...William Barr is not nuts, at least about the Freedom of Religion (see 1st amendment). and he may not be 100 percent right about secularist attacks on religion, but but maybe 67 percent on target. Read his UND speech for yourself.
There is some conspicuous lacunae in his analysis, but all you fans of Alexis de Tocqueville (and who is not a fan?) should give Barr a fair but critical reading.
Paul Krugman was among the very critical opinionators on Barr's speech. (Paul, paul, I'm shocked and disappointed; I thought we agreed about everything.)
UPDATE....OOOPS: It looks like Liberal Catholics have come out against Barr's speech at UND. More fodder for the culture wars. " 'A threat to democracy': William Barr's speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics." Phillip Shenon in the Guardian.
So many things to be alarumed about!
My goodness, he went on and on, didn't he? I imagine even a bunch of lawyers got squirmy.
ReplyDeleteYes, I saw a lot to agree with. I may have been more focused on the lacunae than you because he began by dealing from the second Great American Heresy, that the Founders and Framers were good, church-going Anglicans and Presbyterians and Catholics (remember Carroll of Carrollton) singing out the the same hymnals. Bosh. The F & Fs were deists. Cf, Forest Church, "So Help Me, God" (2007). So by the time you get to our fifth president, James Monroe -- he is the one standing behind Washington, holding the flag that didn't exist yet, in Leutze's painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware -- you can go through his letters, speeches and public documents from end to end and never find the word "God."
So when one makes a simultaneous appeal, as the Hobby Lobbyists do, to the Founders and St. Paul, one is spouting pure poppycock.
There is that problem. And, of course, the moralist of South Bend is the protector, defender, and beyond-the-call-of-duty Cabinet flunky for the first president to call bull**** on someone in a nationally televised speech. Not to mention all of the other things that would offend a moralist in South Bend if he really were a moralist. That's the part that I think sent Krugman over the top.
When a defender of the indefensible equivocates about religion at the top of his speech, the rest of the speech likely won't get any more attention than the person annoyed by the beginning is likely to give it. But, down below, he did blame secularists (socialists!) for the empty feeling that people get from working for the modern corporation that outsourced their jobs, phased their pensions into 401(k)s, shifted the burden of private health care more and more on their pay-raiseless backs, and calls them to "come in" only when their stockholders need them. I am not saying modern American economy is the only cause, but I am saying you wouldn't have two people working to make ends meet and not spending enough time with their kids without the modern American economy, which was NOT designed by Saul Alinsky.
Yes, the economy...which he blithely ignores...
ReplyDeleteBut the lacunae I noted is this: mid-speech he says: "Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values."
But he never gets back to popular culture (like reality TV, the Apprentice),the entertainment industry (like Secy of the Treasury Minuchun) Of course, what do I know....The Beatles were the last of my faves...
However, I have meditated on my love for "The Daily Show," with Jon Stewart and now Stephen Colbert...practically the night prayer that calms me down. Meaning that the level of humor and mockery now in fashion (and for good reason) itself is a source of cynicism and the ready dismissal of some moral strictures and of course of the current government...(richly deserved we may think, but somewhere Vaclav Havel had a thought about the way in which a society becomes demoralized and cynical...and sometimes I think my favorite humorists are contributing to this.
Yeah, I have to agree about that. A few will remember "Cry Pax!." the "column without rules" that originally ran on the right column on page 1 of the National Catholic Reporter. It skewered odd syntax in parish bulletins and the Catholic Press, reprinted funny stuff from elsewhere and, of course, made fun on purple and lace and episcopal oratory. Bob Hoyt eventually moved it to the back page because we realized people were reading the whole newspaper in the cream-pie-flinging mood created by the (mostly) humor column.
DeleteSomewhat off subject, but a propos. One of my deacon friends arrived with a Q&A this morning, which he had heard attributed to Cardinal St. Newman but was unable to source for himself. None of us had heard it before, but it sounds more like Chesterton to me and more like 21st Century to my wife. It would have made a worthy comment for Cry Pax!, but does anyone know where this comes from?
Q. Do you know what's the difference between God and you?
A. What?
Q. He never thinks he is you.
Tom, that's funny! But I agree with your wife.
DeleteTom - the extent to which the Founding Fathers (an amorphous group) were Christians, Deists or others, and the influence that Christianity and Deism had on the founders, is a complicated and controversial historical question. Barr is not a historian and his speech is not an in-depth historical treatise. I think we can grant him at least a little latitude. He further complicates the judgment in his speech by referring in the passage I think you have in mind, not to the "Founding Fathers" but to the "Founding generation". Does he equate the Fathers with the entire generation? Maybe, but it's kind of hard to tell.
DeleteI loved the speech from first to last. I mentioned to a conservative friend that I hadn't known Barr held these views, and that he'd look just fine in Supreme Court robes. He reminded me that Republicans would want someone a couple of decades younger for the next opening.
I didn't love the speech. But I liked it. Liberals (I'm sort of one, until I get kicked out) forget that government, corporations, non-profits, and other large organized entities don't actually raise children, cook dinner, supply good advice to sad people. We do it for one another in families, maybe for neighbors, and for friends, the little troopeaus of Burke's metaphor.
DeleteAs I've probably mentioned from time to time, my neighborhood has a number of homeless hotels, shelters and single-rooom occupancy apartment buildings. The hotel is for mothers and children (don't know if dads are in residence). I'm glad they have a place to live, (thanks to a liberal city government and courts), but I am sorry that they don't have another adult to help, a permanent place to live, and permanent schools for the kids. There is almost nothing as sad as being on the subway with a mother and two kids on their way to a school on the other side of the city because the only shelter was 30 miles away. That's what I thought of when I read Barr's speech.
I would like to see what Tuppence thinks are "traditional values." As a fundigelical ex-Catholic (along with Pompouseo) I can pretty much speculate what he values with is comes to female subservience, LGBT rights, marriage equality, ad nauseum. If his "traditional" ideas are the epitome of American culture, count me and many millions out.
DeleteI think there are a lot of myths that people like to believe, and get upset when they are challenged. Such as that our Founding Fathers were devout Christians. Another one came up lately, that Chris Columbus was an honorable Catholic gentleman who brought the faith to the new world. And didn't enslave and kill peaceful native people. Of course that one doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And makes one wish that Father McGiveny had called his organization something else, maybe the Archbishop Carroll Society.
ReplyDeleteI think the wish to believe in a comfortable myth is why some people stick with Trump, no matter what. Because of course the president of the USA is a truthful moral person; we wouldn't have elected any other kind...would we?
Just another speech in the culture wars blaming the other side for all our national ills.
ReplyDeleteBarr should have opened his speech by recounting all the evidence that indicates that the Religious Nones, a group now as large as the Catholic Church, lost any interest in formal religion because of the hypocrisy of religious leaders in their sexual and financial lives rather than because of the propaganda of secular elites.
Then he should have said that does not give secular elites the right to persecute religion or force their secular views on others. Then he might have had an audience beyond the committed and the beginning of a constructive conversation.
When I began graduate education in psychology and sociology in the late sixties, the secular consensus that religion was either unimportant or a negative influence was dominant. Over the decades both disciplines have evolved to see that religion and more recently spirituality are important aspects of human life. In 2009 I gave a presentation on Conceptualizing and Measuring Forms of Religious Capital: A Bible Study Exemplar. One of many (dozens) of presentations on religion and spirituality at the annual APA meeting.
In recent decades with the help of the Templeton Foundation large strides have been made at integrating religion and spirituality into health care. Of course psychology, sociology, and health care are probably pretty suspicious of religious leaders and institutions, but they are likely to see religion as very important in the lives of people.
What is it OK for religionists to force their values on people (and don't deny that they do)but not secularists?
DeleteA good example of constructive behavior was provided by recently deceased Cardinal Levada when he was archbishop of San Francisco. Faced with the legal demand to provide health insurance to same sex partners he revised diocesan health insurance to allow anyone who lived with an employee to be covered regardless of legal status.
ReplyDeleteI suspect it might have cost him less than the legal fees in fighting a religious freedom defense.
The main problem I see is that Barr is over-generalizing about religion, the Media, the Founders, and everything else. What simple-minded pablum.
ReplyDeleteHe seems to think all Judeo-Christian sects are equally good. They're not. I got three words for him to chew on: Westboro Baptist Church.
On a related note, there is an interesting-sounding book reviewed in Commonweal this time. The article is titled Inescapable Evidence, 'How the Christian Revolution Remade the World'. The review is by Costica Bradatan. The book is by Tom Holland. From the article:
ReplyDelete"...who would have guessed that the crucifixion of a seemingly insignificant Jew by the world’s greatest empire would give birth to a world-changing movement? But it did, and Tom Holland does a fine job of showing just how profound and pervasive the change was. If you needed a book to give to someone who doesn’t know much about Christianity, Dominion would be an excellent choice. But you could also offer it to those who seem to know a bit too much, or all the wrong things, about Christianity."
The article isn't too long and is well worth reading.
The World Values Study has documented the substantial effect that religious traditions (Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic) have had upon modern values despite the strong effects of both industrialization which promoted secular values, and the service economy which promotes self expressive values.
DeleteOne German research remarked "both I and my Russian colleague are atheists, but he is an Orthodox atheist and I am a Lutheran atheist."
What does that make Mick Mulvaney, William Barr,and the other Trump Catholics? Just plain old Catholic sinners.
DeleteReligious traditions in the World Value Study operate through national cultures not personal beliefs. Americans have values similar to other English speaking cultures. It is the residual influences of centuries of Orthodox, Catholicism, and Protestantism that have made European countries similar. The average American Catholic and average American Protestant are little different.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at the world cultural values map here.
Americans are at the midpoint (mean) of the secular vs. traditional values dimensions, i.e. we value life, law, our nation, God. We are one standard deviation toward the self expressive dimension.
We are as traditional as Canadians but they are more self expressive, i.e. not preoccupied with survival. We are as self expressive but not as tradition as the Irish, as self expressive as Mexicans but far less traditional.
Protestant Europe is very secular and self expressive, that is not very survival oriented. Catholic Europe is less secular and less self expressive. Orthodox Europe is very survival oriented
Thanks for linking the world cultural values map, Jack. It's interesting, and a little surprising. For instance, I wouldn't have guessed that India is less survival oriented than China.
Delete