Thursday, May 28, 2009

Christian Crusader

To my mind, the war and occupation of Iraq were like the first steps in a very long division problem. The first few calculations were wrong (mistaken or massaged intelligence, undermanned and undersupported troops, corrupt occupational government, Abu Graib, etc.), but the solver couldn’t go back and erase them, and start over. He or she just had to just keep plugging on, and no matter if all the rest of the calculations were correct, the answer will still be wrong.

But some, who may even acknowledge mistakes in execution, would still see the war and occupation as good works. Those Bible verses on the covers of DOD intelligence briefings suggested as much (discussed in my first posting), and I have wondered how widespread is the notion that the War on Terror (though the Obama administration no longer calls it that) is a Christian holy war. So I went swimming through the web and came across an interview with David French in Citizenlink.org, a part of Dr. Dobson’s Focus on the Family. David French blogs for the National Review on academic issues (Phi Beta Cons) and is senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal group that takes on threats to Christian privileges in the public square.

The Citizenlink interview’s angle was French’s decision to resume active duty in the Army Reserves, and he served for a year in Iraq. But French’s explanation of the military’s role is what interested me—a frank statement of Christian crusade.

First, there is the common dumbing down of the enemy, a demonization, and a grandiose depiction of their threat.

. . .the depravity of the enemy has to be seen to be believed. In America, we have no frame of reference for this kind of evil, for individuals whose ability to inflict pain and death on innocent people is limited only by their imagination and power. We have no option but to defeat them, or we (and others in the world) will face truly barbaric terror.

Maybe this characterization of the enemy is inevitable, especially among those whose lives are at risk, and who may have to kill. We need only remember the American caricatures of Germans in WW I, the Japanese in WW II, or the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. And it’s certainly not just an American habit. I agree that the tactics of Al Qaeda and other insurgents are heartless and appalling, and I can’t imagine the depths of suffering that American and allied troops, and the many more Iraqi and Afghan civilians, have experienced. To portray the enemy as irrational beasts perhaps is a useful way to mobilize home-front support for a dubious war and occupation. But it’s not smart way to comprehend an enemy who no doubt has logic, a rationale, even if we find their means and ends detestable.

French goes on to quote the Bible to back up his claim:

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9

If a Christian doubts that fighting al-Qaida and trying to give Iraqis a chance to live a decent life is not “doing good,” then they neither understand our enemy nor the plight of the people of Iraq.

Well, this begs the question of what is “good,” yet, rhetorically, we are put in a position of not being able to ask this because the implication here is that if we’re not there with French, if we’re not sharing his role, than we cannot understand. While I agree I cannot know what it’s like to be in combat, being in the thick of it doesn’t necessarily give one the basis to claim that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is “doing good.”

But Captain French has another basis for making the claim. The war is about Christianity versus idolaters. In responding to a question of his opinion about the future for Christians in the US, he said:

. . .there remain millions upon millions of Americans who have not “bowed the knee to Baal,” and so long as that remains true, there is great hope.

If you don’t believe me, spend five minutes out here in eastern Diyala province, then go back to America. You’ll see our country with new eyes.

So we now have the picture. A powerful country with a core of proper believers who are holding moral decay of non-Christians at bay on the homefront, while engaging a barbarous, Baal-worshipping enemy abroad.

I suspect this picture isn’t widely shared among Americans, but it sure has been prominently displayed, and it mirrors the narrative we tell ourselves about Islamic fundamentalism--a core of jihadists bound and determined to rescue their nation from modernists and from the satanic West.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Growing religious partisanship

Today’s online Inside Higher Education briefly reports on Liberty University’s refusal to officially recognize the campus Democratic Club.  The group can still meet on campus, but it cannot use the Liberty name, nor receive university financial support.  Liberty officials said the university could not give its stamp of approval to a group associated with a political party that supports pro-choice positions.  You may recall that the late Jerry Falwell founded Liberty University, so the decision is hardly out of the blue.

The story draws on a Lynchburg News Advance article about the Virginia Governor Kaine’s request that Liberty reconsider denying the Democratic Club equal support (Kaine is, after all, the chair of the Democratic National Committee).  The headlines of both are obvious in sentiment.  The New Advance headline has a little fun with irony: “Kaine urges Liberty to reverse ‘attack on the liberty of its students.”  Inside Higher Education suggests totalitarianism: “One Party State at Liberty U.”

There was a small flurry of reader commentaries, 65 or so by around 20 people.  A few took the side of Governor Kaine, a few said good riddance with the Democrats. Two people dominated the discussion.  “Arthur Pewty” crudely parodied conservative Christians and conspiracy theorists.  “Gordie” earnestly argued back from a liberal Christian perspective (and complained it was hard to know when Pewty was being “sarcastic”).  While Pewty egged on one conspiracy theorist trotting out the urban legends of Obama’s radical Muslim sympathies (“You are SO RIGHT Mr. VinceP1974!”), Gordy had a meltdown:

I am sick and tired of low lifes like you and I will fight you every step of the written word that I can find allowable on this forum. I am sick of it and all the lies that the Republican scum of this earth and the distorting of issues or using words to suit their purpose. You and your kind will be in my prayers to vanish from this earth. You, Rush, Fox and all that are like them shall be dammed till eternity.

Perhaps Pewty giggled over this, for pranksters like to get an outraged response, but it's too bad that both sides of the debate resorted to vitriol. Fortunately, we can’t take this online discussion as representative of Americans, as if this were a fray amidst a much larger Culture War.  Typically, only people with deep feelings about a particular issue, what survey researchers call “intensity,” are the ones to participate in online forums.

Still, Liberty University’s action, and those debating it, echo a shift in the relationship between religion and political parties.  Referring once again to my trusty Pew Foundation source, a recent report on “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes, 1987-2009” finds a growing difference between the Democrats and Republicans in terms of “religious traditionalism.”  Respondents were asked three questions to determine their level of traditionalism.  To what degree to you agree or disagree with the following statements: 1) Prayer is an important part of my daily life; 2) We will all be called before God at Judgment Day to answer for our sins; and 3) I never doubt the existence of God.  The chart below tracks the percentage people who agree with all three statements, by party and over time.


What’s remarkable is how close the Demos and GOP were just a decade ago, when we look at all voters.  But more remarkable is the shift among White Non-Hispanics, increasingly polarized.  There’s a reversal of this trend in the last year, but looking at the two decades as a whole, it’s not likely a permanent trend.  Over the same time period, a growing percentage of people say they completely agree with all three statements (40% in 2009), while a growing number of people also describe themselves as affiliated with no particular religion, or as “atheists, agnostics, or ‘nothing in particular’” (16% in 2009).  In other words, the US population features an increasing number of fervent religious traditionalists, and those who are decidedly not (though the former outweigh the latter).

The puzzle then is, if such a large minority of Americans are traditionalists, and these traditionalists are flying to the GOP banner, why were the Republicans trounced so thoroughly in the 2006 and 2008 elections?  The Pew study suggests one reason. The “percentage with conservative views on social values has been steadily declining over the past two decades” especially among younger generations.  Religiosity has surged, but the mores informing that religiosity have shifted.  Or, we could say that this religiosity has contributed to shifting mores, or at least accommodated it.  Whatever the relationship, the GOP policy positions on social issues have lost supporters.  Of course, war and scandal didn’t help Republicans much either.

So, Liberty University’s partisan decision represents the growing religious divide between Republicans and Democrats.  I’m not sure, though, that purifying the ranks is going to help the Republicans all that much, especially if it’s not certain that religious traditionalists can be trusted to adhere to standard GOP positions.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Rumsfeld, the mouthpiece of God?


Did you know that GQ publishes political pieces?  I didn’t, until I read about Robert Draper’s article in a Frank Rich op-ed in the New York Times.  Draper published an officially approved biography of George W. Bush in 2007, but in this piece we get a scathing review of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, based on interviews with Bush loyalists.  What I found especially interesting, though, is the slideshow GQ provides.  As Rich reports:
Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

If you go to the the GQ story, you’ll find a link to the slide show below the first page of the article. I know there’s a lot of people who will agree with Rich, alarmed by the prominence of conservative Christian evangelicals in the US armed forces.  See, for example, Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming, Chris Hedges’s American Fascists, Jeff Sharlet’s The Family, Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, or American Armageddon by Craig Unger.  The creepiness argument crudely summarized: The Fascist Family Kingdom Coming to Make a Theocracy of America and Drag Us All to Armageddon.  It’s not just left-leaning folks that are upset. Beliefnet’s Stephen Waldman, writing for the Wall Street Journal online, saw this use of Bible verses as more evidence that the Bush administration believed, to Waldman’s dismay, that God sanctioned policies that many Americans found abhorrent.
Let’s take a step back for a moment, though. The Bible, like so many other canonical works, has long been used as a fount of aphorisms.  Quotes are lifted out of context, but the phrases take on new meanings, and come to live a life of their own.  We see such, usually from the King James Version, on cheesy posters of misty scenes (“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help”—which is actually the opposite of the psalmist’s message, you don’t look to the hills and their idols, you look to YHVH), flowery embroidery (“The things which are impossible with men are possible with God”), or the string of lawn signs I see in one neighborhood on my way to work, all warning drivers they may be on the road to hell. And we can see these verses as part of general habit of placing pithy statements from widely known authoritative texts in reports (or articles, or theses, or books) to give them more heft, more legitimacy, and to spark a connection to the reader.
So, one could ask, what’s the big deal?  For those who opposed the Bush-Cheney-Rove regime, anything Rumsfeld might have put on these covers, including nothing, would have been occasion for criticism.  If we deplore a set of policies (and I did so deplore many of the foreign and domestic policies accompanying the Global War on Terror), the policymakers will never be able to dress it up to our satisfaction.
Still, it’s hard to ignore their triteness, and I’m not so much creeped out by the covers as I am angered by the intellectual and religious shallowness they reveal—a shallowness the Bush administration, and apparently many of its supporters, treated as a virtue.
A Pentagon senior intelligence officer and Christian, Major General Glen Shaffer, picked out the verses.  On the first GQ slide you’ll see armed soldiers, presumably praying.  The Bible verse is Isaiah 6:8, “Here I am Lord, send me.”  The sentiment of this clear enough—the soldiers are servants, willingly submitting to undertake an arduous task.  Take the analogy another step, and we get to what Waldman and others find so disagreeable.  They are undertaking the task on behalf of God, not the state.  We could take it one more step and come to the grotesque sense that President Bush is the stand-in for the Lord, though it would be a bit outrageous to believe that the President ever would have made such a claim.
It’s unfortunate that General Shaffer and his approving readers like President Bush didn’t bother at least a little with context.  Thus ironies abound in Shaffer’s selections.  The Isaiah verse is from a book chock full of criticism of the moral decay of God’s chosen people, and predictions of disaster that will result (see Richard Rubenstein’s fascinating exploration of Isaiah in Thus Saith the Lord: The Revolutionary Moral Vision of Isaiah and Jeremiah).
The next slide is a scene atop an aircraft carrier, with lines from Psalm 139: “If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me, O LORD.”  The psalm ends with lines (verses 21-24) that seem contradictory to us today, but it’s a contradiction that I think encapsulated the Bush approach:
Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;  Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me; And lead me in the everlasting way.
Hatred and piety can sit comfortably with one another, and if God is on your side, then it’s not surprising that vindictiveness was the M.O. of the Bush response to political opposition.
Shaffer dips again into Isaiah (5:28) in the third slide, using Isaiah’s description of Assyrian imperial invaders (or whomever God would “whistle for” to punish decadent Judah) to describe US armed forces.  In the fourth, Shaffer juxtaposed a picture of a US tank with lines from Ephesians 6, “Therefore put on the whole armor of God. . .”  This is just too silly for comment.
The rest of the covers are equally cavalier, sophomoric uses of the Bible to suggest a providential role for the US military, and its Commander-in-Chief.  I realize there are people who do believe that the US is (or can be, or should be) a vehicle of God’s will in the world.  But when it comes to foreign policy attitudes, I'm not sure a whole lot of Americans back this or that foreign policy based on a providentialist ideology. A Pew report a few years ago assessed a series of surveys on US values and attitudes related to international affairs, and one conclusion is that “while Americans are clearly nationalistic and quite religious, there is little evidence that either their patriotism or their faith drives public support for the more activist and unilateralist U.S. foreign policy that has fueled anti-Americanism in recent years.” The question remains, though, if it wasn’t jingoism or religious arrogance that led so many Americans to back Bush’s War on Terror, what did? The fear following 9/11, and the politicians and pundits that stoked it?  That’s too simple.  Whatever the reasons, these covers, with a dash of the Bible, didn't demonstrate our leaders' insight, but rather a whopping blindspot.