Look at the Bird
And now…the third and final winner of the first annual Parenting Beyond Belief Column Competition: Robbin Dawson’s “Look at the Bird.” Thanks again to all who participated!
Look at the Bird
by Robbin Dawson
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. —Richard Feynman
“What’s the matter, babe?”
We were at a bowling alley for the birthday party of my son’s friend, Joe. My son, Ethan, was walking toward me with tears welling.
I met him halfway, scanned him for goose eggs, then began examining his fingers. When 7 year-olds are bowling, there are some things in the alley that can break.
“No, it’s not that!” He wrenched his hand from mine. I followed him to some nearby chairs. He crossed his arms over the back of his seat and rested his chin atop. A few tears slid down his cheeks.
We sat quietly for a few minutes.
“Joe said I’m not his best friend.”
Wow…hmm…really?
At that time, Joe and Ethan were inseparable. Their usual mode of greeting involved Joe running across the playground screaming, “Eetthhaaaaaannnnn!” before they tackle-hugged. The two would then thoroughly vet each playscape while sharing the milestones that had occurred since their last meeting.
Certainly, they each had other friends. Certainly, friendships changed and shifted. I just hadn’t seen this coming, and neither had my son.
“He said that,” Ethan sniffled and blew out a breath. “He said that Jesus is his best friend.”
Ah. Now that made more sense.
I picked quarters out of my purse and motioned toward a vending machine in the arcade. While Ethan chugged his cold drink, I selected a pool cue from a rack on the wall and rolled it across a table.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m judging how straight this cue stick is.” (It wobbled across the felt like a lady wearing one stiletto.) I was just about to challenge Ethan to a game, when he appeared at my side with another cue to test.
I explained eight ball, taught him how to hold a cue and helped him break. There is something inherently satisfying in the sound and feel of breaking. I racked the balls several more times for him, ostensibly for practice.
Two turns in, I tested the waters. “Joe seemed to like the Bionicle you gave him.”
“Yeah.” Ethan’s tone was matter-of-fact. “He’s been wanting Toa Hordika Vakama for a long time.”
“Oh. I guess that’s something a friend would know.” I paused to prepare my innocent, casual tone. “I wonder if he’ll let Jesus play with it.”
Ethan looked up from his shot, one eyebrow raised.
“What?” I shrugged. “I share my Bionicles with my friends.”
“Mama! You don’t have Bionicles!” He resumed lining up his next shot with entertaining concentration.
“True. But if I had Bionicles, I would let my friends play with them. My bug collecting boxes, too. I might even let them play with that goop in a jar that makes farting noises.”
We giggled. Then we talked about what makes our friends our friends. Enjoyable conversation, shared interests and helping each other out were high on both of our lists.
I was just about to bring the talk full circle, back to Jesus, when Ethan did it for us.
He laid his pool cue on the table. “I know I’m still Joe’s best real friend—you know, his best people friend. It just made me feel bad when he said that I was second.”
Several months prior, he’d asked me to refrain from hugs and kisses in public. Alone in the arcade nook, he accepted both without complaint.
We continued our game. In between helping him visualize angles and realizing that my skills had atrophied to embarrassing, I did my level best to explain the notion of a personal god and why anyone might refer to a god as a “friend.”
“Do you believe that?” he asked.
“No, I don’t.”
“Me either.”
“Oh?”
“No. I mean, you can’t see God, and you can’t hear God.” A light bulb flicked on. “I’m going to try praying tonight.”
I sensed a chance to inject methodology. “What would your hypothe…”
“I got one!” he yelled. He had indeed managed to sink a ball in a corner pocket.
“Great shot!” I did not point out that the ball was mine, or that the cue ball had followed it.
“Mama, can I go back now?”
“Of course.”
I couldn’t help but smile. We would get to fuller explanations of others’ religious beliefs. We would visit places of worship. He would eventually decide for himself.
At that moment, though, watching the bird and seeing what it did seemed the most age-appropriate, educational approach possible.
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ROBBIN DAWSON lives on a tiny mountain in upstate South Carolina with her illustrator/cartoonist husband and their two fabulous kids. She bid farewell to corporate accounting in 2004 to home school her children, and co-founded an inclusive support group. When she’s not out exploring the world with her kids, she’s usually reading or spending quality time with her computer.
Boy, the stuff I don’t know about Islam
I know just enough about Islam to embarrass myself at Ramadan parties. Half of what I learn confirms Islam’s common ground (good and bad) with Judaism and that other one.
That common ground is especially fun when evangelical grandma takes the Belief-o-Matic Quiz and learns she’s 70 percent Muslim.
Then there are the differences, and they can go pretty deep. While cruising a webpage titled Effective Islamic Parenting, I came across this intriguing difference in a list of “General Laws of Development”:
An infant child comes into the world perfectly good and only becomes other than perfectly good while growing into adulthood due to the influences upon him/her during their years of development.
Compare to a passage I’ve quoted before from evangelical radio minister John MacArthur in his book Successful Christian Parenting:
The truth is that our children are already marred by sin from the moment they are conceived. The drive to sin is embedded in their very natures. All that is required for the tragic harvest is that children be allowed to give unrestrained expression to those evil desires.
In other words, children do not go bad because of something their parents do. They are born sinful, and that sinfulness manifests itself because of what their parents do not do.…There’s only one remedy for the child’s inborn depravity: The new birth — [to be ‘born again’].
Anyone out there with enough knowledge of Islam to confirm that it does not include a doctrine of inherent human sinfulness? If so, it’s a pretty fundamental difference, and one I did not know.
MoL Flashback: Where thanks are due
(First appeared on November 19, 2007.)
Thanksgiving — one of my very favorite holidays — is mentioned twice in Parenting Beyond Belief. “There should be no difficulty in secularly observing a holiday dedicated to gratitude,” I wrote in “Losing the Holy and Keeping the Day” :
“We can express to each other our thankfulness for each other, for our good fortune, and for life itself. No eavesdropping deity required. There is an additional opportunity to note that the Puritan pilgrims were pursuing the kind of freedom of religious observance to which secularists should be devoted – fleeing harassment and religious persecution in England and heading to the New World where they were free at last to burn witches. Okay, leave that part out.”
The book explores the issue of gratitude a bit further, naming it one of the “Seven Secular Virtues”:
The most terrible moment for an atheist, someone once said, is when he feels grateful and has no one to thank. I suppose it was meant to be witty, but it’s pretty silly. Nonbelievers of all stripes should and do indeed feel enormously grateful for many things, and I’m not aware of any terrible moments. Whereas religious folks teach their children to funnel all gratitude skyward, humanists and atheists can thank the actual sources of the good things we experience, those who actually deserve praise but too often see it deflected past them and on to an imaginary being.
We have no difficulty reminding the four-year-old to “say thank you” when Grandma hands her an ice cream cone, but in other situations – especially when a religious turn-of-phrase is generally used – we often pass up the chance to teach our kids to express gratitude in naturalistic terms. Instead of thanking God for the food on your table, thank those who really put it there – the farmers, the truckers, the produce workers, and Mom or Dad or Aunt Millicent. They deserve it. Maybe you’d like to lean toward the Native American and honor the animals for the sacrifice of their lives – a nice way to underline our connection to them. You can give thanks to those around the table for being present, and for their health, and for family and friendship itself. There is no limit. Even when abstract, like gratitude for health, the simple expression of gratitude is all that is needed. No divine ear is necessary – we are surrounded by real ears and by real hearers.
Group prayer of any kind, including religious grace, has always bothered me. It’s coercive, for one thing, and one person speaks for everyone, assuming a uniformity that is never really accurate. After the “amen,” I always want to submit a minority opinion: “I consent to clauses 1, 2, and 4, but dissent from 3 and 5 for reasons as follows…”
On several occasions, I’ve even seen group prayer used manipulatively (“And may the Lord bless and protect those among us who have been making unwise choices lately” [all eyes go to cousin Billy]).
BUT…the options to religious grace can bring their own problems. The old “moment of silence” can feel hollow; others can seem a bit forced (humanist meditations with Baptist intonations); while some, even if accurate, seem both abstract and forced (“thank you to the truckers and turkey wranglers and assembly-line workers”).
The best option I’ve ever heard just arrived in my inbox yesterday in the form of a short story by Wisconsin author/educator Marilyn LaCourt (The Prize, 2004):
Thanksgiving Ritual
by M. LaCourtLast year I had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at my friend’s house. I arrived just as we were being invited to take our places at the table and I felt a little awkward because I didn’t know a number of the other guests. I looked toward the kitchen expecting someone to bring on the food. It sure smelled good, and I was hungry.
Imagine my confusion when my host looked around the table at each of his guests and asked, “Who wants to start?”
I knew there was supposed to be food, but I still didn’t see any, not even a relish dish or a breadbasket to pass. What were we supposed to do? Pass imaginary bowls filled with imaginary mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey and cranberry sauce? No one spoke.
Finally my host’s eyes settled on his seven-year-old niece.
Cindy stood up, cleared her throat and smiled at her brother. “Thank you, Jimmy, for teaching me to play games on your computer.”
Jimmy blushed and said, “You’re welcome.”
Eric, a nice looking young man with bright blue eyes was next. He thanked his parents for giving him his first telescope when he was ten, and for the many hours they spent encouraging his appreciation for the wonders of the universe. I learned later that Eric had been accepted into a post graduate program to study Astronomy.
My friend, Ron, the host, said thank you to his wife. “I really appreciate the way you put up with my complaining, your understanding and patience with my cause fighting. I love the wonderful meals you prepare for me everyday, your companionship and your sense of humor. Thank you for being my wife.”
Liz smiled and answered, “You’re welcome.”
I was beginning to get the picture. I had some thank-yous of my own and was getting heady with the whole idea, but I decided to watch and listen a bit longer.
“Thank you for taking care of me when I had such a bad case of flu last winter, Rose. I know how terribly unpleasant that must have been for you, and you were so kind to put your own life aside for a few days to stay with me.” Gina’s eyes were damp when she looked at her daughter. “You were such a comfort.” Then she turned to her son- in-law. “Thank you too, Karl, for fending for yourself and the kids while she was taking care of me.”
“You’re welcome.” “You’re welcome.”
Then Rose stood up and walked over to where her husband was sitting. She bent down and gave him a kiss. “Thank you, honey, for working so hard and supporting us and giving me the opportunity to be the stay at home mom I’d always hoped I could be.”
Chuck thanked his friend Bob for all the wonderful tomatoes and other produce Bob gave him during harvest time. He also thanked Jerry and Judy for teaching him how to make the world’s greatest apple sauce.
Jean thanked Patty for listening when she needed a sympathetic ear.
Juan thanked his grandmother for the loan and told her he had put the money to good use. Sonja thanked her neighbor, Dorene, for the wonderful homemade mayonnaise and other goodies. And on it went.
I was thinking about all the wonderful people I wanted to thank. I guess I was drifting off in some sort of a trance when I heard the next person mention my name.
“Thank you, Marilyn,” she said. “You helped my daughter and son-in-law through some rough spots in their marriage.”
I waved my hand in a never mind gesture. “I was just doing my job.”
Ron nearly knocked over his water glass as he stood to interrupt me.
“No, no, no. That’s not allowed.” He shook his pointer at me. “These are the rules. You only get to say ‘you’re welcome’. If you explain it away you discredit the message and invalidate the sincerity of the person saying thanks. You just got a sincere ‘thank you’, Marilyn. Now, say ‘you’re welcome’.” He sat down and fiddled with his napkin.
“Oops. I’m sorry. I mean…” I looked at the woman who’d thanked me and said, “You’re welcome.” Then I smiled at my host and hostess.
“And thank you, Ron and Liz, for inviting me to share in such a beautiful tradition.”
Ron grinned. “You’re welcome.” Liz nodded, “You’re welcome.”
It took a full thirty minutes to get around the table and all the thanks-givings. When we finished Liz excused herself to put the finishing touches on the food and Ron poured the wine.
REVELATION (bookin’ through the bible 13)
Thomas Jefferson considered it “merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.” Robert Ingersoll called it “the insanest of all books.” Even Martin Luther, who knows a thing or two about being offensive, found it “offensive.” And though some modern theologians call it the “least important” book in the Bible, the Googlemind has a rather higher opinion of its significance:
Google hits for various canonical books:
— “Book of Luke” or “Gospel of Luke”: 414,000 hits
— “Book of Matthew” or “Gospel of Matthew”: 517,000
— “Book of Genesis”: 685,000
— “Book of Love”: 827,000
— “Book of Records”: 893,000
— “Book of Revelation”: 1.14 million
So whether or not it’s theologically “important,” the Book of Revelation clearly has our attention.
I Googled the phrase “The Book of Revelation is the most” to see what word comes next. Some favorites:
controversial–mysterious–troubling–important–detailed–thoroughly literary–dynamic, powerful, awesome, devastating–dispensational–thoroughly Jewish–puzzling, cryptic, frightening–misinterpreted–unusual–beautifully orchestrated symphony–extreme–hard to understand–fascinating–beautiful, majestic–bewildering–hopeful–comforting…
…book in the Bible. And now that Barack Obama has been proven to be the Antichrist — the Beast having chosen to reveal himself through the Illinois Lottery — we’d better take a look at the book that has warned us about him lo these many years.
A brief synopsis, for those of you who haven’t (yet) had the pleasure of devouring Left Behind:
John of Patmos had himself a “vision.” It starts with Christ appearing with eyes of flame, feet of bronze and a sword coming out of his mouth. He explains to John (in an understandably sword-muffled fashion) that he, John, should watch carefully so he can describe the vision to the churches.
John is taken before the throne of God where he sees twenty-four chosen ones and four Creatures covered with eyes, giving glory to God. Seven seals on seven scrolls are opened by a lamb. As each is opened, various things are loosed on the world—war, plague, death, earthquakes, and (my personal favorite) really outrageous food prices.
Sun black, moon red, stars fall, sky disappears, mountains flung, 144,000 people are marked with the seal of God.
As the lamb opens the seventh seal, everyone takes a thirty-minute break. Thank you, unions.
Seven trumpets sound, bloody hail and fire, sea turns to blood. Locusts that look like horses with lion’s teeth and sting like scorpions fly out of the abyss and for five months sting anyone who do not have the seal of God on his or her forehead. One third of humankind is killed.
John eats a scroll, and a war breaks out in heaven. A dragon is defeated. Seven vials of wrath opened. An angel tells birds to feast upon dead human bodies. The beast and the false prophet are cast alive into a lake of fire. The rest are killed with the sword of Jesus. A thousand years pass, God sends Satan to deceive us all, and whoever isn’t found in the Book of Life is cast into the Lake of Fire as the rest ascend to glory.
The End.
Imagine if you will my shock and surprise upon learning that John’s home island of Patmos has been the Mediterranean’s premiere source of hallucinogenic mushrooms for thousands of years.1
For many years I wondered not so much at how anyone could believe such unhinged ravings, but why they would even want to—why such a blood-soaked festival of flying monsters and burning flesh appeals to anyone. And it does, you know. The End of It All is not simply accepted by fundamentalists—it is yearned for.
William Miller, founder of the Adventist movement, predicted that the end of the world would come on October 22, 1844. When it didn’t, his followers referred to it not as “The Day of Phew!”, but as “The Great Disappointment.”2
When yet another, later prediction maddeningly passed, the first one had to be renamed The First Great Disappointment. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.
Many denominations, including Sarah Palin’s Assemblies of God, capture the yearning for the end perfectly by calling the coming end of the world “the blessed hope.” And she almost got the nuclear codes.
But I’ve come to empathize with the yearning to some degree, even if I don’t share it. It isn’t just about the triumph over death—it’s the triumph over injustice and evil. No matter how bad and unfair things seem, says John of Patmos through his shroomy haze, the wicked will one day pay in the most horrible way possible, and you’ll get to watch.
Compared to most of humanity, I’m a shar-pei sitting in the warm, fat lap of obscene privilege. I have never been the impotent victim of genuine injustice. I have recourse when I’m wronged, and I’m rarely seriously wronged. But to be a slave in the 17th century, or an impoverished Irish peasant in the 19th, or a Sudanese villager in the midst of civil war, to be shit upon relentlessly, to live in fear of an oppressor and to know you will die unvindicated for whatever happens to you—to live like that, imbued with our innate sense of fairness and to see none of it—I can see how Ultimate Fiery Justice would exert an irresistible pull. I’ve even seen the need for ultimate justice ( “Without it, Hitler would never pay!”) offered as the reason to believe.
I have considerably less empathy for those who define evil so misguidedly that the burning flesh they dream of smelling is not that of a slaveowner or warlord, but of the gay, the Jew, and the atheist. Not that I don’t know where they got such a grotesque and immoral definition of evil (HINT: See 1000-page preamble to Revelation).
Perhaps the most revealing moral question we could ever ask is whose shoes you’d like to see disappearing under the surface of that eternal lake of fire, with the prize going to those who say “none of the above.”
Okay, there it is. I had predicted the Bookin’ Through the Bible series would end last February (a date now known as The First Great Disappointment), but I proved infinitely distractable. Maybe that’s God’s problem as well—Armageddon’s on the calendar, but it just keeps getting pushed back.
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1“Magic mushrooms hit the God spot” (Australian Broadcasting Corp)
22000 years of end-of-the-world predictions
UK Channel 4 documentary on the continuing worldwide spread of end-times beliefs
(Click on the bible study series link in the sidebar to thumb through the rest of the series.)
Grandmas Gone God-Wild
This guest column by Robyn Parnell is one of three winners in the first annual Parenting Beyond Belief Column Competition.
Grandmas Gone God-Wild
by Robyn Parnell
What defines good or evil? Can moral authority exist without divine dictate? If there’s no god, who pops up the next Kleenex? These questions are pieces of existential cake for secular parents compared to dealing with Grandmas Gone God-Wild.
Our family recently attended my husband’s (H) family reunion. As is her custom after such visits, H’s mother (MIL) wrote to our children. As is their custom upon receiving snailmail, my daughter (D) and son (S) handed their respective notecards to me, requesting translation (“I can’t read Grandma’s handwriting.”)
The notes seemed innocuous, if gushier than usual. Grandma thanked them for coming to the reunion, praised their characters, and effused about the pictures she’d taken: “D, You are a beautiful person, inside & out; it’s fun to see your smile!”
D, who loathes family photo sessions, lasered me an I-know-what-she’s-doing-and-it-won’t-work! look. We both giggled, then gasped, as the notes’ closings caught us off guard: “We didn’t discuss it when we were with you but we are still disappointed & sad that you all have rejected God. He is really a loving God – so hope you get to know Him sometime! We love you!”
“All that stuff about the smile and being a beautiful person – ick,” D sputtered. “She was buttering me up!”
“Just when I thought this conflict was over….” S spoke as if narrating a horror movie. “It’s back from the grave with an icy hand!”
Years ago, our family realized that our naturalistic world view isn’t compatible with religion. We neither concealed nor proclaimed this fact, although our car’s accumulation of freethought-friendly bumper stickers (“What would the Flying Spaghetti Monster Do canadianviagras.com?”) was a likely pointer.
During a summer visit, MIL noticed our de-churched Sundays and questioned H, who confirmed her suspicions. It brought out a side to the heretofore moderate, MYOB Lutheran lady that neither H nor I anticipated.
At first she confined her Save-An-Apostate efforts to H. Then, during a Spring Break trip to my in-laws’ home, out of the breakfast table blue MIL asked H and me why we’d “rejected God.” (“It was weird,” said S, who’d overheard the conversation. “The calmer you and Dad stayed, the more upset Grandma got.”) And after yet another family trip, MIL sent H a four-page letter on the subject. One good thing has risen from this situation, she wrote: her faith is stronger, and she prays for us daily.
“The last thing we intended by leaving religion was to create a religious fanatic,” I chuckled. H concurred, and drafted a reply. Which he didn’t send. He told me he didn’t want to encourage “that kind of relationship” with his mom.
Prior to the reunion trip, our children told me they dreaded Grandma harping on “the religion thing.” “It’s like she thinks we’re a problem she has to solve,” D moaned. MIL’s notes provoked more than indignant laughter from her grandchildren — disappointment, anger, and betrayal flashed in their eyes. So now, I told H, you have a problem to solve.
Letters, phone calls, “witnessing” books – what MIL says and sends to us is extraneous to the issue at hand, which is that she must stop sermonizing our kids. Professions of love are irrelevant. She loves them? Duh; she’s their grandmother. She needs to love them as a grandparent should: unconditionally and uncritically.
She noted their fine qualities — was that sincere? Aside from being in better moods come Sunday morning their essential natures haven’t changed since our family became religion-free. They remain the “intelligent, wonderful, helpful, kind” children she’d extolled; they haven’t started kicking blind beggars or tearing legs off flies. The only discernible change is her attitude toward them.
D & S are well aware of Grandma’s views on religion. Offering unsolicited, critical comments about their views is presumptuous; also, she’s setting herself up for not being taken at face value by her grandkids, who have experienced her not-so-hidden agenda. Praise, compliments, and (biggest ick of all) declarations of love are now seen as set-ups for the altar call. I assume MIL wants love and respect, not toleration, but she’s heading toward “Just smile and nod, you know how she is,” territory.
H rose to the occasion and sent a letter to his mother, analogizing the Serenity Prayer (nice touch, I thought) to warmly yet firmly request that, if she feels she must proselytize, she should pick on someone her own size. MIL replied with more professions of love, declaring she’d merely intended to share “the facts” with us. She did not acknowledge his request.
“We haven’t heard the last of this,” H sighed.
This calls for another bumper sticker. Perhaps I’ll append one I’ve seen elsewhere: “Lord, save us from your followers. Or just Grandma.”
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ROBYN PARNELL is a writer and secular parent living in Oregon. When not working on innumerable fiction projects, she searches for worthy additions to her bumper sticker collection, which includes family favorites “God Told Me To Embarrass My Kids,” and “Jesus is My Co-Pilot, Buddha is my Navigator, And Vishnu Will Be Serving Drinks Once We Reach Cruising Altitude.” Parnell shares life with one freethinking husband, two children, and an assortment of pagan pets (cats, reptiles, spiders, dust bunnies).
As the Right fights…
After dominating the country’s politics for years, the conservatives’ grip on power was quickly fading. The Chief Executive was already enormously unpopular when a financial tsunami struck. Over a million homeowners ended up in foreclosure. Unemployment soared. To avert economic disaster, the government poured billions into a bailout of the financial sector. But it was too late. In the next election, voters expressed their lost confidence in conservative leadership, and the liberals swept to power in a landslide victory.
You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m talking about the past two months in the US. In fact, I’m describing the UK in the 1990s. The British Conservative Party held the reins for 18 years, then was trounced by the liberal Labour Party—at which point the Conservatives went through a “struggle for the soul of the Party” — precisely what’s now happening in the U.S.
They eventually split into three factions: the centrist “One Nation” Conservatives, Free Market Conservatives, and The Cornerstone Group, social conservatives whose motto “Faith, Flag and Family” says it all.
Because compromise is a longstanding element of British politics (and British life in general), the three elements remain under a single party identity, struggling for dominance of the platform. But infighting among the factions is credited in part with keeping the Conservatives out of power for over a decade.
Republicans in the US have a similarly mix of the sane, the selfish, and the sanctimonious, and it’s becoming ever clearer that these bedfellows are heading into a bloody civil war. Because compromise is seen as weakness in American culture (and religion), I don’t see it ending in a three-winged party. The big red tent can no longer hold Colin Powell, Pat Robertson, George Will and Sarah Palin. I think the GOP will split in half. And (in case you were wondering about relevance) this will open a completely new way of looking ideology in the US—including religion.
The new parties:
THE NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY (NRP)
The New Republicans are intelligent advocates of small government, limited social engineering, and fiscal conservatism. They are furious at having their party hijacked by the mindless lunatic fringe and their moralistic obsessions. The NRP will merge with Libertarians to revive Goldwater Republicanism.
THE CHRISTIAN AMERICA PARTY (CAP)
Populist, anti-intellectual, ultra-nationalist and über-religious, The CAP will finally have a party unfettered by compromises with the real world. Informed by American exceptionalism and fundamentalist Christianity, it will be in essence an American fascist party.
I use “fascist” here not as a cheap epithet but as a literal political descriptor. The historian Robert Paxton defines fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Political theorist Roger Griffin adds that “The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation’s imminent rebirth from decadence.” A perfect description of the Religious Right.
The Christian Americans will front a candidate for President in 2012 by the name of Sarah Palin.
Freed from the unwieldy social obsessions of the Religious Right, the New Republicans will have more in common with Democrats — not everything, but more — than with the Christian America Party. It would be in the interest of the Dems to work with the NRP to keep the CAP from exerting undue influence.
But if Democrats have become too blindly allergic to the word “Republican,” they may fail to recognize the transformation of the Republican brand, driving the NRP back into the arms of the Religious Right. Which would be bad.
And now the point.
This new fault line in American politics might help dissolve another strained coalition in American life: the big tent of religious faith. Progressive religious believers have long been uncomfortable with those on the wingnut fringe of their worldview but are often compelled to defend “faith” in general because they are under that same big tent. That has made bridge-building between the nonreligious and progressively religious difficult. And that’s a shame, because as I never tire of pointing out, liberal religionists have much more in common with secularists on a wide range of issues and attitudes than they do with fundamentalism.
As Bruce Bawer (author of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity) has noted,
theological liberals of every denomination have found that they have more in common with one another than with the conservatives in their own denominations. Responding to the research of biblical scholars and the ”historical Jesus” movement, they have de-emphasized doctrine.
Meanwhile leaders of the religious right have preached that salvation depends on believing the correct dogma, even as they have succeeded in reducing the considerable doctrinal distinctions that once divided evangelicals, fundamentalists and charismatics.
As a result, American Protestantism is in the midst of a major shift. It is being split into two nearly antithetical religions, both calling themselves Christianity.
These two religions — the Church of Law, based in the South, and the Church of Love, based in the North — differ on almost every big theological point.
I would simply add that Bawer’s “Church of Love” also has much more in common with the nonreligious than with the “Church of Law.”
You can see this in my August post about the Belief-o-Matic Quiz. A secular humanist shows a 60-75 percent overlap with mainstream-to-liberal Christians, while an evangelical shows only a 20-40 percent overlap with mainstream-to-liberal Christians.
The coming fracture on the right can help to isolate and more clearly define the anti-intellectual, fundamentalist side of religious expression in the US. I think that now is the time for the nonreligious to get over our allergy to the word “religion”—to begin opening dialogues and building bridges of common interest and common values with the sizeable non-insane segment of religious believers in this country.
[UPDATE: AHA! I have apparently convinced Christine Todd Whitman.]
[UPDATE: And now Kathleen Parker!]
My future kids-in-law
ERIN (10): When I get married, I want to marry somebody just like you.
DAD: Like me? Aw, what a sweet thing to say, B. And why is that?
ERIN: Because of the way you care so much about Mom. It’s totally obvious how much you love her. I want somebody to treat me just like that.
[DAD makes mental note to blog about this.]
DAD: Well you deserve it, B. Don’t settle for anything less.
DELANEY (7): And I want to marry somebody who believes in God.
DAD: Really? How come?
DELANEY: ‘Cause then we can talk about how we believe different things, and we’ll always have interesting things to talk about.
Best Practices 2: Encourage active moral reasoning
The second installment in a nine-part series on best practices for nonreligious parenting. Back to BEST PRACTICES #1.
If the Ten Commandments had been posted at Columbine High School, the April 20 massacre would never have happened.
—former Republican Congressman and current Libertarian Presidential candidate BOB BARR, at a press conference on June 17, 1999
Children’s understanding of morality is the same whether they’re of one religion, another religion or no religion. But if it’s simply indoctrination, it’s worse than doing nothing. It interferes with moral development.
—Dr. LARRY NUCCI, director of the Office for Studies in Moral Development, University of Illinois, Chicago
ast May I mentioned a powerful study in which 700 survivors of Nazi-occupied Europe—both “rescuers” (those who actively rescued victims of Nazi persecution) and “non-rescuers” (those who were either passive in the face of the persecution or actively involved in it)—were interviewed about their moral upbringing. Non-rescuers were 21 times more likely than rescuers to have grown up in families that emphasized obedience—being given rules that were to be followed without question—while rescuers were over three times more likely than non-rescuers to identify “reasoning” as an element of their moral education. “Explained,” the authors note, “is the word most rescuers favored” in describing their parents’ way of communicating rules and ethical concepts.1
This echoed work by Grusec and Goodnow in the 1990s, which showed that “parents who tend to be harshly and arbitrarily authoritarian or power-assertive are less likely to be successful than those who place substantial emphasis on induction or reasoning.”2
Both the Oliners’ results and the central role children play in their own moral development are underlined by cross-cultural research from the Office for Studies in Moral Development at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Children in cultures around the world tend to reach certain landmarks in moral development reliably and on time, according to lead researcher Larry Nucci, regardless of what their parents do or don’t do. “Children’s understanding of morality is the same whether they’re of one religion, another religion or no religion,” says Nucci.
The reliability with which kids hit these moral landmarks was underlined by a University of Zurich study published in the August issue of the journal Nature. Kids between 3 and 4 were seen to be almost universally selfish, after which a “strong sense of fairness” develops, usually by age 7 or 8. Fairness was most evident toward those with whom the children identified—in this case, kids from the same school as opposed to a different one.
Ideas of fairness and of in-group preference appear to go hand-in-hand. “The simultaneous development of altruistic behavior and preference of the own group provides interesting new impulses for the conjecture that both of these processes are driven by the same evolutionary process,” said Professor Ernst Fehr, one of the principals in the study. This development, which has never been shown to occur in other species, “may be an important reason for the unique cooperative abilities of humans,” he said. Unlike animal and insect societies, human societies are based on a detailed division of labor and cooperation in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals who are nonetheless joined by common concerns.
So once again, for the vast, vast majority of kids and situations, morality happens. We are wired up, however imperfectly, for cooperation and fairness. Parents can and should encourage these tendencies, but we mustn’t think we are writing on a blank slate, or even worse, rowing against a current of natural depravity. Our job is to draw out and enhance the ethical nature that evolution has already put in place, then expand it beyond the in-group by widening those circles of empathy. Knowing that our children’s tendency is toward the ethical can help us relax and row with the current, knowing that kids in a supportive, “pro-social” environment tend to turn out just fine.
Nucci’s work does point to one way in which parents can actually impede their children’s moral growth. Any guesses?
“If it’s simply indoctrination,” he says, “it’s worse than doing nothing. It interferes with moral development.”3
So the one practice conservative religious thought insists is vitally important in moral education, the one thing we are begged and urged and warned to do—to teach unquestioning obedience to rules—turns out to be the single most counterproductive thing we can do for our children’s moral development.
Instead, the best thing we can do is to encourage our kids to actively engage in the expansion and refinement of their own natural morality—asking questions, challenging the answers they are given, and working to understand the reasons to be good.
Marvin Berkowitz, professor of character education at the University of Missouri, puts it just that clearly: “The most useful form of character education encourages children to think for themselves.”4
______________________________
1 Oliner and Oliner, The Altruistic Personality, 181-2.
2 Grusec, J.E. and J. J. Goodnow, “Impact of Parental Discipline on the Child’s Internalization of Values: A Reconceptualization of Current Points of View,” Developmental Psychology, 30, 1994.
3 Quoted in Pearson, Beth, “The art of creating ethics man,” The Herald (Scotland), January 23, 2006.
4 Ibid.
Two ways blind
Someone please pull this video out from under my eyes. I’m riveted and repelled. I can’t stop watching it, analyzing it, pausing and advancing it, trying to learn something from it. It somehow holds the key to…something. In just one minute, this woman manages to illustrate the intersection of blind faith and blind intolerance more succinctly and powerfully than I’ve ever seen:
[SIGH. Careful what you wish for. The production company has pulled the video from under my eyes. Go here to see it. You’ll have to wait for it to load and go to 8:25 to see the segment in question, but it’s worth it. I hate stingy copyright holders.]
It’s not like I haven’t seen the combination before–it’s not exactly rare–but I’ve never seen such a richly-illustrated portrait of the way faith and intolerance can, and often do, spoon. Watch her eyes. Listen to the cadence of her voice. Catch the suppressed violence in her last sentence. Most of all, watch that smug, self-satisfied blink/head-toss combo that appears first at 0:17, then again in some form six more times, in each case following a declaration of blind faith or blind hatred.
If you aren’t yet convinced that religious moderates share more in common with the nonreligious than with a wingnut like Ms. Kerlee, share this video with your religious moderate friends and watch their reactions. Recognizing our shared outrage over ignorance posing as “values” would be good for both groups–and who knows, might even get that long-overdue bridge-building underway.
(via Pharyngula.)
Tray tables up! Flights of nonsense landing in Texas schools
The next act in the long and ugly creationist end-game will take place in Texas. After the previous two acts, my confidence is high.
One of my dearest hopes for the next generation is that they get a real shot at understanding evolution. My own teenage understanding of the theory was fuzzy around the edges, since we touched on it for all of about eight minutes in high school. I didn’t encounter it again until Anthro 1 at Berkeley–at which point it dazzled me so much I changed my major from psych to physical anthropology.
And am I ever glad I did, because understanding evolution changes everything. It is not just true but transformative and elegant and exquisitely, lastingly wonder-inducing. And the wonder is increasingly evident the deeper you dig — as opposed to religious wonder, which pales with each stroke of the spade. Yes, I want kids to understand evolution because it’s true, but I also want to gift them with the giddy perspective it brings, both humbling and exalting in its implications. It is indeed the “best idea anyone ever had,” but also the most astonishingly wonder-full.
When I fight to keep evolution in the schools and creationism out, it’s that wonder that I’m fighting for as much as fact. The fact that ignorance and cowardice among parents and educators keeps our kids from learning much about the Coolest Thing We Know simply breaks my heart.
That’s why I’m so excited to hear that creationists are busily reviewing state science standards in Texas.
(Wha??)
You heard me. When I read about this on Pharyngula, I squealed with girlish glee. Here’s why: When lunacy flies too far below the radar, the good guys slumber, the middle shrugs, and untold damage is done. But once in a while it flies high enough and caws loud enough to wake enough of us up to do something serious about it. That’s why I’m a big fan of those flights of nonsense.
It happens in politics as well. A recent such flight was piloted by the ghastly Michele Bachmann, a fascist (and I don’t use that word lightly) from my former state who won a seat in Congress in 2006 despite my objections. She’s been a dangerous nut for two years but only came to the country’s attention when she went on Hardball recently to call for a McCarthyesque rooting out of “anti-Americanism” in Congress:
Bachmann’s no more dangerous this week than last — she’s simply visible. As a partial result, the most admired Republican in the country endorsed the man she slandered. And as a direct result, three quarters of a million dollars poured in to her opponent’s campaign.
Another example: Would the left ever have gotten its act together if John McCain had selected a sensible running mate?
So we really shouldn’t gnash our teeth too much when nonsense flies high. Pass out the peanuts and encourage them to enjoy the in-flight movie while you spread some foam (or not) on the runway.
Evolution education has benefited tremendously from such high-visibility nonsense in recent years. The Dover trial was a lopsided victory for evolution, and the judge, a Bush appointee, wrote the most devastatingly powerful and scornful evisceration of “intelligent design” in the history of the issue. (If you haven’t seen the NOVA program about the trial, oh my word, people, click here.)
Without that high-flying attempt by the creationists, a crucial moment of progress couldn’t have occurred.
Then there’s Kansas, where the state Board of Education’s attempt to throttle evolution education ended with evolution more firmly ensconced in the curriculum standards than before and every last one of the creationist board members out of a job. Again, progress not in spite of, but because of, overt lunacy.
Now the flight is landing in Texas, where the Texas Board of Education (itself stocked with two creationists for every science-literate member) has named a six-person committee to review science standards — three science-literates and three high-profile creationist activists. The committee is headed by a seventh member, Don McLeroy, a creationist dentist (of all things).
See where this is going?
So why should parents outside of Texas care? Here’s why, from the Texas Freedom Network:
Publishers will use the new standards to create new textbooks. Because Texas is such a large market for textbook sales, publishers typically craft their textbooks for this state and then sell those books to other schools across the country. So the results of this curriculum process could have consequences for far more than just the 4.6 million children in Texas public schools.
Unsurprisingly, the National Center for Science Education is on it. They’re the good folks who coordinated the brilliant victory in Dover.
So be glad the lunacy is flying high where we can see it — but don’t be complacent, especially y’all in Texas. If nothing else, get yourselves informed before the board election by listening closely to this incredibly clear message from a well-informed Texas gentleman whose resemblance to Satan is almost certainly coincidental:
“What happened in Kansas and in Dover, Pennsylvania is about to happen here in Texas, too,” he says. Well I certainly hope so. It won’t be easy or smooth. The fable purveyors will do some damage along the way. But I’ve never been more confident in our ability to win in the end.