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Editorials
In
1999, we were advised by the President of the Unitarians, John
A. Buehrens, that we should read the weekly column of
"Sightings" by Martin Marty of the U. of Chicago
Divinity School. He said we would better understand what is
happening in the world. We have faithfully followed his advice
since writing the article below which was printed in our paper
in 1999. The
'Religious Right' In Massachusetts ... Good or Bad? Should Their
Name Be Changed to 'Believers?' How
many people in Massachusetts realize the following were
members of the "religious right?"
All
of those people would certainly qualify. Just
who are the "religious right?" And how did they get
that name? Is it fair to call them the "religious
right," or should they be called "believers"
because of their belief in God? One
of their severest critics in the entire country is right here
on Beacon Hill. It is the Unitarian Universalist Association
which has seminars and sells books on how to
"confront" and "challenge" them. But
the Unitarians won't tell us exactly who it is who bears this
terrible name of "religious right." In answer to my
query, the President of the Unitarians, John A. Buehrens, sent
me a nice letter which attempted to do so, but it was over a
page long and only hinted at the answer. But he did say that
"the divide runs down the middle of nearly all branches
of religion in America: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish."
I
believe I know the answer and why he doesn't want to admit it.
The
"religious right" are most of the people in America.
They are primarily Catholics, Protestants who believe the
Bible, and Orthodox Jews. They are people who believe that God
is real and that he has spoken to us through the Bible.
Although there will be great discussion among them (and there
should be) as to what the Bible means and whether it has been
translated correctly, there is unanimity among believers that
it contains the word of God. It
is easy to see that the Unitarians do not belong because most
of them are atheists who do not believe that God even exists. It
is a little more difficult to determine whether others are
believers. When I was recently with a group of people from a
Congregational Church which is affiliated with the United
Church of Christ, I asked if anyone believed the Bible. Their
response was laughter. The
Christian Church is deeply divided. The mainline churches do
not teach the Bible anymore and are losing many of their
members. The churches which do teach it are increasing in
numbers. Is
a believer an evil person who should be feared? Obviously,
most people would not believe that about the three people that
are listed at the top of this editorial. Those three were
sincere believers. Most of the people who founded this country
to which our ancestors flocked from all over the world (and
still do) were believers. So
why is it that the Unitarians hate them so? Why do they want
to "confront" and "challenge" them? It
is a very puzzling question, but hopefully, we can help to
build some bridges across this great divide and put an end to
the divisiveness that is upon us. It is necessary to have
debates and discussions, but we are unable to have them in the
present atmosphere. Why
is it that the people who plead for "tolerance" seem
to be the most intolerant? Most
of you who read Massachusetts News will be able to agree on
many issues. When our opinions differ, we will be able to do
so without bitterness and agree that we can disagree.
Hopefully we can provide a secular point-of-view for moderates
and conservatives, believers and non-believers, that is not
seen in the liberal press of Massachusetts. In
November 2001, we realize the failure of Protestant
intellectual thought in Massachusetts when we see only the
remarks of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell printed so
prominently in the press. Where
are the leaders from this area who should be helping to lead
the nation and the world to a better understanding of
Protestant thought? Do such people exist? Are they hiding in
bunkers and talking only to themselves? Most
recent article from the Martin Marty Center should make us all
realize that we need leadership desperately. Pat
Robertson and the Rhetoric of Decline By
Andrew R. Murphy Commenting
on the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, Pat
Robertson warned that "[t]he Lord is getting ready to
shake this nation....God Almighty is lifting his protection
from us." Citing abortion and pornography as just two
practices that have incurred divine disfavor, Robertson called
on Americans to "live the way the Bible tells them to
live" in order to avoid future attacks. Such
a position is extreme, of course, but should hardly surprise
those who have been listening to religious voices in recent
years. Setting aside the offensive and theologically suspect
aspect of Robertson's remarks enables us to see the kernel of
an enduring religio-cultural question that lies at the root of
the American experience, and at the heart of his concern. According
to Robertson's view, American society has seen a marked
decline in moral behavior, and a corresponding increase in
radical individualism and value relativism, in recent years.
But he is hardly alone. William Bennett, Robert Bork, Gertrude
Himmelfarb, Richard John Neuhaus, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes,
Joseph Lieberman and, from a more secular standpoint, many
communitarians and neoconservative critics of contemporary
liberalism have painted similar portraits of a nation just now
waking up to the effects of a dramatic moral and spiritual
wrong turn. Their accounts of American society are arresting.
Their statistics and figures are often disheartening. Their
calls for revival and renewal are serious. When
we cast our eye a bit more broadly, however, we find claims
that declining piety threatens America's unique role as a
"redeemer nation" to be more the norm than the
exception in American history. Many voices throughout the
years have described misfortune and disaster as signs of
divine displeasure. [Indeed, no] sooner had Puritans arrived
in the Massachusetts Bay Colony than clergy began warning that
waning piety would incur God's wrath. With many of the
original settlers likely listening, William Stoughton wondered
in 1677, Wait
just a minute. Is this giant "intellectual" telling
us that many of the "original settlers" of
Massachusetts were still living in 1677, 57 years after their
arrival here? His basic reasoning ability appears to be very
shaky. "Were
our fathers as a noble vine, and shall we be as the degenerate
plant of a strange vine?" According to Samuel Hooker,
"Sins more than enough have been found with us to deserve
all our sufferings, that we sin no more lest a worse thing
come to us is the duty incumbent..." Puritan clergy
preached dozens of such sermons in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries. Most concluded with a call to
revitalize the religious beliefs and practices of the
colonies' inhabitants as a way of regaining God's favor. So what if the Massachusetts clergy were constantly cautioning their flocks to stick with their heritage? We all know it is difficult to keep any endeavor on a positive course in human life. It's too bad that most of us no longer have no connection whatsoever with the earth. Anyone who does knows that the weeds are never gone. You must constantly weed a garden almost every day or it will quickly be consumed by the weeds. A human society is much the same. When
the Jews first left Egypt, it was only a short time later that
Moses climbed the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments.
But when he returned, his people were already worshipping
golden idols. It is a constant struggle to keep any group of
people on a positive course. Such
tales of pietistic decline are hardly unique to the Christian
tradition, let alone to our time. Augustine's City of God
represents a grand response to the claims that turning away
from traditional Roman religion had incurred those gods'
wrath. He described the City of God as a "reply to those
who hold the Christian religion responsible for the wars with
which the whole world is now tormented, and in particular for
the recent sack of Rome." And although I am not an expert
on other traditions, colleagues assure me that narratives of
declining moral and pietistic conduct bringing divine judgment
on human communities appear in the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist,
and Zoroastrian traditions as well. Again,
so what? The same rules of life and weeds apply to every
society. Whatever they believe, they must constantly work at
maintaining it or the weeds will take over. What
shall we make of the fact that previous generations of
Americans [believed] their own contemporaries [to be] in a
process of moral and spiritual decline that had gradually
worsened down to their own day? More specifically, if
contemporary declinists like Pat Robertson look for examples
of a godly society exhibiting ordered liberty in the founding
era, or even in a purported pre-1960s
Protestant-Catholic-Jewish religious consensus, what do we
make of the fact that one hundred years prior to the nation's
founding, New England clergy were lamenting how far their
society had fallen? There
seems a propensity, perhaps even a compulsion, of people in
all times to create narratives of a Golden Age in the past and
decline in the present. We should, however, not take such
accounts at face value without requiring their authors to
grapple with the difficult problems of history and recurrence
- without clarifying what difference (if any) it makes that
strikingly similar arguments were made three hundred, fifteen
hundred, even two thousand years ago. There
are no difficult problems to solve except for
"intellectuals" like Mr. Murphy who have too much
time on their hands. There will always be "similar
arguments" because they are a part of any human society. Pointing
out this recurrent rhetoric of spiritual decline will surely
not dissuade Pat Robertson from seeing the terrible events of
September 11 as evidence of God's displeasure with
contemporary America. But rather than criticizing his suspect
theology, or condemning his callous willingness to subsume the
deaths of thousands under some notion of God's anti-liberal
disgust, we might reflect more deeply on the widespread and
somehow deeply American idea that they voice. Significantly,
the lament over New England's, and later the United States',
spiritual decline was made all the more poignant by its
inscription within a rhetoric of America as the "chosen
nation," the "New Israel." Along with Puritan
laments of spiritual decline and corruption went the notion
that this land is steeped in providential promise. Abetted by
the experiences of revolution, nation-building, westward
expansion, the civil war, and the liberationist movements of
the twentieth centuries, the notion became even more deeply
ingrained that America possessed some special relationship
with, and a special responsibility to, the Creator and that
Creator's plans for the unfolding of sacred history. Wow!
We're not a great nation and a great society after all! We
must abandon all of those claims. It was only because we were
a new nation with a lot of empty land that we became a beacon
of light to the world. It had nothing whatsoever to do with
our religious beliefs. It would have happened no matter what
we believed. But . . . on the other hand, we were only a tiny
part of North and South America. Why were we so unique? Why
did our ancestors flock only to the United States? What is it
about the Rio Grande that gives us such a unique culture as
opposed to the countries to our south? Why do people continue
to flock here today. Is our dirt different in some way? Until
we are willing to question seriously, if not discard, these
claims, Pat Robertson's views will remain just the most
explicit articulation of a highly problematic, highly
persistent political theology. Andrew
R. Murphy is a Senior Fellow in the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School, and a lecturer in
social sciences in the college. He is writing a book on the
rhetoric of moral and spiritual decline. Perhaps
Mr. Murphy, who wrote the above article would understand if he
understood the Basic Rules of Life. The Basic Rules of Life November 2001 Everyone
agrees there are basic rules of life in the physical sense. We
all know we should not jump out of a four-story building or we
are going to get hurt. These basic rules of our physical world
cannot be denied. There
are also basic rules of morality. God
has told us about those basic rules. But Mr. Murphy and many
others do not understand or agree with the concept. God tells
us that if we do not follow those rules, we will have the same
problems as if we jump from a four-story building. But
they will usually not occur as quickly, so it is difficult for
people like Mr. Murphy to see that they do exist. All of us
must be constantly reminded of the fact. Mr.
Murphy is very arrogant about his intellectual powers to
understand all the mysteries of the world. It would be very
difficult to explain to him that there is music constantly
around us but our senses are unable to hear it. But then we
remind him that all of the radio stations are constantly in
the air around us. We can hear all types of music if we have a
radio to lower the frequencies of the waves so that our senses
can hear. We
can see in only three dimensions but many believe there are
other dimensions in the world about which we have no knowledge
and that our senses are unable to distinguish. How
can anyone be as arrogant as Mr. Murphy and say with certainty
that he knows all there is to know about the world? We know
only a tiny speck of what there is to know. Pat
Robertson and Jerry Falwell told the world that God was
punishing us for straying so far from His teachings. A better
way to express this would be to say that when anyone follows
the moral teachings of God, he is following a course that will
give him protection on his journey through life. If he does
not follow those teachings, he will be leaving that
protection. Mankind
has had a problem understanding that since the beginning of
the world. The Jewish Bible, the Pentateuch, is primarily a
history of how God tried unsuccessfully over and over again to
get them to obey his teachings. Being human, they constantly
failed to do so and as a result they left their protection and
lost their homeland. There
is no question that America is losing its sense of morality.
The polls all show that Americans know that and are concerned
about it. We cannot allow Mr. Murphy and the University of
Chicago Divinity School (or Harvard) to be our guiding light
or we will be in serious trouble. Tear Down This Wall, Justice Marshall! November
2001 When
you see Ken Newell arrested and put in chains for two days
because he does not want to desert his children (as he was
advised to do by the court psychologist), you must certainly
wonder about our courts. We
see them dividing our citizens by class. They are pitting men
and women against each other as though they are enemies. Margaret
Marshall's courts provide any woman with a free lawyer but
there is not one lawyer for any man. Chief
Justice Marshall is a political animal who makes no apology
about the fact that she is still an extreme feminist even
after becoming Chief Justice of all the people. She goes to
meetings of women and tells them that their goal must be to
elect "women and those who are interested in the
interests of women." She
joins in with the Women's Bar Association in promoting the
causes of lesbians even though those women, by definition, are
unable to have any meaningful relationship with men. She gives
them our tax dollars from her slush fund of $17 million per
year to support gay and lesbian lawyers. And she promotes gay
marriage in meetings with them even though she knows that that
very issue will be coming to her court. She
is dividing women into two classes also. She is helping those
who believe that no woman should be allowed to stay at home
with her children. There was a mother in chains in the Lowell
court this year because she did not wish to part with her
newborn baby. In
chains! And made to climb up and down the courthouse stairs
with the chains attached! It
is Margaret Marshall's courthouse. That
poor woman and her husband are still being hounded and driven
from hearing to hearing because Margaret Marshall's courts do
not control what happens. They allow the women lawyers from
DSS who dislike all men so intently to manage the courts and
tell the judges what to do. We
need a Chief Justice who will understand the problems of all
the people and not divide us by sex. We're
Seeing Extremism As We Did in Vietnam November 2001 Once
again, the Boston Globe is leading us down a path of extremism
in Afghanistan just like it did in Vietnam. We
are seeing two extremist viewpoints spouting forth from its
pages. On the one hand we see the peaceniks saying that
America is the cause of all the problems of the world. On
the other, we see people who are cheering our troops into
battle as though it is a wonderful, joyous adventure. As
usual, the truth is somewhere in between, but we will never
reach it if we continue to let the Boston Globe set the terms
of the discussion. This
is exactly what happened in Vietnam. The liberals sent our
teenage boys to fight a land war in Asia and when it was not
as easy as they thought, they abandoned our boys and left
millions of our friends who had trusted us to die and suffer
in Asia. We
must start an intelligent discussion which begins with the
premise that we are a moral country who has somehow become the
policeman of the world. Is that an assignment we want, or
should have? If we accept it, can we do so by allowing the
people of those countries to fight their own battles instead
of asking our young men to do it for the entire world? These
are important questions but we will never reach them if our
leader is Renee Loth, whose claim to fame was that she was
Political Editor at the Boston Phoenix before she became in
charge of Editorials at the Globe. Radical
Feminists Continue to Alienate Women November 2001 The
radical feminists continue to try to ignore the obvious fact
that their opposition to the Protection of Marriage amendment
is because they are seeking to change our society. They
wish to force all women to become a part of the workforce
outside of the home. They want no woman to think for herself. But
some of them, like Rachelle Cohen, Editorial editor at the
Herald, are so obvious that one must feel sorry for them. How
can Cohen possibly expect many women to agree with her that
continuing marriage as we have always known it is
"silly." But that's what she wrote. It's
sad to see anyone make a fool of themself. The
feminists at Channel 2 didn't distinguish themselves either.
They ran a good documentary, "5 Girls," but didn't
even note the most obvious thing that the story revealed,
which was that the two girls who still had a mother and a
father did much better than the others. One girl who lived
with her father was also doing well, but was having some
problems because she did not have two parents at home. The
two girls who lived only with their mother were clearly in
trouble because of the conflict that the divorce had inflicted
upon them. But
don't wait for Channel 2
to recognize that obvious truth
that the Protection of Marriage amendment is needed. Is
There Really Some Movement About DSS? November 2001 It
is heartening to see there may finally be some movement about
DSS by the legislature. The Human Services and Elderly Affairs
Committee is to be commended for its decision to look into the
terrible things that we are doing to children. Rep.
Antonio Cabral should be supported in his oversight hearings
which will be held this fall, as should Rep. Ellen Story and
Sen. Susan Tucker who have expressed their concern. Rep.
Demetrius Atsalis has introduced a bill which would appoint an
independent ombudsman at the agency. While
the elite go to musicals such as Oliver and cry their eyes out
about what used to happen in Dickens' time, we are doing much
worse to many of our children. They are even put into solitary
confinement like a prison, but no one can discover what is
happening because they are juveniles and it is being done for
their "protection." Of
course, none of this would have happened without the tireless
eye of Nev Moore and her Justice for Families. Let's wish them
all luck and hope they can alleviate this terrible problem.
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