Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The Book is Probably Better

In my law and religion seminar this week, we’ve been discussing justifications for religious freedom. Why should the state protect religion? One argument is that religion, on the whole, contributes greatly to social capital. Take aesthetics, for example. How much great art and music has Christianity alone inspired? What a diminished culture we would have without the St. Matthew Passion, the Sistine Chapel, and The Brothers Karamazov.

But, critics object, religion isn’t the only possible source of artistic inspiration. The Enlightenment inspired great works too, like Candide and The Magic Flute. And then there’s this:  John Rawls’s  “A Theory of Justice”: The Musical, a current student production at Oxford. (Better hurry, the February 1 performance is already sold out). “A Theory of Justice,” the producers tell us, will be “the world’s first feature-length musical about political philosophy.” Here’s the plot:

In order to draw inspiration for his magnum opus, John Rawls travels back through time to converse (in song) with a selection of political philosophers, including Plato, Locke, Rousseau and Mill. But the journey is not as smooth as he hoped: for as he pursues his love interest, the beautiful student Fairness, through history, he must escape the evil designs of his libertarian arch-nemesis, Robert Nozick, and his objectivist lover, Ayn Rand. Will he achieve his goal of defining Justice as Fairness?

Well, Handel it’s not, but it could be fun in a nerdy sort of way. And it’s nice to see that the musical theater is finally taking Rawls seriously.  (H/T: First Thoughts).

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 Marc O. DeGirolami

Beards

The redoubtable Peter Berger has a winning column on them.  A few years back I had one, but despite Berger’s plausible claim that “the power of the beard as a profane symbol of adult masculinity should not be underestimated,” my wife for some reason did not hold my beard in very high esteem. 

Berger’s post is prompted in part by the legal controversies involving the Amish beard cutting incident in Cleveland, now being tried as a federal “hate crime,” and the trial of alleged murderer Major Nidal Hasan in Fort Hood, Texas, who was ordered to shave his beard for trial.  Here is Berger’s beards and religion angle (but you really should not miss the rest):

Needless to say, religion is a particularly rich field for the beard as sacramental symbol. There are significant differences between Latin and Greek Christianity. Bearded priests have become the norm in Eastern Orthodox churches; in the Roman Catholic Church, while there are some monastic orders whose monks wear beards, secular priests are normally clean-shaven. I don’t know whether there are “grooming regulations” in either case, nor do I know of any in Protestant churches. Mormons stand out: Young men going out on their two-year missionary stints must be clean-shaven, as must students at Brigham Young University. Beards have become the trademark of Orthodox Judaism, though the Torah does not command them directly (Leviticus only has rules for shaping the beard). I would imagine that there are different deductions from these rules in the Talmud. Jews in mourning, while “sitting shive”, don’t shave and let the stubbles sit during this period. Sikhs are very intent on their luxurious beards. Many Hindu ascetics have beards, but that is not so much a symbol as the result of their having no possessions, not even a razor (they do beg—is there no pious barber who can donate a free shave?). I have no knowledge of Buddhist attitudes to facial hair. But of course we are most aware of the role of beards in contemporary Islam.  Beards are the male equivalents of female headgear. If young men in Turkey come out of the closet as Islamists and consequently drive their Kemalist parents crazy, their young sisters achieve the same result by covering their hair with the scarves that signify Islamic modesty. As far as I know, there is no commandment to wear beards in the Koran, though there is an authoritative tradition (hadith) according to which the Prophet Muhammad did issue such a commandment.

I promised that there would be no theoretical or practical conclusions. Let me just say this: There are very few “natural” symbols. (Though the lion may be a “natural symbol” of might, as against the mouse.) Beyond such clear cases, anything can symbolize anything. Symbols change over time. As to beards, often they symbolize nothing beyond themselves—as Freud did not say, but might have said: Sometimes a beard is just a beard. Beards have carried all sorts of symbolic freight. In the area of religion, it would be nice if beards symbolized moderation and tolerance.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 3 Comments

Platform Repairs

At CNN, it is reported that the Democratic Party has updated its platform to include specific reference to Jerusalem and God, which (and who) had to this point been excluded for the first time in Platform History.  Apparently the President “himself intervened” to get Jerusalem added, but it does not appear that God received similarly direct presidential intercession.  No matter: Ohio Governor and Democratic Party Platform Committee Chairman Ted Strickland rose to the occasion and had some nice things to say about God to boot.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Better Than It Sounds

I know nothing about contemporary classical music, so you probably shouldn’t pay too much attention to this post. I can’t help mentioning, though, a notice I received about an upcoming concert in NYC, “Freedom’s Ransom,” which seems meant in part as a tribute to religious freedom. The concert will feature a performance of “A Carnival of Miracles,” a work by composer Richard Einhorn:

The overall theme of “A Carnival of Miracles” is different kinds of freedoms: religious, scientific, artistic, cultural, sexual, and political.  Its texts are taken from numerous sources, and range from the 4th century through the 20th.  They include such unlikely sources as an ancient text from a Nag Hammadi codex; a U.S. Supreme Court decision; the Marquis de Sade; the first female U.S. Presidential Candidate Victoria Woodhull; Beethoven; Galileo; and a Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet.

Well, yes, those are rather unlikely. I looked up the text for “A Carnival of Miracles,” which you can find here. To invoke “religious freedom,” the composer has chosen a Gnostic text that reads, in part:

I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband,
and he is my son . . .

I am shame and boldness
I am shameless, I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Hear me.

Well, the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause opinions aren’t always so lucid, either.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

John Milton on Secularized Law

From Paradise Lost, Book 5.  An exchange between Satan and the angel Abdiel — “than whom none with more zeal adored The Deity” — after Abdiel angrily asks, “Shall thou give law to God? shalt thou dispute With him the points of liberty, who made Thee what thou art, and formed the Powers of Heaven Such as he pleased and circumscribed their being? . . . . His laws our laws; all honor to him done Returns our own.” 

Whereat rejoiced th’ Apostate, and more haughty thus replied:
That we were form’d then, say’st thou? and the work 
Of secondary hands, by task transfer’d
From Father to his Son? Strange point, and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learn’d: who saw 
When this creation was? Remember’st thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised
By our own quick’ning pow’r, when fatal course
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature
Of this our native Heav’n, ethereal sons.
Our puissance is our own; our own right hand
Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try
Who is our equal: then thou shalt behold
Whether by supplication we intend
Address, and to begirt th’almighty throne
Beseeching or besieging. This report,
These tidings, carry to th’Anointed King;
And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 1 Comment

What is the object of “human rights”?

To ban works of literature, of course.  Dante’s Divine Comedy is on the chopping block, even at universities.  From the story:

The classic work should be removed from school curricula, according to Gherush 92, a human rights organisation which acts as a consultant to UN bodies on racism and discrimination.

Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president . . . .

It represents Islam as a heresy and Mohammed as a schismatic and refers to Jews as greedy, scheming moneylenders and traitors, Miss Sereni told the Adnkronos news agency.

“The Prophet Mohammed was subjected to a horrific punishment – his body was split from end to end so that his entrails dangled out, an image that offends Islamic culture,” she said.

Homosexuals are damned by the work as being “against nature” and condemned to an eternal rain of fire in Hell.

“We do not advocate censorship or the burning of books, but we would like it acknowledged, clearly and unambiguously, that in the Divine Comedy there is racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic content. Art cannot be above criticism,” Miss Sereni said.

The concession about not burning books is truly magnanimous.  Perhaps the woman may have missed the exquisite pain previewed for Popes Clement V and Boniface VIII in the Eighth Circle.  But the latter probably deserved a bit of hell, given his pretensions to temporal power.  Perhaps Dante and Ms. Sereni agree on the issue of simony. 

No matter –Dante was banished in his own time, so it is fitting that some right-thinking folks wish to banish him today.  Still, if I could offer a little lawyerly advice to Messrs. Cervantes, Chaucer, and Shakespeare — keep your heads down.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

We Could Have Told You That

On Saturday, Pope Benedict named 22 new cardinals, including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of the neighboring Catholic Archdiocese of New York, now Timothy Cardinal Dolan. While in Rome, Cardinal Dolan went out of his way to assure the Vatican that New York is not an entirely irreligious city:

“New York seems to have an innate interest and respect for religion and I’m going to bring that up because I don’t like that caricature that New York is some neo-Sodom and Gomorrah” he told reporters after celebrating Mass on Thursday in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica…. “[T]here are instances of secularism and materialism and paganism in New York as there are everywhere … but I have found the New York community to be very religious and innately respectful of religion, interested in religion,” he said.

Cleary, more Vaticanisti need to be reading CLR Forum.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Fortress of Atheism

Here is an interesting story about the vision of the French writer, Alain de Botton, to capture some of what he sees as religion’s “consoling, subtle, or just charming rituals” by erecting gigantic atheist “temples.”  The story relates to Botton’s new book, Religion For Atheists: A Nonbelievers Guide to the Uses of Religion (Hamish Hamilton 2012).  Inside these collossal atheist edifices, it is not exactly clear what would occur, except that people obviously would not worship, but would instead “behave as they would in a museum.”  Proposed Fortress of Atheism at right.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

God’s Bureaucrat

In the pre-modern era, political leaders frequently had themselves depicted in church art. Romanesque churches have mosaics of emperors and senators; Renaissance princes had themselves depicted in altarpieces. It’s unusual to see this kind of thing nowadays, but the practice may be making a comeback in some places. Interfax reports this week that a regional governor in Kazakhstan had himself painted in a church fresco, among a group of people welcoming Christ (left). Facing criticism, the governor has denied asking for the depiction and says he wants it erased. It does look a bit incongruous. After all, those Roman emperors in the old mosaics – they actually wore togas in real life, too.