Eyal Press doesn't "get" religion- or the First Amendment
Eyal Press's article in The Nation entitled "Closing the Religion Gap" only provides further evidence that those on the political Left just don't "get it" where religion is concerned.
By now, of course, we're all used to the kind of hypocritical rhetoric it contains about how the "religious Right" wants to "impose its morality on others-" as if the Left, secular and otherwise, were not attempting to do the same thing, and is if every law, literally without exception, didn't involve the imposition of certain moral standards on other people. The point seems to wholly escape folks like Press that in a diverse and religiously pluralistic democracy, purely sectarian moral standards, or those supported only by narrow constituencies, don't get imposed on anybody. You need something resembling a politically viable consensus for that, and the very pluralism of our culture protects it against the bugbear of anybody's religion being imposed on anybody else by force of law.
Moral standards, of course, are another matter. What standards get imposed- which is merely another way of saying "what laws get passed-" is a function of debate, dialog and the democratic process. And it's here that the true hypocrisy of the social Left is exposed in terms no honest person can miss: to Press, and to the Left generally, it's OK to impose moral standards they approve of; in fact, "political correctness" is nothing other than the imposition of the sensibilities of one group upon the whole. But moral standards they do not share are not simply mistaken, and best not adopted. Their mere advocacy is cast in threatening, anti-democratic terms, as a threat to diversity, pluralism and the American way.
This inconsistency lands the cultural Left in some very odd places. Consider the following quote from Press's article:
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, affirmed the importance of maintaining the wall of separation between church and state, reminding the audience that, far from inhibiting religion, this division "has allowed religion to flourish" by keeping government out of the pews. Saperstein took to task the Catholic bishops who announced they would refuse to let John Kerry take Communion because he is prochoice, arguing that while Americans have a right to know how a politician's religious beliefs influence his or her policies, it's wrong to demand that decisions be made solely on the basis of faith.
These are important principles--principles that, as it happens, the vast majority of Americans share. A recent Time magazine poll found that 70 percent of Catholics believe the Catholic Church should not try to influence the positions Catholic politicians take.
I guess Rabbi Saperstein has decided that government has stayed out of the pews long enough, and that maybe religion shouldn't flourish anymore. Why else would he want to dictate, on purely civil grounds, to whom the Catholic church gives Communion? Isn't that interfering in the internal affairs of a religion to which he does not even subscribe? And if he has even the slightest regard for the First Amendment, how dare he?
First, Catholicism gets to decide how what Catholicism believes gets decided. It's long since decided that the Magisterium decides that on the basis of Scripture and tradition. It isn't up for majority vote. To the extent that they are faithful to the Catholic religion, Catholics are so guided. To the extent that they are not faithful to the Catholic religion, they are not. It's the same for Jews, or Lutherans, or any other group of people who voluntarily have associated themselves with a religion that stands for a certain set of beliefs. To the extent that such people do not share those beliefs, the honest thing would be to change religions- and not to demand that the religion change to accommodate them!
Secondly, Catholics are people who believe what the Catholic church believes. The Catholic church believes- and has always believed- that not only does the Catholic church have the right to try to influence the positions Catholic politicians take, but that it has the positive obligation to do so. All Christian churches believe that they have such an obligation. Judaism believes that it has such an obligation. Even Press and the cultural Left believe that the Catholic church and other religions have such an obligation- at least when it comes to social justice, opposition to capital punishment, and other positions they like. What Press and Rabbi Saperstein and the cultural Left object to is not religions seeking to influence their adherents to simply be their adherents- i.e., to follow their teachings- but only religions seeking to influence their adherents to follow teachings with which Press, and Saperstein, and the cultural Left do not happen to agree.
Their position is essentially that everyone should have the religious freedom to agree with them. It is only when religions disagree with them that they are violating what they imagine to be the "wall of separation."
Third, biblical religion of all flavors feels bound by the Ten Commandments, the very first of which demands that one have no other gods but God. Where one's faith speaks to an issue- where one believes that one's conscience is bound by God's own command or will- to fail, in Rabbi Saperstein's terms, to "make decisions soley on the basis of faith" is to commit the primal and most fundamental of sins: idolatry.
It seems odd that a clergyman such as Rabbi Saperstein would seek to set one's religion against one's conscience. Again, if a person's conscience is not bound by his faith (as John Kerry's, apparently, is not bound by his on the subject of the legality of what his church teaches- and he claims to agree- is willful the willful murder of innocents), he is free to find a church with which his conscience does agree. The "important principle" which Rabbi Saperstein is espousing is the moral imperative to be either an idolater- for whom one's obligation to some other principle or consideration comes before one's obligation to God- or a hypocrite, who claims by his public religious confession a set of beliefs which in fact are not his at all.
It should be noted in passing that the "wall of separation between church and state," insofar as it has any actual constitutional basis at all, involves the turning of religious dogma as religious dogma into public policy. Our government does not have religious dogma; religions have religious dogma. Our government has public laws, agreed to through a process involving all elements of a religiously diverse society. But to say that is a very different matter from saying that there can be no overlap between what might constitute religious dogma for some, and what is resolved upon as public policy through a process involving all. If it did, laws against stealing and murder would be unconstitutional encroachments by the Ten Commandments into the realm of civil law!
The "wall of separation" does not suggest that because an idea is religious in its origins, it is therefore to be excluded from the public square. It rather insists that it be enacted into law only if it is agreed in that religiously diverse forum that it is recommended by compelling secular arguments. Opposition to legalized abortion, for example, is no more verboten by Jeffersonian logic than the advocacy of social justice on precisely the religious grounds Press endorses. But that is the fundamental inconsistency in Press's entire argument, and in the entire approach of the cultural Left to the subject of the relationship between faith and the public square: a willingness to admit to public debate any religiously- engendered idea with which they agree, while treating any idea of religious origin with which they disagree with all the tolerance with which, for example, the Inquisition treated the public expression of such disapproved ideas.
That's the dirty little secret of the cultural Left, when it comes to the relationship between faith and the public order: its fundamental intolerance. Nowhere is this failing more obvious than in the totally uncomprehending- and wholly inappropriate- criticism offered by folks like Press and Rabbi Saperstein of the notion of denying John Kerry Communion because he commits what his professed religion teaches is a public sin by advocating the legality of what even he personally agrees is willful murder! The moral desolation of Kerry's position in view of his confession that he is not totally a hypocrite, but personally agrees with his church's teaching with regard to the moral nature of abortion, but thinks it should be legal anyway, is itself appalling; one can only reflect on what one would have thought, personally, of a German who believed that Jews were human beings who ought not to be murdered, but didn't want to impose his personal convictions on the subject of murder upon Adolf Eichmann. When we reflect that Washington, Jefferson, and Lee, to name only a few otherwise admirable Americans who favored the legality of slavery despite a conviction that Africans were human beings, we are quite properly appalled; why is it that at least those of us on the cultural Left have such a difficult time being equally appalled by the moral cowardice of John Kerry's stance on the legality of abortion?
But while any morally consistent person is- or at least ought to be- appalled by Kerry's position on the subject, it is emphatically not for, say, a Reform Rabbi to pass on whether it means that he should be denied Communion. Rather, it's for the Catholic church- a church which has historically held that unrepentant public sin and the public rejection of the Church's teachings by a professing member are each independently legitimate grounds for refusing a member of the church Communion. While it is true that mainline Protestantism has pretty much abandoned this attitude in the last century or two (along with most of the remainder of the Faith), my own Missouri Synod Lutheran tradition retains the same belief, which happens to correspond to the unanimous attitude of the first fifteen hundred years of the Christian tradition. To suggest that it is somehow improper for the Catholic church to deny a Catholic Communion for behavior which has historically been regarded as demanding precisely such action because he is a politician and his sin is in the area of public policy is once again to encounter that fundamental flaw in the cultural Left's position on the subject of faith in the public arena- except in a far more sinister form. Now, it's no longer simply a matter of religious ideas being banned from the public square on the mere ground that the Left happens to disagree with them. Suddenly, it has become a matter of the Left intruding into the internal faith and life of the Catholic church, and telling it what it can and cannot do with its own Sacraments.
Suddenly, it is no longer the public square that we're discussing. It's the sanctuary, the altar, the pulpit. The cultural Left- Press and Saperstein included- seem oblivious to the fact that they are seeking to dictate to an entire religion what it can and cannot believe, and how it may and may not exercise its own internal spiritual discipline!
It may well be, as Barak Obama said at the Democratic Convention, that those in the "blue states" worship an awesome God. Or god; in view of the Left's attitude toward the First Commandment and the relationship between one's religious convictions and one's attitudes toward public policy, the conclusion seems unavoidable that at least a large percentage of the time, those to whom Obama referred are their own deities. The real issue, though, is that the cultural Left wants to invade the sanctuary, and tell specific religions what they can and cannot proclaim from the pulpit, and precisely who they must admit to their Sacraments.
I submit that such a thing is intolerable to anyone with even the slightest respect for the First Amendment, and that on purely civil grounds Rabbi Saperstein, Press, and the others (especially the non-Catholics) who have usurped the right to even express an opinion on whether or not the Catholic church should admit John Kerry to Communion are way, way out of line.
More than that, I would submit neither Press nor the Left "gets" religion. Religion is one's final authority for one's life, or it isn't religion. Nor do Press or the Left "get" the First Amendment. If they did, they wouldn't be trying to tell people of other faiths what they can and cannot believe.
Yes, there is, indeed, a threat to the "wall of separation" abroad in the public square today. But it isn't the much-demonized "religious Right." As long as we remain as pluralistic a democracy as we are, there is no realistic threat of anyone's denominationally-specific beliefs somehow being codified into law and imposed on the rest of us.
But there is a very real threat indeed from the cultural Left, which understands neither religion nor freedom of religion- and whose entire agenda in this area is to silence anyone with whose religious convictions they happen to disagree, even to the point of seeking to tell individual churches to whom they may, and may not, administer the Sacraments.
It's folks like Eyal Press and Rabbi Saperstein who are the real threat to the First Amendment. Frankly, they scare me to death- and they should scare anybody who values freedom of religion.
By now, of course, we're all used to the kind of hypocritical rhetoric it contains about how the "religious Right" wants to "impose its morality on others-" as if the Left, secular and otherwise, were not attempting to do the same thing, and is if every law, literally without exception, didn't involve the imposition of certain moral standards on other people. The point seems to wholly escape folks like Press that in a diverse and religiously pluralistic democracy, purely sectarian moral standards, or those supported only by narrow constituencies, don't get imposed on anybody. You need something resembling a politically viable consensus for that, and the very pluralism of our culture protects it against the bugbear of anybody's religion being imposed on anybody else by force of law.
Moral standards, of course, are another matter. What standards get imposed- which is merely another way of saying "what laws get passed-" is a function of debate, dialog and the democratic process. And it's here that the true hypocrisy of the social Left is exposed in terms no honest person can miss: to Press, and to the Left generally, it's OK to impose moral standards they approve of; in fact, "political correctness" is nothing other than the imposition of the sensibilities of one group upon the whole. But moral standards they do not share are not simply mistaken, and best not adopted. Their mere advocacy is cast in threatening, anti-democratic terms, as a threat to diversity, pluralism and the American way.
This inconsistency lands the cultural Left in some very odd places. Consider the following quote from Press's article:
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, affirmed the importance of maintaining the wall of separation between church and state, reminding the audience that, far from inhibiting religion, this division "has allowed religion to flourish" by keeping government out of the pews. Saperstein took to task the Catholic bishops who announced they would refuse to let John Kerry take Communion because he is prochoice, arguing that while Americans have a right to know how a politician's religious beliefs influence his or her policies, it's wrong to demand that decisions be made solely on the basis of faith.
These are important principles--principles that, as it happens, the vast majority of Americans share. A recent Time magazine poll found that 70 percent of Catholics believe the Catholic Church should not try to influence the positions Catholic politicians take.
I guess Rabbi Saperstein has decided that government has stayed out of the pews long enough, and that maybe religion shouldn't flourish anymore. Why else would he want to dictate, on purely civil grounds, to whom the Catholic church gives Communion? Isn't that interfering in the internal affairs of a religion to which he does not even subscribe? And if he has even the slightest regard for the First Amendment, how dare he?
First, Catholicism gets to decide how what Catholicism believes gets decided. It's long since decided that the Magisterium decides that on the basis of Scripture and tradition. It isn't up for majority vote. To the extent that they are faithful to the Catholic religion, Catholics are so guided. To the extent that they are not faithful to the Catholic religion, they are not. It's the same for Jews, or Lutherans, or any other group of people who voluntarily have associated themselves with a religion that stands for a certain set of beliefs. To the extent that such people do not share those beliefs, the honest thing would be to change religions- and not to demand that the religion change to accommodate them!
Secondly, Catholics are people who believe what the Catholic church believes. The Catholic church believes- and has always believed- that not only does the Catholic church have the right to try to influence the positions Catholic politicians take, but that it has the positive obligation to do so. All Christian churches believe that they have such an obligation. Judaism believes that it has such an obligation. Even Press and the cultural Left believe that the Catholic church and other religions have such an obligation- at least when it comes to social justice, opposition to capital punishment, and other positions they like. What Press and Rabbi Saperstein and the cultural Left object to is not religions seeking to influence their adherents to simply be their adherents- i.e., to follow their teachings- but only religions seeking to influence their adherents to follow teachings with which Press, and Saperstein, and the cultural Left do not happen to agree.
Their position is essentially that everyone should have the religious freedom to agree with them. It is only when religions disagree with them that they are violating what they imagine to be the "wall of separation."
Third, biblical religion of all flavors feels bound by the Ten Commandments, the very first of which demands that one have no other gods but God. Where one's faith speaks to an issue- where one believes that one's conscience is bound by God's own command or will- to fail, in Rabbi Saperstein's terms, to "make decisions soley on the basis of faith" is to commit the primal and most fundamental of sins: idolatry.
It seems odd that a clergyman such as Rabbi Saperstein would seek to set one's religion against one's conscience. Again, if a person's conscience is not bound by his faith (as John Kerry's, apparently, is not bound by his on the subject of the legality of what his church teaches- and he claims to agree- is willful the willful murder of innocents), he is free to find a church with which his conscience does agree. The "important principle" which Rabbi Saperstein is espousing is the moral imperative to be either an idolater- for whom one's obligation to some other principle or consideration comes before one's obligation to God- or a hypocrite, who claims by his public religious confession a set of beliefs which in fact are not his at all.
It should be noted in passing that the "wall of separation between church and state," insofar as it has any actual constitutional basis at all, involves the turning of religious dogma as religious dogma into public policy. Our government does not have religious dogma; religions have religious dogma. Our government has public laws, agreed to through a process involving all elements of a religiously diverse society. But to say that is a very different matter from saying that there can be no overlap between what might constitute religious dogma for some, and what is resolved upon as public policy through a process involving all. If it did, laws against stealing and murder would be unconstitutional encroachments by the Ten Commandments into the realm of civil law!
The "wall of separation" does not suggest that because an idea is religious in its origins, it is therefore to be excluded from the public square. It rather insists that it be enacted into law only if it is agreed in that religiously diverse forum that it is recommended by compelling secular arguments. Opposition to legalized abortion, for example, is no more verboten by Jeffersonian logic than the advocacy of social justice on precisely the religious grounds Press endorses. But that is the fundamental inconsistency in Press's entire argument, and in the entire approach of the cultural Left to the subject of the relationship between faith and the public square: a willingness to admit to public debate any religiously- engendered idea with which they agree, while treating any idea of religious origin with which they disagree with all the tolerance with which, for example, the Inquisition treated the public expression of such disapproved ideas.
That's the dirty little secret of the cultural Left, when it comes to the relationship between faith and the public order: its fundamental intolerance. Nowhere is this failing more obvious than in the totally uncomprehending- and wholly inappropriate- criticism offered by folks like Press and Rabbi Saperstein of the notion of denying John Kerry Communion because he commits what his professed religion teaches is a public sin by advocating the legality of what even he personally agrees is willful murder! The moral desolation of Kerry's position in view of his confession that he is not totally a hypocrite, but personally agrees with his church's teaching with regard to the moral nature of abortion, but thinks it should be legal anyway, is itself appalling; one can only reflect on what one would have thought, personally, of a German who believed that Jews were human beings who ought not to be murdered, but didn't want to impose his personal convictions on the subject of murder upon Adolf Eichmann. When we reflect that Washington, Jefferson, and Lee, to name only a few otherwise admirable Americans who favored the legality of slavery despite a conviction that Africans were human beings, we are quite properly appalled; why is it that at least those of us on the cultural Left have such a difficult time being equally appalled by the moral cowardice of John Kerry's stance on the legality of abortion?
But while any morally consistent person is- or at least ought to be- appalled by Kerry's position on the subject, it is emphatically not for, say, a Reform Rabbi to pass on whether it means that he should be denied Communion. Rather, it's for the Catholic church- a church which has historically held that unrepentant public sin and the public rejection of the Church's teachings by a professing member are each independently legitimate grounds for refusing a member of the church Communion. While it is true that mainline Protestantism has pretty much abandoned this attitude in the last century or two (along with most of the remainder of the Faith), my own Missouri Synod Lutheran tradition retains the same belief, which happens to correspond to the unanimous attitude of the first fifteen hundred years of the Christian tradition. To suggest that it is somehow improper for the Catholic church to deny a Catholic Communion for behavior which has historically been regarded as demanding precisely such action because he is a politician and his sin is in the area of public policy is once again to encounter that fundamental flaw in the cultural Left's position on the subject of faith in the public arena- except in a far more sinister form. Now, it's no longer simply a matter of religious ideas being banned from the public square on the mere ground that the Left happens to disagree with them. Suddenly, it has become a matter of the Left intruding into the internal faith and life of the Catholic church, and telling it what it can and cannot do with its own Sacraments.
Suddenly, it is no longer the public square that we're discussing. It's the sanctuary, the altar, the pulpit. The cultural Left- Press and Saperstein included- seem oblivious to the fact that they are seeking to dictate to an entire religion what it can and cannot believe, and how it may and may not exercise its own internal spiritual discipline!
It may well be, as Barak Obama said at the Democratic Convention, that those in the "blue states" worship an awesome God. Or god; in view of the Left's attitude toward the First Commandment and the relationship between one's religious convictions and one's attitudes toward public policy, the conclusion seems unavoidable that at least a large percentage of the time, those to whom Obama referred are their own deities. The real issue, though, is that the cultural Left wants to invade the sanctuary, and tell specific religions what they can and cannot proclaim from the pulpit, and precisely who they must admit to their Sacraments.
I submit that such a thing is intolerable to anyone with even the slightest respect for the First Amendment, and that on purely civil grounds Rabbi Saperstein, Press, and the others (especially the non-Catholics) who have usurped the right to even express an opinion on whether or not the Catholic church should admit John Kerry to Communion are way, way out of line.
More than that, I would submit neither Press nor the Left "gets" religion. Religion is one's final authority for one's life, or it isn't religion. Nor do Press or the Left "get" the First Amendment. If they did, they wouldn't be trying to tell people of other faiths what they can and cannot believe.
Yes, there is, indeed, a threat to the "wall of separation" abroad in the public square today. But it isn't the much-demonized "religious Right." As long as we remain as pluralistic a democracy as we are, there is no realistic threat of anyone's denominationally-specific beliefs somehow being codified into law and imposed on the rest of us.
But there is a very real threat indeed from the cultural Left, which understands neither religion nor freedom of religion- and whose entire agenda in this area is to silence anyone with whose religious convictions they happen to disagree, even to the point of seeking to tell individual churches to whom they may, and may not, administer the Sacraments.
It's folks like Eyal Press and Rabbi Saperstein who are the real threat to the First Amendment. Frankly, they scare me to death- and they should scare anybody who values freedom of religion.
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