Michael Gerson tells anti-Muslim Christians: "Freedom of religious worship and expression is essential to human dignity"

Okay, we can have a little more fun with the not-on-Ground Zero not-a-mosque, but this is as far as today's fun goes, because, believe it or not, Michael Gerson has a serious, dare I say eloquent argument to make.

"[T]he purpose of social influence for Christians is not to favor their own faith; it is to serve a view of universal rights and dignity taught by their faith. It is not to advance their own creed; it is to apply that creed in pursuit of the common good. This is what turns religion into a positive social force -- a determination to defend everyone's dignity."

--Michael Gerson, in his WaPo column today, "In mosque

controversies, some Christians undermine their own faith"

by Ken

It's hardly an original observation that the fundamentalists of most religions have more in common with one another than they do with the rest of the population. Sometimes they join in unholy alliance, the way the crackpots of American Christianity and Judiasm have found each other. Sometimes they face off in implacable hatred. Sometimes it seems like a determination made via coin toss.

UH-OH, THE RIGHT-WING JEWISH
LOONS ARE AT IT AGAIN

They're out there blaring that the administration's modest championing of a new round of Middle East peace negotiations will cause Jewish voters to rise in righteous wrath against Democrats in November. Jim Gerstein, of Gerstein/Agne Strategic Communications, has a terrific reality-check piece in Politico ("Here we go again") which concludes: "As Israelis and Palestinians sit down for direct talks, we can be sure that some Jewish hawks will attack President Obama for hurting Israel and some journalists will write about the Jewish threat to punish Obama. And once again, they will both be out of touch with Jewish voters."

I know that Michael Gerson, for all his hard-right ideology, has a streak of genuinely compassionate faith. He often has to engage in fairly wild contortions to keep it from interfering with that hard-right ideology, which makes him for some hard-right-wingers on the squooshy-hard side. Which is why I don't think he's going to get far with the appeal to reason and good faith he sounds in his column today, "In mosque controversies, some Christians undermine their own faith." He's talking to people who have been encouraged by savage apostles of ignorance and hatred -- people very close to Mr. Gerson, and often, I'm sorry to say, including Mr. Gerson -- to curse reason and reality and give heed to their most wildly delusional imaginings.

Still, I have to give Mr. G credit for making the effort.

"A church in Florida," he notes, "is poised to commemorate an act of violence committed in the name of Islam, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with an act of stupidity committed in the name of Christianity, the public burning of the Koran."

This threatened libricide proves little more than the existence of a few attention-seeking crackpots in a continental country -- the natural resource that makes cable news possible. But the Manhattan mosque controversy has exposed a broader, conservative Christian suspicion of mosques and Muslims. Protests against the construction of mosques in California, Tennessee and Wisconsin have often included Christian pastors. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian group, recently wrote: "Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: Each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government."

Mr. G understands that he has to tread carefully here. Whether he believes it or not -- and it may well be that he doesn't -- he's not going to be caught saying that Christian fundamentalists are crackpots. So he finds his own way of insinuating that certain people could argue that it contains a certain strain of crackpottery. He lays it off on (who else?) the liberals, on (to be specific) the God-forsaking New York Times!

The Christian fundamentalist view of Islam bears a striking resemblance to the New York Times' view of Christian fundamentalism -- a simplistic emphasis on the worst elements of a complex religious tradition. Both create a caricature, then assert that the Constitution is under assault by an army of straw men.

Perhaps because he's standing on a solid foundation of liberal-bashing, he feels free to make some breathtakingly knowing observations about Islamic belief which you don't expect ever to hear from an archpundit of even the Squooshy-Hard Right.

The debates within Islam on the nature and application of sharia law, for example, are at least as complex as the debates among Christian theologians on the nature of social justice. And the political application of Islam differs so greatly -- from Saudi Arabia to Mali to Morocco to Bosnia to Tanzania to Detroit -- that it defies easy summary.

Many Christian fundamentalists seem oblivious to the similarity of their own legal and cultural peril. In portions of America -- say San Francisco or Vermont -- conservative Christians are sometimes also viewed as suspicious, illiberal outsiders. Their opinions on gender roles, homosexuality and public morality are viewed as an attack on constitutional values -- much as fundamentalists view the threat from Islam.

I don't count myself as an admirer of Mr. G, whose role putting words in the mouth of G. W. Bush made him one of the country's foremost evangelists for a reign of violent ignorance, fear, and hatred. But the following makes me understand better why he has a corps of apologists. This is outstanding stuff.

"Christian fundamentalists who undermine religious liberty in order to target Muslims are playing a game of intolerance roulett," he writes."That First Amendment might come in handy someday."

But the problem runs deeper than an inability to calculate self-interest. This Christian attitude toward Islam represents a distortion of Christianity itself.

Every religious tradition has two competing visions. First, religion may be a source of tribal identity. This was the norm for centuries in Western history. The Christian church jostled for social power along with other interests, pursuing a tribal agenda at the expense of Jews, heretics at home and Muslims abroad. The goal was to see Christian theological beliefs publicly recognized and favored. This remains a temptation in the United States and a problem in much of the world, where the appeal of the tribe remains strong.

But Christianity, as an Abrahamic faith, sets out another vision -- an assertion of human worth and dignity that transcends tribe and nation. Christianity has accommodated this belief in slow, halting, often hypocritical stages -- a history that should leave Christians tolerant of the slow, halting, hypocritical progress of other traditions. The implications of this shift within Christianity, however, are profound. In light of this belief, the purpose of social influence for Christians is not to favor their own faith; it is to serve a view of universal rights and dignity taught by their faith. It is not to advance their own creed; it is to apply that creed in pursuit of the common good. This is what turns religion into a positive social force -- a determination to defend everyone's dignity.

Freedom of religious worship and expression is essential to human dignity -- which makes blocking the construction of a mosque for religious reasons a violation of Christian belief. And laws preventing the building of churches in Mecca or Riyadh do not make this principle less important here.

Religious tribalism -- dividing the children of light from the children of darkness -- is a problem in many traditions. But a reaction in kind from conservative Christians would manage to undermine their interests and their convictions at the same time.

This seems to me remarkable thinking and writing by any standard. It's too bad that the people it's aimed at have been so steadfastly conditioned by their demagogic mind-controllers against any inclination or even ability to receive it.


MEANWHILE, GENE ROBINSON VIEWS AN ELECTORATE
CONDITIONED BY PUNDITS TO EXPECT QUICK FIXES

"In the punditry business, it's considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it's impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. . . .
"They're in the market for quick and easy solutions that won't hurt a bit. It's easy to blame politicians for selling a bunch of snake oil. But the truth is that all they're doing is offering what the public wants to buy."

-- Eugene Robinson, in his Washington Post column

today, "The spoiled-brat American electorate"

Gene is careful to explain that he isn't making partisan argument. "The refusal of Americans to look seriously at the nation's situation -- and its prospects -- is an equal-opportunity scourge." It bit Republicans in 2006 and 2008, and will likely bite Democrats this year. ("By 2012, it will probably be the GOP's turn to get slapped around again.")

The nation demands the impossible: quick, painless solutions to long-term, structural problems. While they're running for office, politicians of both parties encourage this kind of magical thinking. When they get into office, they're forced to try to explain that things aren't quite so simple -- that restructuring our economy, renewing the nation's increasingly rickety infrastructure, reforming an unsustainable system of entitlements, redefining America's position in the world and all the other massive challenges that face the country are going to require years of effort. But the American people don't want to hear any of this. They want somebody to make it all better. Now.

The president, he writes, " can point to any number of occasions on which he has told Americans that getting our nation back on track is a long-range project." But his campaign stump exhortation, Gene reminds us was to "go change the world," not "Let's go change the world slowly and incrementally, waiting years before we see the fruits of our labor."

And one thing he really hasn't done is frame the hard work that lies ahead as a national crusade that will require a degree of sacrifice from every one of us. It's obvious, for example, that the solution to our economic woes is not just to reinflate the housing bubble. New foundations have to be laid for a 21st-century economy.

He mentions "weaning the nation off its dependence on fossil fuels" (meaning an oil-price increase), having the richest Americans pay higher taxes (because they have so much larger a share of the nation's wealth, and revenue will be needed just to maintain, forget about improving, the infrastructure needed for economic growth), "fixing Social Security for future generations," improving schools, "charting a reasonable path on immigration," and notes,

None of this is what the American people want to hear. They're in the market for quick and easy solutions that won't hurt a bit. It's easy to blame politicians for selling a bunch of snake oil. But the truth is that all they're doing is offering what the public wants to buy.

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