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Terrorism: The Use of Pseudo-Sociology to Foment Cultural Hostility

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One of the lynchpins of the Third Reich was the “science” of eugenics. The conflation of genetics and culture justified an organized assault on disadvantaged minorities that spread to those that spoke out against their annihilation.

I find it hard to escape this precedent in reading Kenneth Krause’s “Religion, Violence and Terrorism” (Skeptic Vol 20, No.1, pp 48-56). The primary defect of Krause’s analysis is to reason backwards from his conclusion, which is militantly anti-religious. This leads to pseudo-sociological analysis that ignores the historical context that inflames conflict between the Muslim world and the West. Moderating those passions is going to require analysis that is both better and more honest than Krause presents.

For example, on page 49, Krause advances David Eller’s theory of violence as a basis for an argument that religion contains all the characteristics that foment violence. However, Krause fails to notice that the characteristics of religion are generically characteristics that cause believers to “expand both the scope and scale of their activities.” In my reading of history, that has included much that must be upheld as good, such as caring for the disadvantaged and speaking out against injustice all over the world.

What matters, then, is what religious leaders actually teach their followers, and whether scripture provides a sound basis for exposing immoral teaching. In substantiating his opinions (pp. 50-52) regarding the uniquely perverse nature of the traditions of Abraham, Krause cherry-picks from the most objectionable passages, failing to recognize that the exhortations he decries, when implemented methodically, are reported in scripture to have resulted in the destruction of the community of believers. Applying the discipline of anthropology, honest treatment of the religious edicts of the Old Testament would also recognize numerous occasions on which God decried the extent to which he suffered from the perfidy of the religious and political elites. This should be taken, by the mature reader, as an indication that human political ambitions corrupted the practice of the religion, which obviously would best be implemented by subordinating scripture to political ends. This is known to have occurred in documented history – so how could we not expect it to have occurred when the elites had complete control of the holy word?

Finally, Krause avoids the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who overthrew the religious justification for violence and eviscerated all dualistic systems of judgment (not only “good and evil”, but all legal codes that purport to categorize us as “guilty” or “innocent”) with edicts that we are to treat every interaction with people as an opportunity to create strength in them. Jesus’s exhortations reiterate the wisdom of the judgment upon Cain: our Darwinian heritage makes moral conduct difficult. Rather than destroying those that fail, we should give them the opportunity to pass on the lessons they have learned.

In summary, Krause’s scriptural analysis of the traditions of Abraham suffers terminally from confirmation bias. He seeks out passages that support his thesis, and ignores all others. Worse, he advances his selections and interpretations as typical dogma, when in fact I have never heard these passages used as moral guidance in any American church, synagogue or mosque. At least in the developed world, the religious have moved on. So should Krause.

The remainder of the article presents survey data that substantiates the oppressive opinions of the populations of largely Muslim nations. The glaring defect of this study is its failure to consider other factors that might contribute to the attitudes expressed by the sampled population. For example, at the recent Skeptics Conference, Ian Morris noted that foraging societies tolerate violence to a far greater degree than do fossil-fuel cultures. Islam is the religion of the poor: many of the nations in the survey data lived at or near foraging levels until last century. That lifestyle was obliterated when a large number of these nations were granted enormous oil wealth, which has given their monarchical elites the means to propagate their social codes in an attempt to secure stability in the face of sophisticated social critiques brought back by youth educated in Western universities. We should not be surprised that these nations, granted sudden and enormous wealth, should use it to propagate their social standards. That includes, as happened during the Spanish Inquisition, support for religious “scholars” willing to corrupt scripture to justify violent oppression (Wahabbism, which foments the most virulent extremism, is a recent construction of the Saudi monarchy). I would argue that the failure to consider this and other social factors (such as the organized attempt by Western-educated elites to uproot Muslim culture in the 20th century) leaves readers of Krause’s article vulnerable to the classic misattribution of “correlation as causation.”

My disappointment is that this shoddy piece of analysis was published by an organization that claims to promote science.

In the Year 2525: Big Science, Big History, and the Far Future of Humanity

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I went out to Pasadena yesterday to Caltech, where the Skeptics Society held its annual conference. The theme was set by Michael Shermer, whose latest book “The Moral Arc”, framed the conversation.

Shermer’s basic premise is that charting the course of science shows that it correlates with an improvement in moral decision-making. I would tend to caution that correlation does not imply causation. But let’s look at how the conference speakers responded to that framing.

The first speaker, Don Prothero, raised an alarm about the dangers of science denial. We are skating on the edge of ecological disaster. Species extinction is occurring at a rate never before seen in the history of the planet, and global climate change threatens human survival as well. Prothero pointed the finger at science deniers who have impeded the implementation of policies such as those pursued by Germany and France to reduce their fossil fuel dependency. But where did the power to extract and consume so much fossil fuel come from, Dr. Prothero? From science, of course. In conversation, I also pointed out to him my sense that the political investments made by the Koch brothers probably reflect a basic understanding of the science of economics.

Ian Morris did not look deeply into the future, but commented on the correlation between social moires and energy consumption in foraging, farming and fossil fuel societies. He noted that the citizens in the last stage consume nearly 100 times as much energy as those in the first stage. Only farming societies tend to accept hierarchical structure, while foraging societies accept violence. The fossil fuel culture has created a kind of “sweet spot” for citizens that are largely free from violence and also allowed personal liberty (although that conclusion seems weaker if we look at what we’ve done to the rest of the animal kingdom – pigs, chickens and cows might beg to differ). The future depends greatly upon discovery of alternative sources of energy.

Jared Diamond framed his comments on the perception of danger against his experiences among the natives of New Guinea. His charming vignettes included the wisdom that parents in New Guinea allow their children choice. While I agree that far too much of our children’s time is prescribed for them, I found his admission that his household ultimately held 150 or so reptilian pets to reflect more an allowance for children to decide for their parents. The overall flow of the presentation, however, seemed to argue against Shermer’s hypothesis: the medical benefits of advanced cultures comes with emotional disassociation and irrational anxiety that is unknown in tribal cultures.

Carol Tavris offered an amusing and enlightening look at gender and sexuality. Mostly it was directed towards disassembly of social stereotypes regarding gender and sexuality. The most significant revelation for the attendees should have been the debunking of studies that suggested that sexual orientation was a biological predisposition rather than a choice. The intervening years have demonstrated that there is no biological factor that determines sexual orientation, and sociologists have described societies that have age groups that engage in homosexuality before entering into hetero adulthoods. Tavris also emphasized that feminine rights (with a focus on the frightening practice of castration and mutilation) depended upon economic opportunity for women. Both observations have significant political consequences, and led to turbid discussions regarding Western cultural imperialism.

John McWhorter was on far safer ground in considering the future of languages. Many languages will die, and attempting to preserve languages that are dying is a lost cause – their structure is simply too irregular for anyone to master who hasn’t learned them from the cradle. In fact, the relative elegance of many modern languages is related to the need to bring adult learners (emigrants) into the social system. The language had to be “dumbed down.” For this reason, McWhorter confidently states that Chinese, although the language spoken by the most people, would not overcome the tide of English. The tonal and contextual subtleties of Chinese make it impossible for an adult to master.

After the lunch break, Shermer and Richard Dawkins had a conversation that was advertised to consider the future of religion, but became rather focused on the suitability of Darwinian theory as a moral weathervane. It was nice for Dawkins to admit that he would allow for an advanced alien species (a type of “God”), but that it would have to have arisen out of evolution. I found the discussion to be frustrating, and stood up in the Q&A to offer that human behavior and evolutionary success is driven by Lamarckian processes (due to the enormous plasticity of the brain, human adults pass traits acquired during their lifetimes on to their children). While competitive selection still applies in human society, attempting to use Darwinian processes to explain human morality is a broken proposition.

Esther Dyson gave humble and uplifting introduction to the work that she is doing in trying to change the systems that cultivate poor health choices in the economically disadvantaged segments of our society. She shied away from any claims to scientific process. I had to stand up and applaud the empathy demonstrated by her choice to feel the pain of these people, and respond by wading in to do something.

My assessment of Leonard Krauss was summed up in person to him. Since I left the field of particle physics in 1990, I have become concerned that physicists talk about mathematical constructs as though they were observed physical fact. Krauss agreed that was an issue, but when I asked what the corrective was, he simply said “people lose their funding.” I did try to introduce some of the concepts I’ve outlined here. The conversation was an experience that hopefully will prepare me to do better in the future.

David Brin was to talk about privacy and security, but ended up developing a philosophical framework for political action. I found his presentation to be fascinating, in that I think that he was actually trying to deal with moral complexity that the others escaped by narrowing their focus. However, it wasn’t terribly scientific: Brin’s claim that developed nations have a “diamond shaped” power structure (a broad middle class) ignores the third-world critique that we’ve merely exported our poverty (globally, the pyramidal structure still applies). Brin did characterize the war on the middle class as an upper-class “putsch”, and considered that a reflection of behavior held over from our Darwinian past. I was heartened by one particular marching order: liberals need to reclaim Adam Smith, whose thinking has been corrupted by the neo-conservatives.

Gregory Benford spoke about the future of space travel. He echoed Prothero with an alarm that if we don’t start pulling our space junk out of orbit, the gateway will close: we won’t be able to launch rockets through the debris generated by colliding fragments. He then considered economic models for resource extraction from the asteroid belt, which are apparently related to long-term (100 million years) plans to boost the earth from its orbit so that it won’t be dried out as the sun heats. As for the prospect for travel to other solar systems, Benford invoked the lack of foresight of Thomas Jefferson, who thought it would take 1000 years for Americans to settle the continent, and the importance of the explorer spirit to human culture: politics, rather than science.

Returning now to the framing set by Shermer, I offer this: science is the study of the behavior of things that lack personality. It has long been recognized that the stepchildren of political and social science struggle because the participants don’t sit still long enough to be studied – introduce a change in the system, and they’ll change their behavior. So while trying to manage morality must be a rational exercise, this conference offered weak indications that scientific practices are going to have an impact. Where the question of the basis of morality was addressed, it was in gross abstractions that were often contradicted by the evidence offered by other speakers.

The lesson that I would hope a skeptic would draw from this is that they should have far more sympathy for the struggles faced by leaders of religious and political organizations. St. Augustine, for example, was a rational philosopher whose thought shaped moral discussion for more than a thousand years. His writings might be worthy of consideration.

The danger of convocations such as the Skeptics’ Conference is that they create an echo chamber. The fact is that most of society cannot keep up with the developments described by these worthy speakers: we lack either the mental capacity or the time. In that context, ritual and mystery are essential and valuable props to social development. So don’t tell Christians that they are unscientific. Tell them that we need intelligent design, and since they are exhorted to be Godly, why not get into the game ourselves?

How Christ Tranforms Evil

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In “Christ is Risen”, Matt Maher encapsulates the message offered by so many celebrants at Easter:

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling over death by death!
Come awake! Come awake!
Come and rise up from the grave!

Oh, death, where is your sting?
Oh, Hell, where is your victory?

It is a message of conquest.

But those that have survived a near-death experience tell us that as they drifted into the light, they saw all their loved ones reaching out to call them forward, and behind them shone the loving embrace of Christ.

Jesus did not conquer death: he entered into our greatest fear and transformed it into a conduit through which love is brought to us.

Understanding that conflict justifies evil, I have been negotiating with sin for the last fifteen years, offering the exhortation that love will not destroy it, but bring it into greatness. In that process, I have been assaulted psychologically, night and day, by people that exercise sin to gain power over others. The struggle has been exhausting.

This morning, I find myself in a different place. I turned the problem around: rather than resisting them, I envisioned the light of Christ shining through me, then through them and onto those that they oppress. The closer they press against me, the closer they come to the light, and the more brightly it shines from them.

Maher begins his song with this exhortation:

Let no one caught in sin remain
Inside the lie of inward shame.
We fix our eyes upon the cross
And run to him who showed great love.

Those that rely upon sin for power run in the other direction, of course, and build their castles to wall out the light of Christ. Death is their final tool – the means by which they weed out those that insist upon loving. Every Christian that keeps his eyes upon the cross defeats that strategy: they make death the means by which Christ enters into the darkness, bypassing all the walls of the citadel.

How does Christ protect his faithful? Because even thinking about bringing harm to a true servant of Christ calls him closer. Those that would sin against the faithful must flee their ramparts into the wilderness.

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus offered this counsel:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
[NIV Matt. 5:38-39]

And for those strong enough, even more:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of heaven.
[NIV Matt. 5:43-45]

What I see now is: it is the miracle of the cross that guarantees the efficacy of this conduct! Death was not vanquished, it is the very tool by which we redeem one another!

The Currency of Understanding

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Sylvia Nasar’s Grand Pursuit traces the history of economic thinkers from Marx to the modern era. I say “thinkers” because Nasar present a series of historical and psychological sketches of those that generated the ideas that most profoundly influence modern public debate about the management of economies. This is not a book for those seeking to understand economics.

But for those involved in public policy debate, I would characterize Grand Pursuit as essential reading. It is one thing to talk abstractly about the relative merits of economic and fiscal policy. It is quite another to confront the historical context and moral concerns that drove the currents of economic thought. During the era that Nasar considers, Western civilization was confronted with profound existential threats. Economics was not about allocating the privileges of wealth – it was about preventing widespread loss of life through mismanagement that led to starvation and/or war.

The success of economics as a science is tied intimately to industrial entrepreneurship – to the process of incremental improvement that successively multiplies the value produced by individual effort. As Nasar documents, it was the observation of this effect that eventually gave economists the courage to believe that society could be liberated from ecological constraints.

In the agricultural era, the value of labor during planting and harvest so far overwhelmed the cost of survival that communities banded together to preserve their members. Parents taught their children almost everything that they needed to survive. Against this cohesion was mounted the vulnerability to environmental and political circumstance (drought or war could destroy the community), and lack of education that slowed innovation. Given the primitive motivations of the populace, economic thought was dominated by Malthusian precepts: any attempt to improve the lot of the lower class would result in increased birth rates, and an inexorable drop in wages to subsistence levels.

In the agricultural era, the stability of currency was paramount: sellers wanted to be certain that the currency they gained from selling grain one year could be recouped for equivalent goods in the next year. When governments abused this trust by printing money, economists concluded that money must be backed back a tangible good, such as gold. When industrialization and capitalism took root, the constraints on money supply choked the pace of investment. It took nearly half a century for economists to respond to the fact that currency was backed, not only by government-held gold reserves, but by the capital goods (machinery and buildings) that supported production, and the education and skills of the workforce.

One of the primary lessons of the history Nasar documents is that financial obligations are secondary to production, and that countries that effectively manage production (to wit: without undermining fiscal stability through inflation) almost always grow out of their obligations. Failure to recognize this opportunity entrained Europe in the terrible hardships following World War One and drove it inevitably to World War Two. (One might argue that we face this same problem today in the debtor nations of the third world.) The second prejudice to be overcome was the idea that each nation could chart independently its economic course. This should have been obvious to the colonial powers, but it was only when WW II ended that Europeans were forced to recognize that they would have to cooperate to ensure access to the resources that industrialization converted to consumer goods.

Nasar begins her survey with Marx and ends with Sen. This brackets the second great threat to the survival of Western liberalism: the proposal that planned economies were the only way to prevent economic collapse. This was not an idle question during the Great Depression. Unemployment depressed earnings, and as prices fell due to lowered demand, the value of savings increased, and the capitalist incentive to invest vanished. The Western economies were confronted with wasteful idleness of their productive capacity, and no means to stimulate demand. It was Keynes and others that encouraged governments to deficit spending and jobs programs that stimulated consumption. That eventually got economies rolling again, or at least it did in Europe – in America, FDR lost his nerve in 1937, and full economic recovery did not occur until the nation was forced to rearm under the threat of German and Japanese aggression.

The lesson of this history is that governments do not need to control all aspects of the economy. As long as leaders ensured demand sufficient to stimulate investment, individual initiative will produce the triple benefits of innovation, growth and – as falling prices outpaced population growth – increased wealth. The centrally planned economies of the East (principally Russia and China) were repudiated not by military power, but the basic laws of fiscal probity and industrial growth.

While Nasar does not articulate clearly the essential points of economic theory, that perhaps is just as well. The history makes it obvious that the greatest economists were pragmatists, not dogmatists. They were concerned principally with how things worked, not with abstract principle. They were driven by the desire to prevent, manage and recover from crises that political and economic parochialism wrought upon Western civilization.

I believe that this is why Nasar ends her survey with the economic moralism of Sen. The great thinkers of economics were successful because they cared enough to commit themselves relentlessly to study of the systems that secured the well-being of their countrymen. They confronted hardship, and felt deeply the need to overcome it. One would hope that their conclusions – that wealth can survive only when it is a tide that lifts all boats – would be appreciated better by economic and financial decision makers who have yet to have to face such crises. Else, as Santayana famously observed: “Those that cannot recall history are doomed to repeat it.”

Bibi, Stay Home

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I wrote previously about the balance of powers problem in the federal government. As Congress continues to refuse to act on the pressing issues confronting the nation, President Obama has chosen to take executive action under existing laws to mitigate the developing crises in competitiveness (education), immigration and global climate change. The Republican-held Congress continues to complain.

While I believe that the House of Representatives under Boehner “dost protesteth too much” – after all, they have the opportunity to pass legislation – it seems more and more obvious that they pursue an agenda driven by narrow political calculation. I see the shadow of Karl Rove still lurking in the background. Rove was the campaign adviser that filtered for political impact all Cabinet decisions in W’s first term. He or his ilk appear to be doing the same for the Congress.

This began with the “poison pill” terms in the first-term budget negotiations that preserved high-income tax breaks. It continues with leaving Obama to wrestle with the nation’s intractable problems, and crying “foul” on separation of powers whenever a Republican constituent has an ox gored. And it proceeds now with a clear trespass on the President’s foreign policy remit with the invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to speak before the Congress.

Netanyahu is involved in his own political shenanigans at home. Prior to his election as prime minister, Israel was the target of frequent suicide bombing attacks. The terrorist attacks were the asymmetrical Palestinian response to ongoing Israeli settlement of the occupied territories. The stupidity of the strategy was evidenced in Netanyahu’s election in 2000, as the Israeli public eventually accepted his long-established “greater Israel” policy as the only way to restore internal security. However, years of secure living and the growing problem of domestic intimidation by Orthodox Jews is causing the Israeli public to broaden their concerns, and think fundamentally about justice. Raising the specter of Iranian attack preserves the political psychology that brought Netanyahu into office.

Israel has benefited from the action of both US presidents to serve in the 21st century. The removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq ended a bounty program that paid $30,000 to the families of suicide bombers. US-led global sanctions against Iran have also prevented an end to Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region. John Kerry has already made clear that the U.S. was motivated to a great extent by concerns for Israeli security, and Netanyahu’s panicked protests against diplomatic reconciliation between the US and Iran seems untrusting.

What other issues could be driving Netanyahu’s move? Obama has embarrassed him on at least one occasion in memory – letting comments regarding Netanyahu’s honesty slip out to the press during an open-mike chat with the French President. The rise of a respectable Palestinian counter-part in Mahoud Abbas has allowed the US to apply pressure against Israel to bring concessions to the negotiating table. (The lack of such concessions continues to place Abbas in danger from Palestinian extremists, making him dependent upon Israeli security, and thus undermining his authority.)

But the pro-Israel vote in America includes the historically Democratic Jews, and as we saw in 2000, that vote is enough to swing key states. So Netanyahu and Boehner have common cause in this engagement: embarrass Demcratic Foreign Policy to improve Republican chances for the 2016 presidential elections, and reinforce the ability of Israel to be the tail that wags America’s Middle Eastern policy.

Given this complicated political calculus, Netanyahu would be best advised to stay home, pursuing his agenda in coordination with the Administration’s Foreign Policy team. If this issue becomes a Republican talking point, placing the Jewish vote as a token to trade in the 2016 presidential election is going to reduce its strength over the long run. This is reflected in the decision by Democratic Representatives of Jewish heritage to boycott his speech. Once the Jewish vote is divided, there is less and less reason for any presidential candidate to cater to the concerns of Israel, while currently they get the best of both worlds: respected collaborators for Democratic presidents, and a justification for Republican hawkishness.

Church and State

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President Obama fanned the flames of controversy when, at breakfast with Muslim leaders, he remarked that Christianity had a history of injustice that should be cautionary when characterizing movements such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The specific examples he cited were the Crusades, the Inquisition and slavery in America.

How does each of these examples relate to the effort to create an Islamic State in the Middle East?

The Crusades

The Crusades were a complex political effort. The laws of inheritance in Europe meant that all the younger sons of the nobility were unlanded, and thus unable to provide for a noble wife. As a result, Europe was embroiled in internecine strife, to a degree that the Papacy at one point threatened to excommunicate the nobility if the bloodshed did not cease.

In this context, the Emperor of Constantinople, in whom leadership of both Church and State were gathered, was facing Muslim aggression. Again, the politics was complex: the Emperor was a tyrant, and faced internal dissent both from Christian “heretics” and Jews. The Emperor pled to the Rome for assistance, and Urban, seeing the possibility of reuniting the two halves of Christendom, agreed. Of course, this was also an outlet for the unlanded nobility to attain honors and wealth.

The first of the Crusades was a successful military effort, but revealed its misconceived origins. The Jews fought against the Crusaders, which led to pogroms against the “elder brothers” that Europe had accepted as representatives of their nation. The castles gained were impossible to support logistically from Europe, and ruled by the most aggressive of the European knights, men who insisted on attacking passing Muslim caravans. When the Caliph refused, on Islamic grounds, to retaliate except when the raiders were attacking, he was overthrown by Saladdin, a military slave, who began a concerted effort to conquer all of Christendom.

Back in Europe, the organizational strength of the Catholic Church led to a fascination with Christian ceremony and piety among the nobility. This reached its peak in France, where King Philip decided to mount a crusade as a proof of piety. The logistics were poorly conceived, and the mission ended in disaster. The last of the Crusades, in complete contradiction of Urban’s original intent, ended with the sack of Constantinople itself.

So the lesson I see here is: don’t mix religion and politics.

The Inquisition

The Inquisition is often spoken of as a single movement, but study reveals that the character of an “inquisition” depended upon the political context.

The worst excesses of inquisition occurred when political leaders began to challenge the organizational power of the Church. Again, this was a complex problem: the Church had benefited from the instability of the European nobility, and so had acquired huge amounts of land and wealth. They used religious authority to protect those lands. As the nobility began to establish independent systems of law and institutions of learning, the more aggressive among them focused on the practical opportunity of the weak Church military. The hypocrisy of many religious leaders also led them to question the authenticity of their claim to the lands held for Christ.

The most horrific inquisitions occurred in Spain and France. Following the Muslim invasion, the crown of Spain holed up in the Pyrenees. When the Islamic world rejected scientific thinking, advances in military technology eventually gave the king the upper hand in the struggle. Sweeping out of the mountains with the fire of religious purity, the king set out to purge Spanish civilization of Muslim collaborators. As in the Middle East, this included many Jewish nobles, who had benefited by Muslim occupation. The king forced them to Christianize their names and convert. Those that did not were stripped of their titles.

The mechanisms of this inquisition were horrific, and that was recognized by the Pope. A papal decree was issued warning the king to cease the program. The king responded with a threat to reform the church in Spain with himself as its head. Rome, for reasons among which should be considered to provide relief to those under indictment, choose to retract its decree and remain active in Spain. The king pushed his advantage by posting Borgia to Rome. The methods used by Borgia to obtain the papacy reflect more the guidance of Machiavelli than Christ.

The prior situation in France was similarly complicated. The French king was in a struggle against the independent southern nobility. The region was also distinguished by its Catharism, a schismatic sect that upheld feminine spirituality and the renunciation of worldly concerns. Rome was an active collaborator in the purge of the region, but was goaded by the murder of its legate by a rebellious noble, Raymond of Toulouse. I do remark that about this time the king invaded Rome and transferred the papacy to Avignon. Obviously, the balance of power in Europe was shifting. Most Cathars chose to convert to Catholicism: those that did not were hanged or burned at the stake.

The French and Spanish Inquisitions bracketed the Medieval Inquisition. Again, this was a complicated situation. Prosecution of heresy was performed under civil as well as Church law, and Rome often found that the proceedings were manipulated to benefit the civil authorities. In an attempt to prevent executions and to ensure that heretics received correct Christian teaching, the papacy attempted to take control of prosecution of heresy. Some assert that the mission saved thousands of lives.

So the lesson I see here is: don’t mix politics and religion.

Slavery in America


Obama made the claim that Christianity was used to “justify” slavery. While not having studied the matter deeply, I have never heard anyone claim that the slave masters looked into the Bible and found a command to subjugate the peoples of Africa to slavery. Yes, slavery was mentioned as a common practice in the Bible, but it also came with injunctions against mistreatment. Sympathy and counsel to the slave is given in a charming fashion in the story of Naaman [2 Kings 5], whose humble servants convinced their violence-prone master to accept the guidance of Elisha, and thus to receive healing.

This sense of slaves as part of the owner’s family is contradicted by the zeal and determination shown by God in freeing his people from Egypt. Though jilted by Joseph and his family, who became prominent political figures in Pharaoh’s circle, God heeds the cries of the Israelites under the foreman’s lash. Obviously, God acted in a way consistent with justice.

My sense, then, is that the Bible was used to rationalize the corrupt system of slavery in the American South by those that profited by it. They were eventually beaten down, just as Pharaoh was beaten down. Of course, racism is still strong among all the survivors of that system, but Obama did not mention racism – he spoke of slavery.

So the lesson that I see here is: don’t mix economics and religion.

The Lessons of Christ


The Republican Party likes to draw upon the authority of religion in its legislative program. This has led to some interesting policy contradictions in a party committed both the Christian action and laissez-faire economics. Indiana recently passed a law allowing the state to contract with organizations that require adherence from their employees. You would think that they would prefer those institutions to demonstrate the alignment of those precepts by succeeding against all comers in the open market, and so to be uninterested in government contracts.

To the discerning reader, the Bible gives clear testimony regarding the effects of the mixing of politics and religion. Samuel counsels against the anointing of a king, but relents in a “law of natural consequences” demonstration. While the wisdom and grace of God had guided the nation through trouble unscathed, with the creation of a monarchy, the nation was riven by internecine strife, forsook its covenant, and was eventually destroyed by the Assyrians.

With the return to Canaan, the process is repeated. Jesus finally comes along to counsel “render unto Caesar” and to demolish the authority of the law that had been perverted to make wealth a substitute for actual piety. Dashing the hopes of his Apostles, he renounces an earthly kingdom and submits to destruction at the hands of the authorities of his day. His resurrection was proof that the paternity of God promises greatness that no king can equal.

Christians should understand political systems as a temporary mechanism used to protect against exploitation. Such claims always have an aura of subjectivity: the rich man confident of his contributions to the general well-being may consider taxation to be a form of “exploitation.” Conflicting claims can only be resolved face-to-face, as happened to John McNamara in India. However, when the era of Christ’s reign occurs, the openness of Christ’s heart will make resolution of these claims immediate and obvious to those involved. That era will manifest only when we stop heeding the political philosophies of men, and trust the “still, quiet voice” that talks directly into our hearts.

So the lesson of Christ is that in the face of personal weakness, attempting to legislate justice is a fool’s errand. The Christian path is to expose corruption, and then to heal the victims, thereby disempowering those that use fear to exploit the weak.

So the lesson of Christ is: don’t mix politics and religion.

The Lessons of Islam


Following the death of Mohammed (pbuh), the Islamic Ummah went through a period of upheaval as it assumed the responsibilities of state management. Corruption was rampant. The Eleven Followers of Mohammed (pbuh) tried to restore the integrity of the Ummah, but were systematically destroyed. This is the essence of the Shia-Sunni split, with the Shias coming out on the losing end of the argument. It was the Sunni Muslims in Baghdad that mounted the era of Muslim conquest, although ultimately Islam proved to be a fig-leaf for a sequence of conquerors of diverse nationalities, including Ughurs and Turks.

In the service of celebrating the martial accomplishments of the conquerors, the state-supported Imams glorified and justified their atrocities (as can also be seen in the Bible, with the Babylonian Chronicles a re-write of the disparaging Kings). These nationalist paeans are now held by some as a higher authority than the Qur’an itself, in which Mohammed (pbuh) inveighs against violence unless under immediate attack.

In the modern era, we can see the disastrous consequences of mixing politics and religion in the extremism generated by Saudi Wahabbism and militancy throughout the world when Islamic practices are enforced by the state (as by the Taliban in Afghanistan).

So the lesson of Islam is: don’t mix politics and religion.

Wisdom from the Bully Pulpit?


I obviously find Obama’s comments to lack nuance. Religious history shows that religious states always yield to corruption. Worse, ISIS doesn’t appear to have ever been a manifestation of Mohammed’s (pbuh) moral principles. However, I would agree that nations that profess to be Christian have also failed to practice the moral principles of Christ.

As a moral imperative, I’d like the President to exhort Islamic leaders to renounce state-enforced religion. And I’d like him to remind Christians that legislation of morality has an ugly history in the Bible, not excluding the crucifixion of the man we hold as our Savior.

God granted us free will. In the exercise of that will, we will make mistakes, hurting ourselves and others. This is the path of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that we choose in Eden. The greatness of our God comes in patient forgiveness and healing.

For Christians hoping for the reign of Christ, this is not an idle matter. Jesus died for our sins, but his compassion does not stop there. A sin is a sin because it leaves a wound in our eternal souls. When Jesus returns, it will be for the healing. So long as we continue to attempt to prevent sin through the coercive power of the state, his power can only be manifested against the institutions of the state.

Yes, competent administration of the state is essential, but should not be linked to manifestation of his ultimate aims, for his spirit will unite all peoples, and wash away fear with healing. Provide private support for your church and its charitable efforts among the less fortunate, and let the spread of the Holy Spirit make the state irrelevant.