Posted on by Mark Movsesian

What Really Matters

This fall, as the Eurozone’s constitutional and economic crisis deepened, some observers suggested a religious explanation: the crisis had resulted from different worldviews in the Protestant north and the Catholic (and Orthodox) south. The Protestant culture of the north is thrifty, sober, and bourgeois: a contract society. The Catholic (and Orthodox) culture of the south is profligate, emotional, and traditional: a status society. Among the observers who have offered such explanations are Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Harvard Professor Steven Ozment.

As First Things’s Matt Schmitz points out in a fun post yesterday, these observations have an implicit moral component: Protestant values are better, or at least better promote economic efficiency. Maybe, says Schmitz, morality cuts the other way. The “passionate and ecstatic culture” of the Catholic and Orthodox south, he writes (quoting Christopher Dawson), a culture which “finds its supreme expressions in the art of music and in religious mysticism,” may, in fact, be morally superior. Schmitz would doubtless agree with Hillaire Belloc’s famous observation:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

I need to think some more about all this. But it’ll have to wait till tomorrow. Here at the Center, we knock off early on Fridays, so we can drink ouzo and listen to Monteverdi.

Posted on by JCPW

Wolterstorff, “The Mighty and the Almighty”

This July, Cambridge University Press published The Mighty and the Almighty: An Essay in Political Theology by Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale). The publisher’s description follows.

For a century or more political theology has been in decline. Recent years, however, have seen increasing interest not only in how church and state should be related, but in the relation between divine authority and political authority, and in what religion has to say about the limits of state authority and the grounds of political obedience. In this book, Nicholas Wolterstorff addresses this whole complex of issues. He takes account of traditional answers to these questions, but on every point stakes out new positions. Wolterstorff offers a fresh theological defense of liberal democracy, argues that the traditional doctrine of ‘two rules’ should be rejected and offers a fresh exegesis of Romans 13; the canonical biblical passage for the tradition of Christian political theology. This book provides useful discussion for scholars and students of political theology, law and religion, philosophy of religion and social ethics.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 1 Comment

Studying Conflict Without Solving It: An Agenda

I participated in a terrific conference yesterday organized by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown. The master of ceremonies, Tom Farr, did a wonderful job of putting interesting panels together. And our own moderator, Tom Banschoff, put a series of provocative questions to our panel. I learned a lot from my good co-panelists, Cathy Kaveny and Mark Rienzi, and was happy to see and listen to many old friends and meet new ones (I am now on the train home with some spotty internet access, and so will forbear from linking to the various places where you can learn about the conference — at some point, a video will be available for those who need a sleep aid).

Our panel’s overarching subject was conflict between religious liberty and other rights. My initial comments had to do with the importance of conflict — not only its inevitability, but indeed (and more controversially), its positive desirability as a reflection of the reality of our respective and very different backgrounds, traditions, and memories, but also as a reflection of our internal struggles to manage the clash of sundry values as to which we each hold strong allegiances.

But I realized — both throughout the day and during the panel itself — that my approach and that of others may be slightly different, and in a way that maybe it would be helpful to spell out. During the conference, there was sometimes mention, by some of the speakers, about the need to “build bridges” or to reach mutual agreements or to “solve” conflicts with those with whom one disagrees. Provided that compromises are undertaken at the right level of particularity, I think these are all very worthy goals. They are important as a matter of practical getting along. They are important as a political and legal matter. And they are important inasmuch as an irenic state of affairs is generally welcome.

But I do not think that bridge-building is the only activity that needs pursuing. There are other projects too. Because of the depth and complexity of the conflicts at issue in many of the contemporary controversies addressed by the conference — indeed, because of the central importance of conflict — it seems to me that some study of the conflicts themselves is worthwhile — a study which would be undertaken without the self-conscious and more specifically practical aim of “solving” them. The project would be simply to understand them, and if that were accomplished, it’d be a good day’s work. It also might be the case that taking the measure of a conflict can be achieved more effectively and more deeply without an underlying impulse or motivation to reach a state of harmony, and without the conviction that harmony must somehow be possible.

Perhaps it might be useful to offer some concrete examples of the beginnings of an agenda for the study of conflict as applicable to some of the specific controversies swirling about today. The list surely is not and is not intended to be complete. The main point of this post is methodological. It is about what projects are worth pursuing.

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Posted on by JCPW

Gorski, Kim, Torpey & VanAntwerpen (eds.), The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society

This past March, New York University Press published The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society edited by Philip Gorski (Yale University), David Kyuman Kim (Connecticut College), John Torpey (Cuny), and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (NYU). The publisher’s description follows.

The Post-Secular in Question considers whether there has in fact been a religious resurgence of global dimensions in recent decades. This collection of original essays by leading academics represents an interdisciplinary intervention in the continuing and ever-transforming discussion of the role of religion and secularism in today’s world. Foregrounding the most urgent and compelling questions raised by the place of religion in the social sciences, past and present, The Post-Secular in Question restores religion to a more central place in social scientific thinking about the world, helping to move scholarship “beyond unbelief.”

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Heneghan on Christian-Muslim Relations in the Middle East

This article by Reuters’s Religion Editor Tom Heneghan in Al Arabiya is, quite simply, the best I have read in the popular press on the complicated relationship between Christians and Muslims in the contemporary Middle East. Reporting on a Istanbul conference attended by Christian and Muslim intellectuals, Heneghan explains that the two sides sometimes seemed as if they were “talking about two different places and using divergent meanings for the same words.” For example, Muslim participants spoke with pride about Islam’s history of “tolerance” for Christians. Christian participants were less impressed: for them, historical Muslim “tolerance”connoted a requirement that Christians accept subordination as the price of peaceful coexistence. Christian participants also discounted the importance of formal legal equality, since, even today, social customs in the Middle East often dictate inferiority for Christians. For their part, Christian participants spoke with pride about Christianity’s insistence on separating church and state. But Muslim participants viewed this concept with suspicion, arguing that Islam does not admit such a separation. “In the West, religious liberty emerged when Christianity was weakened,” one Turkish scholar explained. “This does not give Muslims much confidence.” On the eve of the papal visit to Lebanon, a very worthwhile read.

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Corteguera, “Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition”

This month, University of Pennsylvania Press will publish Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition by Luis R. Corteguera (University of Kansas). The publisher’s description follows.

On July 21, 1578, the Mexican town of Tecamachalco awoke to news of a scandal. A doll-like effigy hung from the door of the town’s church. Its two-faced head had black chicken feathers instead of hair. Each mouth had a tongue sewn onto it, one with a forked end, the other with a gag tied around it. Signs and symbols adorned the effigy, including a sambenito, the garment that the Inquisition imposed on heretics. Below the effigy lay a pile of firewood. Taken together, the effigy, signs, and symbols conveyed a deadly message: the victim of the scandal was a Jew who should burn at the stake. Over the course of four years, inquisitors conducted nine trials and interrogated dozens of witnesses, whose testimonials revealed a vivid portrait of friendship, love, hatred, and the power of rumor in a Mexican colonial town.

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Sisk, “Between Terror and Tolerance: Religious Leaders, Conflict, and Peacemaking”

This November, Georgetown University Press will publish Between Terror and Tolerance: Religious Leaders, Conflict, and Peacemaking edited by Timothy D. Sisk (University of Denver). The publisher’s description follows.

Civil war and conflict within countries is the most prevalent threat to peace and security in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. A pivotal factor in the escalation of tensions to open conflict is the role of elites in exacerbating tensions along identity lines by giving the ideological justification, moral reasoning, and call to violence. Between Terror and Tolerance examines the varied roles of religious leaders in societies deeply divided by ethnic, racial, or religious conflict. The chapters in this book explore cases when religious leaders have justified or catalyzed violence along identity lines, and other instances when religious elites have played a critical role in easing tensions or even laying the foundation for peace and reconciliation.

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Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Faour on Religious Education and Pluralism in Egypt and Tunisia

Muhammad Faour (Carnegie Middle East Center) has published Religious Education and Pluralism in Egypt and Tunisia, a contribution to the Carnegie Institute’s Working Paper Series. The abstract follows.

Religion occupies a prominent position in the education systems of all Arab countries. With the rise of Islamists across the Arab world, especially in Egypt and Tunisia, there is a possibility that the new parties in power will update education curricula to reflect conservative Islamic beliefs. Education is very important for any ideological party that assumes political power. And in the long run, the Islamists of Egypt and Tunisia will target education reform to ensure that more Islamic content is included in all students’ schooling. But in the short term, the emerging power of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Egypt and Ennahda in Tunisia is unlikely to lead to a dramatic change in the curricula Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Hate Speech and Foreign Relations

At Opinio Juris, my friend and former colleague Peter Spiro has an interesting post on recent events in Egypt and Libya. Peter argues that there is a foreign relations rationale for banning hate speech. In a world where obscure YouTube videos like “The Innocence of Muslims” can result in the murder of one of our ambassadors, he says, the US should consider banning such material. He notes that European countries have stricter limits on religious hate speech than we and still manage to have functioning democracies.

As I say, it’s an interesting post. Actually, though, this doesn’t seem a workable solution for the US, legally or politically. First, I don’t think Peter means “hate speech,” which typically connotes speech likely to incite violence against minorities. A ban on “hate speech” wouldn’t have applied to “The Innocence of Muslims,” which was not likely to incite violence against anyone, except perhaps the film’s producers.  I think the category Peter is looking for is “offensive” speech, specifically, speech that would offend listeners’ religious sensibilities. It’s true that European countries are more comfortable than the US with Read more

Posted on by ddrakeman

Getting Out of Our Grooves — Part II: Islam and Secularization?

We tend to think of countries such as Pakistan as quintessentially religious states.  As Humeira Iqtidar, of Kings College London, writes in her fascinating new book, Secularizing Islamists? (2011), the “increasing prominence of Islamists in Pakistani political space, especially over the last two decades, has crystallized a particular reading of Pakistan past and present . . . . Pakistan, Islam and fundamentalism – the conflation of the three has become an inescapable focus of media portrayals . . . . “

To provide a fuller picture, Professor Iqtidar spent a great deal of time in the relevant communities and had the rare opportunity to interview members of competing activist Islamist groups.  Her description of their competition for members, for power, and for the ability to define correct Islamic practices is remarkably interesting.

In the end, Professor Iqtidar argues that “Islamists are facilitating secularization at a social level even as they oppose secularism as an official policy.”  This is not, she is quick to note, a “strict demarcation of the public realm from the private . . . .”  Rather, the “Islamist insistence on the internal coherence of religious practice, its appropriateness to tackle the challenges of modern life, as well as competition among Islamist groups have led to a broad . . . thinking through of the role of religion in contemporary Muslim life . . . .  Religious practice can no longer be a matter of communal following of norms; it has been changed into a largely individualized decision that must be justified internally, that is, within a subject, and externally, to others around the subject.”

Finally, for those of us who periodically chafe at how some social scientists have superimposed Western European philosophical assumptions and religious categories on not necessarily matching American phenomena, I wanted to stand up and cheer while I was reading Professor Iqtidar’s comments about “universalist claims in social scientific analysis.”  In particular, she writes, “Within much of academic literature secularism continues to have immensely positive normative associations intertwined with a continued assumption of universal application.”  Until quite recently, social science theories “conflated diagnosis with prescription, description with projection.  This becomes particularly problematic in studying societies that are markedly different from the contexts in which there concepts took initial shape.”  No kidding.

Don Drakeman