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Items on religion in public life and social discourse

Wanda Sykes, Al Franken and the Politics of Incivility: “So civility has an unavoidably moral component. The proper treatment of others conveys regard and demonstrates self-control. Rudeness sets out to dominate and humiliate. . . . Why does politics seem to numb this rudimentary moral sense?” (Michael Gerson, The Washington Post )

Fri 15 May 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Obama’s Prayer Warriors: Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte: ‘When, in the throes of his presidential bid, Barack Obama cast off his controversial pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his campaign advisers began soliciting for more acceptable replacements. There was no shortage of willing applicants. In a provocative essay called “The Inner Ring,” C.S. Lewis suggested why that might be so: “I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods . . . one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring, and the terror of being left outside.” President Obama has recruited several Christian leaders to join one of the world’s most exclusive inner rings, the presidential prayer team.’ (The Weekly Standard )

Wed 18 Mar 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

RIP Richard John Neuhaus: First Things has posted a 2000 essay by Father Neuhaus, “Born Toward Dying,” that is well worth your time. “The worst thing is not the sorrow or the loss or the heartbreak. Worse is to be encountered by death and not to be changed by the encounter. There are pills we can take to get through the experience, but the danger is that we then do not go through the experience but around it. Traditions of wisdom encourage us to stay with death a while.” (First Things (h/t) )

Thu 08 Jan 2009 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Left Wing of America’s Civil Religion: ‘Quinn’s confusion comes from having ignored the most important basis of pluralism that the United States offers. Precisely by distinguishing the political community from many faith communities, the US Constitution opens the public arena to diverse faith communities, all of which are free to be exclusive in their membership while being included on equal terms in American society. Quinn, by contrast, wants to hold onto an American community of faith. And to do that she needs to find a “church” that is so all-inclusive that it can serve as the “sacred space for the nation,” as “a place the nation looks to in critical times.” But such a “church” can, by definition, no longer be an institution of Christian faith, for it has to serve the whole nation. Therefore, it has to be a place where the American civil religion can be celebrated, a religion distinct from all other religions even if it claims to include and encompass them all.’ (Jim Skillen, on one columnist’s recommendation of a church for Barack Obamas. “Root and Branch,” The Center for Public Justice )

Thu 04 Dec 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Obama Dilemma: “Which of these factions in evangelicalism’s divided house is more reflective of its essential character? In truth, both have a strong claim. Evangelicalism has always been centrally concerned with social reform as the necessary expression of spiritual regeneration. It is not merely a religion of inwardness. Nor is it a religion devoted to maintaining the status quo and propping up social elites. Instead, it challenges settled arrangements and champions the lowly and the marginalized.” (Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay, The Wall Street Journal )

Sat 01 Nov 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Christopher Nolan’s Achievement: The Dark Knight: “The title of the Nolan’s latest Batman film calls to mind medieval chivalry in a postmodern key. The dark knight embraces extraordinary tasks and fights against enormous odds; his quest is to restore what has been corrupted and to recover what has been lost. In so doing, he takes upon himself a suffering and loneliness that isolate him from his fellow citizens and inevitably court their misunderstanding and scorn. He is a dark knight, in part, because the world he inhabits is nearly void of hope and virtue, and, in part, because some of the darkness resides within him, in his internal conflicts between the good he aspires to restore and the means he deploys to fend off evil. Of the many filmmakers designing dark tales of quests for redemption, Christopher Nolan is currently making a serious claim to being the master craftsman.” (Thomas S. Hibbs, First Things: On the Square )

Tue 22 Jul 2008 from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

The Return of Religion: “So who, in this subliminal contest, is the truly reasonable one? The atheists beg the question in their own favour, by assuming that science has all the answers. But science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false. There are questions addressed to reason which are not addressed to science, since they are not asking for a causal explanation.” (Senior Fellow Roger Scruton, Axess )

Wed 16 Jul 2008 from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

Theophobia: “Yes, one could imagine that religious believers might ignore the welfare of the secular world in favor of the eternal one. But one can also imagine religious believers who ignore their secular welfare out of obedience to God’s command to value the secular world. If what you need is passionate altruism, my bet would be on the theists: It is not easy to imagine a rational self-maximizing welfarist throwing himself on a grenade for the sake of a world that, from his point of view, will cease to exist at the moment of detonation: What’s in it for him, after all?” (Rick Hills, PrawfsBlawg )

Fri 20 Jun 2008 from Mark Meador • Link & Comments

The Loser Letters: A new weekly column from Mary Eberstadt on the New Atheism, in the tradition of The Screwtape Letters. Very effective use of humor. “Because there’s one thing that’s still missing from atheism’s final victory, and it’s something that just can’t be sugarcoated. Ahem: Apart from me, where is the testimony of anyone Your writings have actually convinced? After all, as one of You said somewhere and all of us want to believe, ‘If this book works as I intend, religious readers will be atheists when they put it down.’ So where are the rest of them, I’m starting to wonder — these other converts (like me!) to the new godlessness?” More here. (National Review Online )

Fri 06 Jun 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Not on Sale: “The free-market ideologues take one instance of spontaneous order, and erect it into a prescription for all the others. They ask us to believe that the free exchange of commodities is the model for all social interaction. But many of our most important forms of life involve withdrawing what we value from the market: sexual morality is an obvious instance, city planning another. (America has failed abysmally in both those respects, of course.) Looked at from the anthropological point of view religion can be seen as an elaborate (and spontaneous) way in which communities remove what is most precious to them (i.e. all that concerns the creation and reproduction of community) from the erosion of the market.” (Roger Scruton, quoted by Rod Dreher )

Mon 14 Apr 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Pope Comes to America: “Well, it set the dialogue in which those people have been engaged back. But that dialogue was going nowhere and the Pope knew it. An inter-religious dialogue that is an exchange of pleasantries – aren’t we all wonderful; wouldn’t it be nice if everyone else was as wonderful as we are – there are no real issues here. That’s not dialogue and that’s not tolerance.” (George Weigel, on Benedict, Islam, and Christianity, at a recent Pew Forum seminar. (h/t Insight Scoop) )

Wed 09 Apr 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Both Read the Same Bible: ‘On the crest of this historiographical wave comes The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, the latest work from the nation’s premier historian of Christian thought. In the opening pages, Mark Noll explains that his goal is not primarily to shed light on the causes or course of the war but rather “to show how and why the cultural conflict that led to such a crisis for the nation also constituted a crisis for theology.” That crisis centered on two questions: what the Bible had to say about slavery, and what the conflict seemed to suggest about God’s providential design for the country. Although “both read the same Bible,” as Lincoln famously observed in his second inaugural, Protestants North and South discovered that “the Bible they had relied on for building up America’s republican civilization was not nearly … as inherently unifying for an overwhelmingly Christian people as they once had thought.” In the end it was the force of arms, not the Word of God, that would resolve the sectional dispute.’ (Robert Tracy McKenzie in Books & Culture )

Wed 09 Apr 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Politics, God, and Blue Devils: “Areas of overlap likewise exist between presidential candidates’ religious commitments and their ability to serve in political office. After all, churches are no strangers to issues of membership, leadership, authority, budgets, and the struggle for consensus—and politics, at its root, is about making moral judgments. A robust national conversation would include room for exploring how religious commitments shape a candidate’s leadership ability and policy stances. Yet it would not allow that discussion to overshadow the many other factors that contribute to an effective presidency.” (Ryan Messmore, National Review Online )

Wed 02 Jan 2008 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Benedict on A Common Word: Very helpful news item with commentary and background links that put the Muslim statement into a larger perspective. Why has Benedict been so slow to respond publicly to the Muslim letter? “Because the kind of dialogue he wants is completely different. The pope is asking Islam to make the same journey that the Catholic Church made under pressure from the Enlightenment. Love of God and neighbor must be realized in the full acceptance of religious freedom.” (Sandro Magister, La Repubblica )

Mon 26 Nov 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Loving God and Neighbor Together: A response to the historically unprecedented statement from Muslim scholars and leaders, “A Common Word Between Us and You.” May both bear much fruit. “What is common between us lies not in something marginal nor in something merely important to each. It lies, rather, in something absolutely central to both: love of God and love of neighbor. Surprisingly for many Christians, your letter considers the dual command of love to be the foundational principle not just of the Christian faith, but of Islam as well. That so much common ground exists—common ground in some of the fundamentals of faith—gives hope that undeniable differences and even the very real external pressures that bear down upon us can not overshadow the common ground upon which we stand together. That this common ground consists in love of God and of neighbor gives hope that deep cooperation between us can be a hallmark of the relations between our two communities.” (Yale Center for Faith and Culture )

Mon 26 Nov 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments