The Religions of the Cultural Elites

Interesting review (entitled, "Mystics of a Materialist Age) of what appears to be a very interesting book on the role of drugs in the historical development of European-American literature: Marcus Boon's The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs. It is particularly timely in the context of recent scuffles over Richard Dawkins's and Sam Harris's attacks on religion (which I admit I have yet to read, but which I plan to comment on here, when I get to them).

In his review of Harris, Alexander Saxton quotes the author: "At the core of every religion lies an undeniable claim about the human condition: [that] it is possible to have one's experience of the world radically transformed." Sure, but religion is hardly unique in this respect. Justus Nieland's review quotes Boon: "Psychedelics point out in a very direct and dramatic way that radical, rapid shifts in consciousness are possible."

Shocking! Religion and drugs share an element of consciousness-alteration. Who doesn't know this already? And why do we still need either religion or psychedelics to know this about consciousness? Haven't any of these people ever fallen in love?

Leaving aside for now the question of whether one (of drugs and religion . . . or love, for that matter) is more pernicious than the other, and in what way(s), a summary question for Boon from Nieland:

Finally, given Boon's sympathy for the quintessentially modern desire for transcendence, and his explicit "call for a proliferation of alternative methods of obtaining gnosis," more attention might have been paid to the specific political horizons that have historically given rise to and constrained the moderns various attempts to imagine its transcendent outsides (86). How might the position of drugs and other transcendent "hybrids" on the map of Latour's modern constitution be shifting in our post-9/11 climate; put another way, who needs opium when you've got Jesus or Allah?

Dawkins would, I suspect, put it in reverse: who needs Jesus or Allah when you've got opium? But in such tracts as Dawkins's, "more attention might [be] paid to the specific political horizons that have historically given rise to and constrained the modern's various attempts to imagine its transcendent outsides," or to its various attempts to imagine the world without transcendent outsides . . . also, dare we say, a historically situated perspective. Or is science itself the transcendent?

Eagleton notes in his review of Dawkins,

It was, of course, Marx who coined that last phrase [i.e., that religion is the opium of the masses]; but Marx, who in the same passage describes religion as the ‘heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions’, was rather more judicious and dialectical in his judgment on it than the lunging, flailing, mispunching Dawkins.

The Dark Side of the Evangelical Force

Haggard has more or less confessed, although he continues to be vague about what exactly he has to apologize for.

In a letter that was read to the congregation of the New Life Church by another clergyman, Haggard apologized for his acts and requested forgiveness.

"I am so sorry for the circumstances that have caused shame and embarrassment for all of you," he said, adding that he had confused the situation by giving inconsistent remarks to reporters denying the scandal.

"The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," he said.

Right, a dark side. Repulsive, even. Would that be the gay side? Or the john side? Or perhaps the meth side? Or maybe the point is that using meth, paying for sex, and having sex with people of the same sex are morally equivalent.

Has he learned anything from this experience? It would appear not.

Arabrein: The Flashback Solution to the Arab Question

Avigdor Lieberman has the "solution" to the Arab "problem": expulsion! Wait, maybe "forced migration" is a nicer way of putting that. He takes Cyprus, of all places, as a model for cultural non-co-existence. Interestingly enough, no one (including the Ha'aretz article, above, and an AP article I saw on Aljazeera.net) notes the parallel to the displacement of Palestinians at the establishment of Israel.

The whole article above is worth reading to see just how deep a hole Lieberman digs, but I want to call out a point about so-called "clashes of civilizations."

"The reason for the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict is not territory, not occupation, not settlers or settlements, rather friction between the two peoples and the two religions.

Why is it always right-wing religious nationalists (and mushy-headed liberals like Huntington, Harris, and Friedman) proclaiming that all political conflict is about religion? Many liberals, for their part, are prepared to ignore everything that comes out of the mouths of religious leaders except their proclamations that all politics -- particularly all political conflict -- is reducible to religion. They allow religious nationalists one true position presumably because those claims feed (neo-)liberal atheists' bizarre (and utterly unscientific and unmaterialist) prejudice that religion is the root of all evil, the only social force standing between modern humanity and utopia.

It boggles my mind, both strategically and ideologically/philosophically, that anyone concerned with social progress would so willingly play into the hands of the religious right-wing by assisting them in reducing all conflict to religion and all religion to fundamentalism.

"Everywhere, the world over, no matter if it's the former Yugoslavia or the Caucasus region in Russia, or Northern Ireland, wherever there are two peoples and two religions, there is friction."

He doesn't mention the US. I wonder why? And anyone who says the conflict in the north of Ireland, for example, is fundamentally about religion is only demonstrating their ignorance of the conflict and its history. Otherwise, see above.

According to Lieberman, Israel had no alternative but to move toward "exchanges of populations and territory, in order to create the most homogenously Jewish state."

"Homogenous" is here clearly a euphemism for "ethnically pure." Astonishingly, Lieberman goes on to turn the persecutor into the persecuted, conveniently eliding the history of his own state and its current conflict with the Palestinians by playing the Nazi card:

Referring to the Nazi-era term Judenrein, describing an area from which all Jews have been removed, Lieberman said:

"I don't understand why the Palestinians deserve a state which is 'Judenrein' - after all, we obligated ourselves to create a Palestinian state 'clean' of all Jews, to evacuate all settlements and all the Jews from there to create a homogenous state - while we turn into a bi-national country in which more than 20 percent of those within the state of Israel are minorities."

Lieberman disingenuously misstates the issue with settlements and outposts, which is not about ethnic purity but about establishment of government structures in occupied territories, and particularly about the commitment of the Israeli government to annexation. For him then to turn around and use this intellectually dishonest position as the basis of an argument for an ethnically pure -- excuse me, "homogenous" -- Jewish state is not only reprehensible, but also the worst kind of political opportunism.

In other news, Dick Cheney today suggested exchanging American Jews to Israel in the interest of creating a more homogenous United States. "I don't understand why we are obligated to create for them a homogenous Jewish state, but we have to have a multi-national country in which more than 33% of those within the United States are minorities," he said in a statement, adding, "Wouldn't they be happier with their own kind, anyway?"

Can you imagine?

More On Evangelicals, Sex, and Bigotry

Bitch | Lab posts from Rapture Ready an article about a new book on evangelical feminism. Who knew there was such a thing? A brief excerpt of a brief article:

[Wayne] Grudem, author of numerous books and co-founder and former president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, is research professor of Bible and theology at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona. In his new book, he discusses 25 patterns of argument employed by evangelical feminists and shows how each one dismisses the authority of Scripture.

[Albert] Mohler [president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] raises the question, “If the New Testament is to be superseded by a later reality based in a more modern understanding, how can the church justify relativizing some texts without relativizing others?”

It can't, but of course these guys have not understood that "Biblical literalism" is already "a more modern understanding." Is there a text in this religion?

Grudem argues that the hermeneutic, or method of interpreting Scripture, used to advocate evangelical feminism leads to the normalization of homosexuality as well. And the approval of homosexuality, Grudem writes, “is the final step along the path to liberalism.”

And here I always thought that gay rights was the first slouching step on the path toward Gomorrha, not the last! It turns out the first step toward recognizing gays as human beings is recognizing women as human beings.

The Culture of the Evangelical Closet

Jeff Sharlet notices the same thing I was thinking about this:

[T]he story is bigger than Ted; statewide, he's one of the key forces behind two new anti-gay amendements. Nationwide, as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, he sets the political tone for the Christian conservative movement at an administrative level broader than the influence of better-known figures such as Jerry Falwell.

If the story is true, Ted's a hypocrite of the worst kind; then again, he's also another victim of the very closet over which he publicly stands guard, as are all the New Life church members he's led into it. That story may not make the mainstream media. Indeed, it seems unlikely that Ted's downfall will be reported with any more nuance than that of Mark Foley's political collapse. Sex, it seems, blinds the press to politics.

The rest of his post is also worth a look, particularly his repost of his Harper's article about Haggard from 2005. Note especially:

He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor.

How . . . convenient.

His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS.

OK, here I'm going to go all pedantic on you: "siege" is a noun. Use either "seize" or "besiege," not "siege." And these are the people who complain about education in this country?

Oh, yeah, and role models. Watch out for the role models.

The Politics of Outing Evangelicals

Turns out Ted Haggard is gay, or at least it sure looks that way. Along with James Foley, this would be two prominent leaders of the Homophobic Community and their Homophobic Agenda. In general, I'm not in favor of outing people. But there's something really problematic about Haggard's and Foley's behavior, more problematic, I think, than outing them. It's not simply a matter of hypocrisy, like having a pr0n library when you head up an organization that fights pr0n. There's some serious and bizarre self-hatred going on here, which you suspect has deep roots in the evangelical Christian community these guys grew up in. I don't know the personal childhood histories of Haggard and Foley, and I'm certainly not making excuses for either of them. But what do you prove with them when you out them? That they hate themselves? There's news. But maybe it's about hatred generally, and here maybe about self-hatred taught and learned from childhood in ostensibly loving but insidiously hate-filled communities, self-hatred that is then projected out onto the rest of the world, so that you do your penance for your own sin by punishing and even terrorizing others.

OK. Now I feel better about this. But it's still pretty fucked up, the whole thing.

Who Exactly Is Afraid of What?

From The New York Times:

Pause for Peace
HERE in Gaza, few dream of peace. For now, most dare only to dream of a lack of war. It is for this reason that Hamas proposes a long-term truce during which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can try to negotiate a lasting peace.

A truce is referred to in Arabic as a hudna. Typically covering 10 years, a hudna is recognized in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract. A hudna extends beyond the Western concept of a cease-fire and obliges the parties to use the period to seek a permanent, nonviolent resolution to their differences.
The Koran finds great merit in such efforts at promoting understanding among different people. Whereas war dehumanizes the enemy and makes it easier to kill, a hudna affords the opportunity to humanize ones opponents and understand their position with the goal of resolving the intertribal or international dispute.

Such a concept a period of nonwar but only partial resolution of a conflict is foreign to the West and has been greeted with much suspicion. Many Westerners I speak to wonder how one can stop the violence without ending the conflict.

I would argue, however, that this concept is not as foreign might seem. After all, the Irish Republican Army agreed to halt its military struggle to free Northern Ireland from British rule without recognizing British sovereignty. Irish Republicans continue to aspire to a united Ireland free of British rule, but rely upon
peaceful methods. Had the I.R.A. been forced to renounce its vision of reuniting Ireland before negotiations could occur, peace would never have prevailed. Why should more be demanded of the Palestinians, particularly when the spirit of our people will never permit it?

When Hamas gives its word to an international agreement, it does so in the name of God and will therefore keep its word. Hamas has honored its previous cease-fires, as Israelis grudgingly note with the oft-heard words, At least with Hamas they mean what they say.

This offer of hudna is no ruse, as some assert, to strengthen our military machine, to buy time to organize better or to consolidate our hold on the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, faith-based political movements in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Morocco, Turkey and Yemen have used hudna-like strategies to avoid expanding conflict. Hamas will conduct itself just as wisely and honorably.

We Palestinians are prepared to enter into a hudna to bring about an immediate end to the occupation and to initiate a period of peaceful coexistence during which both sides would refrain from any form of military aggression or provocation. During this period of calm and negotiation we can address the important issues like the right of return and the release of prisoners. If the negotiations fail to achieve a durable settlement, the next generation of Palestinians and Israelis will have to decide whether or not to renew the hudna and the search for a negotiated peace.

There can be no comprehensive solution of the conflict today, this week, this month, or even this year. A conflict that has festered for so long may, however, be resolved through a decade of peaceful coexistence and negotiations. This is the only sensible alternative to the current situation. A hudna will lead to an end to the
occupation and create the space and the calm necessary to resolve all outstanding issues.

Few in Gaza dream. For most of the past six months its been difficult to even sleep. Yet hope is not dead. And when we dare to hope, this is what we see: a 10-year hudna during which, inshallah (God willing), we will learn again to dream of peace.

Ahmed Yousef is a senior adviser to the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya.
Nov. 1, 2006