More on Linker, ‘The Theocons’ & Baumann
The New Republic‘s new blog, Open University, which is written by approximately seven thousand academics, has taken note of Paul Baumann’s Washington Monthly review of Damon Linker‘s The Theocons, which I mentioned earlier this week.
Columbia University historian Casey N. Blake recommends the review, picking up on Paul’s description of Linker’s argument as “tendentious and “frequently cartoonish.”
More important, Baumann makes the case that Linker’s endorsement of a purely secularist approach to politics actually plays into the hands of Neuhaus and others who insist that an allegiance to the Republican party follows naturally from religious commitments.
Fellow Open University contributor, and frequent contributor to Commonweal, Alan Wolfe, doesn’t agree.
I wrote a blurb for Linker’s book because it is alarming rather than alarmist. It should never be put in the same category as Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming or Kevin Phillip’s American Theocracy.
Linker has managed to write a book that is quite appropriately critical of a sectarian religious figure without dismissing religion as backward or misguided. I don’t recognize The Thecons in Bauman’s review.
Atlantic Monthly associate editor Ross Douthat, who contributes to the First Things blog, not only recognizes Linker’s book in the review, but declares Paul’s take to be “definitive”—“at least for people who don’t necessarily agree with what Richard John Neuhaus stands for.”
Presumably this includes some of you.
How about that! Grant quoting FirstThings Douhout for praising Bauman’s take on the Neocons. I go with Wolfe’s position. Whatever else he is, Neuhaus is not harmless. And Weigel and Novak ARE minor compared to him.
What about this promo for Linker’s book:
Do you believe the federal government should be channeling billions of tax dollars a year to churches and religious organizations?
* Do you believe legally available contraception is producing “a culture of death” in the United States?
* Do you believe that women’s liberation is a morally pernicious assault on the natural order of things?
* Do you believe that moral education should be used to inculcate disgust at homosexuality?
* Do you believe America is a “sacred enterprise” with a providential mission to enforce divinely sanctioned order in the world?
* Do you believe the nation’s judges are bringing about the “end of democracy”—and that overthrowing the government to forestall judicial tyranny would be an example of “morally justified revolution”?
* Do you believe that the United States is—and should remain—a Christian nation?
The theocons answer YES to all of these questions. >>
Those Theocons Wolfe might recognize.
Baumann’s review very appropriately takes issue with Linker’s claim that the explicit disavowal of religious-based moral claims should be a prerequisite for entering into political debate. It’s a curious rule that would severely reduce the scope of political debate on both the left and the right. And, as Baumann also points out, it’s especially puzzling why someone with that view would work at a religious periodical, as Linker did for several years.
Some people just change their mind on important topics. Others, and Linker seems to be a good example, announce their new opinions in such overheated rhetoric that it raises further questions. Perhaps they feel they can be recognized as especially perceptive if they warn of Savonarola when others are complacent.
I’m an admirer of Father Neuhaus. It would be unfortunate if the current controversy obscures the fact that his writings have much that is interesting and provocative on a wide range of topics that have no direct political relevance.
The text below is taken from Robert Orsi’s “Between Heaven and Earth” and perhaps gives some cogent reasons for Linker’s view. Very provocative, I would say.
pg 191
The work of the discipline in constituting itself this way has had grave
social consequences beyond the academy. By inscribing a boundary between
good and bad religions at the very foundation of the field, religious
studies enacts an important cultural discipline. There is no end to human
religious creativity (a comment that has nothing to do with whether this
is a positive thing or not). One would have to look to the staggering
varieties and complexities of what humans have made of sexuality to find
another site of explosive and inventive activity. Yet it has been the impulse of religious studies since its inception to impose closure and discipline
on religion, to control and contain this complexity. When the Branch
Davidian compound was incinerated at Waco, Texas, in April 1993,
much was made of the failure of the government and of federal law enforcement
officials to recognize the religious character of leader David
Koresh’s movement. It was not as widely noted that the government’s
failure paralleled the limitations of religious studies, which has long offered
an authoritative map on religious experience that excluded such a
“marginal” group.
Any approach to religion that foregrounds ethical issues as these are
now embedded in the discipline obstructs our understanding of religious
idioms because religion at its root has nothing to do with morality.
Religion does not make the world better to live in (although some forms of
religious practice might); religion does not necessarily conform to the
creedal formulations and doctrinal limits developed by cultured and circumspect
theologians, church leaders, or ethicists; religion does not unambiguously
orient people toward social justice. Particular religious idioms
can do all of these things. The religiously motivated civil rights movement is a good example of a social impulse rooted in an evangelical
faith and dedicated to a more decent life for men and women. But however
much we may love this movement and however much we may prefer
to teach it (as opposed to the “cultic” faith of Jonestown or the “magical”
beliefs of “popular” religion) this is not the paradigm for religion,
nor is it the expression of religion at some idealized best. There is a quality
to the religious imagination that blurs distinctions, obliterates boundaries-
especially the boundaries we have so long and so carefully erected
within the discipline-and this can, and often does, contribute to social
and domestic vioence, not peace.
Religion’is often enough cruel and dangerous,
and the same impulses that result in a special kind of compassion
also lead to destruction, often among the same people at the same time.
Theories of religion have largely served as a protection against such truths about religion
It is the challenge of the discipline of religious studies not to stop at the
border of human practices done in the name of the gods that we scholars
find disturbing, dangerous, or even morally repugnant, but rather to enter into the otherness of religous practices in search of an understanding of their human ground”
Sorry about the name “bolin”—it got in there amidst my difficulties of scanning etc…