Re: It's Got Nothing To Do With Hostility To Religion.

1

You have more than enough links in the post, but I wanted to note Glenn Greenwald's piece [No need to fix link this time. WD] on this hideous idiocy, which I thought was very very good.

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Having now googled it, I am glad that I did not try to coin hidiocy. Hideoecy, on the other hand.

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Damn, I thought I had it in there. You're right that it's good -- it was on my clipboard and slipped out of the post somehow.l

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I also couldn't find the Unfogged discussion the other day -- it's deep in some comment thread, but I couldn't remember where.

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Amen.

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5 to 4, I presume. A comment on how these comment threads are really ballooning recently, making it very hard to keep track of everything therein.

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The thing is, many of the positions that get liberals upset aren't straightforward separation-of-church-and-state questions. School prayer, sure. These jackasses in Delaware, sure.

But being anti-abortion? Seems a little less clear that it counts as separation of church and state. What about religious motivation for opposing the death penalty? Euthanasia? Alcohol? (I think the concept of a dry county is an abomination unto God, but many disagree.) I don't think the classic straw atheist liberal has a problem with a religious motivation for opposing the death penalty, but religion will probably be trotted out pretty fast in a debate about euthanasia as a reason to dismiss one's opponent.

Too often, separation-of-church-and-state is used sloppily as a defeater for all religiously-motivated positions. It should be used more narrowly and the other positions argued on the merits.

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The people who need to take the lead and raise their profile are liberal protestants. This debate needs to be from the center of the culture, using rhetorical leverage they will be best-positioned for.

In that connection, consider the link below, which was excerpted in the June Harper's also. I know a lot of people here don't share this background, and will sympathize but consider themselves onlookers, but this is the heart of it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/sitbv3/reader/102-6636991-2571310?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00D&asin=0807077216

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I don't think the classic straw atheist liberal has a problem with a religious motivation for opposing the death penalty, but religion will probably be trotted out pretty fast in a debate about euthanasia as a reason to dismiss one's opponent.

The deal is that atheists think that arguments based on religion are bad arguments because they are based on false assumptions. So an atheist dismissing a religious argument isn't necessarily dismissing it because it is improper to make it in public, but because it is categorically unconvincing. And an atheist overlooking such an argument from a religious ally is overlooking it because one unconvincing argument is unimportant when there are other, stronger arguments. That's not hostility to religion, that's lack of deference to religion.

Likewise, you see a lot of religious liberals attacking religious conservative arguments as being bad arguments from the point of view of the religion the liberal espouses. That's also not hostility to religion, that's disagreement with a particular religious argument.

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10

That's not hostility to religion, that's lack of deference to religion

Do you think that the religious right would say this disctinction is a valid one? 'Cause I feel like a lot of religious people (not all, of course) think these two things are one and the same.

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Then make them say that. If what they want is for me to defer to the dictates of a religion I don't share and whose preferred policies (e.g., oppression of gays) I think are immoral, I don't believe my resistance reflects hostility to religion, but opposition to religious oppression. They can be present in the public square as much as anyone -- they just can't expect to be treated with special deference by those who disagree with them because their motivations are religious rather than secular.

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You will concede at least when someone says I believe such and such and the other person says 'Backward thinker, I refute thee with consequentialism', that just maybe the subtle nuance gets lost.

Likewise, you see a lot of religious liberals attacking religious conservative arguments as being bad arguments from the point of view of the religion the liberal espouses.

These tend to be closer to in-house debates where both sides accept religious authority but disagree on what it should mean. not when one side rejects it out of hand as a bad place to begin arguing.

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re: 10

I'm inclined to tell those religious conservatives who expect me to be deferential to their religion to shove it, though.

A lot of mileage can be had from explaining the difference between showing people's opinions due respect on the one hand and expecting special treatment for those opinions *because* of their religious origin, on the other.

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Well, LB, I agree with you in principle, but the fact is that deference to religion is not something that's totally foreign to our constitution. Of course, people can not expect their religion to be treated with deference by individuals, but there are some reasonable legal arguments that it is treated with some deference by the state.

I'll be completely honest. I don't like it. The first amendment scares me a little bit. Plus, I'm still pissed off from last year after reading Yoder.

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14 to 11.

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You will concede at least when someone says I believe such and such and the other person says 'Backward thinker, I refute thee with consequentialism', that just maybe the subtle nuance gets lost.

Oh, the confusion on this point isn't all coming from one side. There are plenty of liberals, including religious liberals, with no problem with religion generally, who are hostile enough to religious conservatives and who have heard that hostility characterized as hostility to religion generally that they've bought in to the characterization: "Fine, if that's hostility to religion, I'm hostile to religion." I'm trying to encourage liberals to see that the characterization doesn't make sense.

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14: I think there are differing meanings of 'defer' going on here. 'Deference' in the sense of making an effort to freely allow any (reasonable) mode of worship, sure. Deference in the sense of treating religious arguments as worthy of special respect in the political sphere simply because they are religious? Not in the Constitution.

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I realize I'm getting slightly off-topic here, but I don't think it's just any reasonable mode of worship. The state can't have a law that interferes with people's desired practice of their religion, even if it isn't designed to curtail religious activity. Like the Yoder case, where the Quakers got an exemption from mandatory education laws.

But yeah, I don't think they're worthy of any special respect in the political sphere, for sure. However, people are pretty quick to cry "interfering with my religious freedom!" The bastards.

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The state can't have a law that interferes with people's desired practice of their religion, even if it isn't designed to curtail religious activity.

Human sacrifice?

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The state can't have a law that interferes with people's desired practice of their religion, even if it isn't designed to curtail religious activity.

That can't be true, can it? If David Koresh has a religion that mandates that the kids of followers have sex with him, he's not all good. Just on the basis of googling, Yoder doesn't seem terribly troubling. You can, AFAIK, homeschool on any basis at all.

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Quakers? I thought Yoder was about Amish/Mennonites, whose way of life really does conflict.

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>Backward thinker, I refute thee with consequentialism

That's awesome.

Also, on church/state separation, there was the whole "equal access" debate, where I think proponents of equal access were fair to characterize the interpretation of establishment as being explicitly anti-religious. (e.g., you can have a secular club, not a religious club)

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Wait wait wait... I think I totally disagree. I think you *are* hostile to their religion. You may not be hostile to the idea of somone believing in God, per se, or praying or going to Church or whatnot. But you are nevertheless hostile to their religion and there is no way to avoid being labeled as such (without completely compromising your values).

You have to understand that these people hear in Church every Sunday that gays are evil and immoral, that we have not descended from monkeys, that prayer was removed from school as part of a vast conspiracy to secularize America, that environmentalism is basically neo-pagan worship of the "earth-goddess", that Jesus' parable of the talents is an endorsement of naked capitalism, etc. etc. etc. etc. This is coming from their pastor, the man (maybe woman, but likely man) from whom they recieve their religious teaching. It *is* their religion. Unfortunately, that *is* modern American evangelical christianity. (I was raised in this culture, so I know it fairly well.) These things are part of their religious teachings.

So anyone who is hostile to these ideas is basically viewed as hostile to their religion. (And, by the way-- no one thinks liberals are hostile to "religion", generically. The stereotype is that liberals love and cuddle buddhism and paganism and Islam and Hinduism, but are very hostile to Christianity.) A secularist just cannot frame this debate in a way that is not going to leave an anti-Christian aftertaste (when "Christian" is defined as above). On the other hand, there is some room for someone to offer alternative religious teachings ("no, I read the Bible and I see Jesus being concerned for the poor and downtrodden, and asking us to help them"), which is why it would IMO be wonderful if those voices were a little louder in our national political debate.

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Also, on church/state separation, there was the whole "equal access" debate, where I think proponents of equal access were fair to characterize the interpretation of establishment as being explicitly anti-religious.

That seems right.

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So anyone who is hostile to these ideas is basically viewed as hostile to their religion. (And, by the way-- no one thinks liberals are hostile to "religion", generically. The stereotype is that liberals love and cuddle buddhism and paganism and Islam and Hinduism, but are very hostile to Christianity.)

But I'm not hostile to Christianity generally. I'm hostile to (purely in the sense that I don't want their policy preferences imposed on me or others. They can do whatever they like so long as it doesn't affect me) certain conservative sects of Christianity. I have no problem at all with, for example, most American Episcopalians, and neither do most liberals.

That's the point -- it's not about religion, or about Christianity generally, it's about the political goals of some particular sect of Christianity. If religious conservatives want to stand up and say that their sects deserve more political power and respect than other sects of Christianity, other non-Christian religions, and secularists generally, let them say that. But it's not about Christianity as a whole, it's about some Christians who stand in opposition to other Christians.

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Urple, let's say someone says "You, liberal who supports homosexual marriage, are hostile to religion" and LWSHM responds, "I assume by religion you mean Chrisitanity, and while I disagree with the religious argument against religion, I am very happy with anyone who wants to going to a Christian church and worshipping the Christian God, and the more important biblical teachings, to my understanding, aren't about human sexuality, but more about the things Jesus said in the sermon on the mount."

I thought this comment had a point, but have changed my mind.

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22, 24: There's been some of that -- the ACLU has generally been on the right (that is, the promoting-equal-access) side of the cases.

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I have written and deleted several longer, and more contentious comments. Can I start by noting that to the extent liberals frame the debate by complaining about fundamentalists or the evil Christian right, they hardly can complain when they are accused of being hostile to religion. If the argument were reframed as you suggest:

people doing or advocating things we strongly disapprove of, like co-opting the power of the state to proselytize for a particular sect, in the service of their religious beliefs,

it would be a good start.

And what baa said in 22.

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Can I start by noting that to the extent liberals frame the debate by complaining about fundamentalists or the evil Christian right, they hardly can complain when they are accused of being hostile to religion.

Yes we can. "Fundamentalists" != "religion". "The Christian Right" != "religion".

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"Fundamentalists" != "religion". "The Christian Right" != "religion".

Oh please. Are you saying that when you refer to someone as a fundamentalist Christian you are not referring to them by their religious beliefs?

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The problem is that the fundamentalist Christian right are powerful and paranoid. Despite exercising a vast amount of power they believe themselves to be a persecuted minority.

That's a difficult combination to deal with if you want to i) engage in open and honest debate while ii) remaining civil.


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No, but I'm referring to a particular sect, not to the religious generally. Does all of the rhetoric about fundamentalist Islam reflect a hostility to "religion"? No.

I'm not saying there's no hostility, I'm saying that it's not hostility to religion, or Christianity. It's political hostility to the political goals of a definable group of religions people.

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26 - There are a frighteningly large number of right-wing Christians who dismiss the denominations you name as basically watered-down "liberal" Christianity. Again, you can say "I'm not hostile to your religion" all day long, but what I'm trying to say is that inside the heads of many believers these two statements sound the same:

"I'm not hostile to your religion, but I support equal civil rights for homosexual citizens."

"I'm not hostile to your religion, but it's ignorant to believe that a man named Jesus rose from the dead."

What I'm saying (clumsily, admittedly) is that there is not in their minds the clear spearation between the religious and the political that you are positing. The political *is* religious! Hence, the "culture wars", etc. And hence, if you are hostile to their (religiously-inspired) political views you will inevitably be viewed as hostile to their religion.

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OT I know, but where has the Putin-blogging been? This story has been in the news for at least a day now. "Like a kitten," indeed.

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33 was to 25, not 26. I don't really understand 26.

Also, I note that Dr. B has already said basically what I'm trying to say, only far more elegently.

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I guess here's what I'm asking, LB: who is it that you are trying to convince that you are not hostile to their religion? If it's evangelical christians, it's not going to work, because you are hostile to their religion. If it's the liberal Episcopalians, okay, you've got a winning argument, but I'm pretty sure they're already largely on your side.

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33 -- I understand you, and I think you're absolutely right about how many conservative Christians perceive it (and how many people who aren't conservative Christians, but nonetheless are subject to the same framing of the debate perceive it). I am trying (from the incredibly powerful soapbox I occupy) to point out that that framing is just flat wrong unless you take as a premise that the One True Religion is that espoused by conservative, and only conservative, Christians, and that anyone who doesn't believe that to be the case shouldn't accept the frame.

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re: 33

To those people I'd be inclined to say, 'Yes, I am opposed to your religion. I find *your* religious views repugnant and your paranoid persecution fantasies laughable. You are in the moral wrong on just about every issue I care about and it is my intention to defeat you at every turn'.

If there doesn't seem to be anything you can say to those people that will allow them to view you as anything other than hostile to their religion then why bother? Just get on with defeating them.

However, I presume LB (and others) point is that if you want to win over the *moderate* Christians who've bought into the 'hostile to Christianity' theme then some kind of rhetoric that makes clear the difference between religion and Christianity (in general) and a particular flavour of right-wing Christianity on the other, is bound to be necessary.

The hardcore Christian right are a lost cause.

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31 and 32 make my point quite well. You say that you are not hostile to religion, but then choose to attack people by reference to their religion. If you think each and every fundamentalist Christian holds the political beliefs with which you disagree and for which you have contempt, you have proved your ignorance of those people and their beliefs. Do you honestly believe that everyone who belongs to certain sects (could you list them please, so we know who to hate) has the same political beliefs?

To insist upon describing your opponents by their religion makes it a bit hard to claim the purity of heart regarding religious intolerance which you are claiming.

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36: I want to make it explicit to conservative evangelical Christians that the only thing I'm hostile to is the political goals of theirs that I disagree with. If they want to say that that means that I'm hostile to 'their religion', fine. If they claim I'm hostile to Christianity generally, they're lying, unless they want to explicitly claim that american Episcopalians are un-Christian.

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If you think each and every fundamentalist Christian holds the political beliefs with which you disagree and for which you have contempt, you have proved your ignorance of those people and their beliefs.

I've been referring to conservative Christians -- i.e., those who hold views that I politically disagree with. I know there are liberals who belong to evangelical churches. I've voted for them.

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To insist upon describing your opponents by their religion makes it a bit hard to claim the purity of heart regarding religious intolerance which you are claiming.

And honestly, are you claiming that it's wrongful or intolerant to talk about the existence of the religious Right as a political force?

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I want to make it explicit to conservative evangelical Christians that the only thing I'm hostile to is the political goals of theirs that I disagree with.

Well wouldn't it be easier to talk about the political goals with which you disagree rather than to conflate them with religious beliefs.

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If you think each and every fundamentalist Christian holds the political beliefs with which you disagree and for which you have contempt, you have proved your ignorance of those people and their beliefs.

That's completely wrong. Or just a wierd way to analyze things. We make bets on people's politics on the basis of other characteristics all of the time. That's the way it works in a nation of 300 million.

The point is not to win the evangelical Christians, but to win other Christians who sort of think the evangelicals are crazy, but think Dems are dismissive of and rude about Christianity.

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re: 43

The point is that it is those very people who make explicit the link between their religious views and their political views.

It's a pretty cool trick to link one's political views with one's religion and then claim that anyone with opposing political views who makes the self-same link is 'disrespecting' the religion.

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The point is not to win the evangelical Christians, but to win other Christians who sort of think the evangelicals are crazy, but think Dems are dismissive of and rude about Christianity.

Precisely, except that evangelical should be conservative evangelical.

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Well wouldn't it be easier to talk about the political goals with which you disagree rather than to conflate them with religious beliefs.

Wow, LB's getting it from both sides right now. Um, I sort of forced her into that box, Idealist. See above. And, for the record, I think these political goals are *religious beliefs* for many people. They aren't particularly interested in listening to evidence, they're just interested in listening to their pastor.

And, lest I be unclear, I am personally religious.

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McGrattan, what are you getting so worked up about? Ideal hasn't said anything tricksy, I don't think. Wrong, but not tricksy.

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I sort of forced her into that box,

Really not the thread for that sort of thing.

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There should have been italics in 47. Precisely where I shall leave to your imaginations.

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And, lest I be unclear, I am personally religious.

At least to the extent that we're willing to believe that Catholicism is a religion (IIRC).

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48: Well, he's asserting that my identification of a political bloc by its religious affiliation is somehow improper from a 'hostility to religion' point of view. In a world where the Christian Coalition is a political pressure group that identifies itself quite openly by its religious affiliation, his squeamishness seems poorly placed.

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51 is both potentially correct and troubling. When have I ever mentioned that before?

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the Christian Coalition is a political pressure group identifies itself quite openly by its religious affiliation, his squeamishness seems poorly placed

My squeamishness would be poorly placed if you had made the target of your contempt the Christian Coalition (all caps--the organization) rather than evangelicals and fundamentalists, which are terms which describe people solely by their religioous beliefs.

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I don't know that you've mentioned it, but it's a fair guess from hard-line anti-abortion but otherwise fairly liberal. I had made the same guess without any more basis.

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54: Wanna search the post, or the thread, for examples of contempt directed at 'evangelicals' or 'fundamentalists'?

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d if you had made the target of your contempt the Christian Coalition (all caps--the organization) rather than evangelicals and fundamentalists

But, of course, it's not the organization that anyone cares about; it's the votes the organization controls.

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False statement: all conservative christians hold the same political views
False (and bigoted) statement: all conservative christians "are paranoid"

These are what I take as Idealist's points. And aren't they just obviously true?

Increase the peace!

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For some of us this is tricky. I agree there are principled reasons to want separation of church and religion that have nothing to do with an aversion to religion. I even try, as best I can, to stick to those. But the truth is I want religion out of the public square because I think it's wrong-headed. If, 100 years from now, the US is going the way of Europe - with religion fading into nothing, I will be satisfied. Dead, but satisifed.

So... I can pay lip service to this neutral principle, but it isn't what motivates me.

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58: But his implication that we've been making those statements is false.

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55- Have I said things here before to give the impression that am fairly liberal?

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Not explicitly, but the only arguments I remember you getting into are the abortion ones. I tend to assume that anyone who's hanging around here a lot and not being visibly argumentative is somewhere to the left of center.

If you aren't, you need to pipe up more when Idealist and baa are feeling beleaguered.

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True statement: most conservative Christians hold sufficiently similar political views to form a voting block, and there aren't enough of the rest left to count.
True statement: those similar political views are either hostile to consensus Dem views or effectively hostile to consensus Dem views.

Those points seem true, and nothing from the above seems lost. (Actually, the first statement is more hardline than the one LB's taking.)

Urple, I think it was when you referred to me as a "Huguenot dog."

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But his implication that we've been making those statements is false.

Um, you cannot insist that you oppose a religious group because of its political views unless you believe that all people who hold those particular beliefs also hold the same political views.

For example: It's political hostility to the political goals of a definable group of religions people.

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"definable group of religious people" != "religious group"

A "definable group of religious people" is "those conservative Christians who have organized themselves into pressure groups within or parallel to the Republican party, including but not limited to the membership of the Christian Coalition, and often referred to as the Religious Right". That definition does not assume that all, e.g., Southern Baptists vote Republican or favor mandatory school prayer.

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you cannot insist that you oppose a religious group because of its political views unless you believe that all people who hold those particular beliefs also hold the same political views.

On reflection: Well you can, I suppose, but it is a bit much for you to get all huffy when people accuse you of being against certain people's religions.

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it is a bit much for you to get all huffy when people accuse you of being against certain people's religions.

See my 40.

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It is an interesting idea, that someone right of center would feel comfortable here, freely bantering and confessing as we all do, without ever being drawn into battles about exactly what is being said and how. I mean, I think GB, and Cala, and Yamamoto, and I are left-of-center yet often engaged in these controversies, apparently on the side of the jack boots. Somebody side-stepping all that would be remarkable.

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Presumably one of the goals of this sort of "it's not hostility to religion" discourse would be to separate Catholics from evangelicals, by appealing to the social justice instincts of the former. Religion started to take over the public sphere again when the political wall between Catholics and evangelicals came down.

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63: What did you do, call him a papist?

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I suppose it depends on what one means by "liberal." If you mean supportive of liberty, fraternity and equality and all that, then I guess the label is reasonably fair. On the other hand, "Uneasy Rider" by the Charlie Daniels Band is perhaps my favorite song of all time. I'm pretty sure that disqualifies me right there.

Also, I'm not a bit Al-Qaeda sympathizer like most liberals.

Is this a really slow day in the Mineshaft or is it just me?

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What about point-by-point hostility to explicitly religious arguments ? I'm hostile to Bible-verse prescriptions for policy, but not to thinly veiled religious arguments. IMHO it's incumbent upon believers to dress up for the public square.

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I think that a lot of what Urple says in 23 is right.

I have no problem at all with, for example, most American Episcopalians, and neither do most liberals.

Thanks for saying kind things about my denomination, LB, but I think that the Presbytereans, the Lutherans and most of the Methodists are OK too.

(As an aside, because it's an internal religious argument not related to religion and the public sphere, I will note that General Convention of the Episcopal Church just elected a woman as our presiding bishop (our primate who meets with all of the other Anglican primates every so often). The conservative bishops of Fort Worth and Pittsburgh have declared that they are not in communion with her. (Sigh.)

Urple is also right that liberal Protestants have done a really bad job of articulating a competing vision, partly because a lot of us are wary of arguing for certain values in the public sphere based on our religious beliefs. This goes both ways. We don't want to impose our religion on other people, and we tend to be wary of bringing political views into religious discussions. At its worst, this can lead to the impression that religion is only about personal piety.

The big problem, from the point of those of us who woulr like to see a more prominent voice for liberal Protestants and Catholics in shaping some of these debates is that the mainline churches are shrinking.

Note that I see this as a problem on two levels. (1.) I don't like the effects of the unchallenged prominence of the right-wingers on public policy. (2.) It saddens me as a Christian, because (without being al loosy goosey and liberal--cause ina number of areas I'm pretty traditionalist) I don't think that's what Christianiy is all about. I hate the fact that huge swathes of the population see Christianity as a hateful religion.

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Did anybody read the Marilynne Robinson piece I linked in 8, or in Harper's?

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by appealing to the social justice instincts of the former

Careful, there. There are, and have been, evangelical Christians with social justice instincts (remember the Civil Rights movement?).

At the risk of sounding too academically respectable, I'd say there's a terminological problem here. "Protestant fundamentalists" ≠ "evangelical Christians".

I don't think it's out of line to say that Protestant fundamentalism is inherently a politics as much as it is a religion. The point of being a fundamentalist is to insist on a supernatural source of morality and to oppose accommodation to modern conditions. So when you oppose "fundamentalism" you're opposing a religious strain whose leaders and adherents have set themselves a political agenda. It's really hard to pick the religion and the politics apart.

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Your link doesn't work for me, idp.

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I hate the fact that huge swathes of the population see Christianity as a hateful religion.

If it makes you feel better, I really don't think this is true. I think huge swathes of the population think (if conservative) that 'liberals' think Christianity generally is a hateful religion or (if liberal) that other liberals think Christianity generally is a hateful religion. I don't think (which is sort of my point generally) that there are many people out there who actually do forget the existence of Epsicopalians, Presbyterians, all the millions of people in the evangelical sects whose political beliefs are unexceptionable, and end up thinking bad things about Christianity generally.

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You say that you are not hostile to religion, but then choose to attack people by reference to their religion.

right, LB's making a distinction between "religion" (general), and "their religion" (particular). Your argument here is tantamount to "any hostility to any religion is hostility to religion." I doubt that's what you meant, but it seems that's what you wrote.

Well wouldn't it be easier to talk about the political goals with which you disagree rather than to conflate them with religious beliefs.

May we dub this The Infuriating Circular Argument? It goes like this:
Religious Person X: I take polititcal position C because of my religion, Z. You can't attack C, because it's based solely on my belief in Z. And if you attack Z, you hate religion, upon which this country was founded! And you're intolerent. And you don't share my values, because you hate religion!

Of course, I am hostile to religion, in general. I refuse to respect!

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re: 48

I didn't think I was getting worked up! I need to work on my rhetorical stance. My point in 45 was the same as LBs in 52.

Anyway ...

FWIW, I used to work for a Baptist religious college. I don't have a problem with Christians or even evangelical Christians.

However, you can't just talk about 'the right' -- contra what Idealist and others have described as a more desirable way to carry out political discourse. This is because there's a real distinction to be made between the secular right-wing and the religious right-wing and there's a specific policy agenda that the latter group has which is often distinct from the agenda of the secular right.

I don't think there's any way to clearly express one's opposition to that particular sub-species of right-wing policy agenda without also referring to the religious element and religious inspiration of that policy agenda.


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76: hmm. The link works on my other machine, linking direct from the comment.

Anybody else have trouble?

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Well you can, I suppose, but it is a bit much for you to get all huffy when people accuse you of being against certain people's religions.

oh, yes, yes you can. I had a wonderful Godwin's Law violation all worked up!

And, Idealist, here's the thing: "Being hostile to religion" doesn't make sense, in a way, because liberals just about never complain about religions practices, only their political activities. If liberals were really hostile to religion, then that hostility would manifest itself in myriad ways, none of which do I think we are seeing. Liberals are hostile to religious political activity, of course.

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Liberals are hostile to religious political activity, of course.

Where they disagree with the political goals sought. There was not, for example, widespread liberal disapproval of Obama's "awesome God" speech -- might conceivably have been some, but nothing like a majority position.

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Ought to have been, but people don't realize what code words those are.

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Careful, there. There are, and have been, evangelical Christians with social justice instincts (remember the Civil Rights movement?)

You mean the guys referenced here?

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I suppose it depends on what one means by "liberal."

"liberal" = oral sex

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re: evangelical Christians with social justice instincts.

Of course. To the extent that I was aware of the specific political views of my colleagues when I worked for the religious college mentioned above, they slanted pretty far to the left on issues of social justice, racial equality, wealth redistribution, etc. Most of them would have been of the 'socioeconomic' left while remaining fairly conservative on a number of social issues: abortion, to pick one notable example.

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and end up thinking bad things about Christianity generally.

college students.

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I think I'm the type of person that you might be addressing, LB, because I certainly think I'm hostile to religion. Not individual religious people, generally (with exceptions, of course), but I just really don't like organized religion, don't like the political power it wields and tries to wield, and have a lot of bad feelings about religious organizations from back in my Mormon days.

And I was pissed off at Obama. I think I even said something about that here, too lazy to find it though.

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If we want to get into a terminological dispute, though, I'd like to see a solution to it. How should we linguistically separate the christians who propose, agitate, and lobby for fascist social policies from those who share similar religious beliefs, but are slightly more liberatarian in their politics? Baa and Ideals seem very concerned that we are slighting the latter group. But how can we separate the wheat from the chaff?

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There's a splatter problem.

Religious Person X: I take polititcal position C because of my religion, Z. You can't attack C, because it's based solely on my belief in Z. And if you attack Z, you hate religion, upon which this country was founded! And you're intolerent. And you don't share my values, because you hate religion!

I'm not sure how many people besides the fringe make this argument. But if we take another religious person, Y:

Y: I take political position C because of my religion Z. I'm up for you attacking C, but if you attack it merelybecause it's grounded in Z rather than addressing it as policy, I have no reason to believe you're arguing in good faith, any more than you would if I attacked your position by saying 'you're a woman' or 'you're black' or 'you've been brainwashed by the liberal academy'.

I think we can distinguish X from Y. So let's just hate on X, you say? But here's the splatter problem. Y probably knows X better than you do. Y may go to church with X. And Y may not really like being told she's a harmless good Christian who doesn't rock the boat. It comes across rather like 'I hate all Christians; oh, not you. You're a good one. I'm just saying in general.'

Replace 'Christians' with 'feminists' or 'blacks' or what have you if you don't see why it's not working. No one wants to be the acceptable token of a despised group.

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Also, I'm not a bit Al-Qaeda sympathizer like most liberals.

OK, I just have to ask: WTF?

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and have a lot of bad feelings about religious organizations from back in my Mormon days.

You're an Egyptian Mormon? Great Jehosephat!

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an egyptian mormon? I had no idea. (I'm made glad that Silvana joins me in my intolerance, though!)

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91: It was a joke. He totally sympathizes with Al Qaeda.

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As I often say, I think the only Arab-American ex-Mormons in this country are probably me and my siblings.

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94: Now that I stop and look again, I think I misread it originally, and apologize to Urple. But I'm apologizing through the giggles that 94 inspired.

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and have a lot of bad feelings about religious organizations from back in my Mormon days

Not to get off topic, but you had "Mormon days", Silvana? Growing up in Egypt as a Mormon must have been way weird.

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I take political position C because of my religion Z. I'm up for you attacking C, but if you attack it merelybecause it's grounded in Z rather than addressing it as policy...

Cala, how can this work? How can I attack an argument by critcizing reasons which are not the reasons said person supports the argument? I know too many christians who will say, "I understand your reasons E,F,G and H, and I'm sympathetic, but I'm sticking with position C, because of religion Z. Sorry."

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or, just as often, "i don't know how to reconcile observations m ans n with virtue W, which Z believes in, but Z demands C, so I have to believe, though I can't see why, that C leads to W, and I'll just have to ignore m and n." Otherwise smart people frequently make this argument.

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Re: Mormonism. Are "stakes" a territorial, organizational subdivision, like parishes or presbytries or dioceses?

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Arab-American ex-Mormons

I'm afraid now.

Y may go to church with X.

Depending on the church, that's the problem. We more or less have to right off Y.

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Careful, there. There are, and have been, evangelical Christians with social justice instincts (remember the Civil Rights movement?).

It's hard to be very careful in a short comment! What I meant was that with televangelism and megachurches and whatnot there is a much more capitalist flavor to large swathes of evangelical life, today if not always historically, and much of the teaching Urple describes in 23 is not Catholic doctrine.

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Jesus. I had no idea the church even had a presence in Egypt--or was it just you and your sister?

I get pretty nervous about religious institutions for similar reasons, although I wouldn't think of myself as exactly "hostile."

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I didn't mean to derail this very good discussion. I thought I had mentioned my former Mormon-status here before? Maybe not. Yeah, to make a long story short, my mother was an American and teen convert to the LDS church who, when she married my father, who is Coptic Catholic and Egyptian, agreed with him to raise the kids Mormon cause she was more into her religion than he into his, and they bought thought bringing kids up religiously was important. She actually was one of the first Mormons in Egypt, back in the 70s, and as more expatriates moved in and the Oil industry grew and the Diplomatic mission, the number of Mormons grew (especially 'cause the CIA has a habit of hiring mormons). I'd say when I was in high school, there was a branch of about 150-200 Mormons there. Mostly Americans, with a sizeable group of Nigerian/Senegalese/Ghanaian converts (they weren't allowed by the government to convert any Egyptians). I probably kept going to church until I was about 14, and by that point my siblings had moved away and my father not going to church with me anymore (and my mother dead), but he still wanted me to attend, so I would pretend like I was going and walk for hours around Cairo, 'cause I hated it that much.

On preview: 100, yeah. Stakes are regional, and groups of "wards." But we weren't even big enough to have a ward, we just had a "branch," which had, instead of a "bishop" (who is the head of a ward), a "branch president." So much terminology.

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"bought" s/b "both"

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100--An individual church and congregation is a "ward." A bunch of wards in an area form a "stake." Then there's a regional grouping, I think.

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JM, more on the Mormons in Egypt, from here:

Legal ambiguity also concerns the membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), or Mormons, in Cairo. The LDS Church has maintained an organized congregation in Egypt for over 30 years, though without formal legal recognition. The Government is aware of the activities of the congregation and has raised no objection so long as no proselytizing of citizens occurs; however, excessive attention from State Security has been a problem for individual citizen members who attempted to participate in meetings, particularly those who have converted to the LDS Church overseas and then returned to Egypt. According to credible sources in the LDS community, citizen members sometimes avoid meetings out of fear of harassment from State Security.

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150-200 wasn't considered big enough for a ward? That's strange because my ward was about 60 people. On a full day. I think it used to be bigger back when real estate was affordable in the area.

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98: When X argues that policy C is the right policy because it's supported by their religion, often their reasoning is that C leads to desirable outcomes, and their religion's support for C, let's call it R, is evidence of that. The reason they dismiss evidence to the contrary is that they think that R is extremely strong evidence. But I don't think any X supports C even though they think it leads to bad outcomes. So if you were able to convince them that C does does lead to bad outcomes (which is really hard because they ignore evidence that it does) then they would abandon C. And probably have a crisis of faith or two.

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98: In other words, there's a Catch-22 in arguing with these people, and your objection to Cala's comment is halfway recognizing that.

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Ah, given 107, I understand a bit better. I wondered whether the "branch" designation mightn't have been a bit of soft racism. (Ethnic congregations often end up as branches and get shuffled between various ward buildings. My ward building had a Laotian branch that met after the "regular" ward meeting.)

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then they would abandon C. And probably have a crisis of faith or two.

This, of course, is the subtext to Book 6 of The Republic, one specific analogy being the philosopher leading the savage out of the dark cave of religion to see the Good of practical atheism.

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philosopher leading the savage out of the dark cave of religion

This is precisely where you will get written off as condescending, and the conversation ends. For many among the religious, it is not a matter of philosophical inquiry. It is faith. Period.

(Note: others, notably my very-libera-Catholic mother, have done the philosophical legwork and still decide to believe.)

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98: Look, you're not trying to win them over, necessarily. All the nicety-nice talk in the world probably won't convince someone that liberals are pro-life. But if you're trying to convince them that liberals are pro-choice and that doesn't entail anti-Christian sentiment, it may be better just to treat their reasons as legitimate close-held reasons. If you don't think they're legitimate, all well and good, but that makes you kind of hostile.

Depending on the church, that's the problem.

Maybe. Catholicism is a really big tent. Assemblies of God, not so much. But the point is just that if Z rants about those idiot Whatevers to Y, a practicing Whatever, even if Y agrees with Z that the idiot X is a bad Whatever, there's going to be a fair amount of hostility perceived simply because religion forms a pretty strong part of most practioners' identity.

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"libera" s/b something else, but I kind of like it; it's easy-on-the-eyes.

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It's just me, Bartcop, and PZ Meyers who have hostility to all religion.

For a fee, we're willing to hand out liberal-weeny certificates attesting to inadequate hostility to religion.


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I'm a liberal and an ex-Christian, with a somewhat ambivalent relationship to the idea of religion. I recognize that if the liberals, as a group, are going to persuade (some) conservatives to change their minds, some of the argument will have to be religious. That is, the speech across the liberal-conservative gap will have to include discussions between Christians who share a lot of religious and cultural assumptions that I don't. So, in the hope that the politically liberal view will prevail, I have to accept the collaboration of many people who differ from me in practically every way except the political goal. It's in my political interest to put up with -- sometimes even, in effect, to endorse -- rhetorical style and assertions of identity that alienate me.

I believe this is called a "coalition".

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You guys have got nothing on the seminarians.

Kotsko can out-hate all of you, for example.

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And I should say that I'm not asserting that no liberal is hostile to religion -- PZ Myers, Emerson, and Silvana are holding up the militant atheists banner. Give me a minute and I can find some militant atheists on the right. (Does Derbyshire qualify? I'd have to read more of his stuff.)

It's just that the general liberal hostility toward the religious right doesn't have a thing to do with hostility to religion, and shouldn't be thought of as being on the same spectrum. Atheist liberals, agnostic liberals, and profoundly Christian liberals all have hostility toward the religious right -- it't not about the religion, it's about the politics driven by that religion.

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Razib and the even more notorious GC at GNXP are right-wing atheists, though Razib seems to be going soft.

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Oh, the whole Ayn Rand cult. Anyone out there taking Ayn Rand seriously has got to be a right-wing militant atheist.

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I want to march under the militant athiest banner, too. It makes me sore that I should have to consider, even strategically, the merits of a political opinion rooted in chapter and verse. I think it's fine for children and good for philanthropy, but fuzzy things like "respect for life" are so far from the appopriate purview of the government.

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. Anyone out there taking Ayn Rand seriously has got to be a right-wing militant atheist.

I don't know if that's quite true. The Randoids endow Rand with deific powers: the ability to transmute rape into not-rape, for example.

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In the case in question, though, the problem was that the public schools were imposing one religion on those of a different religion. It's not religion as such that is being opposed by liberals.

Conservative Christians do not believe that theirs is one among many religions. They believe that theirs is the only true religion. So do Muslims, and possibly a few others. The American political system does not allow government to recognize this kind of claim, but it's exactly what the most militant Christians are demanding.

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Does it seriously annoy you when you agree with the conclusions? I think you're too young to have voted for Clinton, but does that sort of 'God wants us to take care of the poor' rhetoric bother you generally? Or does it just not do much for you?

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122: My point is that we've just got to suck it up. Trying to exclude religion from the argument is suicidal (regardless of whether it's hostile).

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One more thing: I think that another part of the problem here may be that many prominent liberal organizations are run by people who are hostile to religion, and not just to the religious right. (I'd throw out the ACLU as an example here, but I don't know who runs that. I'm really just speaking based on experiences with friends.) These are the managers' personal beliefs, not necessarily the motivating principles of the organization, but these things sort of come out nonetheless. And then when liberals support these organizations there is some degree of guilt by association, at least in terms of public perception. After all, why would you support this person who hates religion if you yourself don't hate it? (I'm not saying that's really logical, just that I think it's a perception that I think exists.)

So that's another problem.

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Then there was that Ten Commandments monument idiocy. I was hostile towards that.

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(I'd throw out the ACLU as an example here, but I don't know who runs that. I'm really just speaking based on experiences with friends.)

They're out there protecting the rights of religious groups to equal access in schools. They're protecting the right to religious freedom of people like the family in the linked story. What has the ACLU done lately that's struck you as anti-religious?

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I did a little too much thinking and too little proofreading in the last parenthetical of 127.

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The ACLU hasn't done anything that's struck me as anti-religious-- that's part of my point (their org. is reasonably fair to fight for liberties for the religious and non-religious alike). Some people who work for the ALCU have struck me as personally very anti-religious, however, and I don't think that's out of the ordinary. A lot of liberal activists are personally very anti-religious. And liberal "activists" are, almost by definition, the face of liberalism that many people will see.

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125: Ceremonial deism doesn't annoy me. But appeals to God when the policy is reasonable on the merits do bug me. Not so much that I'd ever throw the baby out with the holy water, but it definitely grates.

128: If I may, some religious iterations of the Statue of Liberty.

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Part of what Urple may be getting at (please correct me if I'm wrong, Urple) is that "liberal culture" does seem somewhat hostile to people who take their Christian faith seriously. It may not be an attack on that faith directly, but rather an attack on attitudes likely shared by such people. So, if you don't believe in sex before marriage, you're a freak. If you think (pace Hirshman) a mother at home is a positive good, you're a freak. And so on. If the only place people who are serious Christians find like-minded people is at church, those people are likely to associate those lifestyle choices with the church, whether or not the choices are based on church doctrine.

Also, Smasher personally cost us the '04 election.

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Why is your blog no longer pretty, Smasher?

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There are certainly some militant atheists who are more hailed on the right than the left these days - Christopher Hitchens and Oriana Fallaci, for two.

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133: But there are plenty of serious Christians who don't find liberal culture alienating. I don't deny the alienation, but I do say that it applies to a subset only of Christians.

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131: This, I have no idea of what to do about.

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What do you mean, it's not pretty?

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SCMT used to gaze at your picture while playing "Ask". Now the picture is gone....

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Oh, yeah, the picture banner—dude, that was too vain even for me.

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I really think that by worrying that we're being seen as "hostile to religion" when discussing the alleged asshattery in Delaware we are in fact feeding the beast that is the lie that we are hostile to all religion. Those people, if the story as reported by that family is true, are already hostile. I really don't think we need to worry ourselves with whether we're being hostile in return. Of course, I'm not much of a cheek-turner, so hey.

I am a member of a religion, but it is not Christianity. Some of my political ideals are rooted in or at least bolstered by my religious beliefs, and some are not, and either way it is not my place to go around pointing out which are which to anyone else. I generally appreciate the same from others.

But by the same token, I would love to see more charismatic Christian leftists take the stage and try to point out to their fellow believers that a lot of good work would come from enacting liberal ideals (Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values is an excellent example of just that). If they want to look at it as serving a religious goal as well as a political one, more power to them. However, I don't think it's my job to do that, and I don't think it's our fault when some members of some religions are openly hostile to the point of driving someone out of their town, or otherwise picking a fight, especially when the second someone criticizes them for it the right-wing fringe of said religion (or any other body) claims that suddenly it makes them the victim.

Rather than worry about how to present ourselves in regards to religion, I wish we could figure out a way to point out that the Christian Coalition does not represent all of religion, or all religious people, in a way that undermined their rhetoric of representing some silent majority. If we could expose that fringe as being a fringe, I think it would do a lot to neuter them as a force for stagnation and regression.

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If you don't think they're legitimate, all well and good, but that makes you kind of hostile.

It's just me, Bartcop, and PZ Meyers who have hostility to all religion.

I'm not asserting that no liberal is hostile to religion -- PZ Myers, Emerson, and Silvana are holding up the militant atheists banner.

Why do I get no credit? I am an enraged teddy bear - ready to kill, but no one will take me seriously.

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That's not hostility to religion, that's lack of deference to religion.

And that's exactly where this all stems from. As silvana said, to many religious people these are one and the same.

Liberals aren't hostile to religion, we're hostile to the notion that people should be able to legislate their religious beliefs based solely upon arguments made from their religion. "Because the Bible says so" isn't a fucking argument. But God forbid any liberal point that out, because now they're "hostile to religion."

It's never enough that they are free to believe what they want. The government in their eyes should actively promote their beliefs. They believe in prayer, so schools should lead students in prayer. They don't believe in pre-marital sex, so schools shouldn't teach sex ed. They believe in talking snakes and magic fruit trees, so schools should teach creationism.

And anyone who opposes such measures is immediately tarred as"hostile to religion." Because if there's anything religious screwballs like more than pushing their nonsense on others, it's crying about how victimized they are.

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I just want to second Urple's 127 and 131. I would almost even say it's a problem of manners -- there are definitely subgroups of (in my experience) college-educated, politically liberal, urban Americans who feel comfortable openly expressing contempt for religious faith.

But "manners" doesn't quite cut it. It's not just about being courteous to religiously observant people even if you don't agree with them. I would almost say it's a problem of liberalism not to be able to acknowledge that a person of faith may also be rational.

Maybe liberalism is the wrong word too.

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I spy a small kitten.

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"huge swathes of the population see Christianity as a hateful religion"

I'm not sure about "huge swathes", but a number of us see Christianity as a hateful religion because of you know, the whole Bible thing.

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I find 144 overly hostile to liberals. (kinda seriously.)

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I would almost say it's a problem of liberalism not to be able to acknowledge that a person of faith may also be rational.

See, I just don't see any substantial group of liberals (or snooty urbanites, or any other obvious category of people) out there refusing to acknowledge that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter etc. can be rational. I think the statement you made there is flatly false, unless 'person of faith' means something very restricted to you. That's exactly the sort of generalization I think is so pernicious. (When I say it's pernicious, I don't mean to attack you personally. I think it's very common, just wrong.)

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I would almost even say it's a problem of manners -- there are definitely subgroups of (in my experience) college-educated, politically liberal, urban Americans who feel comfortable openly expressing contempt for religious faith.

Man, I don't know if I should say this, but hey, I'm apparently marching under the militant atheist band already, so I might as well. Look, some people (not me as much, because although I'm hostile toward organized religion, I'm probably an agnostic more than an atheist) see religious belief as patently false and harmful. I see nothing "rude" about expressing contempt for religious belief if you see it as patently false and harmful, just as there is nothing rude about my expressing contempt for the opinion that Iraq has WMDs, back when we still didn't know whether they did or not.

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Having read gswift's 143, I now think we're describing two different phenomena.

a) the false positive of "anti-religionism" detected by religious extremists (of whatever stripe) when the rest of society fails to accommodate their particular wishes.

b) the genuine "anti-religionism" shown by (a small subset of) liberals people who seem not to have experience or knowledge of any religiously observant people whose intelligence they respect.

(OK, I see LB and Michael's points - but I honestly have experience of sitting among a group of people, in a college class or a nonprofit organization, who think they are safe among friends who share their prejudices, and therefore say things about "religious" people that they would never say if they knew I was a Quaker who attended services every week. Or perhaps, they would do what Cala mentioned and claim I was one of the "good ones.")

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I also really don't have a problem with people who are openly contemptuous of religion. There are people who are openly contemptuous of my existence as a gay man, but that's not stopping me. I have friends who know that I have religious beliefs who will state openly that they believe religious beliefs are a sign of a weak intellect, but somehow I survive. Getting out of bed in the morning, for everyone, no matter who they are, everywhere, is to some degree an exercise in being the object of someone's contempt. Suck it up! Deal!, we should say to the people who cry victim because we don't go to their specific church and we are not interested in a copy of their newsletter. I don't think anyone who's contemptuous of religion should be made to hide that as long as they don't try to legislate that contempt - outlawing religious observance, for example - and I don't know anyone who has ever seriously suggested such a thing. Yeah, great, they hate religion. And there are people who, for religious reasons, hate them. Life, in its {eternal wonder,remarkable series of coincidences} continues to go on for everyone involved. There should be no need to apologize for taking the position that the legislation of religion - whether for or against - is wrong.

We're liberals, right? It's all about options, right? Let people live the way they want to live and leave everybody the hell alone, right? That's a message that requires no apologies, and anyone who demands an apology for that message has either misunderstood it or confessed that their faith is too weak to withstand another's noncompliance. In either case, their problem is not our problem.

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Hey, where the hell is apostropher?

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See, I just don't see any substantial group of liberals (or snooty urbanites, or any other obvious category of people) out there refusing to acknowledge that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter etc. can be rational.

Yeah, we're all so intolerant of religion that we put evangelicals in the White House. Liberals are seriously tricky that way.

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Oh yeah, he's on vacation. RTFP, me.

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150: Is it possible that they're using 'religious people' as shorthand for 'The Religious Right' (or that they're explicitly talking about 'The Religious Right' and you're taking it the wrong way)? If they are, they're doing something stupid, and one of the things I'm trying to warn people against in this post, but my guess is that they don't, in fact, have a problem with religious people generally. There just can't be that many people who do, judging by the election results.

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150: Is it possible that they're using 'religious people' as shorthand for 'The Religious Right'

It's certainly possible. I don't think it's always the case, though.

my guess is that they don't, in fact, have a problem with religious people generally. There just can't be that many people who do, judging by the election results.

I think that's a little bit of a logical leap. What was the great West Wing where the Marlee Matlin character explained to Josh why 90% of Americans oppose flag-burning but then those same 90% turn around and rank it like 29th on their list of priorities? (I'm making up those numbers.) Point being, even people who genuinely hate religion may not be single-issue voters. (Yes, yes, I know religion is not a stand-alone "issue." Simplifying! Comity!)

I feel responsible for helping to drag the discussion away from the main theme of your post, that separation of church and state need not be even slightly hostile to religion (and in its own way actually protects minority faiths). And that sometimes people yell "I'm being persecuted!" as a distraction, somewhat akin to how one's "right" to hit one's spouse gets one "persecuted" by those darned assault laws.

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I don't know, LB. I think a lot of liberals, myself included, if the only piece of information they got about someone was "X is very religious," there would be an automatic negative impression formed. There are certainly tons of people who happen to be religious that I like, but other people that I dislike precisely because of their religiosity.

So, I don't think that many people will dislike any religious person, but I do think their overall impression of "religious people" is a bad one. For better or for worse. I think you are trying to hard to ascribe pure motives to all mainstream liberals. Some of us are pretty bitter about religion. I think a lot.

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I see nothing "rude" about expressing contempt for religious belief if you see it as patently false and harmful and Suck it up! Deal! bother me, because they're fine postures to take when you have the whip hand. But we don't, and, unless your primary concern about the US is tossing away votes we can get, expressing contempt is not helpful in getting the whip.

So it wasn't just Smasher, but also Pants and silvana who put GWB back in the White House.

Smasher, isn't the color scheme gone, too? And the picture was awesome.

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I don't think that it's fair to say that it's the responsibility of people who are *critical* of the religious right to make it clear that they're not hostile to religion as such, or to expect them to object to politics when the religious right is the group that's identified "christianity" with a narrow and bigoted political agenda.

I mean, it's valid for those of us who hate the religious right to say, repeatedly, that we aren't hostile to religion per se, and to identify our own religions leanings if that helps make that argument. But we aren't the ones that have made the argument--fairly successfully--that "christian" means "right-wing politics" in this country. The religious right did that, and they did that precisely *in order to* make it impossible to effectively argue against them without getting the "you're hostile to religion!" nonsense. If folks object to equation of "christian" with "right wing," then they need to criticize the people who made that equation, not those that object to it.

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So it wasn't just Smasher, but also Pants and silvana who put GWB back in the White House.

This isn't serious, right?

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158: "unless your primary concern about the US is tossing away votes we can get" s/b somets,hing like "unless your primary concern is the growth and influence of religion in the public sphere, we're tossing away votes, and..."

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160: Not unless you voted a number of times in Ohio. For Bush.

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You've caught me, SCMT. My religious beliefs reached for the (D) lever, but then my contempt for religion got in an argument with my religious beliefs, and I ended up bumping the machine in my struggle and my sleeve caught on the (R) lever and then it was party-line all the way down the page. Next time I plan to tie both hands behind my back and vote with my teeth. They almost never fight with each other.

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But we aren't the ones that have made the argument--fairly successfully--that "christian" means "right-wing politics" in this country. The religious right did that

Hey! This is totally right!

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tie both hands behind my back and vote with my teeth

ATM

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I don't think that it's fair to say that it's the responsibility of people who are *critical* of the religious right to make it clear that they're not hostile to religion as such, or to expect them to object to politics when the religious right is the group that's identified "christianity" with a narrow and bigoted political agenda.

You know, I see where you're coming from; they started it, we didn't.

On the other hand, life ain't fair. If a politician were criticizing abuses under shari'a law she'd have to take care not to simply call the problem a problem with Islam, even though shari'a interpretations insist they're the only correct way to read Islam. It wouldn't play well, not to mention being pretty foolish, to say 'Muslims are murderers' and then, when challenged by moderate Muslims, tell them that they're just using the term narrowly like the other side claims.

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I think you are trying to hard to ascribe pure motives to all mainstream liberals. Some of us are pretty bitter about religion. I think a lot.

I've actually been surprised by the number of people expressing direct hostility. Of people I know IRL, crazed secularists every one, the most negative emotion about religion I've heard expressed is a sort of puzzled bemusement ('Why do they believe that stuff?') not translating into having any particular problem with people who do. But there's a good chance my experiences have been shaped by living in the most liberal and urban places possible -- no one in my social circle is likely to have been significantly hassled in the name of religion.

I think that's a little bit of a logical leap. What was the great West Wing where the Marlee Matlin character explained to Josh why 90% of Americans oppose flag-burning but then those same 90% turn around and rank it like 29th on their list of priorities? (I'm making up those numbers.) Point being, even people who genuinely hate religion may not be single-issue voters.

Yeah, but the polls show that something crazy like 90% of the country believes in God. While I'll believe in the existence of the hardcore antireligionists, there just can't possibly be that many of them.

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Okay, seriously, stop. Not long ago John Emerson wisely upbraided us all for falling into the right-wing rhetoric trap over and over again. Nobody---not even most of the pundits who spew this garbage---really thinks that "liberal"=="hostile to religion". But if you say it does, ooh, watch the liberals turn purple and spout steam from their ears! It's awesome!

Seriously (I say again) we need some other way of engaging basically unserious assertions.

(Scratch that, I'm going to sneak up on a feminist and call her a man-hater. Oh Prof B, where are you....)

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Of course, but I don't think we're saying "the political beliefs of Christians are wrong." I think that by and large, "we" ("the left") are pretty darn careful to say, at minimum, "the political beliefs of fundamentalist christians are wrong" or "the political beliefs of the religious right are wrong" and so on. That's in the political arena.

On the other hand, in the cultural arena (e.g., the comment thread over at my place), I think it's useless to say, "those people aren't really Christians" and assume that's the end of the discussion. There, you can say, "yeah, fine, they're Christians (at least, one kind of christians)--and under the constitution, they are not allowed to dominate public arenas to the exclusion of others."

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159: But I do get frustrated with this sort of thing: I don't think that it's fair to say that it's the responsibility of people who are *critical* of the religious right to make it clear that they're not hostile to religion as such.

I am not really talking about or worried about responsibilities, or the morality of stands in this arena, or anything like it. I'm worried about winning. A lot of this has to do with (a) how worried you are about the direction the country is headed, and (b) what worries you about the direction the country is headed. I'm (a) really worried, and (b) not very worried about religious people generally. I'm willing to bend a lot of ways to get the current Republican coalition out.

What I was trying to say above in #161 is that your perspective on this is a function of what you're worried about. If you are worried that religious people, broadly, have a pernicious effect on US politics, you're not going to agree with me. It doesn't mean you are wrong in some moral sense; it means that you and I pragmatically disagree about what winning coalition we can and should build, and how to go about building it.

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168: No, I honestly think that there are liberals who are, in fact, hostile to religion. They're entitled to be hostile to religion, especially given that a lot of religious folks have made a lot of hay in the last few years out of hating on gays, feminists, and so on. But that doesn't mean that liberalism, as such, is hostile to religion as such.

Likewise, there are surely feminists who hate men. I'm not one of them (well, most of the time), and I'd certainly argue that feminism as such is not hostile to men. But I'm not so stupid as to fail to realize that women who do hate men often do so (erroneously, imho) under the guise of feminism.

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170, oh, I agree. And given that religion is a really powerful way of talking about morality, I think we oughta get out there and start using religious language to make moral claims about tolerance and concern for the poor and ecuminicalism and all the rest of it.

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Just to be clear, by "suck it up" I didn't mean that secularists should accept the legislation of religion, but that they should accept the incursion of religion into political discourse. (One question, of course, is how to do that without ceding the rhetorical high ground to those who know how to wield it.)

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170: The thing is that being apologetic about liberal hostility to religion buys into the frame (as slol says) and hurts us. Saying it's all crap (and I hereby dismiss the lot of you as anecdotal evidence), even though it seems more confrontational, I think helps us more in the end.

You're making the Yglesias argument -- give a little on the soft church/state issues, who really cares? But then someone's going to get run out of town over them, as in the linked story, and we'll have to fight -- we don't get anywhere by giving in.

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Yeah, but look. The people who are currently using Christianity to hate on homosexuals would be hating on homosexuals anyway. (If it makes you feel better, you can substitute "oppress women" for "hate on homosexuals".)

Seriously, they don't need a few stray passages in the Bible to help them do it. Think about it from a reverse angle: long before Darwin, there were people who said that the rich owed nothing to the poor, and that free competition in society was the only measure of progress. And those people will be around long after they've expunged Darwin from the curriculum. There's really no point, as a liberal, blaming Darwinism for that belief.

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Look, there's got to be a middle ground between disbanding the ACLU and calling religious people savages. No one's saying give in here.

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there's got to be a middle ground

Typical wishy-washy liberal.

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But then someone's going to get run out of town over them, as in the linked story, and we'll have to fight -- we don't get anywhere by giving in.

Incidents like that in the story will help us more than they hurt us. The (IIRC) 25% of American Jews who voted for Bush last time around? A little closer to coming back to the fold.

We're just not in a position to enforce much, these days, including things that are really, really important to me. (Insert Padilla rant.) I think I'm closer to slol's view than you--I say don't respond to provocations, which is what I read him to be saying (roughly). That said, slol hates America, so I'm not sure his advice is sound.

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176: Keep the ACLU, have them do exactly what they're doing. Whenever some member of the religious right talks about liberals wanting to keep religion out of the public sphere, point and laugh, saying "Like when Clinton talks about religion? Or Obama talks about religion? Or Martin Luther King talked about religion? Sweetheart, liberals don't have a problem with religion, we've got a problem with you. Entirely different."

There's the middle ground.

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Hey, I like the middle ground. It's comfy and you can watch the two sides fire at each other and it looks like pretty fireworks.

Seriously, they don't need a few stray passages in the Bible to help them do it.

This is a really good point. Bigots are going to be bigots whether someone's telling them God says so or not. Some'll do it even if God tells them otherwise; this is why churches fracture. I think that some religious groups are reachable, and I'm convinced that a lot of the moderate religious types who have bought into the right-wing 'must vote Republican to be Christian' will come back if given an alternative.

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slol hates America

You do know that the Smiths are British, right?

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181: The last five years have shown that the UK is our 51st state, and you know it.

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the UK is our 51st state

I, for one, welcome our gap-toothed underlings.

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Shurely it should be 51-54th states, right? We can't lump them all in the same state, they'd get cranky.

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Don't call Tim Shirley. And anyway, I'm in favor of admitting them in as many states as we can get.

Really, I'm just marking time until nattarGcM, 1FE, or dsquared can tear himself away from Doctor Who long enough to get insulted.

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185: A Scot, an Englishman, and Welshman: there's a joke in there somewhere. That is, beyond the fact of the UK.

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If apparently, but not really assimilable countries are what we want, we've got a contiguous one we could try first (again).

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What'd they do to the Irish guy?

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You know that if you really tried to absorb the UK as states 51 through 54 you'd just find yourself bowing down before your kilted overlords within a year or two.

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Oh, and we could teach you a thing or two about religious hatred as well.

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What'd they do to the Irish guy?

Don't step on the punchline, LB.

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We could try Alberta, the 51st state of conservative wet-dreams.

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189: What, really, can be said to this other than 'ATM'?

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we've got a contiguous one we could try first

Oh, because that worked so well the last few times. Strangely resistant, is the True North.

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your kilted overlords

Dude, Scotland weren't even in the World Cup, were they?

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The only strange thing is that this surprises people. First thing I discovered on immigrating here forty years ago is how many people didn't get why Canada existed. It's just invisible, like the way weather disappears on the weather channel when it goes over Canada.

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That's a very important border. As that video rather neatly illustrates, not being American is the essential part of being Canadian.

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people didn't get why Canada existed

Although, you know, in fairness to those of us south of the border, there are fewer Canadians than there are Californians, and some ridiculously large percentage of them---15%, maybe?---live in metro Toronto. So.

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Just as I suspected: Phil Hartman, Canadian.

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The only strange thing is that this surprises people.

That's what comes of disrespecting Benjamin Franklin. When he comes to ask you to join the revolution, join.

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Just as I suspected

Does this mean something to you, though? Like, for example, that it is not I, but you, who hate America?

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201: Dude, you've (basically) copped to being an academic--there is no doubt about (or aboot, as they case may be) your anti-American credentials. I just thought it was interesting.

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re: 195

No, we didn't make the world cup.

We are, however, the most violent people in the developed world and one of the best educated. It's a wierd combination.

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Canad aexists because Montcalm and Aaron Burr both screwed up. The fuckers.

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People used to make fun of me for saying Molson Golden was my favorite beer, back when Molson Golden was my favorite beer. I gather Canadians see it as the equivalent of Budweiser. But I would always think of the vast frozen tundra as I drank, and it pleased me.

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Favorite Kids in the Hall moment: a Filipino kid asks Dave Foley's character if he's American, and Foley replies, "I'm Canadian - just like an American, but without the gun."

I see this as a point in Canada's favor.

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What'd they do to the Irish guy?

This.

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"I'm Canadian - just like an American, but without the gun"

Except it's not really true. Handguns, maybe. My brother had a prodigious arsenal by the time he was sixteen.

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It may depend on where you are in Canada. My impression is that rural Canada likes their shotguns, and that a rather large national registration program failed miserably.

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Ah, Canadian beer. In my teenage years I used to like Molson Triple X. It's the one that's 7% alcohol.

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Well, in a land filled with (rape)bears and moose, I imagine it's inaccurate. Still a funny punchline to the sketch, though.

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Møøse bites are råther nasty.

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#6: Actually, I posted "Amen" in hopes it would be the first comment, and hence be funny, given the subject matter of the post. But alas, by the time I posted it, four comments had already been posted ahead of it.

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The people who are currently using Christianity to hate on homosexuals would be hating on homosexuals anyway.

Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that they've successfully managed to convince the world that Christianity = anti-gay. See, e.g., the current pope, and the Anglican church's current crisis.

Canada: just like a lot of the midwest, only even colder.

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We are, however, the most violent people in the developed world

That article is awesome. My favorite passage.

"While violent crime has decreased recently in Scotland, people are still the victims of violence, especially knife crime."

"That's why we will address the culture of violence by doubling the maximum penalty for carrying a knife to four years, by strengthening police powers of arrest for people suspected of carrying a knife, and by raising the age at which a person can buy a non-domestic knife from 16 to 18."

Yeah, doubtless the underlying problem is the ready availability of pointy objects.

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If it turned out that that those sort of silly-sounding knife-carrying and purchasing regulations had a fairly robust correlation with decreases in either the frequency of assaults, the severity of assaults, or both, would you be all right with them? By robust I mean something like: not only does the frequency or severity go down as the rules go into effect, but it's also the case that in areas which currently have equivalent rates or severity of assaults the one's which have these rules better enforced (enforcement measure in some way other than frequency or severity of assaults) experience a greater decrease. Oh, and there's no confounding variables, like they tripled the police presence in one place and not in the other.

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If it turned out that that those sort of silly-sounding knife-carrying and purchasing regulations had a fairly robust correlation with decreases in either the frequency of assaults, the severity of assaults, or both, would you be all right with them? By robust I mean something like: not only does the frequency or severity go down as the rules go into effect, but it's also the case that in areas which currently have equivalent rates or severity of assaults the one's which have these rules better enforced (enforcement measure in some way other than frequency or severity of assaults) experience a greater decrease. Oh, and there's no confounding variables, like they tripled the police presence in one place and not in the other.

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If you've got such data, go ahead and post it. But in this country it doesn't seem to work out that way. D.C. and L.A. aren't exactly reaping great benefits from having strict gun laws.

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I was also struck by that passage. I have to say that here in NYC, my nightmares aren't populated by knife-wielding brawlers. However, I sure wouldn't want to have to assume as a matter of course that random thugs are carrying wicked Bowie knives.

(It's the idea that you could be arrested on "suspicion of carrying a knife" that trips me out.)

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Personally, I'm quite happy if they make it a lot harder for 14 year olds to buy combat knives.

Knives weren't, as far as I remember, carried that frequently when I was growing up. None of my friends, as far as I know, carried one. Despite that, and despite not being involved with gang culture, I was still threatened with one, more than once. An ex g/friend of mine, who (ironically) grew up in a much more comfortable area than I did, knew a couple of kids who had been murdered with knives and several friends at university had been slashed or stabbed at some point in the past.

I can joke about articles like that, living as I do now in a fairly comfortable Oxford suburb. The reality, on the ground, is not actually very funny, obviously.

The same applies to religious bigotry. Every second or third Saturday, for example, we had an Orange Walk come round our street. It's not so easy to be tolerant of religious expression if it involves a bunch of bigots marching round your street beating drums and blowing flutes in an act of intimidation (or of celebration depending on which side of the sectarian divide one is from).

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#219
The UK has all kinds of bizarre knife regulations. In the U.S. you can buy pretty much anything you want in a knife, with a few exceptions. CA bans "switchblades" and some other stuff. It's like they base legislation off of bad 80's movies or something.

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re: 221

I'm not really sure the legislation is necessarily bizarre.

I can think of shops in Glasgow that used to do a roaring trade in 'combat' knives and machetes. They weren't being used for hunting or jungle expeditions, you know.

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So do the Scots have the same Catholic (read, for Urple's sake, "papist pawn") / Protestant divide that Ireland has?

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re: 223

Yes. The Catholic/Protestant divide was, unfortunately, exported to Northern Ireland from Scotland in the form of plantations of Scots Protestants deliberately moved to Northern Ireland (in a divide and conquer move) in the 17th century.

The divide was then reimported back to Scotland again in the 19th century when fairly large waves of Catholic immigrants from Northern Ireland starting moving to Scotland's west coast.

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I can think of shops in Glasgow that used to do a roaring trade in 'combat' knives and machetes. They weren't being used for hunting or jungle expeditions, you know.

And yet according to the article assaults have taken a 50 percent jump in the last ten years. I'm not advocating no age restrictions or anything, but in my opinion attempts to reduce crime that take the form of "less guns" and "less knives" are approaching the problem from the wrong end.

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Most of the legislation has, to the best of my knowledge, been concentrated on increased penalties for those actually carrying knives. I don't think anyone realistically believes that teenagers can be completely prevented from acquiring knives. They just want to make it a little less easy and then combine that with more stringent penalties for their possession or use.

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Summaries of existing knife legislation:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1993/Ukpga_19930013_en_1.htm

and

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/scotland/ssi2005/20050483.htm

Note the specific exemptions for religious costume, national dress and anyone who has a reason to carry the knife for purposes of work.

This is to cover the fact that Scots national dress involves knives (in the form of the skean dubh for example) and the fact that Sikhs often carry knives as part of their religious obligations.

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If you've got such data, go ahead and post it. But in this country it doesn't seem to work out that way. D.C. and L.A. aren't exactly reaping great benefits from having strict gun laws.

Obviously because they don't have strict border control; you just go to Virginia or Bakersfield or whatever.

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218: I went away for a bit, sorry. I certainly don't have such data, and was only describing what good data would look like in order to ask in an oblique way if you were opposing the laws on the grounds of their consequences or for more rights based reasons. And lot's of places have odd knife laws, New York state for instance.

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The Catholic/Protestant divide was, unfortunately, exported to Northern Ireland from Scotland in the form of plantations of Scots Protestants deliberately moved to Northern Ireland (in a divide and conquer move) in the 17th century.

These would be the Scots-Irish, who later played an important role in the settlement of America.

The divide was then reimported back to Scotland again in the 19th century when fairly large waves of Catholic immigrants from Northern Ireland starting moving to Scotland's west coast.

Where do the Gaels (who as far as I know are mostly Catholic) fit into this?

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Good point, but I'm not sure how feasible keeping out guns in the whole U.S. would be given that we can barely control our borders as it is and guns are teeny.

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231: Well, other countries manage. I don't think the issue is "barely controlling our borders"; I think the issue is that realistically, given the 2nd amendment, we are not going to see nationwide gun control laws.

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I've heard (via a roommate) that Toronto has gun problems despite strict gun laws because it's not that hard to secure guns from the U.S.

But the 2nd amendment is there, so, yeah.

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I had reason to look up the NYC knife laws a while ago, and the exemptions are pretty broad. You get a pass if you're going to a theatrical rehearsal or if you're a Boy or Girl Scout.

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If it would give us control of the federal government, I'd support a law that provided every adult in America with a tax credit for gun ownership. As it is, crime's down.

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re: 230

They don't really fit into it that much.

If you mean people who've been Gaelic speaking in the past 200 years, there aren't really many of them -- in contrast to all images of 'historic' Scotland in the media, of course. The vast majority of Scots live in the central belt, up the east coast and across the south of the country and haven't really been 'Gaels' for many hundreds of years, if ,arguably, they were ever 'Gaels' at all.

Also, the Gaelic people on the Hebrides (by far the largest concentration of Gaelic speakers) aren't Catholic at all but Free Church.

The vast majority of Scots Catholics will descend from irish immigrants.

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By the way, I just got back from the corner store, and on my way across the street, I glanced into the idling car outside my building--right next to the cute kids playing--and realized that that guy bending over from the driver's seat wasn't picking something up from the ground and wasn't asleep--he was methodically licking the pussy of the woman in reclined in the front seat.

Wow.

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Well, other countries manage.
Perhaps less than the U.S. due to having less to start with, but still have issues. The UK still saw increases in handgun violence after they banned them.

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If it would give us control of the federal government, I'd support a law that provided every adult in America with a tax credit for gun ownership.

It would probably work too. I bet we'd take a bunch of Western and borderline Midwest states like Ohio.

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#237

Wow indeed. Is every hotel in town full or something?

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Møøse bites are råther nasty.

That's what they tell me.

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236: That's pretty much what I figured, although I didn't realize the Hebridean Gaels were Protestant (although upon reflection I probably knew that at some point and had forgotten).

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241: I'd forgotten about part of that thread, and reading through it, I no longer feel the crushing weight of defeat from all the times (at least twice) that LB has pwned me on mistaken geometric assertions. Not to say that LB made a mistaken geometric assertion in that thread, and if she had it wouldn't be what I was referring to.

I wish comments in old threads could be reopened.

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238: Obviously banning the things isn't going to get rid of gun crime altogether, but a blanket ban would, eventually reduce it. I think this would be worth it, as I don't really see what, in a modern urban culture, people gain from having the damn things, and I think the cost/benefit analysis weighs pretty heavily towards banning. But hey, like I said, it's not going to happen. I just think it's kind of silly to pretend that a blanket prohibition wouldn't reduce gun deaths.

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240--Well, a hotel room around here would probably be prohibitively expensive, but there is a nice park with dim lighting a block over. It really wouldn't have fazed me much if I hadn't then gone and chatted a bit with the eight year-old who'd been playing (with her six siblings) loudly up and down the block.

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Good lord, seven kids? Who in NY has 7 kids anymore?

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I may have exaggerated. Maybe the family has about four-five children. And some of the kids on the sidewalk might have been neighbors.

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I don't really see what, in a modern urban culture, people gain from having the damn things

Criminals, who don't tend to respect gun bans, gain by using the damn things to commit crimes. And the rest of us gain by using the damn things to stop or deter them.

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re: 248

That's really workin' for ya, over there in the US, eh?

[Don't mean to be facetious but all possible evidence suggests that it's not. I realise the debate isn't really that simple, of course, but it's certainly not straightfowardly true that 'the damn things stop or deter' crime.]

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Scotlands high rate of non-lethal assault combined with a moderate murder rate suggests that the gun ban over there has had some effect, and perhaps limits on knives of certain types would help even more.

Guns are sacramental in the US and arguing about the question is like arguing with a Catholic about miracles. Forget it.

You rarely get a one-factor cause for any social phenomena, which means that quibblers will usually be able to prove that no law whatever has any positive effect. But in certain circumstances, good restrictive gun laws, as part of a package of other good laws, can have a positive effect.

Assuming that criminals are already armed and then arming everyone else to defend themselves is an attractive solution for people who want the possibility of high drama in their lives. Places where it has been tried include Colombia, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

And there are some places where gun ownership is not a problem, e.g. here in Minnesota, and even more so in North Dakota. A friend who visited from New Jersey was astounded that guns are sold here in hardware stores like garden tools -- not even locked up. No pistols, though.

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On the subway this morning, I saw some ads that are part of this campaign. Now there's a religion I am hostile to. Very hostile, in fact.

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Oh, those are creepy. They bought all the ad spaces in the long hallway between Times Square and 7th Ave. Weird.

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I'm confused. Is the site linked in 251 distinct from the "Jews for Jesus" people I saw running around my college campus, or have they reversed their name?

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I believe the same. They're active around here, I think concentrating on Russian immigrants.

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Jews for Jesus is a cookbook!

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One and the same, I got to that page by clicking a link on the web page of [name in normal order].org, the link with a picture of a subway.

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I think it's part of their new marketing campaign. I saw a picture of the subway ads somewhere and I think they formed the phrase "Jesus For Jews, Jews For Jesus". I suspect they're trying to reposition the group to suggest that Jews should accept Jesus because Jesus is on their side (or something) instead of just asking them to accept Jesus for the hell of it. It wouldn't surprise me if J4J is joining up with those pro-Israel evangelicals.

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It wouldn't surprise me if J4J is joining up with those pro-Israel evangelicals.

I thought that was who they've been all along -- not an organization of converted Jews who now proselytize but an evangelical organization working to convert Jews. That's what's always creeped me out about them.

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What we also have around here are Lubavitchers who appear to believe Schneerson was/is the messiah. Their symbol is a yellow flag with a British-style royal crown on it. Sort of like the one in the center of an Ontario license plate.

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Christians for Shabtai Tzvi, that's where it's at.

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It's obvious by now LB has no respect at all for the believer's obligation to witness.

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258 - Yeah, it's evangelicals trying to convert Jews. (They were very active on my college campus since it was 30+% Jewish.) I meant they're probably trying to sound more like those evangelical groups that don't proselytize but are pro-Israel because they think supporting the Jews will help bring about the Rapture.

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not an organization of converted Jews who now proselytize but an evangelical organization working to convert Jews. That's what's always creeped me out about them.

Putting to one side whether you are right as a matter of fact, what is wrong with what they are doing? Are all missionaries creepy?

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Are all missionaries creepy?

Yeah, but that's just me. And we've established that I'm a liberal religion-hater.

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Missionaries who misrepresent their identity to increase their credibility are. If I'm right (which I might not be -- I don't remember my basis for thinking this to be the case) it's an organization founded by people who are not and never were Jews, falsely claiming to be Jews. Ick.

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Putting to one side whether you are right as a matter of fact, what is wrong with what they are doing?

Putting to one side all the injuries Christians have visited upon Jews throughout history, nothing.

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Putting aside my belief that all missionaries are creepy, let's just pretend I don't believe that, and say, that I think missionary-dom in general is just fine.

Even so, having as your m.o. the targeting of a particular religious group, not just "we want to save everyone we can" but "we want to save the Jews" is offensive. Why is it that they are particularly targeting Jews? Because they think they are already kinda on board? Or because they think that the Jews need to be saved more than other groups? And if so, why?

It's gross.

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Idealist, to me they're a bit creepier than a standard proselytizing group because the ones I've encountered, at least, seem to believe either that the Jews are even more likely to be damned, having heard half the Word and not followed up, or that the Jews are really just confused Christians who haven't figured it out yet. It's a strange, almost condescendingly paternal attitude.

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If I'm right (which I might not be -- I don't remember my basis for thinking this to be the case) it's an organization founded by people who are not and never were Jews, falsely claiming to be Jews.

Here's what the NY Times says about them. The article discusses a number of reasons why people do not like them, but says nothing about your accusation.

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I just did a little online research, and my belief was overstated -- the founder of J4J appears to be of Jewish heritage. Still, articles like this one, directed to J4J missionaries who'd like to convert some Jews but don't know any (tip: look in the phone book for people named Rosenberg!), suggests that there is a substantial component of the organization that is as I described it.

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Or what Cala said.

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I haven't read much of this thread, but the problem with them is their name, even if they really were born Jewish. If you are a Jew who believes that Jesus was the son of God and you need to accept him as your savior to be redeemed, you are a Christian. You can call yourself "ethnically Jewish" or whatever, but the name "Jews for Jesus" is total bullshit. You are a Christian. Call yourself "Christians for Jesus."

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I like, and endorse, this line from the wikipedia article, as explaining why I find the group objectionable. "The long-term goal of Jews for Jesus is one of conversion of all Jews to accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah — a position which is usually characterised as Christianity." They're not willing to acknowledge the truth of this, and rather vigorously dispute it.

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Damn you, Tia.

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I am pro "Jews for Jesus." If you're so weak-minded that you can't resist those dweebs (I'm talking about you, Emerson!), you don't deserve to be a Jew.

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272 is a very typical attitude, but I've always found it very easy to understand them. If being Jewish is important to you, and you are aware — what Jew isn't — of the contempt and opprobrium directed at the convert, than this is a way of squaring the circle. And since before St. Paul Jewish practice was an important part of Christianity, what they want to be actually has a historic basis.

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Putting aside the fact that putting aside facts is creepy, yes: missionaries are creepy.

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Cull the herd! Eat the weak (with a yogurt marinade)!

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Guns are sacramental in the US and arguing about the question is like arguing with a Catholic about miracles. Forget it.

It goes deeper than that. It's a reflection of a larger American attitude towards government that's also seen in the 1st Amendment, 4th Amendment, etc. Which I think is a good thing.

Assuming that criminals are already armed and then arming everyone else to defend themselves is an attractive solution for people who want the possibility of high drama in their lives.

And this is definitely where I part ways with a lot of other "gun nuts". Arming everyone just doesn't address the underlying issues anymore than a gun ban does. If this country could muster the same excitement about minimum wage, mass transit, access to health care, and actual family friendly social policies that it does when the issue is guns we'd all be a lot better off.

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I had a friend who was a self-described messianic Jew; believed in Christianity, but celebrated most of the Jewish holidays. Her mother was Jewish, so she was, technically. And heck, if there can be Jewish atheists or secular Jews, I don't see why someone can't be culturely Jewish and practicing Christianity.

Still, the Jews for Jesus thing is weird. I've only run into similar organizations composed of Protestants trying to save the Jews and I think by extension the Holy Land.

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If being Jewish is important to you, and you are aware — what Jew isn't — of the contempt and opprobrium directed at the convert, than this is a way of squaring the circle. And since before St. Paul Jewish practice was an important part of Christianity, what they want to be actually has a historic basis.

If they reject Paul they're rejecting pretty much all of historical Christianity. Even without the questionable claim of many of their members to ethnic Judaism, historically, Jews who converted to Christianity (in the first century and later) have ceased to be Jews in any meaningful sense.

It's icky because it's a trick -- a claim that you can convert to Christianity and remain Jewish. While it may be comforting, it's not true in the eyes of Jews who don't convert. I don't like missionary work based on misrepresentations.

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You are all candy-asses. Have you ever met anyone who was actually converted by these people?

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279: Comity!

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282: Oh, they're tacky and annoying and deceptive -- I don't have to think they're effective to dislike them.

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I don't like missionary work period, but I'm actually not as hostile to messianic Judaism as a lot of Jews. I don't have time to explain now, but I promise to later.

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I don't have to think they're effective to dislike them.

Not logically, no. But you're wasting precious hate that should be saved for the Reds. That's just not good husbandry of resources.

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it's not true in the eyes of Jews who don't convert

Assuming that is the standard by which Jews who convert judge their lives, I guess see your point. But why is that the standard?

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Ideal, do you think there is a fact of the matter to religious identity? I do.

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While it may be comforting, it's not true in the eyes of Jews who don't convert

The broadest definition of Jew in the eyes of "Jews who don't convert" resembles slol's definition of a Canadian:

Jewish background, not a Christian.

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Because it's the standard applicable from a pre-conversion point of view. "Being a Jew", while there are many, many different definitions, for most Jews incorporates components of descent, practice, and connection to a Jewish community. J4J claim to Jews before conversion that they will remain Jews if they convert -- in terms of the last of those components, that seems simply false. I don't know that it's likely to be an effectively deceptive claim, but it appears to me to be an attempt at such.

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I don't have time to explain now, but I promise to later.

At the Second Coming.

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288 may be unclear. It's the same question as "Could anyone ever be mistaken about what religion they are a member of?" I may have unorthodox views on topics like this. I can't remember what the majority opinion was when, in an undergrad class, we got into an argument about whether or not there is a fact of the matter as to nationality, but I'm certain I argued yes.

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It's a question about heresy. There's an unanswerable argument if the heretic is claiming "I'm right about church doctrine and you're the heretic", at which point there's nothing to do but fight about who gets to use the name and who has to change the name of their sect.

But if the issue is that the heretic is denying the existence of the conflict, then they can be just wrong.

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Ideal, do you think there is a fact of the matter to religious identity?

I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at. If someone claims to believe that they are a Jew for Jesus, that is, a person of (in their view) Jewish heritage and culture who believes the Jesus is the Messiah, I think it is pretty pointleess to tell them that they do not believe what they believe. You can say that you do not believe that they any longer are a Jew. You can point to any number of learned texts which say that they no longer are a Jew. But I'm not sure how you can make this anything other than a contest of beliefs--they believe they are, you belileve they are not.

This is like people saying that other people, or groups (Mormons, for example) are not Christians. Well, you can say that that's how you feel, but people have been arguing over what Christianity is for two thousand years now (the same could be said of Jusidam, which has many different branches and practices), and I am not aware of a generally accepted external standard on which anyone agrees.

What objective, external universally accepted standard of Judaism did you have in mind?

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if the issue is that the heretic is denying the existence of the conflict, then they can be just wrong.

Are you saying that the Jews for Jesus peole tell potential converts that other Jews will continue to accepts them as Jews and that there is no controversy regarding their conversion? That's more than a bit hard to believe, but if true, you certainly are right to criticize them.

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The "Christians aren't Jews" standard identified by IDP in 289. 'Universal' is an impossible standard to meet, but that standard is next thing to universal among unconverted Jews.

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Mormons deny the existence of the conflict between their vision of the "Godhead" (three entities, one purpose) and monotheism. But anyone who on the basis of this heresy wants to declare that Mormons aren't Christians annoy me.

I kind of feel the same way about some of the criticism being levelled at the Jews for Jesus people. I mean, I agree that it's a silly bunch of dweebs, but it's not for me to police the boundaries of Jewishness.

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297 cross-posted with 294. And, wow, holy mindmeld.

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Huh. I didn't know that Mormons thought of themselves as Christians.

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LB, Ideal, JM: I realized that heresy might come up, but it doesn't quite get at what I mean. What I mean is more what it would be like if I somehow convinced myself in the next 24 hours that I'm a Jain, despite having no idea what any Jain believes. In fact, (me convincing myself is) pretty sure Jain's believe in the flying spaghetti monster. Tomorrow, I sincerely believe that I'm a Jain, and I tell you so. I would be wrong, because I can't make Jain mean "people who believe in the flying spaghetti monster." It describes a different group of people, who have certain commonalities.

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Instead of, "In fact, (me convincing myself is) pretty sure Jain's believe in the flying spaghetti monster," I should have said, "(me convincing myself is) pretty sure it's sufficient to believe in the flying spaghetti monster in order to be a Jain, though perhaps not necessary." Because otherwise I'd be stuck denying that other Jains are Jains, and I don't want to do that, that's just the humpty-dumpty in Alice in Wonderland maneuver.

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297: What would you consider a reasonable way for members of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches to identify the overarching structure of belief which they share and Mormons don't? That is, are you arguing that Mormons have as good a right to the word 'Christian' as members of other churches, despite their differences, but there's nothing wrong with verbally recognizing the doctrinal distinctions, or are you arguing that it's annoying for members of other churches to want to distinguish between the churches with which they have a basic commonality of doctrine and Mormons on any basis?

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299: Are you serious? I got the "how to respond to other Christians when they claim that Mormons aren't Christians" lecture in Sunday school when I was, like, seven.

300: I'm not entirely sure you've moved away from heresy, w/d, as unpleasant as the word is. A lot of what the definition of a religious group entails is the creed; if you contradict a central creedal belief, you open yourself up to charges of heresy. If you purport to be a Jain without knowing anything about the creed, you'll be called stupid by other Jains if you're small-scale, and a dangerous heretic if you actually attract followers.

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302: "Trinitarian Christians."

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299: I thought y'all claimed to be "People of the Book," IYKWIM. AITTYD.

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Hey, there are Christians who claim that Catholics aren't Christian.

Look, believing that Jesus = god makes you a Christian. I don't see how anyone can seriously argue that people who believe that Jesus = god are Jewish by any standard other than "Jewish by origin."

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New example: I decide that Buddhism is a sub-branch of Mormonism. Fictional me, being a practicing Buddhist, goes around telling everyone he is a Mormon. Do people here really want to say fictional-me is right, I'm just expanding what Mormon means?

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304: Well, okay, so there's nothing wrong with the distinction, you're just arguing about who gets to keep the word. That's just social pressure -- if/when there are enough Mormons calling themselves Christians that the other Christian churches feel it's necessary to avoid confusion, some distinctive naming convention will be widely used, whether it's 'Trinitarian Christian' or something else. But it would be simply incorrect to claim that you can't sort Christian sects by common doctrine into a box that leaves Mormons on the outside.

Same thing with J4J. If they're arguing about who gets to keep the word 'Jew', as in "I fully recognize that unconverted Jews do not regard me as a member of their group. I think they are all mistaken about the definition of the word 'Jew', and so I'm going to call myself a Jew anyway", that's a linguistic quibble. If the intent of the quibble, on the other hand, is to minimize or mislead about the existence of the conflict, that seems to me to be unsavory.

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No, no, no, B. Believing that Jesus died to redeem human sin makes you a Christian. Who exactly he was (God, son of God, vehicle of God) has been the matter of some dispute.

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I'm not really following, so maybe I shouldn't be butting in, but it seems to me the analog to J4J in the Mormonism discussion would be more like, "I was baptized Episcopalian, but now I've been baptized as a Mormon, I perform the set of specifically Mormon religious practices and I believe that God is three separate entities. I'm an Episcopalian for Brigham Young [I know that's facile and inaccurate, but you get my point]." There's a specific word for what you are, and it is "Mormon." It's nothing other than crazily disingenous not to embrace that word.

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306, 309: Makes you a 'Trinitarian Christian', at least. I don't believe that there's any substantial non-Mormon sect of 'Christians' in which that's an ongoing controversy.

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309 is my opinion also. It's why when I "converted" to Judaism, the part about "renouncing other faiths" gave me no trouble. I made the Apostles' Creed into a checklist, and went down it asking myself if I believed, or had ever believed, those things in other than a "symbolic" way. No? All right then.

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307: The Mormon church was excommunicate your ass the instant you hit their radar. Then you can claim to be an excommunicated Mormon practicing Buddhist. And I think you can have a good time with that label.

308: Yes, I think that who has the power to name is pretty important here. The Jews for Jesus people have a different definition of Jewishness than you do. It is a linguistic quibble that will be resolved, or not, by social forces within the larger Jewish community.

310: Tia's analogy is a good summary, but I'm not entirely sure I accept it. A lot of people switch between various denominations of Protestantism in their lives, and they'll often talk about their religious affiliations along the lines of "well, I was raised X, but I'm now Y." Also, I've encountered a lot of arguments (recently) for Jewish identity not being solely religious. And then there are all the Jewish people I grew up with who were practicing Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs...

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311--Doesn't the Eastern Orthodox church consider Jesus the vehicle of God? That was the version of the Great Schism I learned. Then there were Cathars. Do you consider Unitarians to be Christians? (That one is debatable.)

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313: Your last point speaks to the essentially negative definition of who is a Jew most Jews use in predominantly Christian countries. Toying with obscure faiths or belief systems doesn't impact their Jewishness as only Christianity can.

So Jews famous for believing other things, like Trotsky (atheist Communism), Leonard Cohen (Buddhism), or Gary Farber (science fiction) would still be considered Jews.

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Don't J4J know that by reversing they're name they're only going to widen the chiasmus between Jews and Christians?

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That's the most embarrassing comment I've ever posted.

their

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317: Don't sell yourself so short.

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:)

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317 is no longer true.

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I don't accept that the fact I'd be excommunicated is the reason I'm wrong. Also, not to get into quibbles about which I'm most likely wrong, but it seems like, at least when you say I'll be excommunicated, you're using Mormon as equivalent to LDS, and that's not right (in a way that's not actually relevant to the discussion) (claim based on two sources, only one of which is a fictional TV show).

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I think there's some debate over whether the Uniate Churches - Orthodox Churches that accepted the Pope and Catholicism, but still use Greek or Slavonic where Latin would be used, among other things - should simply be called Catholic or not. I don't think anyone calls them Orthodox for the Pope, though.

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308: Yes, I think that who has the power to name is pretty important here. The Jews for Jesus people have a different definition of Jewishness than you do. It is a linguistic quibble that will be resolved, or not, by social forces within the larger Jewish community.

Yeah, that's sort of the source of my sense of ickyness. 'Jews for Jesus' is an organization made up of Christians, some of whom have some sort of Jewish heritage, that is purporting to speak for the 'Jewish community' at least to the extent of being able to create a controversy within, rather than outside of, that community. That, to me, reads like w/d's FSM-believing Jain claiming to be on one side of a schism within the Jain community.

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'Jews for Jesus' is an organization made up of Christians

This is your view, and apparently the view of many people, but as I understand it, people in Jews for Jesus think that they are an organization made up of Jews. This is like the situation to which w/d alludes in 321 where there is a disagreement among Mormons over whether Mormonism allows polygamy. I'm sure they have a lot to disagree about, and between themselves, the groups likely have a rousing debate over which group really are Mormons, but it seems a bit much to argue that the Mormons who believe in polygamy are deceiving anyone when they explain their beliefs and say that they call themselves Mormons. They think they are Mormons.

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Missionaries are totally creepy, no matter what their deal is. I don't think J4J is necessarily creepier than any other ones, but that's because the Care Bear Stare pretty much pushes my creepometer to 11 when I open the door on any of them.

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This is your view, and apparently the view of many people, but as I understand it, people in Jews for Jesus think that they are an organization made up of Jews.

They don't purport to be entirely made up of Jews -- many members are Christian with no Jewish connection. The organization is a missionary group rather than a religious sect -- the members worship in various different sects, largely conventional Protestant Churches. It's not like a breakaway sect of Jews that wants to worship Jesus but still call themselves Jewish, it's a organization with some members who have some connection to Judeaism marketing Christianity to Jews.

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But anyone who on the basis of this heresy wants to declare that Mormons aren't Christians annoy me.

Oh, I'm not sure it's so much just that heresy as the fact that Mormonism had the bad luck to form in an era of papers of record. That and they pissed off enough Catholics that a Mormon converting to Catholicism has to go in the special line for unbelievers, not the frequent flier lines that Protestants get to use.

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What objective, external universally accepted standard of Judaism did you have in mind?

None, but here's a standard I just made up which, if accepted, proves I'm right and doesn't, on first glance, exclude anyone I want to include as someone who can correctly call themselves a Jew or include anyone I want to exclude. I assure you that some Hassidim would disagree, since I don't require, among other things, that the person not be an atheist. Probably a whole bunch of other people would also disagree.

I now define a Jew as someone who either
I.a. sincerely believes in (all, most, many, or the most theologically important) words of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings either as literal or metaphorical truth and
I.b. doesn't believe in the claims of any other religion with nearly the same level of confidence;
or
II.a. regularly attends the explicitly religious ceremonies of people who do, or appear to, fall into category I, for a non-monetary (e.g., you aren't part of the staff) and non-other directed (e.g., you would continue going if your spouse or whomever else is currently doing so stopped strongly encouraging you to) though does not believe that even the most important theological statements are true in any sense and
II.b. doesn't believe that any of the theological statements of any other religious group are true in any sense and
II.c. doesn't attend the explicitly religious ceremonies of any other group with nearly the frequency which s/he attends Jewish one's, unless for monetary or other-directed reasons;
or
III.a. ever converted to Judaism according to the rules of some group composed of people who are described by, or appear to be described by, Ia-b. and
III.b. never subsequently violated II.b-c;
or
IV.a. is a lineal descendent of someone (I purposefully ignore matrilineality) described by I-III and
IV.b. no intervening ancestor would not be accurately described by one of I-IV and
IV.c. doesn't themselves violate II.b-c.

There might be a V about being able to become a person who I believe could correctly call themselves a Jew if one moves to Israel and becomes accepted in the mainstream Hebrew-speaking culture while not believing in the theological claims of any other religion, I'm not sure.

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Woo! I'm Jewish, by w/d.

There has to be some limit on what a word means. I can claim that that thing with the thick rind of the color in the spectrum between red and yellow and the citrusy taste is an apple. I can form a whole sect devoted to calling it an apple. But I've redefined the word past meaninful relationship with its past referent in the eyes of all people who are not members of my sect. I am communicating either nonsensically or dishonestly with the outside world.

To paraphrase Tevye, "If 'Jew' bends this far it will break!"

also, to 313: "well, I was raised X, but I'm now Y."

I would have no problem if J4J went around saying, "I was raised Jewish, but now I'm Christian."

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There has to be some limit on what a word means.

That limit is going to vary as the community you speak with varies. People seem to be searching for some sort of essentialist meaning to "X"; I don't think there is one.

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Hey, check it out: there's a wikipedia article on the question.

I liked this part:

Members of most secular societies accept someone as a Jew if he says that he is, unless they have reason to believe that the person is misrepresenting himself for some reason.

As for the FLDS people, maybe they're culturally mormon, but they're heretical dogs. I actually think that the LDS church's position of blanket denial of responsibility for them has had harmful consequences, but that's a pretty complex (and touchy) internal dispute. I'm jack, but officially still on the books, at this point at least. Anyway, this is probably the last I'll say about this.

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I don't think there's an essentialist word meaning. I understand that J4J can form their own community and happily call themselves "Jews," but like I said, they are communicating either nonsensically or dishonestly with people outside their community.

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they are communicating either nonsensically or dishonestly with people outside their community.

That's a probability bet about what other people think. It's an informed one, and I think it's a good one. But I can't seem to catch what people think has been advanced in the last hundred comments. I mean that seriously--I'd like to know the answer.

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I don't think there's an essentialist word meaning.

Me neither. That is, I think for many words it's wrong to say that every instance described by that word shares the following characteristic(s). But it's almost always fine to that no instance properly described by some word contains some characteristic. Wittgenstein discusses something like this in the context of "What is a game?"

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I'm supposed to be advancing something?

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Hey, I was just reading about that "What is a game?" thing in a cog psych textbook. And I remember thinking that I needed that idea, that something can have characteristic, but not defining features, to win an argument I'd been having previously, but now I can't remember the argument.

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335: I think I was looking for some version of 334, though I don't think I buy anything but a very narrow version of it's almost always fine to that no instance properly described by some word contains some characteristic.

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333: Here's some support for that bet.

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The only real question here is when someone is going to be offended by my attempt to define Judaism.

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I'm not offended (and not Jewish) but I'd call it both under and overinclusive. You're including someone with no Jewish family connection who goes to temple regularly but hasn't formally converted, and excluding the stereotypical Jewish buddhist who meditates more than he goes to temple (I know, wanting to include him is inconsistent with what I've been saying about Christian converts. My belief is that that inconsistency is standard in the Jewish community.)

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339: I'll be offended, if you like. I'm pretty sure you get a "Certificate of Jewishness" with the Seinfeld DVD box set.

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Isn't there something about simply having Jewish grandparents makes you a Jew, but whether you practice makes you a good Jew or not?

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My link in 338 has this to say on the subject:

The halacha (B.T. Sanhedrin 44a) recognizes the biologic link to the Jewish people as inviolate, but also recognizes that as long as one remains an apostate one is not considered to be part of the Jewish community. A willing convert, whether formally or informally, forfeits his/her legal and social rights, which express a Jew's belonging to the Jewish people.

I can't vouch for the linked organization -- it's something called Jews for Judaism -- but that's pretty much what I understand the situation to be.

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340: I meant to do both of those things and think they're defensible, not that everyone should obviously see them as correct or anything.

341: Really? All I got were salt & pepper shakers that my roommate's girlfriend broke soon after.

342: I am purposefully ignoring the standard matralineal test as uninteresting and not particularly helpful for discussion.

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Really? All I got were salt & pepper shakers that my roommate's girlfriend broke soon after.

Dude, you are sooo not invited to the next meeting where we decide how to control the world.

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The Unitarians originated in Transylvania.Long-time Unitarian villages still exist in Romania. Many Transylvanian Unitarians are ethnic Szekelys, speaking a Hungarian dialect and sometimes claiming descent from Attila the Hun. One branch of Transylvanian Unitarians became Sabbatarians and ultimately converted to Judaism.

The Subbotniks were Christian converts to Judaism whose descendant eventually migrated to Israel. General Raful Eitan was of this descent. My (Jewish) source says that they are unusual because unlike other Israelis they don't make demands or complain much.

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I dunno, w/d. If the matrilineal test is good enough for those wanting to persecute Jews, it probably gives someone enough of a claim to call themselves a Jew

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From here on, in deference to JM, I will include Mormons in my anti-Christian curses, rather than giving them a special schismatic curse of their own.

I have been proselytized by Hasidic Jewish missionaries. They were skinny young guys wearing funny ill-fitting black suits and stereotypical hats. They only prosyletyze secular Jews, and a friend of mine did get involved with them.

The Hasids apparently use the Mormon method of baiting the trap with their daughters, who aren't allowed even handshake physical contact with males, but who are seemingly allowed to talk dirty.

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Geez, John, work at pissing people off much?

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What was the special schismatic curse?

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Okay, I'm back. I have a lot to say on this subject, and I may do a post on it later, but briefly:

1) I don't know much about J4J specifically, and it's quite probable that it is in fact merely a stalking horse for the evangelicals (as LB is arguing). My comments here don't apply to them.

2) LB argues about J4J that "It's not like a breakaway sect of Jews that wants to worship Jesus but still call themselves Jewish"; regardless of whether or not this is true, there are indeed such groups. They are what I mean by "messianic Jews."

3) There are many aspects to Jewish identity, some genetic, some cultural and some theological. Different people prioritize these differently.

4) Some messianic Jews are culturally and/or genetically Jewish but, for whatever reason, have decided to accord a special status to Jesus. I don't know any of them personally, but I can see how they could legitimately be considered Jewish depending on what exactly that special status is.

5) Other messianic Jews are culturally Christian and join the movement to go back to a sort of pre-Pauline Christianity. I don't see any way to legitimately call these people Jewish. I'm not sure how exactly they see Jesus either, but it doesn't matter as much.

6) I do, of course, have some problems with these groups calling themselves "Jewish," but I think many Jews are too quick to reject them out of hand.

7) Missionaries are creepy no matter what.

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The special schismatic Mormon curse goes on about the magic underwear and the golden plates.

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I have been proselytized by Hasidic Jewish missionaries

They only prosyletyze secular Jews

One of these statements is true.

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They didn't actually go beyond asking whether I was Jewish. Their proselytizing intent was clear. I should have said yes.

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2) LB argues about J4J that "It's not like a breakaway sect of Jews that wants to worship Jesus but still call themselves Jewish"; regardless of whether or not this is true, there are indeed such groups. They are what I mean by "messianic Jews."

True. My understanding is that some members of J4J belong to such groups, while others belong to conventional evangelical churches.

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351: What's the important difference is between (4) and (5), other than (I assume) the priority you give "culturally Jewish"?

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The conventional definition of a Jew as someone who either has some type of Jewish lineage or has gone through a formal conversion? If the people in (5) have done neither, and merely observe a Judaism-influenced but doctrinally Christian form of worship, then it's hard to define them as Jews.

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It actually depends on the theology of the groups (which I wish I knew more about). If they are theologically Christian, there is no sense in which the people in (5) are Jewish. If they are theologically Jewish, those people are sort of Jewish in a theological sense. The impression I get is that most of these groups are primarily Christian in theology.

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Cross-posted. 358 is basically the same as 357.

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Also, I think the people in (5) outnumber the people in (4).

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the priority you give "culturally Jewish"

FWIW, I actually give "culturally Jewish" a significantly lower priority than most Jews. And "theologically Jewish" a higher one.

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If they are theologically Christian, there is no sense in which the people in (5) are Jewish

Except to the extent that they see Christianity as a (really successful) subset of Jewish theology; there must have been a point at which one could be a follower of Jesus and still Jewish (while he was alive, etc.). At base, I think LB's "conventional" is doing all of the work; every one is tryin to deduce abstract rules that tie conventional senses of "Jewishness" together, but the easier method is to just turn to the next ten people you meet and play "Jew or not a Jew" with your hypothetical.

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314: (I missed it originally) 311--Doesn't the Eastern Orthodox church consider Jesus the vehicle of God? That was the version of the Great Schism I learned. Then there were Cathars. Do you consider Unitarians to be Christians? (That one is debatable.)

I used to understand the fine points of distinction between Orthodox and Catholic doctrine on the Trinity -- I don't any more without doing some reading. But they're very fine. Both define Christ as fully human and fully divine, two natures in one person. Again, I get my Arians and my Nestorians confused (the Cathars were, I believe, one or the other) but they both considered Jesus less than fully divine. But they're not, to the best of my knowledge, still around purporting to be a Christian church.

Unitarians don't have an agreed upon doctrine these days; I don't think they purport to be, as an organization, a Christian church. Individual Unitarians might believe all sorts of things, but many aren't Christian. A lot of Unitarian congregations resemble a mainline Protestant church fairly closely, but that's a cultural rather than a doctrinal resemblance.

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362: Okay, but here's Jackmormon upthread:

Believing that Jesus died to redeem human sin makes you a Christian.

This belief is seriously incompatible with anything resembling traditional Judaism. If messianic Jews believe it, they're Christian rather than Jewish to pretty much anyone else who identifies with either faith. If they don't (they consider Jesus a prophet or something), as I suspect is true of many of the people in (4), they're Jewish (or perhaps Jewish-Christian, i.e., pre-Pauline) in some sense that might be recognizable to others.

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At base, I think LB's "conventional" is doing all of the work; every one is tryin to deduce abstract rules that tie conventional senses of "Jewishness" together, but the easier method is to just turn to the next ten people you meet and play "Jew or not a Jew" with your hypothetical.

I think the problem is that we're the wrong people to ask about the rules, because we don't really know them solidly, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. There are lots of people who I'd, for this purpose, call core Jews. Jewish family, raised Jewish, observant on some level. Whatever definition of Jew you come up with, if it excludes those people it's wrong. Not arguable, but wrong.

Core Jews are members of a community that has members specially concerned with the rules governing what it means to be a Jew, among other topics: rabbis and other students of Jewish law. Obviously, like any group of people, they disagree about all sorts of stuff [insert hackneyed joke about how this is particularly true of Jews here]. But they operate within a common tradition, and will generally agree broadly on all kinds of things.

It is my belief, although I'd have to do a lot more research to back it up, is that those rabbis and students of Jewish law accepted as authorities by core Jews would largely be in agreement that people in category (5) simply aren't Jews, and that they would have strong arguments in that favor that I am not equipped to make out of ignorance. Further, my sense is that it would be very difficult to find a student of Jewish law accepted as an authority by core Jews who would say that people in category (5) were Jews in any sense. To find an authority who said they were, you'd have to go outside the core Jewish community.

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363: I'm wrong, Arians are still around. I'd still argue (a) that they're doctrinally closer to other Christians than Mormons are and (b) that other Christians would be reasonable in referring to them as non-Christian.

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I suppose I count as a "core Jew" in LB's formulation, and I endorse 365. Traditionally, the only way to be a Jew is to be born to a Jewish mother or to convert to Judaism in a very specific, ritually prescribed way. People in (4) have done the first; people in (5) have done neither.

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Okay, I did a lot of skimming, so I may have missed some nuance here, but are people really arguing about whether it is somehow offensive/inappropriate for persons who are culturally or ethnically Jewish, but who have converted to Christianity, and who are attempting to prostheletize to religious Jews, to label themselves "Jews" under the banner of "Jews for Jesus"?

If so that's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Was someone here actually offended, or we we just arguing abstractly?

I agree if they were "faking" their Judaism that would be weird. Similarly, I agree that many missionaries are basically weird/creepy. But I can't believe anyone would find the facts I've articulated above offensive or otherwise somehow particularly inappropriate.

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Part of the argument is that the people behind "Jews for Jesus" are not actually Jews, but Christians who are using the movement to convert Jews to Christianity. There's also an argument that by converting to Christianity one forfeits one's Jewishness and can no longer legitimately claim to be a Jew.

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Click on my link in 270; apparently some portion of J4J missionaries don't actually know any Jews, and have to find them by looking in the phone book. While some members of the group are ethnically or culturally Jewish in some sense, my understanding is that it's wrong to describe it as an organization 'of Jews'. Rather, it's largely unambigous Christians.

While not every member of J4J is faking Judaism, my understanding, based on things like that link, is that a non-negligible percentage are.

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There's also an argument that by converting to Christianity one forfeits one's Jewishness and can no longer legitimately claim to be a Jew.

Okay sorry, but it just seems like the "for Jesus" part of it pretty well acknowledges what's going on right up front, and I just can't see any legitimate reason to be offended about this. On the other hand...

While not every member of J4J is faking Judaism, my understanding, based on things like that link, is that a non-negligible percentage are.

Okay, yes, people with no relation to Judaism faking some relation is very weird and very deceptive and very wrong. But that's pretty damn straightforward, no? If this if this is the issue what the hell have people been arguing about for the last several hundred comments?

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Arguing, what's an argument? We've been discussing how and whether members of a group can define others as inside or outside that group: what happens when the group says "you're an outsider" and the person addressed says "I'm a member!"

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372- Ah. Okay then. Like I said I just skimmed. Must have misinterpreted something.

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My problem isn't actually with the label. You convert from Judaism but still think you're culturally Jewish and you want to prosyletize, go for it. Spreading the Good News is a Christian mandate. Like teo said, 'messianic Jew' is often what they call themselves and it cashes out mostly as Christians who have Seder services.

But if you're an evangelical Protestant who has never met a Jewish person and believes (ime) that the Jews are really just special Christians in disguise, I'm gonna think that your 'Jews for Jesus' probably doesn't know what it's talking about. (esp. since as an evangelical Protestant, you're probably all about Paul as an authority.)

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365: I'd argue that you could make a pretty compelling case for Catholics as the Christian analogues to "core Jews," yet my suspicion is that very few non-Catholics would be willing to let them (read "those papist dogs" for Urple's sake) be the ultimate arbiters of Christianity.

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Your analogy doesn't work, Tim. No schisms in Judaism. The alternative to "core Jews" is something like "non-practicing cultural Jews."

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Why Catholics more than Orthodox, or Episcopalians, or Presbyterians? My sense is that for any of those groups, if you asked if they all fell under the same umbrella ('trinitarian Christianity'), they'd agree.

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...who are indeed likely to let "core Jews" be the arbiters of Jewishness. Not always, but often.

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372 -- prosecution in the appropriate ecclesiastical court for heresy. Or excommunication.

In general:
I heard a CBC radio interview last year with a big wheel in the J4J movement (a J4J movement?) who went on at length about how Jewish Jesus was, and how natural it was that Jews should embrace Jesus. Sounded like a con man, but I'm not his mark anyway . . .

I haven't read every single comment as closely as I might have, and so might be repeating, but the cumulative character of these religions strikes me. Christianity started out as 'Judaism plus' -- that is, all the tenets of Judaism, but with some new things. Islam was then 'Christianity plus.' Farbeit for me to say whether or not a Mormon is a Christian -- just look at the real name of the religion, after all -- but it strikes me, from quite a distance, as having quite a bit of 'plus' about it. I can imagine plenty of serious Christians thinking that when one embraces as divine (or divinely inspired) additional recently revealed scripture, one leaves plain old Christianity behind.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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376: Yes, the difference is that the people we're arguing about, members of messianic congregations, aren't AFAIK arguing that 'core Jews' aren't Jews. They're claiming to be members of the same group as 'core Jews'.

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a J4J movement?

There's only one.

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379: In what sense is Islam "Christianity plus"?

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Jesus is a prophet, the events of the New Testament happened somewhat as described therein plus Mohammed is also a prophet.

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No schisms in Judaism.

Except for those people in (5), right? Unless there's a formal definition of schism that I just don't know.

Why Catholics more than Orthodox, or Episcopalians, or Presbyterians?

Trust the fucking Irish to start trouble about religion. Actually, I thought that Catholics didn't consider some groups that would traditionally be thought of as Christian as really Christian. I guess I see the Episcs. (whose services I attend) and Prespys as splinter groups from the Catholic Church--which I'm suggesting is how group (5) sees Christianity's relationship to Jewish thought (pick a favorite rabbi, put him in your pocket, etc.).

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382 -- I was thinking of the role Jesus plays in Islam. Much diminished, of course, and the crucifixion denied, but he's there nonetheless.

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Catholics consider most other Christian groups Christian except the Mormons. (Basically, the difference as far as the Church is concerned is whether you need to be baptized in order to convert to Catholicism.)

I think maybe the Catholic analogue is whether someone raised Catholic who no longer practices, but hasn't formally renounced anything or been excommunicated counts as Catholic. Church mostly says, yes, you're still Catholic, but you're a naughty one, but, you know, the door's always open. My impression is that Judaism is somewhat similar, but I'm hardly knowledgeable.

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Mmm. I think most Jews would consider trinitarian worship as a formal renunciation of monotheism -- the analogy is more 'are you still Catholic after you convert to Islam'.

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Except for those people in (5), right?

They aren't Jewish, so no.

(There have actually been schisms in Judaism, but the resulting sects are so obscure as to not matter for purposes like this.)

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My impression is that Judaism is somewhat similar, but I'm hardly knowledgeable.

Yep. "Once a Jew, always a Jew."

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They aren't Jewish, so no. (There have actually been schisms in Judaism, but the resulting sects are so obscure as to not matter for purposes like this.)

Cheater. Assume a community of Jews in 32 AD who decide to follow Jesus and always intermarry. Over the next thousand years, they migrate to England, adopt English customs generally, go to English churches which they find congenial, and always intermarry. And so on to this day. Still Jews or not?

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Not, but I fail to see what this has to do with schisms.

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I suppose I don't know what you mean by "schism," unless you mean a faction that breaks away from the common understanding. Which I would think that the Jews of 32 AD (above) were.

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Unitarians are only "Christians," if they want to be. I know someone who walked into a Unitarian church, never having heard of one, and was shocked to discover that there was a Buddhist affinity group and a Christian affinity group. I believe that the New Englanders who originally founded Unitarianism were disputing the relative importance of the members of teh Trinity. They thought that the son and the spirit were inferior to the father. In practice, I think hthat this is what a lot of Christians do believe even if it's not orthodox. When the Unitarians merged with the Universalists it just became a kind of religion-free fellowship.

I'm not up on the distinctions between the Western Churches (by which I mean the credal churches, especially the Roman, Anglican and Lutherans--and I'm guessing the Presbytereans too) and the Eastern Churches, not counting all of the Uniate permutations. There are two basic formal bits plus a lot of antagonism growing out of papal imperialism and bad behavior by Western Christians in the East. There's the homoiusios controversy and the filioque, but it's not clear that the disputes over the filoque actually caused a rift or whether they simply reflected one that already existed.

There's a lot of Mormon theology that is in conflict with historic Christianity even as they differ greatly from eachother. It's not just about whether Jesus didn't ascend straight to heaven but took a detour to the New World. Don't Mormons believe that human beings who are very good attain a god-like status and get their own planets in the afterlife. That's very different from saying that humans are made in the image of God, and it's a very different concept from most Christian concepts of heaven. (Heaven may not be al that heavenly, since you have to share the banquet with people you might not like very much inthis life.)

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Karaites. Samaritans. Sabbatarians. Subbotniks. The Christian sect that honors Judas (featured in Master and Margarita). The Doukhobors. The Munster Anabaptists. Michael Son of God. The I Am Temple. The Marcionites, who believed that there were two Jesuses and that that the real Jesus was laughing at the one who was crucified.

Y'all are doing top 40 theology. Indie theology is where all the fun is.

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unless you mean a faction that breaks away from the common understanding

Which I do, and note that I did backtrack a bit and say that there have been such. Christianity originated as such a faction, but no one really considers it a sect of Judaism anymore; it's just too different.

Anyway, my point is just that your analogy "core Jews":"Catholics"::"Judaism":"Christianity" fails because what LB defines as "core Jews" aren't differentiated from other factions that split off for doctrinal reasons. Rather, they're just the Jews that really practice the religion, as opposed to the others that might be Jewish in some sense but don't really practice.

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yes, you're still Catholic, but you're a naughty one

Now we're getting somewhere, especially if it involves a schoolgirl uniform.

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, but no one really considers it a sect of Judaism anymore;

This really seems to beg the question; isn't that exactly the claim that we're addressing as made by (5)?

If I have a point, it's that there isn't "an answer" to this, except so far as that answer is a useful solution to some set of decisionmakers. That answer will change with changes in the set of decisionmakers.

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isn't that exactly the claim that we're addressing as made by (5)?

I don't think so, no. As far as I know (and keep in mind that I've never actually met any of these people) they consider themselves Jews rather than Christians, or perhaps members of a special sect of Christians that are also Jewish. They don't (again, AFAIK) consider Christianity as a whole to be a sect of Judaism, and I don't think anyone else does either. Is Benedict XVI Jewish? Is Jerry Falwell? Billy Graham?

(I might agree with your overall point, but it's phrased so abstractly that I'm not sure I understand it.)

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More generally on the question of missionaries, was Bodhidharma creepy too? How about Jesus? What is it about missionaries that makes them so objectionable to those who expressed an objection?

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It's fucking obnoxious to go around telling people that you have the secret to save their immortal soul. I mean, do you like it when people stop you in the street or knock on your door and ask you about Jesus? Because I find it intrusive, condescending, and rude.

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do you like it when people stop you in the street or knock on your door and ask you about Jesus?

Usually, in a situation like that, I simply say that I am too busy to talk, but I certainly do not find anything offensive about. They believe that they have the number to the winning lottery ticket and want to share that good information with me. I'm not interested in listening, hardened athiest that I am, but their motivations are admirable in my book.

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There's a possibility that it might not be obnoxious if the missionary were actually enlightened or the Son of God with the capability of doing something about that annoying ingrown toenail I have in exchange for listening to his spiel.

But, as a general rule, Jews for Jesus are creepy for reasons as detailed above. Straightforward missionaries have significant potential for being annoying and obnoxious, but I have no quarrel with their right to proselytize, I just don't actively want to listen to it much.

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It's fucking obnoxious to go around telling people that you have the secret to save their immortal soul.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Sure, it *is* annoying, but obnoxious? They really believe they have the secret to save your immortal soul. I mean, um, if someone really did know that, I'd want them to tell me.

Or, what Idealist said.

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hardened athiest that I am,

Claiming to be athier than the rest of us, are you?

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LB, you've lived and worked in the kind of place most of think of when we say the word "missionary." Did you come to any conclusions?

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Claiming to be athier than the rest of us, are you?

Great, now we have the great athiest schism, with fights over who truly can claim to be an athiest. I say, keep those damn agnostics out! I do not care if they claim the name athiests, that's just a trick to fool real athiests into falling into their uncertain ways. Bastards!

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400: It's an issue of frequency. It almost never happens to me, and when it does, the proselytizers are uniformly polite, and go away when I say I don't care. I don't have a problem with them; it's the same as political groups that come to my door on occassion. To the extent I find these people at all creepy, it's because they have a worldview that is almost entirely foreign to me.

398: Yeah, I'm not sure how to say it more better, as it were. If getting rid of the Republicans depended on considering J4J Jews, I think we could get at least 49% of the electorate to agree. Or at least not to disagree openly, which would amount to the same thing.

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Not really applicable -- the Samoans were all converted long before I got there. I knew some missionaries there, but they were doing social services rather than converting people.

(A Samoan missionary story: Way back in the 1830's or so, John Williams came to Samoa to preach Christianity. There was a prophecy in the Samoan religion that white people would come from across the sea and bring the true religion; when Williams arrived, the locals said something along the lines of "Ah, it's you, is it? What should we be doing?" and all converted promptly.

Emboldened by his success, he moved on to Fiji, where there was no such prophecy. They ate him.)

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I know I've told that story before here. I'm running out of material.

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I never saw it before.

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I know I've told that story before here. I'm running out of material.

But your skill as a raconteur is such that it still is entertaining, so fret not. Continue to entertain us. Hurry up, maybe some tapdancing, now.

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With an ingrown toenail? Cruel.

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I tend to tell them I'm Catholic. If they then ask if I'm saved, I tend to sort of go on a rant about how we invented it and they and their megachurch that tells them they're blessed for being rich can fuck right the fuck off.

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It's not admirable: it's literally holier-than-thou. And there's a rather long and detailed history of cultural destruction and exploitation that goes along with it, to boot.

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Years ago, I hoped the missionaries who approached me with the question "have you read the bible?" would return so that we could discuss translations. I had been non-committal and they eventually left me alone. (Note: they essentially cornered me - three of them, one on each side - by a wall at a bus stop. Some might consider such behavior creepy, if unrepresentative of missionaries overall. I generally don't find them creepy.)

At the time I was looking for a copy of the Douay-Reims version, revised by Challoner, I believe. Maybe they'd have known where to buy it.

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featured in Master and Margarita

I'd just like to note that this is one of my favorite books of all time.

What is it about missionaries that makes them so objectionable to those who expressed an objection?

I should note that by 'missionaries' I mean door-to-door folks in suburbia. They're the only missionaries I've ever met. Missionaries who go abroad to build schools and provide food aid and things like that? No problem there. I think it's obnoxious of them to try to convert another to their religion, but at least they're doing something useful at the same time. The ones who knock on my door are there solely to tell me that they're right and I'm wrong, and they have almost all done it with oddly plastic smiles and eyes that gleam in an unsettling way.

It's nice to give them the benefit of the doubt on the whole 'they think they've got the winning lottery ticket' tip, but their mission to witness stands in direct opposition to (a) my religious beliefs themselves and (b) my beliefs about religion itself. If they want to keep doing it, great, but I'm going to think they're creepy for doing it and then I'm going to shut the door in their face.

If your concern is for politeness, I understand and agree, and do tend to be polite with them. I think they're creepy as all get-out, but I try to keep it to myself when they're in earshot. I have only been rude to them once, and that was only when they showed up at my door three times in as many weeks. I didn't cuss or anything, but I did make it extremely clear that I was disinterested.

Oh, and there was that time I opened my bedroom window to yell, "SOME OF US WORK THIRD SHIFT" at them as they left after ringing the doorbell for way too long.

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Missionaries who go abroad to build schools and provide food aid and things like that? No problem there. I think it's obnoxious of them to try to convert another to their religion, but at least they're doing something useful at the same time.

Yeah, but I hate that whole holding-people-hostage-with-good-works shtick. Dude, if you want to help, help. Ideally, you might ask what kind of help is needed. If you want to tell people how to live, go away.

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I'm one of the hard-core anti-missionary people, so I should probably spell out my objections.

Basically, I have a religion, I practice it (not to the extent that many others do, but to a certain degree), I'm very happy with it, and I see no reason to change it. Indeed, I tend to think of religion generally as something close to inherent in one's being; this may be a difficult thing for Christians to get, since it's so foreign to most forms of Christianity, but I really do feel that changing religions is like losing a part of yourself. Trying to persuade people to change religions is just wrong wrong wrong. Particularly if the people you are persuading have been hanging on to their religion for a very long time and it's an important part of their culture.

So yes, missionaries are creepy. They destroy cultures, and do so deliberately. They do good work sometimes, but the places where they do the most humanitarian (and scholarly) work are the places where they cause the most cultural damage.

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416/17: Of course everyone's already seen it, but this is funny. And like so many of their best articles, satire dangerously close to the truth.

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And there's a rather long and detailed history of cultural destruction and exploitation that goes along with it, to boot.

Unless you take a particularly hardcore view of religion, a la teo, I don't think that's a necessary part of missionary work. But teo's view would seem to extend to any number of other areas--I seem to recall from Sociology 101 that two distinctions every studied culture makes are between genders and between ages. I don't think of trying to improve the lot of women (or old people, I suppose) in another culture as a big negative. (In fairness, I'm not overly committed to either, either.)

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It may not be necessary? But historically the two have gone hand-in-hand. And I tend to care more about what *has* happened than what *might* happen.

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Episcopalians do a lot of mission work which is not about converting the heathen. They help people abroad in developing countries. Some of them are already Christian, but many are not. They do good works, and then, if people ask them about their religion, they tell them about it, but they don't go out there with a plan to proselytze.

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But teo's view would seem to extend to any number of other areas

True, and there's some tension here. I'm not saying cultural practices should never be changed, but I do think the most ethical way to change abusive traditions is from within the culture rather than by importing new practices from the outside. Probably works better too.

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Here's a good response to missionaries.

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422: I've got no problem with that. Catholics also have been known to provide needed services without pushing the religion angle, and I'm all for helping out the poor.

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[raises hand] Urple, I am offended by the organization taking the name "Jews for Jesus." If they wanted to call themselves "Ethnically Jewish for Jesus" they'd have my blessing.

Here's a comparison that that may not be illustrative of anything, but I feel like making it. Many obnoxious people will call themselves "vegetarian" if they don't eat red meat. This is way more defensible then "Jews for Jesus" in that there is a much wider and more interspersed community that understands this usage, but it's still stupid. A vegetarian restaurant does not serve chicken. A vegetarian cookbook does not have salmon recipes in it, or if for some crazy reason it did, it would indicate that these things made the recipe not vegetarian. because I know just how obnoxious that is, these days I never say "I'm vegan" unmodified. I say that I'm mostly vegan, or a bad vegan, since I don't want to claim a label for myself I don't deserve. That's kind of at the heart of what's annoying about it. The fake solidarity. The insinuation into the group, when you don't belong there. Because at times I've been a very good vegan, I know that my life, which now includes the occasional tiramisu, is different from a real vegan's. And in J4J's case, there's another gross insinuation in the name, that other Jews could convert and not give up anything, that their identity would remain intact and unaltered, which it certainly wouldn't. And by representing themselves as Jews, they create a false face for Judaism that other people use to their rhetorical advantage. My fundamentalist Christian friend in junior high once, after I had talked about my lineage: "Oh I like Jews. Jews for Jesus are great."
J4J consciously went and joined another group, membership in which is exclusive of their first one. If I registered Republican, I could not call myself a Democrat, no matter how many times I'd voted Democratic in my life.

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Tia is Hitler.

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Tia describes my feelings about J4J, except that not being Jewish myself, I don't really have the right to be personally offended -- I just find it distasteful. Even in the absence of actual deception, which there's some of, it's what Tia said:

The fake solidarity. The insinuation into the group, when you don't belong there.

Ick.

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LB:

But I don't think that the insinuation into the group is insincere: I think (or at least thought--I'd always assumed they had been Jews) they actually believe they belong there. I can see being unnerved by people whose reading of the world is so different from mine, but I don't really get the hostility displayed here and there, throughout the thread. It would be one thing if these folks had any real power, or the backing of any real power, but, in the lives of most of us, they really don't. Even as a matter of history, they seem unimpowered. They're closer to Scientologists--meat for mockery.

(NB: Please don't sue me, Mr. Cruise. This is all part of my plan to sell each of the commenters here e-meters.)

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It would be one thing if these folks had any real power, or the backing of any real power, but, in the lives of most of us, they really don't. Even as a matter of history, they seem unimpowered. They're closer to Scientologists--meat for mockery.


Again, as a Gentile, I'm being sympathetic rather than personally offended or frightened, but there's something very tone-deaf about telling Jews that Christian missionaries redefining Judaism (from a monotheistic religion to an ethnicity and lifestyle compatible with trinitarian Christianity) in an attempt to (from the point of view of unconverted Jews) wipe Judaism (the monotheistic religion) out entirely shouldn't be threatening. Historically, that's about as threatening as you can get without confirming Godwin's law.

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Clearly the only responsible way to deal with this Real Jew/Fake Jew crisis is to appoint a single Head Jew who may then certify or excommunicate potential Jews according to recognized, international standards.

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430: I buy that if you're talking about moves by the Southern Baptist Convention (IIRC, they were going to focus on Jews for a while); J4J, not so much. Also, I think you have to have neutered sense of Jewishness that requires the religion; AFAIK, none of these guys has come out against knishes.

The relative offensiveness may change by region. In my experience, J4J have always been a joke.

(On preview)
way to deal with this Real Jew/Fake Jew crisis is to appoint a single Head Jew

I'm pretty sure ABC new season is doing this as part of a new reality show. Hosted by Howie Mandel, I think.

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And given that there's no inherent incompatibility between Judaism and Christian worship, the Head Jew might as well be the Pope.

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433: See, that's where we run into problems. The Pope might just excommunicate all the Jews, and then we end up right where we started. What we need is a Jewish Pope.

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430: I buy that if you're talking about moves by the Southern Baptist Convention (IIRC, they were going to focus on Jews for a while); J4J, not so much.

Here, I need to do more research, what I've got is an impression with some backup, but I haven't got solid links. But my understanding is that J4J is, in terms of funding and organizational affiliations, pretty much exactly an arm of evangelical churches like the SBCregardless of the fact that some portion of its personnel is made up of converted Jews. For example, look at this list of affiliations from the J4J website. They're Christian evangelical organizations.

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Also this page on their finances:

Jews for Jesus is a not-for-profit, 501(c)3 organization. We trust God for the funding of Jews for Jesus, and He has provided through caring Christians.

An organization funded by Christians for the conversion of Jews is a Christian organization.

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434: But who has the stature to be the Jewish Pope?

435: Ah. 429 is retracted. Maybe.

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437: Obviously, whoever gets elected from the College of Jewish Cardinals.

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438: Jimmie Reese?

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438: and Jason Marquis?

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438: Is David Eckstein jewish?

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439-40: Okay, I'm slow off the mark.

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439-41: There's no way they're Jewish enough to qualify. Would the Head Jew play ball on Shabbat?

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There's already a blogger who calls himself the Head Heeb.

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443: I continue to think the Jewish Pope should be selected by the outcome of a series of "Jewish" competitions. I don't know what activities would be sufficiently Jewish and amenable to competition; we can safely leave that sort of issue to Wolfson. However, I note that the credibility of the Jewish Pope with unbelievers can only be enhanced if one of the competitions includes a "Ring of Fire."

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444: I'm well aware of Jonathan Edelstein, but am unconvinced of his divinely-anointed primacy over the Jewish Church.

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445 has a lot to recommend it.

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I guess Tia is not Hitler. Anyone can make a mistake.

The Jews for Jesus schtick has a little bit of a taunting flavor to it -- like the claim that the NAACP are the biggest racists, or that welfare and minimum wage laws are the main cause of poverty, or that trees cause pollution, or that feminism is the main cause of the oppression of women. My guess is that some of the the J4J people are playing this game in a smirky kind of way. "Why are you so angry?"

It's generally insulting for someone to publicly claim to belong to a group to which they do not belong. The more so when the group is one which they've just voluntarily left for an opposing group.

Christians have a long history of trying in various ways to eliminate, marginalize, or suppress Jews, so Jewish touchiness seems historically quite reasonable -- Jewish survival has always been under pressure from Christians. The never-Jewish Christians in J4J probably remind actual Jews more of the worse Christians in Jewish historical experience, than of the nice Unitarian types.

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It's generally insulting for someone to publicly claim to belong to a group to which they do not belong

Especially when it's a group to which they are, in fact, opposed. I think Emerson's got it exactly right here.

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Late to the party, but now that I'm back in town:

When I was active in the various Reform Jewish youth movements (high school and college) we got our hands on, putatively, internal correspondence from within the Jews For Jesus organization which made their purpose explicit: they are a Christian organization which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. The fact that they call themselves "Jews" is offensive to me and to most Jews. I've heard Tia's analogy before; we always said "'Jews For Jesus' is like 'Vegetarians For Meat.'"

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I'm just stunned (honestly) at the offense here. How on earth are "Jews for Jesus" like "Vegetarians for meat"? Judaism is a religion, with beliefs that they have rejected, sure, but "Jews" carries heavy ethnic connotations. Tia says if they called themselves "ethnically Jewish for Jesus" everything would be cool; I really, honestly don't understand how their name carries any other connotations. It's a less clumsy way to say the exact same damn thing. Of course they're not religiously Jewish -- they're "for Jesus"!

There's no analogue to "vegatarian"; it's just plain improper usage for someone to call themselves vegatarian when they eat chicken and turkey and salmon.

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452

And: they are a Christian organization which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity

Why on earth did you need to get your hands on "internal correspondence" to figure this out?!? This is the obvious, overt, explicit goal of the organization.

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Judaism is a religion, with beliefs that they have rejected, sure, but "Jews" carries heavy ethnic connotations.

This right here is the problem. To Jews, even non-practicing cultural Jews, "Jews" contains a religious as well as an ethnic connotation. The two are inseparable. Also, as some people have mentioned upthread, many Jews define being Jewish as implicitly containing "not being Christian." I can see how theoretically a non-Jewish person could interpret Judaism as primarily an ethnicity whose members can belong to any religion, but that's not how Jews see it.

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If you're not convinced by what's been said so far, you're not going to be convinced.

Does it get you anywhere to thing that offensiveness is a complex matter of cultural signifiers, and lots of people in the targeted group do actually find the name offensive? Obviously I can't speak for Jews as a group, no one can, but I think it'd be tough to find many moderately observant Jews who'd read the name as an inoffensively neutral synonym for 'Christians with Jewish heritage."

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Urple, considering that off and on Christians have been killing Jews in mass quantities for close to 2000 years, most recently 61 years ago, as well as putting all kinds of other pressure on Jews, their touchiness shouldn't be stunning.

In a religious sense, being Jewish and being Christian are exclusive and have been for at least 1700 years (there was confusion for awhile.) Secular Jews are born Jews who aren't religious. A born Jew who accepted Christianity would be an ex-Jew, not a Christian Jew.

Rightwingers enjoy baiting people, and I think that there's a big element of that in "Jews for Jesus".

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Basically, to Jews, one cannot be both Jewish and Christian. Even if you were to think of a way for someone to be both in some sense, you'd be hard pressed to find any Jews who would agree with you.

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457

it's the alliteration they don't want to give up.

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458

what about: "I Can't Believe They're Not Jews For Jesus"?

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459

Where's Gary Farber when you need him?

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460

What, did he already blog that joke?

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461

I'm guessing he has strong opinions on this.

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462

You're thinking he would or would not support 458?

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463

Who belongs to a group and who gets to decide is a fascinating question that would be more fun if people hadn't killed each other over the answers. Who is Jewish--and who decides? Who is Black (1 drop?)? Who is Christian? &c.

I'm a Catholic (or as I sometimes say, Western Orthodox) and I've been told a few times by other Christians that I wasn't a Christian. I took Cala's approach and said they wouldn't be Protestants unless they had us to protest. We were here 1st! Again, more group definitions.

Jewish Pope: Cardinal Jean Marie Lusitiger! The controversy section in the wiki piece hits some of these notes.

I also remember a bit of controversy around the canonization of Edith Stein. Me, I think she was not killed for her faith so she wasn't a martyr. Anything else (her Jewishness) is beside the point in that argument.

J4J: I do think they are weird. Black Hebrews too.

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I've been told a few times by other Christians that I wasn't a Christian.

Yeah, that was bothering me when SCMT brought it up. Protestants are much more likely to tell Catholics that they're not Christian than vice-versa.

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I understand perfectly well that one can't be both Christian and Jewish (religiously). And that J4J are Christian, and therefore not really Jewish. But the name is obviously tongue-in-cheek to some extent, no? I'm not Jewish, but I really just don't see the offense. Although, as LB said, probably nothing that could be said at this point would make me understand, if I'm too dense to understand based on all the above.

Although I find the assertion that "Jew" is an exclusively religious title downright silly. I've never heard anyone take offense at the idea of a "secular Jew" or an "atheist Jew" (both common terms) -- why are these so different?

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458: Butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter.

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Does it get you anywhere to thing that offensiveness is a complex matter of cultural signifiers, and lots of people in the targeted group do actually find the name offensive?

Well, from this thread I understand that some indeed do find it offensive, although I still don't understand why.

considering that off and on Christians have been killing Jews in mass quantities for close to 2000 years

I don't want to minimize the cruelty or significance of Jewish persecution, but this is a pretty significant exaggeration, no?

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467 was me.

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Depends how you define "mass quantities," but I would agree with it.

No one's saying that "Jew" is exclusively religious, but neither is it exclusively cultural. As I said above, the two are inextricably linked.

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470

If 6 million isn't a mass quantity, what is?

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471

Well, but that only happened once. In prior centuries it was more like a hundred here, a thousand there... nothing like six million at once.

(And Urple, I didn't mean to call you 'too dense to understand' -- just that all the arguments I could think of had been made, and clearly didn't convince you.)

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I think that even a "Buddhist Jew" might possibly be OK, because Jews haven't survived in the teeth of 2000 years / 1300 years of Buddhist pressure. And because Buddhists have never said that you can't be a Buddhist and a Jew, whereas Christians and Muslims very clearly have said so through almost all of history.

The "Buddhist Jew" is theoretical, to make a point, but it seems to me that it does make clear why a Muslim or Christian Jew is an ex-Jew, whereas an atheist Jew is still a Jew. (If Jews had been persecuted primarily by atheists, the story might be different. In the USSR they were, and maybe if the USSR had lasted longer the Jewish attitude might have changed.)

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471- LB you worry to much about giving offense. I was making the comment about myself (lightly), not implying that you had actually called me stupid.


I have grown tired of this thread and now deem it closed.

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There's no analogue to "vegatarian"; it's just plain improper usage for someone to call themselves vegatarian when they eat chicken and turkey and salmon.

And it's just plain improper usage for someone to call themselves a Jew when they believe that Jesus died for their sins, etc, etc.

Why on earth did you need to get your hands on "internal correspondence" to figure this out?!? This is the obvious, overt, explicit goal of the organization.

I don't know that this has always been the overt goal. My understanding was that their M.O. was to say, "Hey, we're Jews just like you, but we think you should get a little Jesus in you." That, to me, seems like prosyletizing in bad faith. And I don't know that one needs their internal correspondence to recognize this, but it helps to refute their argument that they don't mean nothin' by it.

Having been on the receiving end of their literature, I can tell you that it was not at all overt and and honest about its intent, and that I found it offensive.

I'm not Jewish, but I really just don't see the offense.

Well, yeah.

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I have grown tired of this thread and now deem it closed.

Too slow again! Damn.

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476

But the name is obviously tongue-in-cheek to some extent, no?

They're completely sincere about it.

Although I find the assertion that "Jew" is an exclusively religious title downright silly. I've never heard anyone take offense at the idea of a "secular Jew" or an "atheist Jew" (both common terms) -- why are these so different?

I think I answered this in my "definition" of a Jew where I disallowed believing that the theological claims of another religion are true. Do you think you can be a Christian (any kind) and believe that Jesus was nothing special, just some guy who said some interesting things, but sincerely believe that Zeus is hanging out on Mount Olympus, every once and a while transmuting into a bull to rape someone?

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467:

considering that off and on Christians have been killing Jews in mass quantities for close to 2000 years

I don't want to minimize the cruelty or significance of Jewish persecution, but this is a pretty significant exaggeration, no?
No.

471:

Well, but that only happened once. In prior centuries it was more like a hundred here, a thousand there... .
I suggest a tad more research and knowledge. You're off by at least an order of magnitude, and if we don't define "persecution" down to only mass slaughter, about two or three orders of magnitude.

Unless, say, you don't regard the Pale as "persecution," or expulsion from a nation, such as England or Spain, as "persecution," or having your country conquered (see Rome, Babylon, etc.). Or even just taxing them differently, restricting what businesses they can be in or own, or whether they can vote, or where they can live, or whether they can hold office, or whether they should be spat at and threatened, and so on.

But even on the mass slaughter, I tend to think of killing thousands of people, and tens of thousands of people, at a time, as "mass," myself. And, heck, yes, even a mere couple of hundred at a time is usually considered "mass."

And on those numbers, as I say, you might want to do a bit more reading, perhaps.

Lastly, as I recall, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer are considered "mass murderers." Were people over-sensitive by calling them that?

As for "tongue in cheek," I suggest querying some of their missionaries on the street to inquire if they're just kidding. Or maybe you can find some cites to back up that claim. Where are you getting this notion from, exactly?

472, Emerson: "I think that even a "Buddhist Jew" might possibly be OK,"

ObFarber.

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Remind me to avoid attempts at sardonic understatement in conversations I've asked you to participate in.

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479

"Remind me to avoid attempts at sardonic understatement in conversations I've asked you to participate in."

Ah. Incidentally, I'm not sure I should mention that when I wrote my comment, I thought, due to careless reading on my part, that I was still responding to Urple on the "Well, but that only happened once" part, or I might have realized it was you and sardonic. Sorry.

I have a button about people thinking that anti-Semitism wasn't terribly serious until the 20th century; it's a real and reasonably common trope out there. But, then, I have a lot of buttons about people being misinformed about things Jewish (or Israeli), I'm afraid. And seem to be getting ever less patient as I get older, I slightly regret to say. (Not that I'm not full of ignorance on a jillion topics, myself, of course.)

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It's all right. I was just nodding along at you ripping into some know-nothing fool, and was brought up short when I looked back and realized it was me, attempting sarcasm. I need more smilies.

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480: For your information, troll, LizardBreath is NOT a "know-nothing fool".

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ripping into some know-nothing fool

Ouch. (Unless this was meant as a joke in response to 473, which case strike the "Ouch" and replace with "Hah".)

Look, I understand that anti-semitism is a huge problem, and has been since looong before the beginning of the 20th Century. And the some Jewish people have been murdered in that span.

Farber, you speak of "persecution"; of course Jewish people have faced persecution. That's different from saying "Christians" have been "killing Jews in mass quantities for close to 2000 years." You mention Babylon and Rome -- neither of which were in any sense "Christian" when they conquered Isreal.

I hate this conversation, I'm not trying to defend or minimize anti-semitism. I was just trying to correct what seemed a blantant exaggeration.

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But Christians have been killing Jews for 1500 years or so. Whether in "mass quantities" or not depends on how you define that, but the numbers are quite large. That's what Gary's saying, but he's adding all the other persecution (not all by Christians) to that as well.

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481: I resent your implication that LizardBreath is a knowledgeable fool.

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Jesus Christ, but there's a lot of Jews around here.

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