. Your Catholic church and your Republican party have scored some recent victories in blocking women’s access to birth control.
3
I urge everyone to read the screed linked to this article - the Nashville Statement.
It poses as a statement of love and acceptance when it is exactly the opposite of that. The love and acceptance come with a caveat (sort of an oxymoron) given "freely" only if: homosexuals deny their feelings as natural, and live a life of chastity or denial; and if transgenders accept the body these people say was god's intention - not natures misinformation - and that somehow their knowledge of god's intention supersedes the individuals relationship with what they believe is god's intent or - if not "of faith" in this particular sects interpretation of what this particular god wants - of what they believe is right and good and in harmony with nature - that we all know exists.
The conceit, the condescension, the we know best, the see "we don't hate you, you're just wrong the way you are and if you change we will love you", drips from every Article.
This, to me, is a philosophy that runs deep and wide through the conservative movements in any form they take. Be like me, be successful and prosperous and Christian and heterosexual - at least have the decency to hide your perversions - and believe less government is better government and the rich should pay less taxes, and, if at all possible, be white - you're in.
But anything else makes us uncomfortable - which we so hate we withhold our love - and make you miserable - we can, you know, and we will. Just watch. In Jesus' name. Amen.
It poses as a statement of love and acceptance when it is exactly the opposite of that. The love and acceptance come with a caveat (sort of an oxymoron) given "freely" only if: homosexuals deny their feelings as natural, and live a life of chastity or denial; and if transgenders accept the body these people say was god's intention - not natures misinformation - and that somehow their knowledge of god's intention supersedes the individuals relationship with what they believe is god's intent or - if not "of faith" in this particular sects interpretation of what this particular god wants - of what they believe is right and good and in harmony with nature - that we all know exists.
The conceit, the condescension, the we know best, the see "we don't hate you, you're just wrong the way you are and if you change we will love you", drips from every Article.
This, to me, is a philosophy that runs deep and wide through the conservative movements in any form they take. Be like me, be successful and prosperous and Christian and heterosexual - at least have the decency to hide your perversions - and believe less government is better government and the rich should pay less taxes, and, if at all possible, be white - you're in.
But anything else makes us uncomfortable - which we so hate we withhold our love - and make you miserable - we can, you know, and we will. Just watch. In Jesus' name. Amen.
14
Hmmm... maybe keep religion out of politics.
You are free to believe in unseen inhabitants, both wondrous and horrifically evil, but to bring that mythology into our Gov. and promote laws based upon such, is absurd.
Do your gods work, in your gods house.
Leave the running of the Republic to We The People. Not by fiat of someone's interpretation of their divine word that only they can hear, much less understand.
By the by, pessimism is much to soft a word for what is thought about the current amalgamation of GOP and God.
You are free to believe in unseen inhabitants, both wondrous and horrifically evil, but to bring that mythology into our Gov. and promote laws based upon such, is absurd.
Do your gods work, in your gods house.
Leave the running of the Republic to We The People. Not by fiat of someone's interpretation of their divine word that only they can hear, much less understand.
By the by, pessimism is much to soft a word for what is thought about the current amalgamation of GOP and God.
4
Is it ok if I do my God's work (helping those less fortunate than me, loving my neighbor as myself) where ever I go. If that is ok, I promise not to try and influence others except by deed.
Very nice, Ross, but until you and your party figure out how to get rid of the toxic virus infecting the White House and destroying our democracy day by day, tweet by tweet, nothing else matters.
11
"When a public person you know and care for dies too soon"
That Mr. Douthat would be in most cases and any age.
That Mr. Douthat would be in most cases and any age.
2
Let's experiment with a new catechism. Questions, answers. In preparation for confirmation in a whole new church:
Q: Why would a man who had been mugged and robbed of $33 in a hotel room be inspired to oppose women's legal rights to abortion?
A: He was pursuing his own prophets. And profits.
Q: Who was Chuck Colson, Cromartie's mentor?
A: The "dirty tricks" chief for Richard Nixon, a merciless Nixon "hatchet" man, who served time in jail for obstruction of justice, then chose to convert, preach to prisoners, establish the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and start his own radio show. Colson too was inspired by male prophets ... and profits.
Q. What did these men think about the introduction of safe and reliable contraception for women in the 1960s?
A: They thought The Pill threatened society, shook the foundations of stable Christianity, robbed men of their rightful power as authoritative inseminators and priests, and led to sin and anarchy.
Q: And what did these men think about the rights of women to shape and decide own futures?
A: Don't make me laugh.
Q: Why would a man who had been mugged and robbed of $33 in a hotel room be inspired to oppose women's legal rights to abortion?
A: He was pursuing his own prophets. And profits.
Q: Who was Chuck Colson, Cromartie's mentor?
A: The "dirty tricks" chief for Richard Nixon, a merciless Nixon "hatchet" man, who served time in jail for obstruction of justice, then chose to convert, preach to prisoners, establish the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and start his own radio show. Colson too was inspired by male prophets ... and profits.
Q. What did these men think about the introduction of safe and reliable contraception for women in the 1960s?
A: They thought The Pill threatened society, shook the foundations of stable Christianity, robbed men of their rightful power as authoritative inseminators and priests, and led to sin and anarchy.
Q: And what did these men think about the rights of women to shape and decide own futures?
A: Don't make me laugh.
14
I mourn for your loss, Ross. Here are a few lines from a guy who also died this week too young, in fact, at just 67 too. He had something to say too about how the world works and what a life can be in art.
“Packed up the Dylan and the Man Ray and the Joyce
I left a note that said well I guess I got no choice
Scuse me girl while I'm kicking it to the curb
Leaving with all I need but less than I deserve”
― Walter Becker
“Packed up the Dylan and the Man Ray and the Joyce
I left a note that said well I guess I got no choice
Scuse me girl while I'm kicking it to the curb
Leaving with all I need but less than I deserve”
― Walter Becker
3
RD's canonization of this man is personal, so I won't question motives, but anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the GOP's use of religion since 1981 knows how fraudulent it is.
God may forgive them, but I won't.
God may forgive them, but I won't.
16
Mr. Douthat,
The difficulties with your "vocation" arise from logical inconsistencies two of which you amply demonstrate in today's column.
Firstly, while the nation is faced with grave existential difficulties you choose to ignore them and are thus by omission act a-critically of the realities created by your cohort. While Rome burns you choose to fiddle.
Secondly and much more telling are the logical inconsistencies of your self-understanding. If you are indeed religiously pulled back, as you self describe, to the "…1970s-era civil war…" of your denomination and are part of the reactionary traditionalists opposing the "aggiornamento" wrought by the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church then it is not possible to hold, as you state, “… the belief that something less balkanized and polarized and desperate is still possible.” Civil wars are not fought as negotiating strategies but rather to prevail.
Ah, but then per chance your "civil war" stance explains why you avoid more pressing and contemporary issues such as the brutal and unsightly events in Charlottesville.
The difficulties with your "vocation" arise from logical inconsistencies two of which you amply demonstrate in today's column.
Firstly, while the nation is faced with grave existential difficulties you choose to ignore them and are thus by omission act a-critically of the realities created by your cohort. While Rome burns you choose to fiddle.
Secondly and much more telling are the logical inconsistencies of your self-understanding. If you are indeed religiously pulled back, as you self describe, to the "…1970s-era civil war…" of your denomination and are part of the reactionary traditionalists opposing the "aggiornamento" wrought by the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church then it is not possible to hold, as you state, “… the belief that something less balkanized and polarized and desperate is still possible.” Civil wars are not fought as negotiating strategies but rather to prevail.
Ah, but then per chance your "civil war" stance explains why you avoid more pressing and contemporary issues such as the brutal and unsightly events in Charlottesville.
2
Yes, where is the Christian fight to (as Dunne would say) "comfort the aflicted and afflict the comfortable". Too all Christians (of which I am one) "He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas" (Poor Richard's Almanack).
2
"The administration of George W. Bush was trying to use an evangelical-Catholic alliance to ground the G.O.P. in an ecumenical and morally serious conservative religiosity....But the Bush project failed, the secular backlash was intense, the sexual revolution routed moral traditionalists..."
Yes, such a shame us sinners who can't keep it in our pants ruined St. George's loving crusade to bring democracy to a fallen world.
Seriously, sir: you blaspheme.
Yes, such a shame us sinners who can't keep it in our pants ruined St. George's loving crusade to bring democracy to a fallen world.
Seriously, sir: you blaspheme.
2
Ya gotta love these conservative columnists. So Cromartie's muggers somehow represented liberal policies and therefore made him conservative -- but coming into contact with Colson, a legally criminal conservative, only reinforced his conservative bent? Sounds to me like Cromartie, and Douthat, both suffer from situational morality and will say or do anything to rationalize their behavior and choices.
11
"....pessimism about Christianity’s relationship to liberalism..."
Oh, Ross... Again, you put dogma above how one lives. Yet feeding the poor and healing the sick seem to have become the left's job, with no help from the right, who are obsessed with sex-related rules.
IMHO, the "thou shalt nots" that so obsess the right are Christian first grade. It's so easy to point out one's neighbors sins and stop there.
What's difficult is the opening of the heart, and not just to those like yourself—the doing of good to those who hate you, the loving of your enemy, not in a kind of strangled, grudging abstraction but from the heart. That inevitably requires action in terms of food, shelter, fairness, and healthcare for all.
I'm pessimistic about Christianity's relationship to the right. It's practiced in a stunted, selfish, self-righteous way that gets no one any closer to the radical stance of Jesus. (There's a reason why the right primarily quotes the Old Testament and seldom Jesus.)
Oh, Ross... Again, you put dogma above how one lives. Yet feeding the poor and healing the sick seem to have become the left's job, with no help from the right, who are obsessed with sex-related rules.
IMHO, the "thou shalt nots" that so obsess the right are Christian first grade. It's so easy to point out one's neighbors sins and stop there.
What's difficult is the opening of the heart, and not just to those like yourself—the doing of good to those who hate you, the loving of your enemy, not in a kind of strangled, grudging abstraction but from the heart. That inevitably requires action in terms of food, shelter, fairness, and healthcare for all.
I'm pessimistic about Christianity's relationship to the right. It's practiced in a stunted, selfish, self-righteous way that gets no one any closer to the radical stance of Jesus. (There's a reason why the right primarily quotes the Old Testament and seldom Jesus.)
9
Wonder what he thought of so called Christians that voted for Trump ?
3
The Christians aren't the problem. It is the cults of self-righteous Pharisees trying to manipulate others with hate and bigotry. It is the cults of Philistinism with their prosperity religiosity feeding off their neurotic greed and hatred of the poor, the sick, the elderly and children. It is the cult of Elmer Gantry, the hero with the feet of clay telling the downtrodden that only he has the answers directly from God, and that common sense & logic are unnecessary.
Another mealy-mouthed rationalization and equivocation from Douthat, who should know better.
Another mealy-mouthed rationalization and equivocation from Douthat, who should know better.
5
Ambrose Bierce in "The Devil's Dictionary" defines a Christian as "[o]ne who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor." Evangelical Christianity in which one's personal salvation becomes inextricably linked to saving his neighbor's soul is Christianity in the Bierce sense, on stilts. Today's Christians seem hell-bent on practicing everything Christ inveighed against, e.g., praying in public, and erecting the very inflexible and exclusive system represented by the First Century temple to which Christ represented an existential threat. So long as questioning the catechism is apostasy, dialogue will remain elusive. This is precisely why even good Catholics like me want my religion to be evident in my ethical deportment, but never, ever explicitly used to govern the conduct of others. The former is the essence of true religious liberty, the later is tyranny.
9
This quote is telling: "the secular backlash was intense, the sexual revolution routed moral traditionalists." It says that the columnist and the man he celebrates here wanted to turn one particular religious morality into the governing principle for all citizens. The secular "backlash" and sexual revolution were simply saying that a religious government is wrong and must be opposed. Freedom of religious does NOT mean the freedom to be ruled by someone else's beliefs. It means the freedom to be ruled by one's own beliefs, as long as you don't impose them on others. The Republican party no longer believes in religious freedom for all, and I'm not sure this columnist does either.
8
After reading Mr. Douthat's well written column, I am convinced that the gaps between Americans are so great that they cannot be bridged.
What is even the point of holding meetings between secular journalists and evangelicals?
What is even the point of holding meetings between secular journalists and evangelicals?
3
Evangelicalism is done for if its future leaders are Jerry Falwell Jr. & Paula White.
5
Ross,
I do not understand your essay as metaphysics is a search for truth and you precede with an essay on a mystic quest. The metaphysician looks for questions his quest is not self aggrandisement but comfort with being but a speck of dust in cosmos. He seeks as Blake says the universe in a grain of sand, he a whirling dervish spinning and twirling in another consciousness or he a Kabbaliste seeking meaning in endless arrays of random numbers.
Ross, you are not cut out for metaphysics. Your needs are for identity for purpose you are a man of reason.
For whatever reason you refuse to acknowledge that it might well be that
"Life's but a walking shadow. a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: It is a Tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing."
I am a Jew and for me Jesus was a brother and one of many Messiahs who bring meaning to my life but with out acknowledging the possible truth of the Macbeth quote I cannot conceive of the possibility of being a real Christian Jew or Muslim because that is religion at its core. It is the message of Job and it is the message of the Book of Jonah.
What does it mean to Ross Douthat "by faith alone shall ye be saved" when not having faith is not an option?
Remember Nineveh is saved because the King believes that Nineveh will be destroyed but he still behaves with righteousness.
I do not understand your essay as metaphysics is a search for truth and you precede with an essay on a mystic quest. The metaphysician looks for questions his quest is not self aggrandisement but comfort with being but a speck of dust in cosmos. He seeks as Blake says the universe in a grain of sand, he a whirling dervish spinning and twirling in another consciousness or he a Kabbaliste seeking meaning in endless arrays of random numbers.
Ross, you are not cut out for metaphysics. Your needs are for identity for purpose you are a man of reason.
For whatever reason you refuse to acknowledge that it might well be that
"Life's but a walking shadow. a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: It is a Tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing."
I am a Jew and for me Jesus was a brother and one of many Messiahs who bring meaning to my life but with out acknowledging the possible truth of the Macbeth quote I cannot conceive of the possibility of being a real Christian Jew or Muslim because that is religion at its core. It is the message of Job and it is the message of the Book of Jonah.
What does it mean to Ross Douthat "by faith alone shall ye be saved" when not having faith is not an option?
Remember Nineveh is saved because the King believes that Nineveh will be destroyed but he still behaves with righteousness.
2
Finally some compassion and decency from a NY times writer; it is very long overdue for anyone.
I think that the writer should be more pessimistic about "Christianity's relationship" to a present day conservatism that is anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-social safety net, anti-fair taxation, anti-gender equality, and a host of other damning anti-positions reflective of its goal, being the perpetuation and hardening of white privilege and supremacy in America.
"Christianity" today is so divorced and distant from the original teachings of its humble and caring namesake that a name change is in order. This religious group more accurately should henceforth be simply known as the "Irrelevants".
"Christianity" today is so divorced and distant from the original teachings of its humble and caring namesake that a name change is in order. This religious group more accurately should henceforth be simply known as the "Irrelevants".
3
Ross, perhaps I missed something. There were twice yearly get togethers so that religious leaders and journalists could converse rather than be "locked in misunderstanding and mistrust." My question is: "how did that work?"
In fact, most religious leaders and certainly evangelicals have no intention of changing their world view no matter how much they converse with those of little or different faiths! My good friend from high school lamented to me on the phone that people just did not understand that as a Southern Baptist he was commanded by the Bible to enforce his beliefs or God would likely punish him in the after life for not being a faithful servant!
It is amazing that Christians are free to practice their beliefs in private all they want and to do so without paying taxes. Conversely, what is difficult to understand is that Christians want to discriminate against sinners and impose their will through conservative political leaders or they scream discrimination! The only solution, as stated by many readers, is to keep religion out of politics!
In fact, most religious leaders and certainly evangelicals have no intention of changing their world view no matter how much they converse with those of little or different faiths! My good friend from high school lamented to me on the phone that people just did not understand that as a Southern Baptist he was commanded by the Bible to enforce his beliefs or God would likely punish him in the after life for not being a faithful servant!
It is amazing that Christians are free to practice their beliefs in private all they want and to do so without paying taxes. Conversely, what is difficult to understand is that Christians want to discriminate against sinners and impose their will through conservative political leaders or they scream discrimination! The only solution, as stated by many readers, is to keep religion out of politics!
8
If you think Christianity and liberalism are estranged, maybe you should pay more attention to your own Pope, Episcpalians and the United Church of Christ, or if you need a charismatic preacher, John Pavlovitz. Unlike conservatives, however, liberals don't see adherence to one faith, or any faith, to be a test of political purity.
4
Would that we all know and learn from living bridges.
Memory eternal, Michael. May God speed the day when the fundamentalists on all sides learn a little humility.
2
I'm sorry that you lost an inspirational friend. I am familiar with that kind of loss. Unfortunately as you have observed that a man and a movement founded on the principle of open dialogue and the exchange of ideas has indeed failed. We now live in a society subject to the whims and fleeting fancy of an erratic and not grounded president who does not believe in dialogue but tweets. We have a congress not even remotely interested in dialogue and debate. I'm not sure how we got to this point but it is eroding our society, our government and the American Dream. Greed and power seem to have replaced equality and fairness and in the process we have shut our ears and minds to a healthy exchange of ideas. Maybe it's time to stop tweeting and texting and to look the other person in the eyes and start talking.
2
What I would ask you, Ross, is this: why are you so sure, so confident, so desperately defensively convinced that the Christian Good News is actually the same thing as "moral traditionalism" and/or "religious conservatism"? Can you justify this identification from scripture itself, from the subtext of centuries of liturgy and devotion, or from the writings of the greatest Christian minds?
Not to mention the encyclicals of the current Pope, whose legitimacy you seem to question, putting you, a traditionalist whose own world view demands loyalty to legitimately constituted authority, in a logical catch-22.
Not to mention the encyclicals of the current Pope, whose legitimacy you seem to question, putting you, a traditionalist whose own world view demands loyalty to legitimately constituted authority, in a logical catch-22.
11
We need a lot more people willing to talk across political and religious lines than yell across them. I see evangelicals, conservatives, and liberals turn into fit-throwing children when their beliefs get challenged, instead of opening up to listen. When we isolate ourselves into our own pods of security and like-minded friends, and don't let the other side have a word, we only show our own insecurity and lack of belief in our values.
3
A piece like this is apt to stimulate responses in the vein of attacks on religion generally including predictions of its demise, as well as high praise for separation of church and state. I'm comforted, but not necessarily presuaded, by Pascal's notion that betting on God seems more prudent than betting against him. It seems reasonable to me to assume a cause and characteristic of life I would prefer to be aligned with. There has been a movement to decriminalize certain drug offenses. I'd like to see that extended to the offenses of the religious as well. There's a perception that much malevolence is flying under the cover of religion, which might be true. For the marginalized, push often comes to shove. When it does, since the time of Jesus and before, the religious community have had something like a welcoming presence for them. Wouldn't it be nice if we could identify and eradicate the root causes of distress? A kind of genocide of evil? Scientists are probably working on all this as we read our papers. Many of them are asking people important questions, like what makes you happy? How are you going to vote?
I often do not agree with Ross Douthat's opinions, but I seek out thoughtful, reflective and honest individuals who espouse differing perspectives. I get tired of my moderate, left of center echo chamber.
One of the often unexpected benefits of this is learning about significant individuals of whom I was unaware. Michael Cromartie was clearly one such individual.
One of the often unexpected benefits of this is learning about significant individuals of whom I was unaware. Michael Cromartie was clearly one such individual.
4
Ross,
Your comments on your friend Cromatie are appreciated by me and many others. There is a place for dialogue between the religious and the non-religious. I am a practicing Catholic and am distressed over the current political environment. Our founding Fathers and many others were believers in God, but many were not participants in organized religions. Our original settlers fled religious persecution. To make a safe place for all to practice their own religious beliefs was a basic goal for our Founders. This rock steady view was enshrined in our Constitution.
I am not a single-issue voter. I cannot push my religious views onto others and do not believe others should do so. Religious choice is too personal and important to politicize. We see the results of religious intolerance in other countries like Iran. We need to practice our faith in a personal way and not point the finger of guilt at others for their practices. ISIS is the worst example of this type of intolerance and we all see their results. They can live their faith without killing others. It is when they want to foist their personal religious views on everyone that things get ugly. We should not follow their lead.
The one thing I was looking for in your letter, but did not see, was who is taking up the gauntlet to continue Cromaties wonderful work?
Your comments on your friend Cromatie are appreciated by me and many others. There is a place for dialogue between the religious and the non-religious. I am a practicing Catholic and am distressed over the current political environment. Our founding Fathers and many others were believers in God, but many were not participants in organized religions. Our original settlers fled religious persecution. To make a safe place for all to practice their own religious beliefs was a basic goal for our Founders. This rock steady view was enshrined in our Constitution.
I am not a single-issue voter. I cannot push my religious views onto others and do not believe others should do so. Religious choice is too personal and important to politicize. We see the results of religious intolerance in other countries like Iran. We need to practice our faith in a personal way and not point the finger of guilt at others for their practices. ISIS is the worst example of this type of intolerance and we all see their results. They can live their faith without killing others. It is when they want to foist their personal religious views on everyone that things get ugly. We should not follow their lead.
The one thing I was looking for in your letter, but did not see, was who is taking up the gauntlet to continue Cromaties wonderful work?
35
Having been one of those evangelicals opposed to and demonstrated against the Viet Nam war, and now an 83 year old quite frustrated by the Church"s retreat from social justice, I really appreciated you op-ed. I would like to recommend that you pick up Bob Brown's piece in the Helena(MT) Independent-Record on September 5. Mr. Brown is a Montana Republican who, by his writing of yesterday, exhibits some real hope for our future.
The loss of a friend of mentor is hard and I wish to extend my condolences to the friends and family of Mr. Cromartie who sounds like an authentic good person.
A new PRRI poll released shows the downward trend of religion in America and especially evangelicals. A trend often causing Mr. Douthat to wax anxiety. Why is Christianity fading? Religious thinkers need look no farther than the obvious: hypocrisy.
A new PRRI poll released shows the downward trend of religion in America and especially evangelicals. A trend often causing Mr. Douthat to wax anxiety. Why is Christianity fading? Religious thinkers need look no farther than the obvious: hypocrisy.
9
Mr. Douthat,
I am always envious of so many people like you, who are able to trust and believe in ONE FAITH. I am afraid that the pluralism is as inevitable as a death of a star. Humans are not and will never be as simple as our previous wise men taught us to be. It is important, however, in my humble opinion to rely on your hearts and minds (brain) to search for the meaning of life, if any.
I am always envious of so many people like you, who are able to trust and believe in ONE FAITH. I am afraid that the pluralism is as inevitable as a death of a star. Humans are not and will never be as simple as our previous wise men taught us to be. It is important, however, in my humble opinion to rely on your hearts and minds (brain) to search for the meaning of life, if any.
3
How sad that the old fashioned Christian virtues of faith, hope, charity, and loving your neighbor as yourself have been turned inside out by today's politicized "Christian" Trump apologists targeting Mexicans, Muslims, undocumented immigrant workers, and transgender citizens for abuse and discrimination.
I have never heard of Michael Cromartie's work before, but if his politics were to inject his religious dogmas into government rules, I would fear his contribution to the public square was similar to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell et al. I believe in Thomas Jefferson's great wall of separation between church and state because good fences make good neighbors.
I have never heard of Michael Cromartie's work before, but if his politics were to inject his religious dogmas into government rules, I would fear his contribution to the public square was similar to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell et al. I believe in Thomas Jefferson's great wall of separation between church and state because good fences make good neighbors.
16
I don't know what I want from religion, from people who are in the forefront of trying to weld together a national philosophy.
But I know that I want to stop sitting in church wondering if the people around me obeyed the summons from my Church leaders and abandoned workers, abandoned the sick to gain a Supreme Court Justice who'd outlaw what the Church deemed immoral, but could not on its own, convince the legions actually is immoral. I want to know that they didn't vote to kill my husband to get a judge.
Politics involves trade-offs, elevates some needs above others, creates coalitions of people who choose what priority comes first, and which comes last. And which are not even on the list.
Religion doesn't have priorities: a sick person, a person in prison, the stranger we turn away, the child born and unborn all have equal standing in religion, but not in politics.
So I respect anyone who tries to keep open dialogue, who tries to broaden understanding. But I wish we'd spend less time with religion in the political front, in the journalists' sights: politics and religion are strange bedfellows. I don't want to keep my political views at the price of losing my religion.
But I know that I want to stop sitting in church wondering if the people around me obeyed the summons from my Church leaders and abandoned workers, abandoned the sick to gain a Supreme Court Justice who'd outlaw what the Church deemed immoral, but could not on its own, convince the legions actually is immoral. I want to know that they didn't vote to kill my husband to get a judge.
Politics involves trade-offs, elevates some needs above others, creates coalitions of people who choose what priority comes first, and which comes last. And which are not even on the list.
Religion doesn't have priorities: a sick person, a person in prison, the stranger we turn away, the child born and unborn all have equal standing in religion, but not in politics.
So I respect anyone who tries to keep open dialogue, who tries to broaden understanding. But I wish we'd spend less time with religion in the political front, in the journalists' sights: politics and religion are strange bedfellows. I don't want to keep my political views at the price of losing my religion.
18
I'm sorry for your loss.
Also, I feel for you in your spiritual struggle. I understand the torment, especially for a person of ideas. I'm not sure a resolution or catharsis will be achieved without suffering. I just don't see the capacity in many to realize their fault before the check arrives. And I understand how difficult it must be for you to abandon these souls to the devil that possesses them. And with it, to doubt the very faith you follow for failing to be a spiritual or even mental bulwark strong enough to resist such travesties. It's your cross to bear. I feel for you.
Also, I feel for you in your spiritual struggle. I understand the torment, especially for a person of ideas. I'm not sure a resolution or catharsis will be achieved without suffering. I just don't see the capacity in many to realize their fault before the check arrives. And I understand how difficult it must be for you to abandon these souls to the devil that possesses them. And with it, to doubt the very faith you follow for failing to be a spiritual or even mental bulwark strong enough to resist such travesties. It's your cross to bear. I feel for you.
This is a provocative eulogy. Ross you are, like it or not, a papist, just like me. On Sunday if you went to mass, Matthew's Gospel chastised Peter when Jesus reveals his passion and death to his disciples, and Peter talks as if he is astonished. But the reply Jesus gives Ross, is something you and I need to contemplate. "If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself and pick up his cross and follow me"! For many years both in the catholic hierarchy and in the Protestantization of American Catholicism, Catholics have failed to "do" the cross. We have affirmed the prosperity gospel adopted by many of our evangelical brothers and sisters. We wanted to BE like the Protestants who settled this land and we wanted them to forget our papist roots. The cross, Ross, is a burden. The Jesus of the Gospel asks each of us to bare the burdens of our brothers and sisters--the way of the cross--Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa come to mind. We Catholics have greatly failed in the church mission to do the real hard work of the cross. In so doing we have contributed to the fall of sound Christian teaching in our homes, schools, businesses, and government. Instead we followed Reagan and Falwell, and Bush and Cheney to cast judgement on the poor, the gay, the migrant, and African-Americans. We consumed ourselves with worry over IUDS, and fortified the false intentions of what 'religious liberty' actually means. I commend Francis, who like us, is the supreme papist, and who does the cross.
7
Consider the irony or paradox of these beliefs: "our unfashionable morality and metaphysics." and, "But the Bush project failed, the secular backlash was intense, the sexual revolution routed moral traditionalists, and in the Republican Party ethno-nationalism replaced religious conservatism as the coalition’s strong cement." It takes considerable effort to feel like you are an outsider, when in reality you are the mainstream. Yes, how can pluralism ever work when you convict the liberal with sin? See how RD believes it was the other, the secular pushback, that was at issue, as if secular pushback was responsible for the racist elements in the GOP, as if these really welcoming conservatives were overcome by a liberal push. There can be a conservative and liberal coalition, yes, even politically, but all need to remove the log in their own eye, before seeing the other. And one more thing. It is not politics that will save us now, at least not directly. The changes needed will first have to be rooted culturally, a culture which sees the other as valuable as one sees one self, you know, like Jesus did.
60
One of Ross Douthat's most remarkable columns. Would that the widespread separatism currently masquerading as secular enlightenment could find common ground with Michael Cromartie. The gift of true religion is the light to see beyond squabbling partisanship.
1
Ross, people who are unjustly and severely injured--as Cromartie's example shows--do not softly glide into warm and authentic appreciation for the social circumstances which made them vulnerable. When it is then required that such victims join the chorus of praise for the tradition and norms under which they got abused, they can do so only in ironic suppressed contempt. All you need to know about the evangelicals in America is that they fell their guilt for benefitting from and defending what caused misery to others and organize around their judgment against all who lack piety with respect to the system's promoted values. The victims become the enemy of the society in their eyes because they do not worship the gods in whose name they were chastised. Certainly the big result is a pervasive contempt for genuinely important values. But until they own their part in preserving the moralistic ego defenses of cruel men, evangeliicals and self-named 'conservatives' like you are not going to play a role in fashioning a new social consensus on basic norms. We're going to descend into civic chaos and I'm calling you for it. You're the biggest reason deviant kids would rather die deviant than comply with such contemptible smug piety.
1
I don't agree with you often but I give you credit for calling out the religious right's hypocrisy of their support for Donald Trump. Thanks for letting me know about Michael Cromartie.
2
Conservatives are increasingly victims of the chasm between their beautiful words and the ugliness of the actions they support by commission and omission.
10
May God grant him, as William James from the other side, refers to as
"evolutionary soul progression."
"evolutionary soul progression."
2
This is lunacy. "Christian" politicians respond, when asked if the world is 6,000 years old, "hey I'm not a science guy". Getting Bush into the sexual revolution, which occurred (unless my memory fails me) 30+ years before is non-sensical. You cannot have a rational conversation giving credence to the tenets of these people. We'd still be living in the trees if these Evangelicals held sway Jesus wept.
3
Yes, I applaud any person and movement that brings various religions together in a room to talk about their faiths. But be clear, a religious person believes that their faith, their religious text, their god---is the only god. Non-believers---the other religions in the room---are doomed individuals, worshipping a false god and reading heretical texts. A truly committed religious person is charged with the role of converting non-believers---the goal of all these meetings. What is really going through the minds of a Catholic, an Evangelical , a Mormon, a Jew, a Muslim, when they sit around a table dialoguing? Yes they accept the humanity of those seated next to them, but, at the same time, are certain they are doomed persons is whatever afterlife their myth system has created.
10
Separation of church and state is an impossible ideal. They cannot be totally separated. Everyone's identity is shaped by how they were brought up and "brainwashed". What they believe in become their core identity. It influences the kind of society people desire and collectively organize. Religions are just a form of Ideologies, and not all Ideologies are correct or harmless. Religions that embrace so-called "just war" and encourage killing the non-believers of their ideology are the worst. Plenty of evidence had been documented in recent years about the destruction brought on by religions. No need to repeat them here. Thus Freedom of Religions is itself a wrongheaded ideology. The best that can be hoped for is a secular form of government established to minimize the harm of religions and push them back from infringing their thirst for power and control on other people. That's the real Jihad people needed. Unfortunately it is almost a lost cause. Human nature is impossible to change in substantial ways. It's worse than two step forward, one step back. Think how slavery, oppression of women, discrimination of ethnic minorities and personal preferences, denial of scientific evidences, etc still plague the world.
4
"The administration of George W. Bush was trying to use an evangelical-Catholic alliance to ground the G.O.P. in an ecumenical and morally serious conservative religiosity."
No it wasn't. I don't have any good advice for how Christians should deal politically with an increasingly hostile culture, but at least being honest about how they have been exploited in the past and the role that religious conservatives specifically played in helping to bring the GOP to where it is would be a start.
No it wasn't. I don't have any good advice for how Christians should deal politically with an increasingly hostile culture, but at least being honest about how they have been exploited in the past and the role that religious conservatives specifically played in helping to bring the GOP to where it is would be a start.
11
Only if pluralism and Christianity can at least stay its course attempting to perpetually merge can its mutually sought timelessness be truly invoked if eternity's permanent now -- for which we relatively long -- has any chance at ever becoming our singularly-destined absolute. After all, the second Einstein proves that even light can bend, the very squaring of its timeless speed reserves a place comparably heaven if the purpose of life's limits is to someday transcend our inseparable space & time. Godspeed!
The road to pluralism is mysticism. Get to the roots of any teaching rather than all the dross of social-political culture its been laden with. Mysticism questions identity. What's become of Christianity is identity politics, certainly not what Christ represented.
5
Mr. Cromartie seems to have been a reasonable and honest person, but he served the Evangelical cause that created "The Culture Wars" and Evangelicalism put a vile, corrupt misfit in the White House.
When growing up, I heard repeatedly what a "fine man" was one Robert E. Lee, but now many of us, even today, recognize him for what hie was: a traitor to the country, as well as a defender of secession and slavery?
A whole bunch of Mr. Cromartie's fellow Evangelicals voted for Trump based on his anti-abortion and anti-immigration views. Well, they got their Neil Gorsuch and Trump has decided to kick transgenders out of the military. Now the "Dreamers" have to go! Yeah, let's make America "white", "male-dominated" and "straight" again! Fat chance!
Sounds to me that Cromartie should have spent more time converting his bigoted co-religionists to reasonable public policies, rather than trying to bridge the differences with secularists. Being a "fine man" does NOT excuse support for reactionary policies and keeping bad company!
When growing up, I heard repeatedly what a "fine man" was one Robert E. Lee, but now many of us, even today, recognize him for what hie was: a traitor to the country, as well as a defender of secession and slavery?
A whole bunch of Mr. Cromartie's fellow Evangelicals voted for Trump based on his anti-abortion and anti-immigration views. Well, they got their Neil Gorsuch and Trump has decided to kick transgenders out of the military. Now the "Dreamers" have to go! Yeah, let's make America "white", "male-dominated" and "straight" again! Fat chance!
Sounds to me that Cromartie should have spent more time converting his bigoted co-religionists to reasonable public policies, rather than trying to bridge the differences with secularists. Being a "fine man" does NOT excuse support for reactionary policies and keeping bad company!
5
You had me until, "But the Bush project failed, the secular backlash was intense, the sexual revolution routed moral traditionalists...?"
That's how you see it? The "sexual revolution routed moral traditionalists"? I really do try to understand your worldview Mr. Douthat. But I keep failing.
Perhaps I need more faith.
That's how you see it? The "sexual revolution routed moral traditionalists"? I really do try to understand your worldview Mr. Douthat. But I keep failing.
Perhaps I need more faith.
2
Mr. Douthat claims without citing any evidence that journalists are one of "America's most secular professions".
I tried to find evidence to justify Douthat's claim. I could find no surveys of polls of religiosity as a function of employment.
Ross Douthat: Will you please tell us what facts you have to back up this claim?
I tried to find evidence to justify Douthat's claim. I could find no surveys of polls of religiosity as a function of employment.
Ross Douthat: Will you please tell us what facts you have to back up this claim?
5
As an old school Christian who was raised as a Methodist and attended church and Sunday school for many years,I felt pushed out by the so-called fundamentalists and evangelicals as they spread throughout our culture.With my focus on peace,helping the poor and being suspicious of great wealth, which were addressed forcefully by Jesus,I almost thought of myself as no longer being able to call myself a Christian.The evangelicals pushed me out with their self-centeredness...a focus only on themselves and their financial well being....and even on promoting war.All supported by biblical teachings which they had cherry-picked from the bible.As I've watched the havoc and negativity most evangelicals have tried to spread throughout the world I have come to regard myself as a true Christian whose core values are major tenants of biblical teachings.I'm sorry to say but Jerry Falwell,Joel Ornstein,Pat Robertson and so many other evangelical figures are not Christians.They are "false prophets."Many of the young people who have rejected religion would welcome the teachings of real Christianity. They have values which extend beyond themselves...to the welfare of all peoples.Your own Pope is trying to tell you this.We don't have megachurches and rich ministries but we do have values.we care about others.It's time for Christians who believe in Jesus's core teachings to take back the religion from the charlatans,kindly as they may be.
19
Cromartie was what he was in spite of his Evangelicalism not because of it. He was better than his religion. Fortunately, many people are. Christianity is inherently us-them and triumphalistic. It is built on exceptionalism. It also plays loose with evidence (a harbinger of "post-truth") and holds to a cosmic/eschatological ends-justifies-the-means ethic. It was a good try, but doomed to fail. Mr. Comartie should be kindly remembered--and a lesson should be learned.
3
I would deeply like to second your call for dialogue and respect that you draw from Cromartie. But I have one problem, the evangelical community have abandoned their faith, and their commitment to the Constitutional institutions of this country so as to support a would be dictator who hates me and all that I value and love. Im not sure if you would be calling for mutual comprehension if it really were the case that President Obama did close your churches and outrage your values in any way he could. I grew up in an evangelical denomination and even though I am a non-believer I kept a lookout for developments in theology that I could respect. The support of the evangelical community for Trump has changed all that, it has shown me the idolatry of a nationalist cliche who would give away all of their values to belong to a cult of personality. Ross you may not worship at Trump's alter but you provide cover for those who do. To those who would bear witness from this cult I tell you I have no respect for how you have oriented your life and I consider you and your president moral cripples.
16
"...my present work depends on the belief that something less balkanized and polarized and desperate is still possible". What makes you believe that? The lust for money and political power has corrupted the church, Pope Francis notwithstanding. That lust is corrupting all (esp. US) religions and it's fuelling the "-istic" fanatical sects of many. I'd be more likely to understand your efforts (which I do love) were you merely hopeful rather than driven by belief that thoughtful dialogue and critical analysis can work.
4
Yesterday, in the Guardian - U.K., the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, had a fine article: "U.K.'s Economic Model is Broken." I like to read the Guardian occasionally as so much of what is happening in England is also happening here.
2
Pluralism doesn't mean we all live by your moral code, Ross. That would be the opposite of pluralism. And yet, that is what conservative Christians demand when they attack LGBTQ people and seek to dictate the reproductive choices of women. Conservatives are moping because Americans have embraced real pluralism, and that is tough pill for would-be theocrats to swallow.
16
Douthat praises the fact that Cromartie spent time helping journalists and his two decades of "great work" -- work that resulted in the election of Donald Trump. How does this square with the "faith, hope and charity" values Douthat comically claims are representative of Christianity? The hypocrisy of this ilk is apparent to all who watched Joel Osteen pray in his dry 16,000- seat church while Houston flooded. That a journalist is enamored with someone who was dedicated to inserting his brand of religion into politics is so disturbing on so many levels.
11
Religion has no place in political thought or process. None.
I do not care and do not want to know what any faith leader has to say about anything political or policy related. They are shamans selling an invisible product from a undeserved tax exempt perch.
If you want to go to Church, Synagogue, Mosque, Temple, etc - feel free. All I ask is that you pay your taxes- on all your property- and stay out of politics. Any God or Gods that wants to speak out on whatever injustice can come on down and speak for themselves. To date they have remained publicly silent.
I do not care and do not want to know what any faith leader has to say about anything political or policy related. They are shamans selling an invisible product from a undeserved tax exempt perch.
If you want to go to Church, Synagogue, Mosque, Temple, etc - feel free. All I ask is that you pay your taxes- on all your property- and stay out of politics. Any God or Gods that wants to speak out on whatever injustice can come on down and speak for themselves. To date they have remained publicly silent.
41
Understood David. I would point out to you however that the religionists are here, abundant and they carry a lot of cultural and political weight. Trying to wish them away is and has never been the answer, and to try to do so only seems to me to confuse the primary question of what to do with them.
Its evident that far greater minds then mine and yours have wrestled with this question since the very inception of the Republic. The Founding Fathers were aware of the conflict that letting a state religion develop in our young country could present, but were themselves of a religious bent as demonstrated by their repeated invocation of the deity in their writings. They in their wisdom therefore made clear that though they would like the blessing of God on our new country, they would impose limits on him (or her) in public life.
So to me the idea of Taxing the churches is a non-starter simply because the churches would then demand the right to publicly campaign for which ever candidate or political party their talks with God revealed to them ('Church of the Old and Hateful', 'Church of the AK-47'- whatever).
No, I think it best to simply try and defend the guide lines that our Framers have already set out for us re: maintaining respect for all religions, but keeping them on a loose but visible and enforceable leash. God Bless!
Its evident that far greater minds then mine and yours have wrestled with this question since the very inception of the Republic. The Founding Fathers were aware of the conflict that letting a state religion develop in our young country could present, but were themselves of a religious bent as demonstrated by their repeated invocation of the deity in their writings. They in their wisdom therefore made clear that though they would like the blessing of God on our new country, they would impose limits on him (or her) in public life.
So to me the idea of Taxing the churches is a non-starter simply because the churches would then demand the right to publicly campaign for which ever candidate or political party their talks with God revealed to them ('Church of the Old and Hateful', 'Church of the AK-47'- whatever).
No, I think it best to simply try and defend the guide lines that our Framers have already set out for us re: maintaining respect for all religions, but keeping them on a loose but visible and enforceable leash. God Bless!
Mr. Douthat, thanks for sharing the story about your friend.
It sounds like he was what we need more of... an actual Christian.
It sounds like he was what we need more of... an actual Christian.
2
I appreciate that Mr. Cromartie was a kind man and a good friend. Nonetheless, his religious beliefs should no more influence government than mine or yours. What is it about separation of church and state that you religious enthusiasts don't get? A GOP grounded "in an ecumenical and morally serious conservative religiosity?" I suppose that would be paradise for you "morally serious conservative" Christians, but what about the rest of us, who are neither Christian nor conservative, although we might be seriously moral (really, it's not impossible). I don't know why I always rise to the bait when you write these columns pining for a mythical Republican party following the doctrines of enlightened Christianity (except for abortion, of course) to save us poor sinners. Maybe because I keep hoping you'll finally understand that your religious beliefs have no place influencing our legislation.
19
Amen to rising to the bait
Maybe Ross can find a redeeming public theology somewhere between Joel Osteen and Donald Trump, but some of us have found that 2000 years of fantasy, dogma and collection plates is quite enough, even if it's in Latin.
"Balkanized", indeed.
"Balkanized", indeed.
18
The problem with faith-based constituencies is not their particular beliefs, it is the effort to use law and governance to impose those beliefs on others.
One may harbor the belief that one's deity abhors racists. While that is a laudable belief, that belief is not an appropriate rationalization for pubic policy. The manifold public harms of racism are rationalization enough. After all, there are also deities who are believed to embrace racism.
The whims of deities and the heart-felt (and sometimes spittle-flecked) interpretations of sacred texts are never appropriate groundings for public policy. There are too many deities and far, far too many interpretations of her words. A utilitarian approach of the greatest benefit to the many at the least cost to the few - in this mortal realm - is sufficient grounding.
Let the priests and rabbis and imams concern themselves with your immortal soul in the afterlife. Representatives and mayors and senators need to worry about best public policy in this life.
One may harbor the belief that one's deity abhors racists. While that is a laudable belief, that belief is not an appropriate rationalization for pubic policy. The manifold public harms of racism are rationalization enough. After all, there are also deities who are believed to embrace racism.
The whims of deities and the heart-felt (and sometimes spittle-flecked) interpretations of sacred texts are never appropriate groundings for public policy. There are too many deities and far, far too many interpretations of her words. A utilitarian approach of the greatest benefit to the many at the least cost to the few - in this mortal realm - is sufficient grounding.
Let the priests and rabbis and imams concern themselves with your immortal soul in the afterlife. Representatives and mayors and senators need to worry about best public policy in this life.
132
Enlightenment was the "religion" this country was founded pm. As ration beings, humans are able to make their own moral decisions, and develop their own ethical systems, without the "assistance" of the church.
Nope, I disagree. The problem with faith-based constituencies IS that they are predicated on beliefs, not facts. And the role of a journalist is to tell the truth. So here we have and excellent individual advocating for the role of believing in world that is actually made up from knowing. Delusional thinking never produces much but misunderstanding and further delusional thinking, like violence begets violence.
It is way past time to tax all religious institutions - they are all too political and benefit as businesses do from government grants and programs. Some do very good work but the overwhelming majority exist to raise dollars and support policies that limit our access to healthcare and autonomy.
The evangelical commitment to Donald Trump whose policies hurt the majority of his voters (while he spouts populist rhetoric) has revealed this religion to be a total scam. It is about power and money - not about people..it was never about people and it was never about god.
The evangelical commitment to Donald Trump whose policies hurt the majority of his voters (while he spouts populist rhetoric) has revealed this religion to be a total scam. It is about power and money - not about people..it was never about people and it was never about god.
17
The paradox here, and one all sincere and good people, Christian or not, must ponder, is why the Republican Party? Was it a simple matter of Ronald Reagan's charm? How were so many good people bamboozled into supporting a party that Reagan began turning mean and that progressively turned meaner? Maybe the kind of intellectual gymnastics it takes to accept the world is 6,000 years old enables also the acceptance of neo-conservatism. Evangelicals are still overwhelmingly Republican, and defending them became a hollow exercise long ago.
Religion has provided cover for many a bad person and many a bad policy. After a while, one has to wonder why it takes people like Mr. Douthat so long to realize, "the generational story he was part of has not had a happy ending." Maybe the "wider establishment" was right to view his "faith and movement as exotic, disreputable, possibly dangerous." The fruits have fallen, and lie all around us.
Religion has provided cover for many a bad person and many a bad policy. After a while, one has to wonder why it takes people like Mr. Douthat so long to realize, "the generational story he was part of has not had a happy ending." Maybe the "wider establishment" was right to view his "faith and movement as exotic, disreputable, possibly dangerous." The fruits have fallen, and lie all around us.
40
There's no doubt that the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was superior to our present Trump Administration but that is faint praise for Bush-Cheney. To say that the Bush Administration was trying to "ground the GOP in a morally serious conservative religiosity" is a rewriting of the history of a group of people who used social issues such as abortion and gay marriage to divide and conquer and who staged a disastrous war on an outright lie. Perhaps religious conservatives have retrenched but they didn't have to dig very deeply to get where they are now.
37
Is it not a little ironic that the Evangelical community has grown so comfortable with the "Prosperity" gospel of Joel Osteen, et al, that as it has become a political "insider," it barricades itself in its own gilded protection from the progresses of reason?
22
One topic the right continues to be against is LGBT rights.
I am not gay nor is anyone in my family so, as we say in the South, I have no dog in this fight.
But also being in the South, I know that our grandchildren will ask how people could have opposed equal LBGT rights, just as today children wonder how 50 years ago we, in the South, had separate bathrooms and drinking fountains and killed people who fought for that equality.
I'd would love to hear Mr. Douthat explaining these thing to his grandchildren when the time comes.
I am not gay nor is anyone in my family so, as we say in the South, I have no dog in this fight.
But also being in the South, I know that our grandchildren will ask how people could have opposed equal LBGT rights, just as today children wonder how 50 years ago we, in the South, had separate bathrooms and drinking fountains and killed people who fought for that equality.
I'd would love to hear Mr. Douthat explaining these thing to his grandchildren when the time comes.
45
This is a beautiful eulogy to a wonderful man unfortunately placed in the context of the worst excesses of both Church and State whose differences he tried and ultimately failed to bridge. For a good reason. Church and State, like oil and water do not mix. Emulsions always break down despite the catalysts.
I understand the desire in human kind to fill in the gaps in our fledgling understanding of the universe by inventing a Supreme Being who has all the answers. Except there's no burden of proof but that written by the inventors. Convenient that, given these manifestos are used to justify the worldly agendas of mankind like making war with "God on their side" against people whose inventions run counter to theirs.
Death will take each and every one of us and I do not begrudge any person on this earth the right to make sense of what that means, both for our time on this earth and for what comes next, but I will fight tooth and nail with anyone or anything that dares to impose those ideas on me. If they want to dictate to their own flock in the privacy of their own congregation, fine. But the minute they seek to insert themselves into the government of the larger congregation, they intrude on the rights of all citizens to live a free life according to the law of the land.
There are no universal heavenly laws. The voice of God speaks directly into each and every human heart as 'conscience". We are blessed by consciousness. It's about time we woke up and used it.
I understand the desire in human kind to fill in the gaps in our fledgling understanding of the universe by inventing a Supreme Being who has all the answers. Except there's no burden of proof but that written by the inventors. Convenient that, given these manifestos are used to justify the worldly agendas of mankind like making war with "God on their side" against people whose inventions run counter to theirs.
Death will take each and every one of us and I do not begrudge any person on this earth the right to make sense of what that means, both for our time on this earth and for what comes next, but I will fight tooth and nail with anyone or anything that dares to impose those ideas on me. If they want to dictate to their own flock in the privacy of their own congregation, fine. But the minute they seek to insert themselves into the government of the larger congregation, they intrude on the rights of all citizens to live a free life according to the law of the land.
There are no universal heavenly laws. The voice of God speaks directly into each and every human heart as 'conscience". We are blessed by consciousness. It's about time we woke up and used it.
142
"Ghost Writers in the Sky." Interesting new information - from the other side.
This is a brilliant comment and I thank the NYT for highlighting it.
@Thomas, Thanks for the tip, but the information is neither information or new. They are stories. While the best can lead us into the truth about ourselves and the universe, you have to be careful you don't fall into the same trap the inventors of their Almighty did.
If you want to see God's work, study physics.
The miracles of electromagnetics, particle physics, even gravity that we take for granted every day.
Way more impressive than the story of the fishes.
As far as the left - right divide, fix poverty and most problems will go away.
The miracles of electromagnetics, particle physics, even gravity that we take for granted every day.
Way more impressive than the story of the fishes.
As far as the left - right divide, fix poverty and most problems will go away.
28
Religion always was and always will be an authoritarian construct designed to control the masses and confer power to forming or existent elites.
In the broad scope in time one certainly can find examples when this worked for the advancement of humankind. Likewise it certainly can be a personal source of comfort and peace to believers. Likewise it certainly can provide a common grounding for a society. Likewise it can the vector that provides for needs when other sources fail. I could go on but my point is simply this: I accept the fact that religion can and has proved beneficial.
But so have many brutal dictatorial despotic regimes through time.
Again said, at its core religion is an authoritarian construct for the benefit of elites. It will always come around to its purpose. That is to advance cohesiveness of the tribe around authoritarian rulers. It will always be at odds with freedom of thought and action, with individualism, and with a greater egalitarianism.
Believers - especially USA Christians - may feel that their religion frees and saves humankind but objectively based on what empirically it ends up supporting it does just the opposite. It cannot fight its natural purpose.
For religion to do the most good - being a cultural Christian I'll put it this way - to be most Christian - there must be a strict wall between it and governance/power. A strict separation.
Else you'll have a Party most antithetical to Jesus's teachings in power - like we do today!
In the broad scope in time one certainly can find examples when this worked for the advancement of humankind. Likewise it certainly can be a personal source of comfort and peace to believers. Likewise it certainly can provide a common grounding for a society. Likewise it can the vector that provides for needs when other sources fail. I could go on but my point is simply this: I accept the fact that religion can and has proved beneficial.
But so have many brutal dictatorial despotic regimes through time.
Again said, at its core religion is an authoritarian construct for the benefit of elites. It will always come around to its purpose. That is to advance cohesiveness of the tribe around authoritarian rulers. It will always be at odds with freedom of thought and action, with individualism, and with a greater egalitarianism.
Believers - especially USA Christians - may feel that their religion frees and saves humankind but objectively based on what empirically it ends up supporting it does just the opposite. It cannot fight its natural purpose.
For religion to do the most good - being a cultural Christian I'll put it this way - to be most Christian - there must be a strict wall between it and governance/power. A strict separation.
Else you'll have a Party most antithetical to Jesus's teachings in power - like we do today!
19
The comment speaks of cultural Christianity but the rhetoric is pure Marxism.
I left the Church as a young man noting the hypocrisy which surrounded it. My parents were not happy.
I felt it curious how so many could condemn one thing and be guilty of the same. I could see as a young man how utterly dangerous this could be.
Now, more than a half century later, nothing, especially in today's climate, has convinced me that I made anything but the right decision.
I felt it curious how so many could condemn one thing and be guilty of the same. I could see as a young man how utterly dangerous this could be.
Now, more than a half century later, nothing, especially in today's climate, has convinced me that I made anything but the right decision.
18
There is a great divide between religion and morality. Religion is rules written and interpreted by humans. There may be some vague moral relationship but that relationship changes with the events of history. Slavery is an easy one to check up on - even Jesus did not prohibit it (Ephesians).
The Republican Party has tried to bill itself as the Party of Christianity. The English colonies were established to get RID of state religion and the Founding Fathers put religious freedom FIRST in the Bill of Rights.
Of course, the only religious beliefs in the Republican Doctrine are related to sexual behavior. In fact, it denies vast areas of Christian doctrine about the poor, the dangers of worshipping money, etc. So maybe not really Christianity?
Unfortunately, looking to religion often stands in the way of our realization of total equality of all humans. We MUST turn against efforts to justify inhumanity by using religion as a bludgeon.
The Republican Party has tried to bill itself as the Party of Christianity. The English colonies were established to get RID of state religion and the Founding Fathers put religious freedom FIRST in the Bill of Rights.
Of course, the only religious beliefs in the Republican Doctrine are related to sexual behavior. In fact, it denies vast areas of Christian doctrine about the poor, the dangers of worshipping money, etc. So maybe not really Christianity?
Unfortunately, looking to religion often stands in the way of our realization of total equality of all humans. We MUST turn against efforts to justify inhumanity by using religion as a bludgeon.
17
After flowering in the biosphere, the human body disintegrates and filters back to elements and energies of the Universe. What remains behind is the subject of religion, a very human avocation. Mankind, just barely glimpsing the beauty of what life can mean in a brief, finite period, and operating from the point of view of a living part of a living world, has in most religions avoided the idea that the gift of life will end for all of us in an individual sense. Death is an individual experience, in spite of its effect on the living. To avoid that painful possibility, heroic efforts to keep the individual alive beyond the final transition have flourished too. Cromartie's efforts were heroic.
4
I have no knowledge of the friend douthat praises, but it sounds odd that he would use this passing to also mourn the loss of "pluralism and dialogue." These traits, along with separation of church and state, are liberal and not what I see douthat advocating in his writing. He may use a lot of "isms" and multi syllable terms to do it, but he still seeks to impose his religion, faith and morality standards on others.
I applaud anyone who speaks out against the falwells and Paula white, but conservatives have worked hard over decades to "exhort"that what a young woman experiencing a crisis pregnancy decides to do could be the worst possible evil, just to use one example.
I applaud anyone who speaks out against the falwells and Paula white, but conservatives have worked hard over decades to "exhort"that what a young woman experiencing a crisis pregnancy decides to do could be the worst possible evil, just to use one example.
19
Chuck Colson delivered a speech on pluralism to Harvard in the 90s. Pluralism, properly understood, is the co-existence of many ideas in the public sphere without the intention or need to coerce the other party to your point of view. That is what Cromartie espoused. Expressing these views under the hope that you might see something of benefit to your life isn't an imposition, it is a kindness.
3
Jim:
"Pluralism, properly understood, is the co-existence of many ideas in the public sphere without the intention or need to coerce the other party to your point of view."
And there is the problem. That is exactly what Christians cannot accept. The cornerstone of the Christian Church (just ask any conservative Christian) is the "Great Commission" - which demands that non-believers CANNOT be left to live their own lives, they MUST be coerced to join.
"Expressing these views [...] isn't an imposition"
When you refuse to take "No" for an answer, yes it is.
"Pluralism, properly understood, is the co-existence of many ideas in the public sphere without the intention or need to coerce the other party to your point of view."
And there is the problem. That is exactly what Christians cannot accept. The cornerstone of the Christian Church (just ask any conservative Christian) is the "Great Commission" - which demands that non-believers CANNOT be left to live their own lives, they MUST be coerced to join.
"Expressing these views [...] isn't an imposition"
When you refuse to take "No" for an answer, yes it is.
2
I'm so sorry for your loss, Mr. Douthat.
But your very tribute reinforces for me the idea that separation of church and state are vital to the survival of our union.
The religious right in this country has far too much power in this country in shaping legislation. The religious right overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump for president:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a...
How do these evangelicals, Christians, Mormons, possibly justify their votes for a three-time married, philandering, hateful, insulting, morrally corrupt con man like Donald Trump?
Their actions speak louder than their empty, meaningless words.
But your very tribute reinforces for me the idea that separation of church and state are vital to the survival of our union.
The religious right in this country has far too much power in this country in shaping legislation. The religious right overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump for president:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a...
How do these evangelicals, Christians, Mormons, possibly justify their votes for a three-time married, philandering, hateful, insulting, morrally corrupt con man like Donald Trump?
Their actions speak louder than their empty, meaningless words.
126
Hear! Hear!!
A Presbyterian from a progressive congregation.
A Presbyterian from a progressive congregation.
Fear of dying obviously can only exist in a still-functioning mind. The fear disappears when mind and biological systems cease to function. Those anesthetized for surgery know the experience of death only because they wake up later to reflect on the void they "didn't" experience when it chronologically happened. Until you wake up, you are unable to remember you ever lost consciousness.
Interesting that we each fearlessly cross this conscious-unconscious threshold night after night at the moment of going to sleep and aren't afraid then.
Interesting that we each fearlessly cross this conscious-unconscious threshold night after night at the moment of going to sleep and aren't afraid then.
6
One of the things that made and make America great is the separation of Church and State.
Douthat has a right to his faith and beliefs no matter how spurious the historical record is that underlies them. But faith is not facts.
He has a right to his faith but does not have a right to impose his faith on me or anyone else.
Unfortunately, the present make up of the majority of the SCOTUS uses the catechism more than our Constitution to make their judgements.
The erosion of the wall between Church and State is a very dangerous thing.
Douthat has a right to his faith and beliefs no matter how spurious the historical record is that underlies them. But faith is not facts.
He has a right to his faith but does not have a right to impose his faith on me or anyone else.
Unfortunately, the present make up of the majority of the SCOTUS uses the catechism more than our Constitution to make their judgements.
The erosion of the wall between Church and State is a very dangerous thing.
76
"the sexual revolution routed moral traditionalists"
No, it did not, unless your morality is focused on policing other people's private behavior in their bedrooms.
You can't keep creeping back in there, hiding behind grand ideas like morality. Get out and stay out.
No, it did not, unless your morality is focused on policing other people's private behavior in their bedrooms.
You can't keep creeping back in there, hiding behind grand ideas like morality. Get out and stay out.
116
To be fair, significant parts of the sexual revolution were not happening in anyone's bedrooms. I'm not endorsing Douthat's perspectives on things, but you could have been alive during (say) 1965-1978, and been somewhat alarmed by what became visible in public without having any opinions or considerations about what people did at home. I would probably say that such alarm was misplaced, but it doesn't require being a nosey busybody to care.
1
For too many people, morality is entirely about sex -- pre-marital, non-heterosexual, unrelated to procreation, etc. And, of course, abortion. This allows the deep and long tradition of morality and ethics that was concerned with social power, equality, and justice to be ignored so that poverty, drug addiction, capitalist exploitation, and the endlessly active war machine to be considered as something unrelated to morality. Indeed, a wide swath of Americans think the words "social justice" are contemptable.
1
It's sad to lose a beacon of the kind of love and compassion that spiritual teachers from Jesus and Buddha to Thoreau and Gandhi taught. The country seems benighted in a never-ending cycle of anathematization of people who don't share one's views. This kind of hostility is neither spiritual nor humanist. Whatever this attitude is rooted in, however it began, those who preach tolerance and acceptance of others no matter how they differ from us seem to be few, drowned out by the multitudes that couch their egos in hatred. Losing one of our defenders of true plurality is a great tragedy, especially in times like these. It is up to the rest of us to capture and communicate the message implicit in the words and intentions of the founders of this great nation: all people are created equal. We are all brothers and sisters in the human family, with far more that unites us than divides us. We are all the heirs of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha and Jesus. I pray that the example of Mr. Cromartie and others like him teaches us how to move past the politics of identity and division into a new era of tolerance and brotherly (and sisterly) love.
19
Thoreau was a misanthropist. Not much love and compassion there.
As one young advocate in Texas showed on her sign: "Y'all means all."
I was baptized in the Christian faith last December after being a non-believer my entire adult life. A big part of what turned me around was an amazing non-demoninational church in Cincinnati, which reflects in so many ways what you describe about Cromartie's religious doctrine. I sense a turning point toward this kind of faith and away from the polarization and dark fringes of the Nashville Statement and Pat Robertson. But I continue to encounter the skepticism and condescension of many liberal friends. No, it doesn't mean I'm a Trumpeter. Far from it. I am a battling liberal progressive. Like Cromartie said, these times just make me pray all the harder.
24
"Skepticism and condescension of many liberal friends." This statement baffles me. I was born and raised a Catholic, but turned away as an adult. I describe myself as agnostic now. I have never looked down on people who choose to "Believe"--that's their thing, who am I to judge them?
Whoever your liberal friends are, they are not true liberals. Maybe they espouse progressive policies, but in their hearts they are not liberals. Liberals accept everyone, black, white, gay, straight, trans, atheists and believers. That's what we do. We accept people as they are. Evangelicals don't seem to have the same attitude, and there is certainly push-back from us on some of the religion-based policies they are attempting to impose on an America that I value as secular nation.
Occasionally, I find myself at a local non-denominational church because they have a stunning music program. On one occasion, when the pastor saw me and didn't recognize me, I said the words, "I don't belong," to explain that I wasn't a member. He smiled and said, "everyone is welcome." If every person in America would adopt that attitude, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.
I wish you well on your spiritual journey.
Whoever your liberal friends are, they are not true liberals. Maybe they espouse progressive policies, but in their hearts they are not liberals. Liberals accept everyone, black, white, gay, straight, trans, atheists and believers. That's what we do. We accept people as they are. Evangelicals don't seem to have the same attitude, and there is certainly push-back from us on some of the religion-based policies they are attempting to impose on an America that I value as secular nation.
Occasionally, I find myself at a local non-denominational church because they have a stunning music program. On one occasion, when the pastor saw me and didn't recognize me, I said the words, "I don't belong," to explain that I wasn't a member. He smiled and said, "everyone is welcome." If every person in America would adopt that attitude, maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.
I wish you well on your spiritual journey.
9
I have no doubt that that Cincinnati non-denominational Church is indeed amazing, and good for anybody who gets spiritual fortitude from it, but that doesn't make the concept of God any less of a hoax.
3
Blessings on your journey.
Beautiful tribute to your friend, Ross. My sympathies on your loss (and the world's). And to continue Newman's prayer, "may God grant him peace at the last." Thanks for a morning pause to reflect on a good man.
15
Unfortunately, as Lewis Namier pointed out religion is organized falsification. This is why it's so frequently used as a cover for deeply unchristian opinions and activities. A Christian neo-conservative. An oxymoron if ever there was one.
149
I can't agree with "religion is organized falsification." For some (me) who have a faith based belief in God, it is real, all we have to do is sort it out as much as our feeble brains allow us to. True religious and spiritual leaders may help us, but in the end each of us is on our own in this matter. What must not happen, and when it does it is the root cause of people like John having the negative attitude he does, is our faith and belief system can not be forced on others. So, while I am very much pro life on a personal level, I also want Roe v Wade to stand, so that no young girl (or any woman) dies in an attempt to terminate a pregnancy that she does not believe she can carry to term. I don't know much about Michael Cromartie, but I hope that he understood that social policy and religious beliefs are not compatible partners.
2
Here we go again. There are none so blind as those who think they hold "the truth."
3
@William S. Oser
Florida
I've no objection to religious belief. I quite enjoy some of its rituals and my wife is fairly devout, but all to often religionists attempt to force their beliefs on others claiming some specious doctrinal reasons. When they can't persecute others (and trying to close PP is a form of persecution) they promptly start claiming to be martyrs. Namier again... "Accurate history writing is not a visit of condolence."
Florida
I've no objection to religious belief. I quite enjoy some of its rituals and my wife is fairly devout, but all to often religionists attempt to force their beliefs on others claiming some specious doctrinal reasons. When they can't persecute others (and trying to close PP is a form of persecution) they promptly start claiming to be martyrs. Namier again... "Accurate history writing is not a visit of condolence."
4
A beautifully written eulogy. The problem with the current crop of religious conservatives is the exclusive focus on sexual issues (Douthat often ralludes to this in his disparaging of the Pope). When religious people mainly worry about sex and abortion, but not about the dignity of life after birth, education, health care and all the challenges of daily life, it is not surprising that they will form an alliance with someone as religiously empty like Trump. They have lost their road. .
181
The three-headed monster of the Middle East (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) has always been obsessed with sex and controlling women as one would control livestock.
In evolutionary biology it is called mate-guarding, in which one gender (usually male) seeks to control access to the other gender (females) to assure paternity. Why else would you lock a princess in a tower?
In evolutionary biology it is called mate-guarding, in which one gender (usually male) seeks to control access to the other gender (females) to assure paternity. Why else would you lock a princess in a tower?
Religious believers and professional media elites are and will continue to be locked in a cycle of mutual distrust, despite the good efforts of people like Michael Cromartie ... or Ross Douthat. It doesn't need to descend to the polarized demonization of our broader left and right, but the disagreements are central, real and rarely "misunderstood": they won't go away by demonstrating that people on both sides can be decent and non-bowlers.
More generally, some of us don't act in civilized ways with one another merely because we like and respect some on the other side, but because we insist on acting in civilized manners. That can be helped by people who evangelize civilization, even when that's not ALL they evangelize; and for that contribution we should thank and remember Cromartie.
Yet much of what failed did so not because of anything Cromartie did or failed to do. It failed because, in the end, each side wishes to proselytize a worldview that is anathema to the other, and it's very hard to bridge that reality.
More generally, some of us don't act in civilized ways with one another merely because we like and respect some on the other side, but because we insist on acting in civilized manners. That can be helped by people who evangelize civilization, even when that's not ALL they evangelize; and for that contribution we should thank and remember Cromartie.
Yet much of what failed did so not because of anything Cromartie did or failed to do. It failed because, in the end, each side wishes to proselytize a worldview that is anathema to the other, and it's very hard to bridge that reality.
17
The keystone of the bridge must surely be the belief that all people are created equal, regardless of religious beliefs and skin tone. As soon as exclusionary boundaries are drawn, be it be evangelicals or others, there is fraction. Kindness and openness to otherness is surely a tenet of liberalism and not of religious fraction.
50
It is hard to see what sort of dialogue over, for example, homosexuality is possible. What sort of dialogue over slavery was possible? What sort of dialogue over segregation is possible? In both these cases, one side is wrong and has to admit it before a dialogue can exist.
It is inevitable that celebrities with same-sex partners will give youngsters thinking of becoming gay (or realizing that they are gay) the idea that they can be openly gay and be successful, with families and with kids if they want, because such celebrities give them examples of its possibility. Such same-sex couples were not allowed to appear in public and be reported on, A dialogue over whether this should be allowed is going to be unsubstantial and unsatisfying.
A tolerant society encourages children in intolerant households to revolt and ultimately to run away from home. Dialogue will not solve that problem. Conservatives have to recognize and admit that they are wrong on LGBT issues and on banning abortions, wrong in the same way and for the same reasons and ways of approaching the problem that previous conservatives were wrong on race and woman's issues.
It is inevitable that celebrities with same-sex partners will give youngsters thinking of becoming gay (or realizing that they are gay) the idea that they can be openly gay and be successful, with families and with kids if they want, because such celebrities give them examples of its possibility. Such same-sex couples were not allowed to appear in public and be reported on, A dialogue over whether this should be allowed is going to be unsubstantial and unsatisfying.
A tolerant society encourages children in intolerant households to revolt and ultimately to run away from home. Dialogue will not solve that problem. Conservatives have to recognize and admit that they are wrong on LGBT issues and on banning abortions, wrong in the same way and for the same reasons and ways of approaching the problem that previous conservatives were wrong on race and woman's issues.
136
I do not think this has to be a zero-sum game. In fact, it will not work as a zero-sum game. Conservative Christians are not simply going to wake up one morning and say "Gosh we were wrong about LBGTQ issues and abortion and other things." That is not going to happen and anyone who considers that it might is woefully ignorant of reality concerning persons with that faith structure.
Persons of conservative belief, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, you-fill-in, must recognize that they can believe anything they want and set for themselves social standards that are consistent with their theology. What they cannot do is to assume the right to impose, or try to impose their standards, their morality on others. They can preach, they can evangelize, they can proselyte, do anything they want in an attempt to persuade others to accept the conservative religious point of view. But the moment they attempt to force non-believers to conform to believers' standards, they have gone over the line and conflict is inevitable.
Persons of conservative belief, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, you-fill-in, must recognize that they can believe anything they want and set for themselves social standards that are consistent with their theology. What they cannot do is to assume the right to impose, or try to impose their standards, their morality on others. They can preach, they can evangelize, they can proselyte, do anything they want in an attempt to persuade others to accept the conservative religious point of view. But the moment they attempt to force non-believers to conform to believers' standards, they have gone over the line and conflict is inevitable.
3
To sdavidc9,
"Conservatives have to recognize and admit that they are wrong on LGBT issues and on banning abortions, wrong in the same way and for the same reasons and ways of approaching the problem that previous conservatives were wrong on race and woman's issues." The whole point is to live and let live, not to become militarized to prove the other side "wrong." Isn't this what democracy was intended to be?
"Conservatives have to recognize and admit that they are wrong on LGBT issues and on banning abortions, wrong in the same way and for the same reasons and ways of approaching the problem that previous conservatives were wrong on race and woman's issues." The whole point is to live and let live, not to become militarized to prove the other side "wrong." Isn't this what democracy was intended to be?
Dlud: sometimes live and let live does not work. For believers in the patriarchic family, the existence next door of other sorts of families will give wives and children ideas of revolt, and is a sinfulness that it is immoral to tolerate. Any group that believes that its ways are the only ways sanctioned by God or nature or morality is going to have trouble living with others, unless it is willing to abandon using the state or social pressure to implement its beliefs. And this abandonment is seen as itself immoral and a betrayal of sacred beliefs.
1
Very beautifully written. A fine tribute to your friend.
The founders very wisely realized that separation between church and state was absolutely necessary for true freedom to be enjoyed. I very much respect your right to follow your religion however you see fit until your religious beliefs start to impact my right to live my life as I choose. Until the Christian right recognizes that we don't live in a theocracy there's always going to be tension. But your friend wisely realized that dialogue is necessary as is a willingness to listen with an open mind.
The founders very wisely realized that separation between church and state was absolutely necessary for true freedom to be enjoyed. I very much respect your right to follow your religion however you see fit until your religious beliefs start to impact my right to live my life as I choose. Until the Christian right recognizes that we don't live in a theocracy there's always going to be tension. But your friend wisely realized that dialogue is necessary as is a willingness to listen with an open mind.
110
Until the Christian right recognizes how sadly they are manipulated by the Republican Party for votes, we are going to get - dare I say goofballs - in political office.
1
I’m sorry for your loss. I’ve reached an age when hearing that someone younger than I am has died gives me momentary pause. I feel it personally, in an odd way. It brings my inner sense of immortality into grim contrast with ultimate reality.
This feeling that we simply cannot just cease to exist has caused us a lot of anxiety. To avoid it, we’ll do just about anything. We’ll construct an astoundingly improbable world to live in after we’re dead. It’s invisible, but that will not stop us from describing it in exquisite detail. The Proprietor is a rather quirky and demanding fellow, so we’d better follow his rules.
The rules are a bit vague, but some of us become Agents of the Divine. They stake out the Great Unknown as their territory, and yet they seem to know an awful lot about it. They tell us that the Proprietor cares deeply about who we sleep with, what we eat and whether we wear blended fabrics. Gay people are turned away at the door faster than if they’re trying to buy a wedding cake at a Colorado bakery.
The Proprietor loves us so deeply that he’ll broil us in infinite fire for rather trivial scriptural violations, so we’d better love him, or else. That’s why we need dialogue. We need to instill fear into people so they can know ultimate joy. We need to accommodate homophobia, force women to have unwanted children, justify war and vote Republican.
As for me, I’ll take oblivion.
This feeling that we simply cannot just cease to exist has caused us a lot of anxiety. To avoid it, we’ll do just about anything. We’ll construct an astoundingly improbable world to live in after we’re dead. It’s invisible, but that will not stop us from describing it in exquisite detail. The Proprietor is a rather quirky and demanding fellow, so we’d better follow his rules.
The rules are a bit vague, but some of us become Agents of the Divine. They stake out the Great Unknown as their territory, and yet they seem to know an awful lot about it. They tell us that the Proprietor cares deeply about who we sleep with, what we eat and whether we wear blended fabrics. Gay people are turned away at the door faster than if they’re trying to buy a wedding cake at a Colorado bakery.
The Proprietor loves us so deeply that he’ll broil us in infinite fire for rather trivial scriptural violations, so we’d better love him, or else. That’s why we need dialogue. We need to instill fear into people so they can know ultimate joy. We need to accommodate homophobia, force women to have unwanted children, justify war and vote Republican.
As for me, I’ll take oblivion.
425
gauzy aftervision of stern Prop. combing the realm of the Unk. to better command our earthly action--
but i think R.D. was after more than that here: the need for dialog and understanding, if not necessarily agreement- as the bedrock to our USA experiment
and the tragedy when an able voice goes silent.
but i think R.D. was after more than that here: the need for dialog and understanding, if not necessarily agreement- as the bedrock to our USA experiment
and the tragedy when an able voice goes silent.
9
Priceless.
3
Perhaps if we thought of God as our own ultimate potential instead of as Zeus we might be able to lose some of that fear that is the ultimate reason we are so evil to each other.
1
Like FunkyIrishman, I believe that separation of church and state remains one of the core principles of the American experiment. Mr. Douthat's sensitive tribute to his friend, Michael Cromartie, suggests some of the reasons why. Preservation of the secular character of the American state does not require evangelicals to abstain from political activity or even to abandon their religious beliefs when they enter the arena of political combat.
But their participation does inject a dangerous divisiveness into the body politic when they claim divine sanction for their partisan views. Billy Graham's public proclamation that God wanted Americans to elect Richard Nixon president cast supporters of Hubert Humphrey in the role of enemies of the divine will. How can Americans engage in healthy political debate when one side claims that the almighty favors low taxes on the wealthy or more defense spending?
When evangelicals organize their partisan activities around their church, they implicitly confer God's blessing on their candidate. In like manner, when they place Christ's seal of approval on their own views ("Nashville Statement"), they convert the Gospel into a weapon in the culture wars.
Separation of church and state protects the political community by discouraging the kind of ideological rigidity that can destroy unity. But it also protects religion by preserving its core principles from corruption in the often tawdry arena of political combat.
But their participation does inject a dangerous divisiveness into the body politic when they claim divine sanction for their partisan views. Billy Graham's public proclamation that God wanted Americans to elect Richard Nixon president cast supporters of Hubert Humphrey in the role of enemies of the divine will. How can Americans engage in healthy political debate when one side claims that the almighty favors low taxes on the wealthy or more defense spending?
When evangelicals organize their partisan activities around their church, they implicitly confer God's blessing on their candidate. In like manner, when they place Christ's seal of approval on their own views ("Nashville Statement"), they convert the Gospel into a weapon in the culture wars.
Separation of church and state protects the political community by discouraging the kind of ideological rigidity that can destroy unity. But it also protects religion by preserving its core principles from corruption in the often tawdry arena of political combat.
343
@James
Thanks for the mention and excellent analysis. I would only offer that I think the tax exemption status has served its purpose as well. It is time to change the dynamic and allow religious entities to stand on their own, and not be subsidized by us ( and as an extension, the state )
I think especially so, since they have been recently hijacked by huge dollar amounts, people and organizations that seem to have the sole purpose of corrupting politics with bombardment of ads.
Not much charity going on there ...
Thanks for the mention and excellent analysis. I would only offer that I think the tax exemption status has served its purpose as well. It is time to change the dynamic and allow religious entities to stand on their own, and not be subsidized by us ( and as an extension, the state )
I think especially so, since they have been recently hijacked by huge dollar amounts, people and organizations that seem to have the sole purpose of corrupting politics with bombardment of ads.
Not much charity going on there ...
219
In my discussions with one of my conservative colleagues, we find that we are staunch supporters of the separation of church and state for quite differing reasons. For me, it is because I worry about how religion can intrude upon government, while he sees ties between church and state as corrupting the church.
49
You have it backwards. The tax exempt status was rewarded to religious groups and others because these entities are subsidizing the work of government: healthcare, housing, education, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor and more. While not all religions do a good job with this, it is important to remember that 501(c)3 was never created as a state subsidy - it was just the opposite of that.
1
Whenever I read or hear something about politics being mixed with religion, then of course I get an uneasy feeling. I am sure others feel the same. When you throw in journalism, then the anxiety level only rises.
Having said that, you do honor to a person that had an impact in your life ( and others ) , and for that I am respectful.
However, I still hold dear the separation of church and state as sacrosanct ( as did the founding fathers ) and want to keep it that way. I don't want religion infiltrating politicians of any stripe, whether it be left or right. ( especially when it seems religious views are superseding human rights or even the law )
Personally I think organized religion is on downward wane to never recover, but that does not mean we cannot still have faith in ourselves and each other to do what is right and good. ( all of the time and not hypocritically when it is advantageous or convenient to do so )
We all deserve rest at the end ( holy or otherwise ) Maybe it is but a beginning, and that is what gives comfort to me.
Having said that, you do honor to a person that had an impact in your life ( and others ) , and for that I am respectful.
However, I still hold dear the separation of church and state as sacrosanct ( as did the founding fathers ) and want to keep it that way. I don't want religion infiltrating politicians of any stripe, whether it be left or right. ( especially when it seems religious views are superseding human rights or even the law )
Personally I think organized religion is on downward wane to never recover, but that does not mean we cannot still have faith in ourselves and each other to do what is right and good. ( all of the time and not hypocritically when it is advantageous or convenient to do so )
We all deserve rest at the end ( holy or otherwise ) Maybe it is but a beginning, and that is what gives comfort to me.
211
A really understandable balanced view indeed.
1
@Paul
Thank you Sir. We can all be respectful on whatever side of the division we may fall on.
SN ~ I hope to visit your great country in the near future. ( looking forward to it immensely )
Thank you Sir. We can all be respectful on whatever side of the division we may fall on.
SN ~ I hope to visit your great country in the near future. ( looking forward to it immensely )
1
Perhaps it was a bit harsh, or possibly seen as off topic.
I'm sure Mr Cromartie was a decent soul. I was not aware of the existence of this person before today. In any event, at my age I have experienced this type of loss of a close personal friend and influence. I'm sorry for your loss.
From the article I guess I was supposed to get the message that Mr Cromartie was a consummate and sincere bridge builder of sorts. While this a well intentioned and noble goal, it is really an exercise in futility.
I'm simply never going to find common ground with those who deny science.
I'm simply never going to find common ground with those who profess to be followers of Jesus, but rather are in fact followers of Evangelical super stars such as Osteen, Falwell, et al, or vote for the likes of Trump, Ryan, McConnell (actually virtually all republican politicians today).
Separation of church and state is one of the best concepts ever conceived by man. This must not be eroded. Mr Cromartie was part of the problem, not part of the solution for the catastrophe that is our current president and the republican party.