Old Time Religion

Genesis of the War on Christmas

21
5 months ago
by dcpetterson in
The 1940 National Community Christmas Tree, li...

The 1940 National Christ­mas Tree

I’ve writ­ten before about the impact of reli­gion on our nation and its poli­cies. The pol­i­tics of abor­tion, birth con­trol, rape, global warm­ing, sci­ence in the class­room, school prayer, same-​​sex mar­riage, genetic and stem-​​cell research, even war and the arts, all are sub­ject to reli­gious pres­sures. That’s just scratch­ing the sur­face of the cul­tural issues into which reli­gion has inserted its fin­gers. Amer­ica is a nation awash in reli­gious sym­bol­ism and filled with the influ­ence of reli­gious movements.

Every year at this time, we are treated to com­plaints about the “War on Christ­mas”. In a nation per­ceived as being increas­ingly diverse and sec­u­lar, a sub­set of con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians and enter­tain­ers mount an annual pub­lic­ity cam­paign decry­ing an alleged denial of — or even hos­til­ity toward — Chris­t­ian sym­bol­ism. Set aside for a moment the First Amend­ment aspects of whether pub­lic funds should or should not be used for pub­lic reli­gious dis­plays. Let’s ignore the preva­lence of Christ­mas movies, TV spe­cials, com­mer­cials with Christ­mas themes, music on radio sta­tions, spe­cial sales in most stores, the National Christ­mas Tree on the National Mall, and so on. The com­plaint really isn’t about a sup­posed dearth of pub­lic dis­plays of Christ­mas imagery. There’s some­thing deeper happening.

(more…)

The Problem of Evil

94
6 months ago
by dcpetterson in ,
All About Evil

All About Evil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As I often do, I’m going to use my Sun­day col­umn to divert us from the con­cerns of the moment. Rest assured, tomor­row Log­a­rchism will return to 24–7 cov­er­age of the upcom­ing elec­tion. View today’s arti­cle as the final pit stop before the polit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of the Indi­anapo­lis 500 roars to its end.

What I offer today is a per­spec­tive on a ques­tion at the root of all our pol­i­tics, all our cul­ture, all our social struc­tures. From a sin­gle com­ment buried in a heated polit­i­cal debate, there is cos­mic sig­nif­i­cance. We can use it to con­sider how the per­ilous issue of rape and abor­tion relates to the nature of our very selves. From there, we can per­haps return to the ques­tions of the moment, with a new and larger sense, and recon­sider our direc­tion as indi­vid­u­als, as a soci­ety, as a nation — per­haps as a species.

Last Thurs­day, in response to an arti­cle by Monotreme,  one of our Gen­tle Read­ers pro­vided a link to a blog post at National Review Online. I thought the arti­cle wrong on all counts, but par­tic­u­larly the­o­log­i­cal ones. It gave me an excuse to write an arti­cle I’ve been intend­ing to do for a long time.

The imme­di­ate topic was a com­ment by Indi­ana Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­ial can­di­date Richard Mour­dock on the thorny issues of rape, preg­nancy, and abor­tion, and the rela­tion­ship to pol­i­tics and the­ol­ogy and indi­vid­ual con­science. Though I pro­foundly dis­agree with Mourdock’s answer — and, as an unashamed par­ti­san, I would glee­fully take advan­tage of it — as a the­olo­gian I need to admit it was a thought­ful and con­sid­ered response. There also are fur­ther depths here to explore, depths which reach to the heart of every­thing related to pol­i­tics and social jus­tice, eco­nom­ics and free­dom. (more…)

Passionate Christ?

23
7 months ago
by dcpetterson in

We’ll take a break today from elec­tion pol­i­tics. It’s not every day ancient doc­u­ments make the news. This past week, Karen L. King, a pro­fes­sor of early Chris­tian­ity at Har­vard Divin­ity School, announced a tiny papyrus frag­ment dat­ing from the fourth cen­tury CE. It is a por­tion of a longer text, a work which has been dubbed “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” You can find Pro­fes­sor King’s paper on the dis­cov­ery here.

What rel­e­vance has this to a polit­i­cal blog? To the extent that our soci­ety is shaped by reli­gious beliefs, it may indi­cate the fragility of that soci­ety. But per­haps more impor­tantly, it sheds light on the dif­fer­ences between things the pub­lic gen­er­ally knows, and things known by spe­cial­ists in a field. When that field seems to have lit­tle rela­tion­ship to every­day life (think: astro­physics), the pub­lic can per­haps be excused from know­ing all that much. But when the topic is con­cerned with the way we live and the way we shape our gov­ern­ments and our economies (think: global warm­ing) the igno­rance is dan­ger­ous, and allows for manipulation.

Among some of the media, Pro­fes­sor King’s newly-​​released text has caused a bit of sen­sa­tion, and you might have seen breath­less cov­er­age. There is evi­dence of the begin­nings of a small indus­try ded­i­cated to debunk­ing the frag­ment as being either or forgery or some other type of dis­taste­ful fraud. Yet for schol­ars of early Chris­t­ian his­tory, it isn’t ter­ri­bly shock­ing. It’s sim­ply one more indi­ca­tion of the com­plex­ity and diver­sity of early Chris­tian­ity, some­thing his­to­ri­ans of the era are famil­iar with, but the gen­eral pub­lic is not. (more…)

The World in Politics

48
9 months ago
by dcpetterson in
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - SEPTEMBER 26: A part of th...

A scroll from the Dead Sea

There is so much inter­est­ing news this week, its hard to pick just one thing to write about. Hir­ing is up, the Dow Jones Indus­trial Aver­age is up…but, para­dox­i­cally, so is unem­ploy­ment. Since early 2010, the econ­omy has added over five mil­lion private-​​sector jobs, which have been par­tially off­set by a loss of over 660,000 pub­lic sec­tor jobs, for a net gain of about 4.5 mil­lion. The Fed­eral Reserve is keep­ing inter­est rates low, which is caus­ing some con­ser­v­a­tive econ­o­mists to con­tinue fear­ing infla­tion (for which there is, so far, no evi­dence).

Mitt Rom­ney returned from his whirl­wind tour, which received mixed reviews. He returned in time for ter­ri­ble reac­tions to his tax plan. The non­par­ti­san Tax Pol­icy Cen­ter called it “math­e­mat­i­cally impos­si­ble,” which is really not quite what we expected from a finan­cial genius like Rom­ney. Per­haps this is why he doesn’t want to release his tax returns: maybe he can’t add.

Speak­ing of con­fused sig­nals, The Dark Knight Rises con­tin­ues to do well at the­aters, despite the tragedy in Col­orado. Talk has died down about whether there was any inten­tional con­nec­tion between Bane and Bain.

But for me, per­haps the most impor­tant of cur­rent events is about to hap­pen late tonight. NASA’s lat­est Mars rover, named Curios­ity, is sched­uled to land on the Red Planet about 1:30 AM Mon­day morn­ing, East­ern time. (more…)

Not Why We Do It

35
10 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Richard Feyn­n­man

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some prac­ti­cal results, but that’s not why we do it.

― Richard P. Feynman

Feyn­man could have been say­ing that about any of the sciences.

I have a per­sonal obses­sion to study sci­ence in gen­eral, and space sci­ence in par­tic­u­lar. This mad­ness has been with me for as long as I can remem­ber. I already felt it on Sep­tem­ber 12th, 1962, when, at the age of six, I saw Pres­i­dent Kennedy on tele­vi­sion, speak­ing as if directly to me. That was the day he com­mit­ted Amer­ica to lit­er­ally reach for the Moon. I’ve never been the same. Nei­ther has the rest of the world.

Log­a­rchism is a polit­i­cal blog. What has my obses­sion with space to do with pol­i­tics? I’ve writ­ten about this before. Pol­i­tics, like sci­ence, some­times gives prac­ti­cal results, but that’s not why we do it. Sure, prac­ti­cal­ity is the rea­son we give our­selves. Hon­estly though, how much of the rhetoric asso­ci­ated with pol­i­tics, how much of the game play­ing and the issues that drive peo­ple to the polls, has actual prac­ti­cal value? Some, yes, but birth cer­tifi­cates? See­ing Rus­sia? Really?

Many of these things serve other pur­poses. The real value of space sci­ence is not prac­ti­cal, unless learn­ing about your­self, about real­ity, about how the uni­verse actu­ally works, is prac­ti­cal. (more…)

Myth Understanding

36
10 months ago
by dcpetterson in
Film poster for The Lord of the Rings: The Fel...

Mod­ern Myth

… some things that should not have been for­got­ten were lost. His­tory became leg­end. Leg­end became myth. And for two and a half thou­sand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge…

— Gal­adriel, from the Walsh, Boyens, and Jack­son screen­play of The Lord of the Rings: The Fel­low­ship of the Ring

Last week, I dis­cussed the rift that exists in West­ern soci­ety between our cul­ture and our dom­i­nant reli­gions. The rift mat­ters, because it means the those reli­gions can’t per­form the func­tions in our soci­ety that a reli­gion his­tor­i­cally per­formed. This has given rise to a mis­un­der­stand­ing of the pur­pose of reli­gion, and a mis­use of reli­gion within our national conversation.

It is vital to under­stand this. For rea­sons I alluded to last week, and will expand on here, it may be impos­si­ble to ban­ish reli­gion from the pub­lic sphere. If this is true, then under­stand­ing what reli­gion is sup­posed to do can help us pre­vent it from being used inap­pro­pri­ately. (more…)

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