The Rumors of Their Christianity Are Greatly Exaggerated

I find myself full of rage these days. There are lots of reasons for that, but a prominent one is this: the people in my family who most vociferously identify as "Christian" are the only people in my family who refuse to be vaccinated. A big part of this, of course, is the same old, tired story of Evangelical hegemony. I am a Christian, too!* Evangelicals have been quite successful at convincing themselves and others that Christianity is synonymous with Evangelical and that Christianity is monolithic. It doesn't matter that this is demonstrably false both in the past and today. (There is a distinct irony embedded in this as Evangelicals have unwittingly thwarted their own global proselytization campaign. Since people have increasingly associated being religious with conservative theology and politics which they find unpalatable, people are simply abandoning religion. In other words, people are saying, "If that's what it is to be religious, count me out.") The whole thing is infuriating on many levels.

In closing, if you don't love your neighbor enough to get vaccinated, maybe consider that you're not actually Christian.

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* - I attend far more consistently than any of them, have dedicated most of my education and scholarship to religion, and actually try to live out that gospel message of "love they God/self/neighbor/enemy," but as a mainliner, they fail to recognize me as Christian. In fact, they have at times evangelized to me as if I were ignorant to Christianity. I digress, though.

New Controversy with Religious License Plates

I've posted before about religion on license plates. A new license plate in Oklahoma has prompted a Methodist pastor to sue the state for violating his religious liberty. The image on the plate is a reference to a regionally-well-known Chiricahua myth about a warrior who shoots an arrow into the sky that had been blessed by a medicine man to end a drought. The plaintiff claims that he is being forced to promote a "pagan" religion.

There is a great irony in this suit, which makes it both a great test case and illuminating of the issue. If the case succeeds and the courts decide that this is an unreasonable infringement on an individual's religious expression, it will undoubtedly mean that people will challenge the other religious plates, including the "In God We Trust" plates. And here is what makes it illuminating. Theologically conservative religionists who are not Chiricahua have a point here; this is not their religion, and the state should not endorse it in this official capacity; however, it is theologically conservative Christians who support the Christian-themed plates and fail to see why it is offensive to those who do not share their religion. The separation of church and state is a compromise in which I promise not to ask the state to endorse my religion as long as you don't ask the state to endorse your religion. It's very pragmatic and, ultimately, self-interested. (See here for a previous post on that topic.)

I imagine that some will argue--including, likely, Oklahoma in this suit--that the image is primarily historic and not religious in nature in the same way that an image of the Pilgrims on a Massachusetts license plate would be primarily about early-American history and not an endorsement of Calvinist Congregationalism. However, the Chiricahua are an active tribe with many members who still practice the ancient animist religion. Ironically, to argue that the plate is a way to honor the history of Native Americans is to erase their present existence and to denigrate them today.

Reframing the Church/State Debate

SCotUS has agreed to hear a case involving the opening of public meetings (i.e. municipal legislatures) with prayer. I'm guessing that the decision will come down to some technical and arcane detail of law and will thus be a fairly narrow ruling, but it still gives a moment to consider an important social issue. I've written before on matters of church and state, but perhaps it's worth reminding ourselves about some basics. The initial historical impetus for a separation between religion and the state was decidedly self-interested. One of the first religious groups to tout a clear separation were ironically Baptists, who found themselves politically marginalized by their Anglican neighbors. It wasn't so much that early-American Baptists didn't want religion mixed up with politics; they just didn't want someone else's religion mixed up with politics, and so the bargain was, they decided, that the state had to be delivered from religion. Flash forward a few hundred years, and our collective amnesia about this part of our history and our short-sighted self-interest endangers the value in a social institution that many purport to champion. I am a person of faith, a Protestant Christian, and I value my religious freedom, and it is (in part) because of that--not despite it--that I am vociferous about my support of a very strict separation of church and state. (One certainly does not need to be religious, though, to be for religious freedom. Atheists, agnostics, as well as the growing ranks of the unaffiliated should be motivated for very similar reasons.) It may seem petty to squabble over seemingly insignificant things like the phrase "in God we trust" showing up on our currency and license plates or "under God" in our Pledge or a brief prayer to open a town council meeting, but the symbolic importance of those instances matters. Any intrusion of religion into government is dangerous, not so much to the government as it is to religion itself.

Incidentally, the "I feel left out" argument doesn't hold water for me. Unfortunately, this seems to be part of the case that SCotUS is taking up. It's easy to see (I hope) how Jews, Hindus, or Muslims who hear Jesus invoked in prayer or, short of that, hear an otherwise nonsectarian prayer constructed on the template of a Christian prayer would feel "othered." In the same way, however, that framing racially disparaging language as insensitive or offensive (i.e. it hurts feelings) is counterproductive, saying that one feels marginalized as a religious minority in a (culturally) Christian setting like an opening prayer detracts from the fact that such practices actually marginalize people in structural ways.

Talking Mouths on Religion and Politics

No time for a legitimate post today, but I will point you toward yesterday's episode of the Diane Rehm Show where they talked about religion and politics in the election. I take issue with much of what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt had to say, but E.J. Dionne had his moments. In all, the prognostications are in line with what I've seen of the exit polls (which is not much) so far.

Taking License with Their Plates

Slate has a cool slideshow of specialty license plates from around the U.S. I've included several of the religiously-themed plates below. First, though, one from my own past.

In 2007, when I was in grad school, living in Indianapolis, Indiana started offering the plate below, not as a specialty plate, but as a standard plate. (To be sure, it is not the only standard plate. The other option for cars is here.)

This is one from South Carolina.

Here is one from Texas.

This proposal from Florida didn't make the cut.

Here is a playful rebuttal to the proposed plate above from Pagans in Florida.

I find these fascinating. Where is the line between church and state? Evidently, it falls somewhere beyond the tailgate of the American automobile.

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h/t  Religion News Service

Follow-up to "On Bacon and Birth Control"

A follow-up on a recent post. Commenter Warner shared this blog post from Sarah Posner over at Religion Dispatches. It's a nice take-down of a straw man argument put forward by several Catholic bishops. It's not quite the same hypothetical that my student proposed in class, but there are similarities. Regardless, and I forgot to mention this in the previous post, this whole issue is one created by our peculiar system of employer-based health insurance in the U.S. A public single-payer system doesn't eliminate all of these "religious liberty" concerns, but it does better. Really, a seemingly logical conclusion would be for employers to give the money they would pay for group insurance directly to the employees in the form of higher wages with which the employee would then be forced by the new healthcare law to directly purchase insurance on the open market. It's all very convoluted, and that's kind of my point.

The more I think about this, the more it would make sense to eliminate employer-based health insurance all together. So long as there is third-party oversight in the transition so that employers aren't pocketing any of the benefits that rightfully belong to their employers, Liberals are happy since all people are required to purchase insurance already; Republicans will be happy because it will be a market-based system. If the federal government is going to organize opaque insurance exchanges, why not just let the public filter themselves into the plans that match their values? Many people would choose fairly broad coverage that would require coverage for birth control and abortion. Religious minorities would have the option to choose more narrow coverage that would not cover services that consumers find morally objectionable. The broader coverage would end up being less expensive since we know that preventative services like birth control are far less expensive than non-preventative obstetric services and STI treatments. Morality and the market: isn't that what the right wants?

Of Bacon and Birth Control

My Senior Sociology Seminar Capstone students engaged in a discussion last week on the recent controversy around the birth control mandate. One student proposed an analogy on which we elaborated. Imagine a Jewish institution being forced to pay for pork dishes for its gentile employees. (I don't know; maybe some employees had a protein deficiency that could only be treated with pork.) Is this ethical? Should there be an exception? While the analogy is far from perfect, I have to admit that this exercise gave me pause. By changing my perspective, I had to consider the issue in a way that I hadn't before. It didn't change my mind, but I think these kind of hypotheticals/analogies/thought-experiments can be very useful in the classroom. I'm still wrestling with just how fitting this particular example really is.

Before folks start getting their dander up, let me be clear that I take the issue of cheap/free access to birth control--especially for women--very seriously and am in no way trying to make light of it here.

Cathleen Kaveny on The Daily Show

These are worth watching:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Cathleen Kaveny Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Cathleen Kaveny Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Thoughts to follow.

No One Can "Believe" Science

There was a cool piece in the WaPo today from Herb Silverman, a professor of mathematics at the College of Charleston. He writes:

Only 38 percent of Americans say they believe in evolution, and far too many politicians are either among the other 62 percent or pander to them....However, science is not and should not become democratic. If 100 million people believe a wrong thing, it is still a wrong thing.

The irony is that those who invoke arguments that would like science to be democratic are arguing for the very social change that they purport to despise, relativism. Science is a systematic search for truth (but not necessarily Truth). If truth can be revised with the shifting direction of public opinion, it has no absolute, universal basis, and that does not bode well for the very folks who are fighting the evidence.

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UPDATE: Here is another, related HuffPost.

Your Favorite Game Show *Jesus or Obama?*!

Just read a great prostest poster a colleague/teacher/friend added as her Facebook profile pic:

Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You're thinking of Jesus.

Yup.

A Google search seems to attribute this to John Fugelsang, yes, the former host of America's Funniest Home Videos. I can't confirm this and don't quite trust it, but if it's true, that even makes it more awesome. But, Google does confirm that Fugelsang is a man after my own heart.

Random Thoughts on the Subcultural Identity of Evangelcials

Can 26% of the population (an unchallenged plurality) be embattled in any real sense or are such feelings rooted in self-benefiting delusion?

I got an idea on how to test this listening to Jim Martin, a former Georgia legislator, speak earlier this week as part of our campus Constitution Week celebration. He noted that late-18th century Baptists were vocal proponents of the Bill of Rights because they feared that the Church of England would be adopted by the fledgling United States as its official religion. Today, as Evangelicals, (Southern) Baptists are often proponents for the (re)insertion of religion into the political process. Could church-state opinions serve as a proxy for perceptions of cultural embattledness? In other words, does feeling that one's religious beliefs are in contention with mainstream culture predict believing in a limited or nonexistent separation between church and state?

Is there an ironic, inverse relationship between opinions about the role of religion in politics and an actual challenge to one's religion? Since Southern Baptists today (as Evangelicals) are relatively powerful, does this explain their abandonment of the Second Amendment?