Phatic Hiatus

Spotting Demogogues

The sermon on Sunday morning was again about the end times (don't evangelicals know that those sermons are supposed to fall during Lent?), so I thought I'd continue thinking about a Christian position on the imminent end of the world. As any reader has probably deduced by now, I'm convicted by (mostly secular) analysis that the end of history/civilization (if not the end of the world/cosmos) is arriving within the next few decades, and so I intend to be ready for it.

Yesterday's "Is Obama the antichrist?" post was only partially tongue in cheek. On the one hand, I think an excessively concordist eschatology is a silly way to define political loyalties. The collection of ambiguous messianic prophecies that existed in the 1st century BC would never have sufficed to create a Christian movement in advance, and the narrative of surprise is an important component of the prophetic tradition itself. At the time of Christ, the more "messianic" a Jew was inclined to be, the more likely he was to support aggressive anti-Roman resistance and insurgency. Being aware of the prophetic tradition was almost a disadvantage, since it predisposed devout Jews to completely miss the direction of history. Rome, and opposition to Rome, was never as important as it seemed, since Rome was going to vanish on its own. What was more important was the way that individual Jews responded to living in that post-exilic geopolitical environment, and the extent to which they became compromised in one way or another by either excessive accommodation or excessive fearfulness.

In the same way, I'm much less interested in knowing who "the antichrist" is, and much more interested in knowing how individual Christians are vulnerable to being seduced by secular powers, and how to insulate them from these tendencies. The clearest way to spot a tyrant or demogogue (whether the apocalyptic antichrist, or just a garden variety madman) isn't by looking at his own behavior, but at the behavior of his followers.

I've said this before about Obama, too. I don't see him as particularly dissimilar to other politicians. He shares the common consensus of his party on views where there is a partisan consensus, and he also shares the values of the establishment where there is an establishmentarian consensus. What does concern me about Obama is his tendency to galvanize support in an emotional or uncritical way. He doesn't scare me. But his followers do. As the etymology suggests, demogogues aren't made in a vacuum, they are made by the acclaim of the demos, the people.

Far more useful than ferreting out the meaning of "666" is looking at the narrative of human deception in both 2 Thess 2 and Rev 13. The multiple references to turning away from good, embracing evil, and falling under the influence of false prophets are intended as a diagnosis of human vulnerability, a vulnerability with dangerous consequences that Paul and John are keen to impress upon their young churches. The urgency of these passages expresses the very real possibility that some Christians will be susceptible to these deceptions.

In order to diagnose the fertility of a culture to demogoguery, we need to watch for a few signs:

• An excessive adulation of one particular leader to the exclusion of others. This leader is regarded as being virtuous in a way that sets him apart from and above peers, even those who hold similar views.
• An iconography may develop, where images of that leader become ubiquitous, appear in stylized forms, and evoke Pavlovian positive response.
• If the leader writes a book, that book will suddenly appear in everyone's library as a mark of virtue.
• Media attention to that leader that is unusually favorable and deferential.
• Public events and celebrations for that leader will be lavish and expensive, but will not receive the criticism that might have been given to similar expensive celebrations by a less popular leader.
• An excessive hostility toward those who criticize the leader. They are "evil", "mean", "unfair", "stupid", and "dangerous". Their reputations are subject to systematic destruction in the media, making it clear that opposing <great leader> is potentially a career-ending move.
• Fearmongering that ordinarily would be directed toward external threats ("foreign terrorists are trying to kill us!") becomes reoriented around opponents of the leader ("anyone who opposes <great leader's> policies could be a terrorist/assassin!") This helps to rationalize movement toward a police state with restricted personal liberty.
• Negative events (wars, crimes, natural disasters, poverty) being blamed on those opponents, even when the evidence itself is scant.
• Sudden changes in public opinion, particularly those that can be observed in detail among family and friends. If you see people suddenly altering their convictions on a variety of issues for reasons that seem to reflect affection for the leader or hostility toward his opponents rather than detailed analysis, this is a warning sign. Standard language would be "I never saw things this way before, but now I can see how <great leader> was right, and I was wrong. I can't believe some of the views I held ten years ago! I've grown so much since then."

Although the evidence for Obama exploing his popularity to become a dangerous demogogue is flimsy and unpersuasive so far, the evidence for American popular opinion being a fertile landscape for hero worship is a lot more convincing. Whether or not we have an antichrist, I do think we have the kind of voting public that would be ready to support an antichrist. That was already true during the Bush administration, with his supporters, and it continues to be true under Obama. And that concerns me.

Antichrist Profiling

During the last presidential cycle (actually, during pretty much every presidential cycle) one of the candidates (Obama) was accused of being "the antichrist" in a whisper campaign, this time on the internet. The quality of the argument was pretty poor, relying on his age and religious background, which really aren't spelled out anywhere in biblical apocalyptic literature. But the counterargument wasn't just that those particular arguments were implausible, it was that the general idea of Barack Obama being the antichrist was itself absurd.

In responding to this, I tried to carefully distinguish one of these arguments from the other. If you take apocalyptic literature seriously as saying something about the future destiny of humanity (whether as an actual roadmap, or just a sort of repeatable template for the kinds of power traps that tend to afflict dominant empires), then you need some kind of reliable method for distinguishing a possible candidate for the antichrist from someone who poses no harm. If Barack Obama is definitely not the antichrist, then there must be some criterion for antichristhood on which he fails.

For reference, I'm referring to the eschatological antagonist called the "beast" (Rev 13-19) or the "lawless one" (2 Thess 2), who might also be an extension of the OT archetype of the final king in Daniel 11. The actual term antichristos is used in 1 John in a more general sense to refer to those who oppose the doctrine of the Incarnation, and those are a dime a dozen these days. Matt 24, which is apocalyptically flavored, never mentions a single unifying figure, just a collection of many false christs and false prophets.

Let's play the game of supposing that there really is a single "antichrist" figure (person or regime) that will emerge in the end times. That seems to be something of a consensus among early church commentators, at least, who had their eyes on each new Roman Emperor. Roughly speaking, I see the following historical traits of someone who behaves as an anti-Christological figure, which at the time Scripture was written almost certainly were written in language designed to invoke the behaviors of various rulers in the Greco-Roman world:

1. Global hegemony (Rev 13:1-5,7), including both military (13:4) and commercial (13:17) control.
2. Widespread popularity (Rev 13:8, 2 Thess 2:12) arising from deception (Rev 13:14). This is reinforced with "signs and wonders".
3. Personal arrogance (2 Thess 2:4, Rev 13:5).

In the present geopolitical, the first criterion makes it almost essential that the antichrist would be the leader of one of the world's major nation-states or alliances. The President of the US is the best candidate, since at the moment our military and economic influence are far ahead of our nearest rivals. Of course, China and Russia are still within striking distance. An Islamic world figure seems much less likely.

The second criterion requires a popular and charismatic figure, not just nationally but globally (Rev 13:3). That, at least to my mind, automatically rules out anyone falling below 50% in national polls, or having little support in the international community. People like George Bush or Dick Cheney just aren't popular enough, certainly in the international community, to meet this baseline.

The third criteria is highly subjective. Almost everyone who runs for high political office needs to be just a little arrogant, in the "this nation needs me" sense. But what's really needed here is some conviction that the government of the antichrist is standing in the place of God, and equating God's will with his own activities. This is the classical meaning of "blasphemy" (Rev 13:5), trying to associate oneself too strongly with God. For example, when Jesus forgives sin (Matt 9:2-6) he's accused of being a blasphemer, since that authority properly belongs to God.

The last criterion is rarely satisfied in a literal sense, except by outrageous cult leaders who could never succeed in decieving the nations. But in the more limited sense of claiming authority to decide what is or isn't sin (like Jesus redefined the Sabbath), I think a lot of politicians trivially satisfy this requirement. For example, Obama was a sponsor of the Matthew Shepard act in his first year in the US Senate, which some observers contend might have made pastors who opposed homosexuality vulnerable to prosecution, or shut down Catholic agencies that fail to place children in homosexual households. This amounts to claiming to right to redefine the boundaries of sin through political power, I think, although none of this has happened yet. Some progressive Christian organizations have made the same criticism of the Bush administration, which seemed at times to base its overly confident foreign policy on various scriptural allusions, sometimes in explicit ways.

In my opinion, someone who wants to strongly argue that Barack Obama couldn't possibly be the antichrist would make the strongest argument by attending to the second criterion. An antichrist needs to be exceptionally popular on the national and global scale, needs to deceive people into turning away from biblical doctrines (2 Thess 2:10-11), and needs to base this deception on signs and wonders (2 Thess 2:9, Rev 13:13). Consider these the three subcriteria of criterion 2.

The first of these certainly seems satisfied by the current presidential administration. Whether that popularity will hold up indefinitely remains to be seen.

On the second, I see some circumstantial evidence that the American public is shifting views on some moral issues (I've used homosexuality, since it's undergoing the fastest transition), but not shifting views on other moral issues. So far the verdict is out on this. The evolution of sexual morality today seems to have little to do with any single figure, and instead just reflects a gradual change in social standards. I can't really see a good argument to lay these developments at any political leader, including Obama.

On the third subcriterion, it's important to look at the two examples of specific "signs" given in Rev 13. The first is a recovery from a serious injury or malady, by someone associated with the antichrist's regime (one of the "heads" of the beast). That would be something accomplished with new medical technology, I assume, if it's a literal healing. Advanced medical technologies that might save someone from the dead could presumably be acquired by nanotechnology or stem-cell research. The second sign is "fire from heaven" (13:13), which seems easily satisfied by the use of modern bombs or missiles. Presumably the antichrist will not simply employ these as a deterrent threat, but actually use them in a military context, though perhaps just as a demonstration. Nuclear tests might qualify, and a nuclear exchange during war certainly would.

Of the three subcriteria under the second criterion, I see no evidence that Obama satisfies the second and third. He could, at some time in the future, and so concerned apocalypse-minded Christians should keep their eyes open. But for the moment, it's an unfullfilled possibility.

It's worth noting that at no point are Christians encouraged to struggle against the antichrist, just to remain faithful in the presence of persecution (2 Thess 2:15) and wait to be avenged (Rev 19:2). Presumably that's what we should be doing anyway, so I'm not sure that knowing the existence of the antichrist modifies our behavior all that much. At the same time, Jesus encourages his followers to pay attention to signs (Matt 23:33-34), so I don't think the exercise of being wary around people who might be deceivers is unwarranted. We clearly don't want to support the antichrist either!

Bonus: This piece by geologist Ken Deffeyes isn't remotely religious, but humorously outlines a possible path for an antichrist to take.

Your book is your entry-level step on a global crusade. Don't worry about finding a publisher. Self-publishing and print-on-demand will earn you better royalties. Aim for 50,000 words; you can easily do 1000 words per day, 2000 when you are fired up. Outline it carefully and write to the outline; otherwise you waste hours wondering what to say next.

Your book establishes your position as An Important Figure. After the book comes out, you'll want to milk the viral advertising on the Internet. Instead of Lili [sic] Riefenstahl, you'll need someone who can churn out two-minute video clips...

A big selling point might be your claim to mixed ancestry. Tell them about hybrid vigor. After you seize power, then you can settle scores with bankers and economists. Your past record should be free of scandals. If you got a 14-year-old girl pregnant, you better settle for something other than Savior of the Universe. Be very careful about being labeled a "terrorist." Preach love and affection for everyone, except geologists, bankers, and economists.

It's a good reminder that the next successful demogogue won't be a Hitler-like figure who seems strange and frightening to use, but rather someone who comes very much from within our own culture and attains popularity by reinforcing our existing prejudices.

End Of Christian America, Take 2

I commented earlier about the Newsweek cover story on declining rates of religious identification, with Christianity falling from 86% to 76% in the last ARIS poll. As critics pointed out, this is not a new trend, and almost all the decline occurred between 1990 and 2001. The more recent trends have been internal shifts from one form of Christianity to another. Mainline denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, etc) dropped from 17.2% to 12.9%, falling by nearly a factor of a third. At the same time, non-denominational Christianity exploded upward from 1.2% to 2.5%, nearly tripling. Self-identified evangelicals (outside of the above categories) have doubled from 0.5% to 0.9%. Christians as a whole are no less common than 8 years ago, but a huge migration has taken place. Older Lutheran and Methodist congregations are emptying and aging, and suburban megachurches are thriving.

This makes the following article on ABCnews all the more baffling. The author of the study being reported doesn't just report a decline in religious identification, but tries to diagnose the reasons behind it:

While these young "nones" may not belong to a church, they are not necessarily atheists.

"Many of them are people who would otherwise be in church," Putnam said. "They have the same attitidues [sic] and values as people who are in church, but they grew up in a period in which being religious meant being politically conservative, especially on social issues."

Putnam says that in the past two decades, many young people began to view organized religion as a source of "intolerance and rigidity and doctrinaire political views," and therefore stopped going to church.

I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the overall decline in mainline denominations (typically regarded as liberal) at the expense of non-denominational and evangelical congregations. If there were really best understood as a rebellion against social conservatism, shouldn't liberal congregations be retaining their flocks, and conservative ones be losing them?

It sounds to me more like an example of wishful thinking. I'd bet you anything the author, Robert Putnam, is a fairly liberal Christian himself, and is trying to push an interpretation favorable to his own tradition. Hey, look, I'm right! Just another good example of how the failure of a news agency to challenge narratives from a partisan source posing as an objective source amounts to a passive form of liberal media bias.

Yes, There's Such Thing As Bad Publicity

As long as I've already tainted the blog with one trashy tabloid story today, I might as well get another one of the way. Last year my mother mentioned that a "Jon & Kate Plus 8" booksigning was the largest event she had ever seen at her local store. I had never heard of the book (apparently it's published by local Christian publishing house Zondervan), but I had a bad feeling about what little details I heard. It's apparently a reality show (strike one) in which a bunch of kids are paraded in front of a camera (strike two) while their parents rake in enormous amounts of money by generating the appearance of constant drama (strike three). Currently this is what's going on, and it seems to either be shaping up as a real-life soap opera train wreck, or else an intentional simulation of one for the purpose of ratings.

If I were Zondervan, I'd yank the book as quick as possible, as a matter of principle. In fact, if I were Zondervan, I'd never have accepted the book in the first place. I'm vaguely tolerant of embryo destruction when it occurs for the purpose of medical research, although I think that deserves some substantial safeguards and I'm not always sure that advocates take the risks as seriously as they should. But implanting yourself with a half-dozen embryos because you aren't satisfied with the twins you have already is just selfish, since you know perfectly well that the odds of them all making it to maturity are slim. And then creating a multi-media empire out of a story about how spending excessive amounts of money on unnatural reproductive technologies is an example of "God's blessings" is downright blasphemous.

I'm not sure who's buying these books, but I want nothing to do with their form of Christianity. I'd feel that way even if I weren't the sort of person who thinks that overpopulation in the developing world is swamping attempts to deal with ecological crises. Which I do.

Winnowing

I've been avoiding the "gay marriage trips up beauty queen" story for a while, since I'm of two minds about the episode. On one hand, I regard it as uncommonly silly for a pageant to even allow these sorts of questions in the first place. What's next, using people's opinions on abortion as a qualification for competing in the Olympics? I can see pitching a few softball questions for the sake of testing "poise" or "eloquence", but turning this into yet another culture war battleground is silly. We have enough of those already.

A good general principle is not to ask a question to which an honest answer would offend you. If I went to a dinner with my family and asked them to give an opinion on gay marriage before we ate, and then threw a tantrum when one of them disagreed with me, I'd have no one to blame but myself. I have no idea who "Perez Hilton" is or why I should care about him, but if he wants to call this poor girl a "dumb bitch" and make that the new face of the gay rights movement, he's only hurting his own cause.

That being said, I'm having trouble understanding why a devout Christian would want to enter a beauty contest in the first place*. According to a follow-up story, she received a free breast enlargement surgery from the state of California. I don't know whether or not that's standard procedure for pageants these days, but it certainly seems like something that creates a poor witness for what the church ought to stand for. It creates a very easy talking point for feminist detractors:

The fact that Carrie Prejean got breast implants is not newsworthy to me. The fact that the California Pageant Association paid for them, well that is. Not because it is scandalous, but because it shows that pageants aren't about highlighting women as they are or for their talents, but for their physical appearance and to make spectacle of a specific type of femininity.

It's a sad moment for Christianity when a weblog teeming with radical feminists is doing a better job of channeling 1 Tim 2:9-10 than the newly minted star of commercials for the National Organization for Marriage. (For this particular matter, and this particular woman, they're even channeling 1 Tim 2:11!) If one of the effects of the new era of "persecution" is that it forces Christians out of ethically compromised activities like this one, I'd consider it a mostly positive development.

This is one of the strange side effects of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. For most of the first few centuries, Christians were notably persecuted in the Roman world for their refusal to participate in the defense of the Roman state. (Both for being pacifists, for refusing to swear allegiance to the divinity of the emperor, and for declining to participate in pagan rituals associated with the celebration of military victories.) Now we're the ones running the military (a deeply conservative enclave in a liberalizing world), and enlisted gays are the ones being subject to persecution for failing to meet Christian standards which look suspiciously similar to the obligations demanded by imperial Rome. I'd feel much happier if things were the other way around. This is part of the reason I can't imagine wanting to lift a finger to help an outfit like the National Organization for Marriage. The sooner the gay rights militants can take over the public sphere, the sooner we can return to a natural state of affairs in which Christians are the persecuted, rather than the persecutors.

Although I hope we eventually have more compelling martyrdom narratives than "beauty queen comes in second instead of first, despite free boob job". That's not exactly on par with the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, is it?

(* from above: Yes, I know, the Book of Esther has a beauty contest. Bear in mind that Esther was a slave of the Persian empire, and was gunning for a chance to become the latest consort of a king with 350 wives. I'm all in favor of making a virtue of necessity, but one shouldn't pretend that this is a normative case.)

The Ape In Its Glory

Damon Linker, reflecting on the Newsweek cover story, isn't shy about revealing the preferred agenda of the Left: not a New Atheism, but an ass in a lionskin. Can't fault a man for being honest, I guess.

To my mind, these are all encouraging trends. (Though they are merely trends, and so could be reversed given the right circumstances.) And yet they leave the most important and interesting question unanswered: What will provide the theological content of the nation's civil religion now that the "mere orthodoxy" of the evangelical-Catholic alliance has proven unsuitable for a pluralistic nation of 300 million people? To my mind, the most likely and salutary option is moralistic therapeutic deism. Here is the core of its (Rousseauian) catechism, in the words of sociologist Christian Smith:

1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth."

2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."

3. "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."

4. "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem."

5. "Good people go to heaven when they die."

Theologically speaking, this watered-down, anemic, insipid form of Judeo-Christianity is pretty repulsive. But politically speaking, it's perfect: thoroughly anodyne, inoffensive, tolerant. And that makes it perfectly suited to serve as the civil religion of the highly differentiated twenty-first century United States.

Now You See It...

The abortion-blessing sermonette by that newly appointed Episcopal Dean has been unceremonious yoinked from her blog, apparently out of interest in avoiding any further controversy. Not quite the same as recanting, but it's better than nothing.

If you're curious about the full sermon - in a gawking-at-the-traffic-accident sense - you can still find it archived on Google, though I suppose that will go dead soon enough as well.

America After Christianity

Newsweek covers this week with a pronouncement of the death of the American church as a culture influence. It's hard for me to mourn the trend, when it heralds an end to a phony war that's lingered for far too long already. In most important pockets of influence (the academic world, the news media, entertainment, internet and technology sectors) religion has already waned in significance. Instead of actually being religious, we've seen a generation of people pretending to be nominally religious to satisfy cultural expectations, or to indulge in harmless nostalgia.

In the political world, this has left me deeply cynical and embittered. Both sides of the culture war seem profoundly ridiculous to me, after a generation of... well, if not actual power, then the closest thing that evangelicalism is ever going to enjoy to being the civil religion of an empire.

All politics is conducted at the margins, which is why it sounds so silly to anyone who isn't stupid enough to be an undecided voter. (Yes, I know, you think you're a swing voter. I'm sorry, but you aren't. In reality, you're going to vote for the same party candidate in the next five elections, after a great show of "comparing positions" to make yourself feel intellectual. Don't feel bad about it, we all indulge in our little self deceptions. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes...)

In economics, for example, we get the annual spectacle of one side advocating a 33% top marginal tax rate, and the other side advocating a 39% marginal tax rate, inspiring accusations of "greed" and "socialism". Both positions are nearly indistinguishable from a philosophical standpoint, representing a center-right consensus that's existed since the Reagan era. But everyone needs to pretend that the differences are vitally important and represent a struggle of deep ideology. The debate doesn't exist for the benefit of anyone who thinks taxes should go to 10%, or to 70%. It exists for the sake of convincing a handful of voters who have no particular knowledge of economics at all, but need their choice recast into an apocalyptic framework of "socialism versus capitalism" in order to have any chance of overwhelming their natural instinct to vote for whichever candidate has cuter kids and a wife with better fashion sense.

Social issues work the same way, except that the actual location of the margin bears no resemblance to any real policy. We pretend that we're in some kind of delicate balance between liberal and conservative camps. In practice, the values of the country are the values of post-Christian elites. Think about, say, stem-cell research. In principle, there are two sides, one that favors embryonic research and one that opposes it. So you'd expect the debate to swing back and forth between those sides, depending on who wins. But instead, this happens:

1. The difference is split halfway, creating a compromise where research is allowed, but funded by states and private donors.
2. The difference between the compromise and the liberal position is split again, creating a situation where federal funding goes for "existing lines" (the Bush policy). Call this the three-quarters-liberal position.
3. The three-quarters-liberal position is denounced as theocracy by secularists, and waved as a banner by social conservatives. When a liberal wins again, the pure liberal position is re-established.
4. The next time a conservative wins, the pure liberal and three-quarters positions are again bisected, creating a "new existing lines" compromise which amounts to a seven-eighths-liberal position.
5. Everyone goes back to pretending this is a struggle between good and evil. Repeat ad infinitum.

As a result, the "accomplishments" of the religious right are a paltry assemblage of tokenism that reflect a complete failure and an accumulated record of political impotence. Intelligent design? One state gets an "evolution is a controversial theory" sticker for a few months, and then it gets discontinued after the next school board election. Homosexuality? Once a liberal policy is adopted (by actual legislators, not by overzealous judges) it never stands a chance at reversal. Abortion? Somehow Roe v Wade always has at least six SCOTUS votes, and the RTL movement has to content itself with parental notification laws.

Theocracy? Torquemada would not be impressed. But everyone is well-served by perpetuating the illusion that all of this is a titanic struggle for the soul of America. Incumbents get re-elected. Lobbyists get a steady stream of revenue and a sense of purpose. The status quo is never really jeopardized.

As the article points out, the most rapidly declining pockets of Christendom are the ones that don't challenge the system at all, so that's clearly not an alternative either. Anyone who things that the church can remain "relevant" by acquiescing to liberal cultural dictates ("stop talking about all that sex stuff and craft some vague God-talk rationalizations for whatever the Democrats would be doing anyway") isn't paying much attention to the fate of Europe, where languidly apostasized clerics preside over empty cathedrals. That's a parallel road to irrelevance, and probably a faster one.

What alternative do we have? It's hard to see how the early-church model adapts itself to America, as successful as it was. Americans simply won't relinquish their participation in a system that has served too many generations too well. Marginalized Americans don't join secret societies that meet by candle-light, and pledge to share property, and exhort their sons and daughters to practice holy virginity in the local monasteries. They watch late-night television, mostly.

As Christians, I'm not sure what else we can do. Wait for Africa to re-evangelize us? Hole up in anticipation of an eschatological deus ex machina? At the very least, we'll all get to indulge our morbid curiosity as to who will or won't remain faithful to the ancient tradition of the church, as that becomes a costlier and costlier choice to make.

Those Muslim Barbarians

Every so often there's a wave of media attention given to some ominous development in the Islamic world related to the imposition of Sharia law. The usual pattern is that a few exceptional incidents (honor killings, violence against women, public hangings) are taken as evidence of the activity of a fully developed culture of Islamic law, and then used to comdemn Islam as a whole. In the last week, we've seen a report that Afghanistan is planning to legalize "martial rape", and a grainy video of a woman being flogged for adultery.

A more careful examination of these stories suggests that they are being oversimplified. The Afghan law doesn't have much to do with "marital rape", per se, but instead simply creates an obligation for couples to not deny one another sexual contact. In a culture without no-fault divorce, it's easy to understand how this could be seen as an important element of a marriage contract, and would trigger divorce rights. Since America has a no-fault divorce tradition that would allow any partner in a marriage to unilaterally dissolve the marriage for any reason, including sexual deprivation, it seems probable that the Afghan law brings them closer to the Western attitude toward divorce, not farther. (Whether this is a good or a bad thing is debatable in my mind.) This has nothing to do with forcible sexual assault within marriage, which seems to be condemned by the Islamic scholars who would nonetheless insist that husbands and wives have sexual obligations to one another.

A similarly close reading of the entire Pakistan story reveals that most of Pakistan is just as horrified as we are by the incident, and an investigation is being conducted. Even Muslims who regard adultery as worthy of punishment would not recommend that a woman be publicly beaten by a grown man in an uncontrolled melee, without benefit of a trial. Unfortunately, I suspect more American readers will see the video than read the full text.

Even in cases where the negative reaction is warranted, I'm still reluctant to jump onto the bandwagon of denouncing the entire Islamic world as "barbarous". This is especially true at a time when we're guilty of excessive meddling in the Islamic world. Say what you like about Muslims, but none of their countries have sent armies to occupy our cities. I'd caution Christians to keep in mind the following facts:

1. When we harshly criticize the Muslim world for having a "medieval" view of justice, we're also criticizing our own religious tradition. The heroes we celebrate in the Bible - Moses, David, Nehemiah - were all staunch advocates of a system of law that was similarly hostile toward adultery, in some cases advocating the death penalty. I'm certainly glad that, as a modern Christian, I'm under a dispensation of grace rather than under the Mosaic law. But we should regard those cultures who still erroneously believe themselves under the yoke of religious legalism with compassion, rather than contempt. They are no more "wicked" than were the authors of the Ten Commandments or the Psalms (which is to say, both similarly sinful and made cognizant of that sinfulness by the harshness of law), they are just theologically mistaken.
2. Our own culture has cruelties of its own. Given the choice between a public flogging or 10 years in solitary confinement, I think any rational person would select the former. Yet our own country routinely treats prisoners as caged animals, and laughs at stories that they are gang-raped by other prisoners. At least the Taliban takes its cruelty seriously, rather than making it the object of comedy. Another alarming example would be a recent public survey suggesting that many teenagers viewed the beating of pop star Rihanna by her boyfriend as something she deserved. Being beaten in the face by your own partner is far more likely to cause serious physical harm than being flogged on the back. Our own culture is not so far removed from barbarism as we might like to imagine.
3. By the standards of many European democracies that would condemn the death penalty, we Americans must seem comparably backward and uncivilized.
4. "Muslims", as a class of people, have varied views on most issues, and should not be treated as a homogenous unit in the first place.

I'm Not Making It Up

Periodically when I'm debating ethical issues with my brother (I'm the conservative, he's the liberal) he'll accuse me of presenting a straw man as an opposing position. During the Sarah Palin unveiling, for example, he opined that she didn't deserve all that much credit for having a Down Syndrome child, since any of his friends would have done the same thing in her place. This is consistent with the commonplace political meme of being "personally opposed" to abortion, but simply not favoring criminalization as the sensible strategy to oppose it. I find the position odd, since the usual reasons for "personally opposing" abortion seem to reference the autonomous rights of the fetus in ways that make it hard not to trigger some kind of mandate for moderate government regulation, if perhaps not outright prohibition in all cases.

But beyond this, the fact remains that a great many people are enthusiastic rather than reluctant supporters of abortion. Rod Dreher excepts a bone-chilling passage from the new dean of EDS, Boston's episcopal seminary, in which she cheerleads uncritically for abortion as something that society ought to celebrate. I'm sorry, but there's no charitable way to spin this kind of language:

And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion - there is not a tragedy in sight -- only blessing. The ability to enjoy God's good gift of sexuality without compromising one's education, life's work, or ability to put to use God's gifts and call is simply blessing.

These are the two things I want you, please, to remember - abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

I'm not sure that there's anything left to do, when confronted with this particular variety of clerical pedagogy, other than back away slowly while making the sign of the cross with the index fingers of both hands, and then running hard for the street as though the devil is at your back.