Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent me a link to THIS POST ON THE BLOG LEGAL FICTION.
The author writes:
E.J. Dionne is on a mission – and it’s a mission near and dear to my heart. And that mission is to co-opt the language of faith and values to both criticize conservative policies and gather support for progressive ones.
The problem, though, is that the people who need to hear such a message won’t listen to E.J. Dionne or any Washington Post columnist for that matter, because they have already identified the Washington Post as a source antagonistic to their faith and values. The people from the Red States who most need to hear that message need to hear it from are people who they won’t suspect are trying to co-opt their faith and values until it is too late, such as the friends and neighbors they trust and interact with. The problem is that those people have long since fled to the cities.
What we need are missionaries for progressivism. So maybe that means it’s time for all us transplanted Red Staters to sacrifice good sushi and head back home – or at least to the closest place to home that we can get tolerable sushi.
One of the best examples from history of this sort of adaptation may come Jesus himself. I saw a documentary a while back that interviewed some biblical historians.
In the Bible itself, there is a big gap in Jesus’s life from childhood to the beginning of his preaching (age3330 or so). Somescholarscharlatans who have ABSOLUTELY NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER have speculated irresponsibly that he traveled east to India during this period. Their "evidence" is that Jesus’s teachings show remarkable similarities to Buddhism except for the fact that Christ taught the existence of God and the reality of the resurrection while Buddhism teaches the non-existence of God and reincarnation. Thus, except on the two most important concepts in every religion–the divine and the afterlife–they are amazingly similar. For example, they both advocate not murdering, stealing, lying, or getting drunk off your butt. That’s just too amazing to be coincidence! Despite the abuses of religion by Dobson’s Taliban which favors forcing women to wear burkas, cutting off the hands of shoplifters, chopping the heads off people who convert to another faith, and slamming airplanes into skyscrapers in order to inflict mass casualties on their enemies, if you actually read the Gospel, Jesus sounds like a 60s hippy preaching love, tolerance, and forgiveness for all. Especially in passages like these:"The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" [Matt. 13:41-42]
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" [Matt. 25:31, 41].
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" [John 14:6].
See? He sounds just like Gandi preaching to the folks at Woodstock! He hung out with the socially marginalized and railed against losing sight of love in the name of cold rules or commandments (for instance, his first two commandments were to love God and love others – not bash gays). That’s why he personally commissioned the Apostle Paul to teach in his name. The Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, then wrote:
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion [Rom. 1:26-27].
What these
scholarscharlatans believed happened was that Jesus went away and was profoundly moved by [far] eastern religions. Growing up in Israel, he was of course already quite familiar with the laws and practices of Judaism. When he came back, Jesus essentially preached the message of Buddhism by incorporating the language, rituals, and practices of Judaism. He used a language and value system familiar to all. In short, he changed it from the inside and did a spectacularly bad job of it as he failed to get across any of the central concepts of Buddhism, such as the non-existence of God, the idea of reincarnation, or the need for using the Eight-Fold Path of self-exertion to achieve enlightenment and cease suffering.Progressives could do the same. Obviously, people who grew up in churches and in Red States have a far better grasp on the language and modes of thought of people in these areas.
Obviously. You did say you were from Kentucky, right?
The challenge is to inject progressive ideas into these areas through the use of familiar language and values in the same way Jesus injected Buddhism into Judaism (which became Christianity).
So . . . you’re recommending that liberals create a new religion by injecting liberalism into Christianity? Sorry. That’s been tried. So-called "mainline Protestantism" dominates denominations that are now a shadow of their former selves, like Episcopalianism and Anglicanism (among others). It’s also found in decaying Catholic movements, such as Liberation Theology and the grey-haired set that is agog for Richard McBrien. You’re re-inventing the wheel.
One tactic I would use – and one I do use – is to first seek out common ground on the goals shared by all. We are all pro-family,
Not if you mean something different by "family." That’s just playing games with words.
we are all pro-values,
The question is which values. Bin Laden can claim to be "pro-values." The problem is the values that he is pro.
we are all pro-patriotism, and we are all pro-individual betterment. The question is not one of goals (which Fox News would like people to believe) because we all share the same goals. The question is
what policies are most consistent with those goalsare the redstaters dumb enough to fall for it when we hijack their language by stuffing our own meanings into it?Take gay marriage. In arguing for this at home, I first affirm how important families are to society. I sincerely believe that families are the microstructure and glue that holds greater society together. Progressives should do everything to strengthen this institution, and to make sure families have more time to spend with each other. The reason I support gay marriage is not because it threatens families, but because it creates them. It strengthens them. It ensures that children will always have access to their parents, even if they split up. Property rights gives people incentives to remain in a stable structure. In short, I support gay marriage for distinctly “conservative” reasons.
More of that scalawag moxie! Gotta love it!
Listen, what you’re talking about ain’t families. A family is what is created by and grows from a marriage. Marriage is the exclusive, life-long union of a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of children by means of sexual cooperation. Homosexual "marriage" is simply an impossibility because such unions can never correspond to the natural law reality that is marriage. It doesn’t matter how much you might want two men or two women to be married to each other, whatever union they have simply fails to correspond to what marriage is.
What you’re proposing is that as a society we play word games by applying the term "marriage" to things that do not correspond to the natural law reality of marriage. This is a bad thing and would be destructive of marriage as it gets the language society legally enforces via its institutions out of line with reality. Getting your language out of line with reality always causes problems. It ain’t "reality-based."
The same is true for health care or increased labor rights. Lessening the demands of work, and freeing people from worry about sickness, gives people more time to spend with their children. Like Social Security, providing access to health care and education eliminates risk and fear, and that strengthens families. Such programs also further individual betterment, just like many other government programs.
This is too vague to be directly commented on as there are no concrete policy proposals you are advancing–only general aspirations. However, it is worth noting that there are costs associated with what you are suggesting. Creating government programs requires funding and that means taxes, and at some point the taxes people are under start to interfere with their family life as when, for example, you start needing two incomes to cover both taxes and all the other things you want to provide for your family. This potentially can lead to very destructive consequences for the family.
As far as the proposal to send bluestaters back home to redstates as missionaries, there are several problems with it.
First, the big one: MONEY. The reason a lot of these folks left in the first place is that they went where the work is. As long as the big-paying jobs are in the big cities, it would require an extraordinary level of commitment to the cause for a bluestate missionary to move back home to a redstate.
That leads to the second problem: The amount of commitment that would be needed to make all the required sacrifices (including good sushi) would be such that the only people willing to undertake such a venture would be the most shrill, most hardcore bluestaters. This means that they will be the most ideologically inflexible and thus the ones least able to make inroads with redstaters. It doesn’t matter where they’re from: If they’re extreme enough to move back just to be bluestate missionaries, they’re too extreme to function effectively in the job.
Third: The level of commitment needed is such that only a tiny handful of the people would even consider it. Consequently, there will be too few of them to have an appreciable effect.
Fourth: This is a two-way street. If you put bluestaters in a sea of redstaters and tell them to dialogue with the redstaters, it’s just as likely they’ll end up modifying their views in a redstate direction rather than the opposite.
Fifth: It’s The Abortion, Stupid! Redstaters, and pro-lifers in particular, are never going to buy the phony-baloney terminology re-jiggering your’re proposing as long as the bluestaters treat abortion like a sacrament. I don’t care how many verses about feeding the poor and taking care of orphans and widows you can quote. If you’re in favor of murdering babies by the millions, you ain’t gonna win the votes you’re after.
All that being said, if you want to encourage people to move home so they can use their redstate language skills to co-opt the faith and values of redstaters by telling them that Christianity is Buddhism hijacking Judaism and that homosexual "marriage" corresponds to the reality of actual marriage and babykilling is fine and dandy, go right ahead.
Lotsa luck.
Valid points, but it’s improper to assume that Christian necessarily equals political conservative, or that Christianity is invariably tied to the political spectrum. One of my Catholic friends would picket an abortion clinic one day, then block a train carrying nuclear weapons the next. Needless to say, he didn’t like to be labeled with any political label, since his beliefs didn’t fit into any of the limited political structures that were available.
The above poster has a point. There should be varience in opinion where there is not a strictly moral position.
But, back to the blog. Its frustrating that people who claim Christianity “hijacked” Eastern philosophy are usually blind to Eastern philosophy as such (especially where it is hyper-conservative). If it was all free-love and flowers (re: Hippy) then the Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, South-East power-brokering, and Indian balkanization were really bad acid trips.
Note the use of the word “progressive.”
Don’t trust anyone who uses this word until and unless he proves himself trustworthy.
He means he’s in favor of progress, or movement in the right direction. Which is to say, that his aims are so self-evidentially right and his means so self-evidentially effective that opposition to him is opposing progress.
The idea of Christianity being some Buddhist-Judaic blend is nothing more than a puerile appeal to the exoticness, and foreign-ness of Eastern philosophy. I got a lot of this in reverse when I was living in Japan and people wore crosses, not to express some religious or philosophical affiliation, but as a trendy fashion accessory.
This type of thinking is insulting to any faith involved. Jesus never preached Karma. The Buddhist understanding of Karma is that anything bad that happens to you is YOUR fault because of something you did in this life or in a former life. The Judeo-Christian concept of God’s justice is much more complex than this because it assumes a sentient force guiding all events in the universe and can account for good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people.
Also, notice how his treatment of Jesus denigrates His divinity. He sounds confused and lost. Why abandon His faith and go to the East for answers? Why take those teachings back to the West and teach them, not as He learned them (as Buddhism) but as a totally NEW religion? Jesus tricked Jews into acting like Buddhists? That is some grade-a deception. Maybe He was brought up Mormon… And why presume Jesus was taught by Buddhists and not the other way around? No Buddhist monk would claim the authority to teach the living God and Christ had a reputation for being a very intelligent and good teacher. Why not assume that Jesus taught the Buddhists? There is no substantial proof for either argument, so why not play Relativist Salad Bar with our beliefs?
Christianity is not a trick. It is a fulfillment. It gets all its power and validity from Judaism. If Judaism is a false faith, then Christianity is a false faith. You cannot have one without the other. If Jesus was only nominally Jewish, then His sacrifice is meaningless and no gentile or Jew has ever entered Heaven in the history of Man (two exceptions in the OT). All is lost.
And now this self-righteous Blue-stater wants to go on missions to preach, not a gospel, but his own 20 year-old political views to the ig’nant Red-staters. He cleaves to an invented history that he thinks provides some vindication. How can we learn from history if we keep rewriting it with baseless conspiracies and outlandish 21st century sensationalism?
Look at what is going on in Canada. The truth is these people will stop at nothing to get their “point” across. They have no qualms about revoking liberties like freedom of speech or freedom of religion or the right to life. They are uber-fascists with an agenda to usurp all religion and thus, all meaning to human existence. It is not just a fight for religion, at its most secular level, the fight against the culture of death is the fight for human significance.
And if you ask me, having sex quotas for marriage (one man, one woman) is VERY PROGRESSIVE.
Glorious fisking Jimmy! 🙂
Growing up in Israel, he was of course already quite familiar with the laws and practices of Judaism.
Well, considering he was the author of those laws and practices…
Actually this would work really well in promoting truth. I would bet the majority of those who moved back to their home towns would in fact be changed for the better rather than the other way around.
I have read Eastern philosophy types quoting Jesus, with ellipses instead of the italicized part, “His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.'”
And then arguing that the “works of God” were the workings of karma.
The word that pops to mind is “shameless.”
The idea of Eastern influence strikes me as a dead end as well. One would expect to see Eastern influences on Muslims as well; there are none. Budhism was never really a missionary religion. The only real spread was into China and subsequently Japan. During the 60’s, 1960’s that is, people would actually goto India and get a geru (This last bit is the benefit of my World History prof, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was refuted by others.)
Has this guy been living in a cave? People have been doing EXACTLY what he advocates for decades, especially in the old mainline protestant churches and particularly in the Catholic church. But the dissenters have hit their high water mark. More and more people just ain’t buying it.
I had to laugh when I read this. He actually sounds as if he were the first one to think of it!
What code are you guys using to get italics?
Good heavens. Remind me never to get on your bad side, Jimmy. You are a fisk master.
Stephen L, for italics, put tags around your text like so: <i>this is the text to be italicized.</i>
The tags won’t show up in your comment (unless you use HTML character codes, like I did), and the text will be italicized.
So people at the Post are asking America to enter into an overarching religious discussion. And this includes Scriptural exegesis. And engagement between Eastern Philosophy/Religion and Christianity.
Do we lead with Merton or St. Francis Xavier?
I forgot about St. Thomas the Apostle, who may be more appropriate in this case, if he doesn’t mind my saying so.
Man! I love a good fisking! You’ve done a few of these in the past and they’re always a fun read.
Thanks for starting my morning off with a smile.
The Tachibana and Nagasaki restaurants (on the north and south sides of Lexington, respectively) are both good sushi places in Kentucky… fyi and all that….
Shhhhh!!! Don’t give him any ideas!
Come on, Jimmy! Maybe we can convert him to our side! Then he’ll evangelize to other transplanted blue-staters who frequent the sushi places.
Arg–such efforts to make our culture’s linguistic confusions even more desperate ought to be punished by flogging.
By the by, Jimmy, I’d be interested to see what you think of Alasdair MacIntyre’s work in moral philosophy (if you’ve had the pleasure). His discussions of how totally confused/fragmented our society’s moral reasoning has become (this whole ‘co-opting’ language nonsense fits right in there) might interest you a great deal (and be post-worthy).