January 3, 2005
CONFUSIONS OF THE ZEUS WORSHIPPING:
Is 'Americanism' a religion? (Spengler, 1/03/05, Asia Times)
Islamists and neo-conservatives concur in calling "Americanism" a religion, the "worst-ever theology" in the view of the former, but according to the latter, "the beliefs that make Americans positive that their nation is superior to all others - morally superior, closer to God". The quotations come respectively from Abid Ullah Jan at the Tanzeem-e-Islami website, and from Professor David Gelernter in the January 2005 Commentary magazine.America stems from a religious movement and displays a marked religious character, but its actual religious life is splintered among scores of major denominations. Gelernter wants to lump it all into a generic American religion. He is just as wrong as the Islamists. Both confound American religion with the Bush administration's strategic agenda. American Christianity at once is more personal and strategically more powerful than either the Islamists or the neo-conservatives imagine.
The neo-conservatives are ideologues, not God-fearers, and they habitually confuse their political agenda with the kind of religious conviction that transforms the world. [...]
Religion proposes not to create a more perfect union, nor to safeguard individual rights, but to vanquish death. America never has had a dominant religion. On the contrary: America has had to rediscover Christianity every few generations, in the form of new "Great Awakenings" (see What makes the US a Christian nation, Nov 30, 2004). The first Great Awakening made the Revolution, and the second made the Civil War. Today's evangelical Great Awakening well may spill out of its American confines and change the course of the world.
Gelernter is a distinguished computer scientist, sadly a victim of the Unabomber, who now has become an amateur theologian. Religion absorbs the aging neo-conservatives, and Gelernter shows an authentic interest in matters spiritual. One cannot dismiss him as another acolyte of Leo Strauss promoting religion as a useful public myth. But a tin ear for matters of the soul afflicts Gelernter along with other neo-conservatives. [...]
Intellectual elites keep turning away from faith and toward philosophy - something that Franz Rosenzweig defined as a small child sticking his fingers in his ears while shouting "I can't hear you!" in the face of the fear of death. But one cannot expect the people to become philosophers (or, for that matter, Jews).
Though he's dead right about the neocons blindspot on religion--which led them both to underestimate the Shi'a/Sunni divide and its effects in Iraq and to believe that the GOP would accept their man John McCain over George W. Bush--Spengler is perhaps missing the theocon convergence that is uniting conservative Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 3, 2005 9:41 AM
Radical Islamists are determined to thwart the democratic process in Iraq by calling it a surrender to homosexual marriage, abortion and widespread cultural decadence. They are using the example of current western political and cultural developments to frighten the disenchanted traditionalists among them. The Wahabists are quietly playing it up. The muddled thinking among American liberals-libertarians is playing into their hands. It is doubtful that this approach will have a lasting effect in damaging the good that comes with free and accountable government but it surely doesn't make it any easier to bring such reform to the traditional societies in that part of the world. Constitutionaly defined and theistically justified government which brings certainty or at least relative consistency to the governed is the solution. We could use more of it here as well.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford, Ct. at January 3, 2005 11:53 AMOJ:
Do you have any clue as to who Spengler is?
RE: the "Theocon Convergence" which I think is an astute insight on your part, a story from a neighboring community was relayed to me recently. A Catholic church had had a display of crosses in the portion of its property adjoining a major road with the message that each cross represented an abortion performed in the previous year in the greater metropolitan area. It stayed up for a few months (I have driven by it a few times.) Several weeks after it was taken down, a Baptist Church in a different part of town, which only had a very small plot of grass available that was in view of traffic, put up a display of crosses with a sign sying that each cross represented 10 abortions performed in the last year in the same area. They borrowed the crosses from the Catholic church.
Now, when I was growing up, I remember the Pastor in my Baptist Church preaching vehemently against the election of a Catholic as President. Now, as I posted in another thread a week or so ago, an incredible number of my clients who are associated in one way or another with Evangelical institutions are very favorably disposed to Rudy Guiliani and, with no exceptions to date, go into paroxsms of joy when I ask how they would feel if Sam Brownback were the nominee. Quite a change.
The anti-abortion Christians share a common culture: "moral values" or family values or what the Pope calls the Culture of Life.
Their theological differences (on Mary, for instance), are far removed from their usual political preferences:
pro-Morals, pro-Gov't programs to help the poor.
Mixed on War (the Pope had been mildly against the Iraq War).
But they all believe that Human Rights come as an endowment from Our Creator. And the secular Left has no good answer ... the UN? (ha!)
Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at January 3, 2005 12:16 PMIs it just me, or does David Gelernter have a strangely hard-to-remember last name? I keep thinking it's "Gerlernter" or "Gelerntner" or "Gerlertner".
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 3, 2005 2:17 PMPapaya,
It's not hard if you speak German. Gelernt=learned.
-er=man, one
An old college friend of mine, who is Irish Catholic, was running for the State Assembly out in Morris County, NJ as a conservative pro-life Republican(which he won). He was utterly amazed to find the amount of support he received from the Orthodox and Hasidic communities in his district. Contrary to popular wisdom, they were both pro-life and especially pro-voucher as they send their children to religious schools.
Bart: my vaguely-remembered high school German didn't help, but your post does. Thanks!
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 3, 2005 4:24 PM