Going after Progressive Christians

By now you have heard that 8 conservative Christian churches in Arizona have started an unprecedented coordinated campaign to impugn a progressive Methodist church in their vicinity.

"... when you have an effort collaborated by multiple churches in one community to try to discredit one other way of thinking, that's when it becomes alarming," said Rev. David Felten, head of The Fountains Progressive Christian Church.
....

"That lets people know there's a choice out there, they don't have to deny science, they don't have to hate their gay neighbor, they don't have to read and take the bible in a way that causes them to abandon their rational mind," he said.

So his conservative neighbors find this sufficiently threatening that they are planning a coordinated series of sermons to attack the beliefs of Progressives as "insufficiently Christian".

Jonathan Merrit puts this in the context of the Pew Survey, which shows continued decline of Christianity and a huge increase in the unaffilitated:

Triumphalist evangelicals have missed the point. The biggest threat to evangelicals is not some form of liberal faith, but rather faithlessness itself. Most people aren’t leaving evangelicalism for more liberal expressions, but rather for nothing at all.

While conservative Christians were crusading against their more liberal brothers and sisters in the mainline, the real growth has been in neither camp—the share of religiously unaffiliated individuals in America skyrocketed by a whopping 6.7 percent.

Rather than taking pot shots at more liberal strains of Christianity, evangelicals would do well to focus on the threat that all Christians are now facing: the growing number of people who are apathetic or antagonistic to the claims of Christianity.

If evangelicals continue to treat current trends as a race to the bottom, they shouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly where they end up.

 Religion Dispatches comments,

It shows a basic flaw in Christianity in the United States: the conservatives don’t believe the liberals are actual Christians, and the liberals think the conservatives are flaming judgmental assholes.

In faith as as in politics, the nation seems to be growing ever more polarized along ideological lines. The net effect is roughly analogous to when campaign ads go negative: the base is kept strong and in line, but the majority of people say “to hell with the both of you, I’m staying home.”

The only discernible difference between the civil declension is that one takes place on a Tuesday and the other on a Sunday. It may work often enough for political campaigns, but I can’t recommend it as evangelism. 

What's wrong with being called "progressive Christians"?

It cedes the norm (the unmodified description) to those who are not progressive, that's what. 

Stop calling broad-minded, non-exclusivist movements “progressive” or “moderate” religion. Stop asking individuals who are deeply devoted to their religious traditions to qualify their religious identity in political terms that over-simplify who they are, what they believe and what they do as a result. 

Moreover, stop ceding the rhetorical high ground to groups that have no claim to it, whether they are the most conservative of evangelicals or the most radical of violent extremists. The idea that to be American is to be religious, and that to be religious is to be conservative, has been embedded in our culture for too long. Progressives must realize that this warped playing field will be leveled only when the idea that religion is inherently “conservative” ceased to go uncontested in our public discourse. Fight for the middle, not the edges of the religious landscape. 

....If religious folks start staking a claim to the centrality of moral traditions that transcend the red vs. blue, us vs. them divide, we may start to see a cultural shift in which being a Christian means that you speak out for the oppressed, or that being a Muslim signifies that you are someone who cares for the orphan and the widow.  

Cultural values

From the Guardian:

If... your country has a public health system that ensures that everyone who needs treatment receives it, without payment, it helps instill the belief that it is normal to care for strangers, and abnormal and wrong to neglect them. If you live in a country where people are left to die, this embeds the idea that you have no responsibility towards the poor and weak. The existence of these traits is supported by a vast body of experimental and observational research, of which Labour and the US Democrats appear determined to know nothing. 

We are not born with our core values: they are strongly shaped by our social environment. These values can be placed on a spectrum between extrinsic and intrinsic. People towards the intrinsic end have high levels of self-acceptance, strong bonds of intimacy and a powerful desire to help others.People at the other end are drawn to external signifiers, such as fame, financial success and attractiveness. They seek praise and rewards from others. 

...These clusters exist in opposition to each other: as one set of values strengthens, the other weakens. 

...

As extrinsic values are strongly associated with conservative politics, it's in the interests of conservative parties and conservative media to cultivate these values. .... 

Margaret Thatcher's political genius arose from her instinctive understanding of these traits, long before they were described by psychologists and cognitive linguists: "Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul." But Labour and the US Democrats no longer have objects, only methods. Their political philosophy is simply stated: if at first you don't succeed, flinch, flinch and flinch again. They seem to believe that if they simply fall into line with prevailing values, people will vote for them by default. But those values and baselines keep shifting, and what seemed intolerable before becomes unremarkable today. Instead of challenging the new values, these parties adjusting. This is why they always look like their opponents, with a five-year lag.

Rugged individualist, or content with community?

From a review in Salon:

In her excellent new book, “Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty,” the sociologist Jennifer Silva analyzes the ways in which neoliberalism has radically transformed our sense of self. As Silva argues, the assault on working-class organizations and living standards has led many young adults to adopt a profoundly individualistic and therapeutic view of the world and their personal development. 

The scores of young workers that she interviewed for her study had no faith in politics or collective action to address their problems or to give their lives meaning. Instead, they deal with the traumas of everyday life by crafting “deeply personal coming of age stories, grounding their adult identities in recovering from painful pasts — whether addictions, childhood abuse, family trauma, or abandonment — and forging an emancipated, transformed, adult self.”

This author goes on to argue that this intense individualism, telling ourselves stories about ourselves only, is part of the problem.  We liberals are too enamored of our uniqueness to make effective coalitions to build change.

The appeal of individualistic and therapeutic approaches to the problems of our time is not difficult to apprehend. But it is only through the creation of solidarities that rebuild confidence in our collective capacity to change the world that their grip can be broken.

We've done this to ourselves,of course, by favoring self-expression and independence, by building self-esteem in our children, to the point where they can no longer deal with failure or setbacks. (As a college teacher, I get a flood of emails at the end of every semester from students who didn't earn the grade they wanted but demand that I give it to them anyway.)  

We've cut ourselves off from community.  And we see politically that the conservatives who maintain that group identity are often more disciplined and effective at getting what they want.  Think of the difference of the political mobilization that lead to the Tea Party, which now holds a power balance in the GOP, whereas the political mobilization from the Occupy movement....oh, right, there WAS no political effect of the Occupy movement.

Elizabeth Drescher recently wrote  about a different study suggesting something similar-- that those more liberally inclined have a greater sense of uniqueness and non-confomity.

Overall, Stern, et al found that “liberals underestimated their similarity to other liberals, whereas moderates and conservatives overestimated their similarity to other moderates and conservatives.”

 She argues that this is a reason for declining youth engagement in mainline Protestant denominations.

While the former Evangelical Christians I’ve talked with in my research on Nones have tended to express anger with the religious traditions of their youth, and many former Catholic Nones express hurt or sadness, Nones raised in Mainline Protestant traditions have tended to express a “been-there-done-that” boredom with the traditions in which they were raised. They’ve graduated, matured out of the need for regular reinforcement of the ethical teachings of the church…. 

Though of course further research would be required to bear this notion out, we may fairly wonder if the personal “specialness” and “uniqueness” that is often at the center of Christian formation programs is perhaps over-amplified in more progressive Christian traditions. 

Are liberal Christians encouraging and affirming themselves to the point that they no longer feel the need to occupy their own communities?

I've commented before that my mother doesn't really "get" my participation in our church community. She is the definition of a rugged individualist.  But I've converted to seeing the good in community, and only wish we'd found it a lot sooner, when it might have made a difference to the kids.

About those liberal Christians: a manifesto

Making the rounds of the blogosphere is the consideration that the definition of "christianity" with the culture wars of gays and abortion is "bad for the brand": 

The exact numbers in this Rachel Held Evans piece, which show that almost all young American non-Christians and even most self-identified young American Christians think that the primary tenet of Christianity is hating on the gays, are a little higher than I've seen from other public opinion surveys. But the general shape is the same. The Millenial Generation has broadly equated Christianity with the political project of conservative Christians at the national level. Which is to say, opposition to abortion and gay marriage, with little room for anything else. ... 

This should really serve as a wake up call to church leaders. The once near-universal brand of American Christianity is being associated with an ever-shrinking size of the American public.. [T]he window of opportunity where people might be willing to consider a more relevant form of modern Christianity is closing.

 It seems that liberal Christians are starting (finally) to speak out against the efforts  of the evangelical right to claim the word "Christian" for themselves.  Ken Locke, a Presbyterian pastor in TN, contemplates why it has taken so long.

Many moderates avoid confronting extremism because it is unseemly. Castigating someone on television would be embarrassing. And yet, it appears that that is the only way to get one’s views across. It seems that only by staking out an extreme position, and vehemently denouncing anyone who even timidly disagrees, is it possible to join the public debate.

Furthermore, thoughtful, nuanced ideas do not lend themselves to brevity. Reduced to sound bites, our positions lose the important context and thought process that gave them birth.

Finally, most moderates are pretty busy. We have parishioners to care for, meetings to chair, weddings and funerals and worship services to lead. Our time is taken up with caring for our flocks, not sharing our views with the world.

But if we do not share our views, how will they be spread? If we don’t say something, how will anyone ever come to appreciate that many people of faith are much more broad and welcoming than our extremists make us appear?

He goes on to enumerate the values of liberal Christianity:

• The Earth is the Lord’s, and when we pollute it, we are destroying God’s property. Issues of global warming aside, we desperately need to radically reduce our pollution.
• Science and Christianity are perfectly compatible. Evolution is real. The world was not created in 144 hours.
• Marriage between consenting adults should be perfectly legal regardless of sexual orientation. Legal protections for both heterosexual and same-sex couples should be equal.
• Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus et al must be treated with respect and consideration. They are God’s children just as much as Christians. Their salvation is in God’s hands, not ours.
• Young people have sex. Young women get pregnant. Abstinence is preferable, but birth control is sensible.
• No one has an abortion on a whim. Legally defining the beginning of life at conception is an act of power against the powerless. The decision to abort should be between the mother, the care-provider and God.
• No single branch of Christianity has a complete and pure understanding of God’s will for humanity.
• Faith has a role in every aspect of life, but often that role is more informative than prescriptive. The Bible says nothing about gun control, capital gains taxes or the U.S. Department of Education per sé. Anyone claiming it does is cherry-picking the text.
• God cares desperately for the poor, the immigrant and the powerless. We neglect them at our peril.
• Life belongs to God, not to the state. Capital punishment is not only failed policy, it is also usurpation of God’s prerogative by the state.
• God does not love any one country more, or less, than any other.

And finally (my emphasis):

I repeat, I am not the only one who believes this. There are lots of us in every denomination. I say to those aching for an alternative to the loudest voices, if you will tune them out and listen to the heartfelt whispers, you will certainly find one that makes your heart sing. 

And I say to my friends and colleagues — now is the time to get over our shyness. We must find time and venues for declaring what it is we believe. Our message is too important to allow it to be drowned out by hysteria and hyperbolae. In season and out of season let us proclaim our message of tolerance and openness until every heart sings with joy.

I think that nails it (to the wall, even).  I hope that all liberal Christians take this year, this election year, to throw open wide the closet doors and come out!

And while I don't think you should claim  that the other side "isn't Christian" (as Rick Santorum famously did of liberal Christians), a robust push back against their rhetoric is essential.  Beginning with a regular,  strong protest every time they claim that their opposition  to liberal values is "because I'm a Christian".  That means, write every paper, email every news channel, speak out in every conversation, and say "They don't speak for Christianity!"  All of you!

Go, do it!

Why are liberal Christians invisible?

America's Christian Hypocrisy: 

Here’s a newspaper headline that might induce a disbelieving double take: “Christians ‘More Likely to Be Leftwing’ and Have Liberal Views on Immigration and Equality.” Sounds too hard to believe, right? Well, it’s true — only not here in America, but in the United Kingdom…

Here in the United States, those who self-identify as religious tend to be exactly the opposite of their British counterparts when it comes to politics. As the Pew Research Center recently discovered, “Most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party” and its ultra-conservative economic agenda. Summing up the situation, scholar Gregory Paul wrote in the Washington Post that many religious Christians in America simply ignore the Word and “proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated union busting, minimal taxes, especially for wealthy investors, and plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations.”

 … religion has become more of a superficial brand than a distinct catechism, and brands can be easily manipulated by self-serving partisans and demagogues. 

If you ask the Man on the Street what he thinks of when he hears the word "Christian", he will probably tell you he pictures a Bible-thumper who opposes health care reform, disbelieves in evolution, considers global warming a crock, and obsesses about homosexuals.  Basically, he will tell you that he imagines a right-wing conservative Evangelical.

And whose fault is this?

Timothy Noah, in the NY Times, writes:

A 78-percent majority of Americans is Christian. Only about a third of them self-identify as evangelical, which is a very rough proxy for the Christian conservative minority that increasingly insists on being called, simply, “Christian.” Such totum pro parte synecdoche de-legitimizes mainline Protestantism, historically black Protestantism, and Catholicism, which account, combined, for most of the other two-thirds of all Christians. The de-legitimization is why Christian conservatives favor it. Mainstream news organizations like the New York Times, ever-fearful of being branded anti-religious, have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the Christian right’s implicit suggestion that the only true Christian is a Christian conservative member of an evangelical or fundamentalist congregation.

GLAAD did a study showing  that mainstream media disproportionately favors Christian conservative views on gay issues. As described in the HuffPo 

The findings confirm that despite growing public support for LGBT people across faith traditions, the media highlight a disproportionate number of anti-LGBT religious voices in the media. Three out of four religious messages about gay or transgender people come from religious groups that have formal policies, decrees, or culture opposing equality. Unsurprisingly, messages from those sources were overwhelmingly negative. Mainstream media uses far fewer voices from the gay-affirming, or even moderate, religious traditions. The vast majority of gay or pro-LGBT sources are presented without any religious affiliation whatsoever…..The media needs to stop promoting the false notion that being religious is synonymous with being anti-LGBT. 

Let's remember that not only The Episcopal Church, but also the Lutherans (ELCA), Presbyterians, and UCC, among others, are actively moving towards LGBT support. The majority of lay Catholics support LGBT rights.  Polls across the country show support for marriage equality at over 50%.  But you wouldn't know this from the media.

Fred Clark at Patheos sees this as an active political strategy

This is a deliberate, intentional attempt by a politicized faction of American evangelicals to do two things: 1) redefine “Christian” to mean “white evangelical Protestant,” and 2) redefine “evangelical Protestant” to mean “conservative Republican.”… 

It’s deliberately insulting to every Christian who is not a white evangelical Protestant and to every white evangelical Protestant who is not a conservative Republican. The latter group is not a small category. …. 

But for the most part, the fundraisers and vote-herders of the religious right have succeeded in getting the media to play along with the weird idea that these millions of people do not exist. 

The de-legitimization Noah describes is the attempt by the self-appointed bishops of the religious right to exclude those millions from Christianity — and to prevent the remaining majority of white evangelical Protestants from being able to imagine that voting for anyone other than who they’re told to vote for is even a possibility.
The power of these power-brokers depends on their being able to claim that they speak for all evangelicals — and for all “real” Christians. The very existence of Christians who are not white evangelical Protestants or of white evangelical Protestants who are not right-wing Republicans undermines their claim to speak as the voice of God and of all of God’s real people.

We talked previously about how Rick Santorum, fundamentalist Catholic, decried liberal Christians and claimed you aren't Christians at all.  All part of the same cloth.

So, what to do?  Of course, you have to come out -- as liberal Christians.  Just as I, a gay person, have to come out over and over again.  The reason we are moving forward on LGBT rights in this country is because we LGBT people ARE coming out--and people learn we aren't any different than anyone else and aren't scary people having sex in the streets.  Yes, you'll take some insults and anger from those to whom you come out.  That's what coming out means.  But you'll also slowly change hearts and minds.

Second, as you move up to the TEC General Convention, and you battle about budgets and blessings, you should also think about how you put yourself forward outside.  Surely one role of the Episcopal Church is to be a strong voice of Christian leadership.   Put up those billboards.  Encourage those wearing collars to speak out to the media and write letters to the media.  Get your voice OUT there, institutionally.

Who knows?  You might also find this kind of thing to be part of mission and evangelism, as people learn that they don't have to give up religion just because they believe in social justice.

(quotes show my emphases and reparagraphing)

Liberal Christians push back

Remember when Rick Santorum commented that mainline Protestantism is in a shambles, and the work of Satan? It was just the cherry on the top of the usual conservative complaints about wishy-washy liberals. You lot got an ear full of them during the controversy over Gene Robinson, the Dio San Joaquin, etc etc.

Here's a great response:

What I would rather point out is the rhetorical sleight-of-hand that refuses to let liberal Christian convictions stand as actual convictions. For either we are meant to be knee-jerk PC speech cops, you see, or we don’t stand for anything. Imagine that! Only conservatives, evidently, can have deeply-held, tradition-formed shared religious principles; principles which they carry with them into the public square, and which force tricky negotiations between public good, religious freedom, and conscience.

Yes, this is like the argument from the pro-Prop8 folks that only straight white Christian men can be objective judges.    But I digress.  The writer goes on,

Here’s the thing, though: Just like conservative Christians, we too have convictions we are unwilling to toss out just to be more popular. Yes, even in the face of our oft-reported decline. Goodness, one might even call this integrity! For example, we are convinced that Christians have got to drop everything and pay attention when they hear someone say, “You are hurting me. No, I mean, YOU. INSTITUTIONAL CHRISTIANITY. ARE HURTING. ME.” (In fact many of us think that’s generally good advice: If someone tells you you’re hurting them, stop, listen, resist for five seconds the urge to offer a rebuttal, and consider that they might know something about the situation that you don’t.)

Of course this requires that one be able to hear criticism and be open to change.

…Incidentally, it’s also dishonest to act like our convictions have nothing whatever to do with Jesus or the Bible. Yes, gee, however could we connect the dots between Jesus of Nazareth and a principled critiques of the capacity for religions to collude with political power-brokers in ways that abuse the most vulnerable?

It continues to amaze me that Rick Santorum and his ilk robustly oppose health care reform, support torture, and demonize the poor as undeserving, all while claiming the mantle of Christian ethics.

 Interestingly, one demographic Santorum can't win is Roman Catholics. Funny, that, don't you think? The RC laity continue to be far more sensible and Christian than their hierarchy.

Anyway, it's nice seeing liberal Christians push back.  Do you have sites or resources that challenge the Christian Right's voice in politics with a liberal Christian view?

Update:  here's another essay along the same lines.

And whether championing the right to affordable health care, nondiscrimination, and social justice or fighting to protect basic welfare, living wages, and the earth we tread and air we breath -- liberals and their standard-bearers have traditionally favored policies distinctly more geared towards the very issues about which Christ spoke and for which he was marginalized and condemned: the poor, the sick and those suffering from injustices of unfair systems. 

I'm not a Christian anymore. But given Santorum's selective use of the Bible and his clear misunderstanding of the overall message of Christ, neither is he..... 

Besides, Santorum was wrong. There is such a thing as a liberal Christian. His name was Jesus.

Conservatives vs Liberals: another difference

So, it seems that if you give people feedback on how much energy they use in the home, their response differs based on political affiliation.

“Nudges” are being widely promoted to encourage energy conservation. We show that while the electricity conservation “nudge” of providing feedback to households on own and peers’ home electricity usage works with liberals, it can backfire with conservatives. Our regression estimates predict that a Democratic household that pays for electricity from renewable sources, that donates to environmental groups, and that lives in a liberal neighborhood reduces its consumption by 3 percent in response to this nudge. A Republican household that does not pay for electricity from renewable sources and that does not donate to environmental groups increases its consumption by 1 percent.

Energy Conservation "Nudges" and Environmentalist Ideology: Evidence from a Randomized Residential Electricity Field Experiment. Dora L. Costa, Matthew E. Kahn

Strange. So if you show people how much energy they use, environmentally minded liberals do their best to conserve, whereas Republicans turn up the thermostat. Burn, baby, Burn.

The Affirmation Declaration

In response to the bias of the Manhattan Declaration that opposes (among other things) gay rights, a group of affirming Christians has created a response. Called the Affirmation Declaration, its intent is as follows.

The Affirmation Declaration is a statement that expresses the convictions of Christians all over the world. It was written in response to the now famous Manhattan Declaration, to correct egregious errors contained in the document, errors that have been preached in the pulpits of many local churches for far too long.

With the growing notoriety and support for the Manhattan Declaration, our Affirmation Declaration reflects an urgent need to respond to the portion of the Manhattan Declaration dealing with issues related to sexual orientation—specifically, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. We strongly disagree with the contention that same-sex attractions and the oft-resulting romantic activities are immoral.

Because of the large number of people affected by this serious issue one way or the other, we felt it expedient to respond formally, both by submitting our Declaration to the drafters of the Manhattan Declaration, as well as by releasing our Declaration to the public, allowing Christians to show their support for love and affirmation, just as so many have shown their support for the propagation of false doctrines of oppression and inequality against the GLBTI (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Intersex) community.

We also desire to let the world know that not all Christians are locked in what we believe to be an ancient worldview regarding homosexuality. We want to give people hope—hope to know that God loves them just as they are; hope to know that their gay loved ones are not destined for Hell; hope to know that although some Christian churches will never accept them or their same-sex unions, a great many will.

May the signatures we garner serve as a fire that will never burn out, lighting the way through the darkness of bad theology, and setting Christ's Church back on the right track as it relates to matters of sexual and gender orientation, and gender identity.

Like it? Go read the whole thing and if you still like it, sign it!

Sauce for the goose

Or, turn about is fair play.

From The Times:

The Times has learnt that talks are already under way about forging permanent links between liberal parishes in England and The Episcopal Church, rather as the conservatives have linked up through the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and related bodies. A new US Episcopal Church outpost in London is also being considered, should any liberal parishes in England wish to affiliate with The Episcopal Church in the US in the way that many conservative US parishes have affiliated with evangelical provinces in Africa and the Southern Cone.

Of course there is no source for this last, which sounds suspiciously like someone is stirring things up.

The marketplace of ideas vs. the silence of the cloister

As the church politics swirl around this and other sites, I am not the only person who finds the parallels to academe very striking, not least in the viciousness of the battles. Of course, our modern conception of a university arose from something on the monastic model, and there's a reason our academic gowns have such similarities to clerical robes and vestments.

It's trendy to see universities as hotbeds of liberalism, and while that may be true in some faculties of the humanities, it is too facile to apply that across the community. In the sciences, law and business schools, there are a lot of quite conservative faculty and in the boards of trustees and upper administration, more than a few of Republican bent. The media stories of "attacks" on conservative students are actually very uncommon examples, and outside of a few highly politicized disciplines and issues, the ideological beliefs of the faculty are largely irrelevant to their colleagues or their careers.

Indeed, one hallmark of the university is the presence of all those ideas, and not surprisingly, a lot of squabbling. The ideal of the university as a marketplace of ideas that are forged and refined in an atmosphere of open debate is, in real life, pretty solid. We don't restrict admission or faculty recruitment to a single viewpoint. Students are generally free to challenge and the vast majority of faculty will focus on the quality of the argument rather than its content. The only absolute requirements are a respect for the facts, and a willingness to listen. That's been my experience in the many academic institutions where I have spent my career (I am a professor of science).

Indeed, it's the conservative schools that are far more likely to insist on a uniform ideological viewpoint. This has become clear to me lately as my stepson (The Boy) applies to university and to our surprise, he and several friends were interested in "Christian" schools. Now, I grew up Catholic (as has The Boy) and I know more than a few who have gone to Catholic universities, which are often the bane of the conservative hierarchy and largely support a vigorous spirit of intellectual inquiry.

But such inquiry does not exist at the colleges The Boy's friends have looked at. At least one school explicitly requires the faculty accept an evangelical view of Christianity which is a requirement they consider more important than a doctorate in the field, and further requires that the instructors incorporate "Christianity" into every class, be it philosophy or physics. This same school considers homosexuality the same as incest or pedophilia, and will expel a gay student who so much as holds hands, or states his/her desire for a romantic relationship with, a person of the same sex. It's not even having sex, simply the desire for a relationship, that will do it. (This is in their student handbook).

Students there will not meet faculty or other students who are atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, or other faiths, let alone from any liberal Christian traditions, thus eliminating well over half the population. They won't meet GLBT faculty or students either.

Why would students want to go there ? We find that the boys are largely interested because they have a better chance of playing college sports; they think the people are nice and the rules aren't really enforced (dream again, lads!). The girls, because their parents want them to be protected against liberal values (I think it is a total fear of female sexuality). Still, if their values cannot survive the give and take of an actual university, it seems to me those values are pretty weak to begin with. We remain vehemently opposed to The Boy attending a school that is so narrow in outlook and so counter to everything we are.

Meanwhile, to my mind, these are not universities, not the marketplace of ideas, but cloisters. Indeed, there is no willingness to engage other viewpoints, only a desire to bar the doors and keep them out. So we see in the battle between conservative and liberals in the churches as well. The liberals are preaching inclusion, and trying to bring even those of violently opposite viewpoints to a table together, under a common roof for discussion and yes, argument. The conservatives are vehemently opposed to this and promote a purity code that will exclude those that disagree or challenge their ideas. They impose a self-segregation to ensure they are not contaminated by The Other, and retreat into the cloister.

And just as with the university or the broader society, the separation of a class of people from the whole diminishes everyone and destroys the fabric of our culture. If there is no unifying "we" there remains only "our side" and "the other". And who cares about "them"?

Defeating fear.

I know you all are sick of Prop8, but this isn't about Prop8, except as a symptom.

I want us to think about what provokes people into fear. Because I put it to you that the separatist instinct that we are seeing playing out across the country, dividing "us" and "them", is about fear and insecurity.

Item:

The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool – one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element.

The article goes on to discuss that a sense of disenfranchisement in Southern and other whites leads to a potential for violent response against Obama and people of color. We can't forget that the Oklahoma City bombings were done by people "like us", and not scary foreigners.

Item:

The theologically conservative Diocese of Fort Worth voted Saturday to split from the liberal-leaning Episcopal Church, the fourth traditional diocese to do so in a long-running debate over the Bible, gay relationships and other issues. About 80 percent of clergy and parishioners in the Texas diocese supported the break in a series of votes at a diocesan convention.

I know you know all about this, but really, from where *I* sit, it looks like desperately trying to hold on to the past, where women and gays both knew their places and father figures (always white men) channeled authority.

Item:

In a recent email urging supporters to attack the Governor for his comments, Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council had this to say: "Since Election Day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has made statements supporting demonstrations against Proposition 8, and urging California 's Supreme Court to block the amendment's enforcement…Condoning street protests and supporting judicial activist scams to overturn a popularly approved state constitutional amendment approaches advocacy of anarchy. Gov. Schwarzenegger is playing a dangerous game, and it needs to stop. Now."

Attempts to suppress peaceful dissent is a major symptom of fear, wouldn't you say? I told you that their next attack would be against free speech.

So, what is it that is so ingrained in the human instinct that some of us need to feel "above" someone else? That people feel threatened by change, or inclusion, sufficient to use acts of violence and words of hate to support their views?

Is it that if someone else is special, we aren't? This sounds like the jealousy of a small child when a new sibling comes home from the hospital--only with the weapons of adulthood.

Some time ago, I wrote here about ambiguity, and argued that fundamentalists respond the way they do because of their discomfort with things ambiguous. Here, I will add that I think fear is also a component.

In these undeniably frightening economic and social times, it is a natural instinct to barricade the doors against what we see as the marauding hoardes. Yet it is precisely now that we need to take the risk to open the door and realize that the "hoardes" are just starving neighbors, and people like us.

With gun sales on the upswing, right wing groups advocating the elimination of free speech, these are indeed perilous times. Now is the true challenge, of living our humane values in the face of fear and violence--not by excluding the fearful, but by trying to reach them.

How do we do this, with the threats of political and social violence?

Updated: Cross posted with some editing at TPM Cafe and Daily kos

Defining liberal values as Catholic values.

From the NY Times: the Democrats contest the Catholic vote:

In a departure from previous elections, Democrats and liberal Catholic groups are waging a fight within the [Roman Catholic] church, arguing that the Democratic Party better reflects the full spectrum of church teachings......

The escalating efforts by more-liberal Catholics are provoking a vigorous backlash from some bishops and the right......

Conservatives argue that ending legal protections for abortion outweighs almost all other issues, while liberals contend that social programs can more effectively reduce the abortion rate than trying to overturn Supreme Court precedents. They cite a 2007 statement from the United States bishops explicitly condoning a vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights if the vote was cast for other “grave” reasons......

In the aftermath of the 2004 election, many liberal Catholics complained that parishes had distributed millions of copies of a voter guide created by a group called Catholic Answers that highlighted five “nonnegotiable” issues: abortion, stem-cell research, human cloning, euthanasia and same-sex marriage.

In response, liberal groups like Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance quickly began preparing alternative guides emphasizing a broader spectrum of the church’s social justice teachings.

Then the Bishops Conference, perhaps to forestall a blizzard of competing pamphlets, all but banned third-party voter guides from parishes, requiring the explicit endorsement of the presiding bishop.

But some, including the bishop of La Crosse in Wisconsin, a swing state, have nevertheless chosen to authorize distribution of the “nonnegotiable” guides this year. The liberal groups are trying to distribute their material through direct mail and at meetings of lay Catholic groups....

Read the whole thing.

So here's my puzzle. I'm marrying a very active Catholic, and a whole slew of Catholics will attend our wedding with no problem. In fact, most of the Catholics I know are impressive social-justice Catholics, who defend the powerless, feed the hungry, and visit the imprisoned, etc etc and are very supportive of us. I actually don't know their views on abortion, but suspect that many are similar to my partner, who is personally opposed but unwilling to impose her religion on others nor elevate it to an election issue, and who considers that preventing the NEED for abortion is something upon which we can all agree and towards which we can all work.

The puzzle? Why does everyone think all Catholics are conservatives being pushed by one side or the other? I'm sure that some of the older people in the parish are conservative, and the clergy, but lots of people in our cohort (we're in our 40s) certainly identify as progressives or liberals. It seems that Catholics quite cheerfully live lives of Don't Ask Don't Tell, which I suppose is not surprising in an authoritarian institution!