A couple of months ago, I received a request from Sarah Harland-Logan at Harvard Political Review for an interview about my book The End of Secularism. I agreed. Ms. Harland-Logan sent me a sizeable set of questions which I answered in full.
The article is now available. Somewhat to my chagrin, it is primarily about how great secularism is with a couple of statements by me and Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, suggesting the self-congratulation is not warranted.
Happily, I saved our full email exchange so that those who would like to read the whole thing can do so. Here it is:
-What exactly is secularism about? Why have so many people turned to this idea/ideology in the last few decades?
Secularism is about removing religion/consideration of God from public life. The desire to do so does not have to be invidious. Those who embrace secularism, including many Christians, often do so because they believe it is a good answer to the problem of religious difference among people in a political community. They think that if they can remove differences among people, especially religious differences, our community will grow stronger. At the same time, secularists tend to see religion as something human beings once needed, but no longer do. They think religion is irrational and extraneous to the things that really matter in life.
On the other hand, some types of secularists are less well intentioned in their efforts to remove religious faith from public life. Secular totalitarians (such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others) have the desire to marginalize religious belief and institutions because they are potential roadblocks to enforcing the will of the state. They would prefer there be no intermediary institutions between the state and the individual.
-Many secularists seem to fear that we are headed toward an “American theocracy.” In your opinion, how valid is this fear?
It is not a valid concern in the United States. Our national identity, formed and shaped by both devout Christians and Enlightenment philosophers, fully embraces religious liberty and the separation of church and state. In fact, there is a powerful religious argument (well delivered by Martin Luther, by John Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration, by the Baptists, and by others) that coerced religion is actually offensive to God and merely causes people to sin by lying about their convictions.
You hear conservative Christians complaining about the separation of church and state, but they are actually failing to voice their real concern. In fact, they object to secularization of the public square which they feel goes too far. As an example, it would be silly to argue that the Ten Commandments are not a hugely important part of western culture. They are part of who we are even if we don’t all embrace them in their fullness. Some Americans see monuments of that nature taken down and feel that secularists have gone too far. And indeed, they have. Separation of church and state, properly understood, means that the two entities are institutionally separate. It doesn’t mean religious faith can’t be part of our identity as a public community or that the church has nothing to say to the state about politics.
With regard to concerns about theocracy, I think this is an area where men and women of the left have been inconsistent. They loved having liberal clergy “speak truth to power” or “speak prophetically” in the 1960’s. But when conservative pastors and priests entered the fray on the part of unborn children in the 1970’s and 1980’s, they were never given credit for “speaking truth to power”. Instead, they were accused of being theocrats, despite the fact that you can argue in good faith that they were challenging structures of power on behalf of a vulnerable population. In addition, I recall a situation in Alabama several years ago where a female law professor convinced the Republican governor to make the tax code more progressive because that is how Christ would have it. Her argument was pretty persuasive and highly religious. I never heard the ACLU or People for the American Way complaining about the threat of theocracy then, even though the tax code is the very heart of government policy.
-You argue that the assertions made by secularists routinely fail. Would you be able to provide an “executive summary” of what you see as the principal assertions made by secularists, and why exactly each one fails?
Sure, this is the heart of my book, The End of Secularism, so I encourage people to read it and engage the arguments in fullness. But there are two prongs of argument that I think are very important.
The first is that secularists argue religion should be kept in the private domain because our society will be more socially harmonious as a result. This is an admirable hope, but I think it discounts how important religion is to people. Individuals bring their religious beliefs to the public square because they have integrity. They want to provide their real basis for a stand they take rather than formulate a false one that meets some secular language requirement. And we already have a built-in limit on religious language and philosophical stands. They must be persuasive or they will fail. If someone comes in quoting obscure sections of scripture without building any connection to reason on a public issue, they won’t be much listened to. I suspect many secularists think pro-lifers are guilty of doing that, but in fact, they are relentlessly rational in making their argument. You may agree or disagree with it, but it is not some kind of inaccessible argument that you could never understand if you weren’t religious.
The other problem with the social harmony argument, which is well-exposed by postmodernism, is that secularists are human beings and human beings have all kinds of orthodoxies (religious or not) to which they cling. Secularists are a team on the field of public debate who want to don striped jerseys and call penalties, as well. They can’t be neutral even though they claim to be.
The other key assertion is that secularists think they have a corner on the use of reason. Secularists sidle up next to science and say, “We’re the natural allies of science. Religious people are the enemies of scientific rationality.” That’s a publicity campaign, not the truth. Christians, for example, want scientific knowledge everywhere they can get it. It’s the best kind of knowledge we can have in many areas of life and we would be foolish not to rely upon it. Augustine made that argument many centuries ago. Too often religious opposition to some use of science (such as embryonic stem cell research) is confused with an opposition to science, itself, as a way of knowing. The reason for the somewhat insincere publicity campaign is that it is an effective way of marginalizing religious people. If an audience can be made to believe that Christians reject science, then they must not be rational people. And if people aren’t rational, then there is no need to listen to them. In fact, they may need their children taken from them, as some secularists have semi-seriously suggested.
There’s another critical point to think about. Secularism mostly has to do with separating politics and religion. I’ve already suggested that the separation of church and state is adequate and that separating politics and religion goes too far. Part of why secularists are wrong to attempt this isolation of politics from religion is because we cannot justify our basic political commitments without going beyond pure scientific rationality. For example, consider the idea of equality. How are we equal? The Federalist Papers point out that we could drag everyone back to the starting line of life and eventually people would sort back out in low, middle, and high because they have different gifts, talents, interests, etc. But we are committed to equality. In the western world, where we value equality more highly, the basis of this idea is equality before God. You can try to create another foundation for it, but I think even John Rawls’ version sounds like a conversation in heaven at the beginning of the world.
-More broadly, why do you believe that people need, and will ultimately never move away from, religious faith? (Explanations that I’ve run across range from “because God created us with faith,” to “because in our evolutionary past, it was useful for survival to ascribe causality to things like tree branches falling on us,” to “because we are terrified of death”…)
I think religious faith will remain viable because, contrary to what many think, it is about the search for truth. That is why religious liberty is so important. We all know we are going to die and yet we feel some connection to eternity. Why are we here? Who created us, if we were created? What will happen when we die? It may be the end, but maybe not. We discover things all the time that we never knew existed before. Maybe there is a whole new reality waiting to be discovered that we lack the instruments to detect. We want to know if there are first things and last things. Religion is about that quest and we won’t tire of that.
-If secularism actually damaging to the culture/the individual (as opposed to merely unpersuasive and/or unsustainable)?
I think the small threat of secularism is that it marginalizes religious people and groups and causes them to feel resentment. Thebigger threat of secularism is that it removes the church as an effective counter to the state. Rousseau complained that the church caused people to have a conflict between two masters which are the church and the state. But he failed to consider that having a counter to the government can be freedom-enhancing and protect against the development of totalitarianism. That is why Hitler was so keen to gain control of the church in Germany. He knew it could stand in his way. Of course, the part of the church that did, people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were killed. Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II, was part of a Polish church which worked for the freedom of the Polish people against the secular Soviet-sponsored state.
-Do you think that the secularist movement has in fact accomplished anything useful, either ideologically or in the realm of policy/social issues?
Yes, I do. They certainly raise awareness of the fact that, hey, not everybody on this bus feels like the people in the dominant faith do. Their difference has to be accounted for and that is a good thing to check excessive confidence and ambition on the part of the church. Madison hoped factions would check factions and thus help protect freedom. I think that kind of thing is healthy in American society.
-And similarly, are there any lessons from the secular “side of the fence” that religious people and institutions could learn from?
The answer here is similar. Secularists deliver a nice, heaping dose of skepticism which is very good for religious people to have to deal with. Without that, people get lazy and just kind of assume things are true without thinking about it. I do wish, though, that secularists would differentiate better between religions. There are a number of critical differences. When Paul spoke to the men of Athens (the philosophers) at the Areopagus, he defended Christianity on the basis of the resurrection of Christ as a public event in time, space, and history. He said God furnished evidence. That’s a different from pure revelation. So, there’s the issue of different levels of credibility between religions. And secondly, of course, they have different track records. I am often shocked that many American secularists resort to the type of hyperbole where they compare conservative Christians to members of the Taliban. How can I take someone who says something like that seriously?
May 12th, 2010 | 2:27 pm
This line in the linked article made me do a double-take:
Pinker claimed that secularism’s greatest achievement is simply “democracy,” which he described as “a form of government that was reasoned from first principles, most famously in the Declaration of Independence, with no support from theological principles.”
Reasoned from first principles with no support from theological principles? I guess the “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” part slipped his mind, huh?
May 12th, 2010 | 3:18 pm
[...] meets some secular language requirement.’” | At First Things, Hunter Baker provides the full text of his email exchange with [...]
May 12th, 2010 | 4:01 pm
What is the Alabama situation you speak of? Are you referring to Bob Riley’s proposed tax hike in 2003? Or is this something else? Fill me in – with an article or two, if you can.
May 12th, 2010 | 5:35 pm
Interesting & disappointing article. I found particularly fascinating the opening. Whedon at the beginning of the article is at least honest (and quite revealing) about the attitudes of this mindset, when he stated, “the important thing is not that we’re right…”
So glad intellectual discourse has done away with silly notions of “objective truth” or “meaning” and now we can all proceed on to much more important things.
May 12th, 2010 | 5:43 pm
Matt, yes, this was the Bob Riley tax hike of 2003 or thereabouts. You can read a whole chapter about it in my book The End of Secularism with plenty of footnotes.
May 12th, 2010 | 6:19 pm
How interesting that Joss Whedon was the recipient of the “Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism”. He made his reputation and fortune writing and producing a TV show that is inextricably linked to a Judeo-Christian worldview.
I see this often among younger people. The will deny the existence of God, while at the same time embracing a worldview that includes the supernatural, Satan, Demons, etc.
May 12th, 2010 | 6:20 pm
“Madison hoped factions would check factions and thus help protect freedom. I think that kind of thing is healthy in American society.”
Precisely!
Yet our history shows a specific, intentional bias on the part of government and society to promote Protestant Christianity. The Catholic school system was created because the Protestant majority feared that “public” schools would teach from a Catholic bible instead of the Protestant Bible — the concerns of Jews, of course, were never considered. Despite the clear wording of the Constitution, this situation didn’t change until the 20th century. [McCollum v. Board of Education Dist. 71, 333 U.S. 203 (1948)]
Please understand that private citizens and organizations of any religious background should have equal access and use of the public square. The problem arises from unequal treatment, like the Washington State dispute some Christians would not accept that an atheist group could place a sign in the state capitol, but had no problem with a “public” Christmas tree or Nativity.
So governments have two options; all or nothing. Yet this even-handed treatment seems to upset some Christians whose notion of Religious Freedom also includes preferential treatment for Christianity.
May 12th, 2010 | 7:36 pm
The preferential treatment of Christianity is warranted due both to the role distinctly Christian principles played in this country’s foundation and to the cultural Christian tradition that has cemented this country’s identity until very recently.
May 12th, 2010 | 8:37 pm
As for Professor Pinker, let me bring to your attention my recently published “Dignity Never Been Photographed: Scientific Materialism, Enlightenment Liberalism, and Steven Pinker.” Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics 26.2 (Summer 2010): 93-110.
Ultimately, Professor Pinker does not actually believe that the human person has intrinsic dignity by nature. In fact, he thinks dignity is stupid. (Hence, the title of his New Republic piece, ‘The Stupidity of Dignity’).
You may find my article online here: http://web.me.com/francis.beckwith/FrancisBeckwith.com/Articles.html It is the first link.
May 12th, 2010 | 8:40 pm
[...] Levels of Credibility Between Religions?12 May 2010Hunter Baker blogs at First Things that he is not entirely happy with the way his email interview with Sarah Harland-Logan of Harvard [...]
May 12th, 2010 | 9:37 pm
“The preferential treatment of Christianity is warranted due both to the role distinctly Christian principles played in this country’s foundation and to the cultural Christian tradition that has cemented this country’s identity until very recently.”
In other words, some are more equal than others.
“…our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“…a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
“…Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
– James Madison
May 12th, 2010 | 9:53 pm
Mr. Baker,
John Courtney Murray would be proud of your effort. Keep up the good fight!
May 13th, 2010 | 12:09 am
“In other words, some are more equal than others.”
And then, you cite, Madison and Jefferson, implying that they are in fact more equal than Hunter on this matter.
They used to charge for this sort of irony before the internet. :-)
May 13th, 2010 | 8:59 am
Irony is the specialty of those who believe we should have an egalitarian meritocracy. ;^)
May 13th, 2010 | 9:19 am
Hunter – many thanks. Looking forward to reading this, though I don’t recall Gov. Riley making a religious argument at the time, I do know that progressive evangelicals in the state applauded the move. Truth be told, Amendment 1 was the sort of legislation that a Douthat/Frum-type conservative would likely support.
May 13th, 2010 | 9:58 am
Well, your definition of secularism is different from mine. As far as I am concerned, secularism is about removing religion/consideration of God from governing, not from public life. There is a difference between a public figure praying before a law making session and leading a prayer before a law making session.
As an example, it would be silly to argue that the Ten Commandments are not a hugely important part of western culture. They are part of who we are even if we don’t all embrace them in their fullness.
I’m not a huge proponent of ripping out TC monuments all over the country, but I have to disagree that it is silly to argue the point. They are part of some of us. Regardless of historical significance, they are not representative of all. I am part of “we” and I do not “embrace them” at all.
The preferential treatment of Christianity is warranted due both to the role distinctly Christian principles played in this country’s foundation and to the cultural Christian tradition that has cemented this country’s identity until very recently.
How is this different from “The preferential treatment of Whites is warranted due both to the role distinctly White principles played in this country’s foundation and to the cultural White tradition that has cemented this country’s identity until very recently.”?
I’m sorry, but the most important principle of this nation, aside from individual liberty, is that which is most often forgotten, equality! When lawmakers use their religious convictions as the basis for law (homosexual marriage, abortion, blue laws, etc.) it is not only unfair, but unjust.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:14 am
“I’m sorry, but the most important principle of this nation, aside from individual liberty, is that which is most often forgotten, equality!”
do you mean equal protection under the law?
or equal oportunity to pursue_______?
or equality, like everyone gets an even slice of pizza?
because if you just mean equality, like totally even, the there can be no rules, as any rule will inhibit someone.
so do we rule to majority?
or do we rule to protect the weak which will most reasonably be defined as smallest, then the rule of law is specifically set for the few at the expense of the many.
so now we are all to be like robin hood, stealing from whoever is percieved to have more than their share, and redistributing it to those with less.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:38 am
America is essentially about liberty, not equality. While we are equal before God and the law, we are free to use assorted talents as best we can and to enjoy the fruits thereof. We’re, also, free to be charitable; according to Arthur Brooks, Americans are the most charitable people on earth.
Ms. Hoagland is at Harvard, presumably due to being a bright, hardworking person. Too bad she has fallen for the illusion of liberal guilt that serious accomplishment should be hidden under a patina of ideological equality. She might take a course under the bracing conservative Harvey Mansfield who could teach her a thing or two about liberty and equality.
May 13th, 2010 | 11:38 am
“I’m sorry, but the most important principle of this nation, aside from individual liberty, is that which is most often forgotten, equality! When lawmakers use their religious convictions as the basis for law (homosexual marriage, abortion, blue laws, etc.) it is not only unfair, but unjust.”
Are you suggesting that other principles are inferior? How non-egalitarian of you.
Seriously, why do you suppose that the prolife view on abortion is “religious”? That seems odd, since, for many of us, it is a position based on the very notion of equality that you are suggesting should be applied across the board. That is, when one thinks of fellow human beings, their size, level of development, environment, and dependency do not seem relevant to their intrinsic dignity. You, apparently, are suggesting otherwise. If we are all equal, then why is it permissible to kill the unborn?
Take now the case of gay “marriage.” As we know from experience, whenever it becomes law, religious believers are forced to go into the closet, to pretend as if their beliefs are false or suffer punishment. Consider the example of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts. In that state, CC had to get out of the child adoption business since it refused to put children up for adoption to gay couples. Apparently, in Massachusetts, “equality” means treating the beliefs of some citizens as false and outside the pale of tolerance. Do you seriously believe that something that is integral to the Christian understanding of the order and nature of things–that Christ’s Church is His bride–is equivalent to racism?
May 13th, 2010 | 12:09 pm
Shouldbeworkin, the problem with that trick you did with the paragraph is that it could be done with another word like freedom or another word like democracy.
And I wish that all secularists were like you. But they don’t believe that about just formal governing, they think religion should be out of public affairs altogether.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:10 pm
“Harvey Mansfield who could teach her a thing or two about liberty and equality.”
And Prof. Mansfield would disagree with Mr. Leavitt on America being about liberty not equality. Liberty AND equality are what America said it was about from the start.
May 13th, 2010 | 12:20 pm
Apparently, in Massachusetts, “equality” means treating the beliefs of some citizens as false and outside the pale of tolerance. Do you seriously believe that something that is integral to the Christian understanding of the order and nature of things–that Christ’s Church is His bride–is equivalent to racism?
I for one, don’t think it makes you all bigots (though I think it can be possible for anti-gay sentiments rooted in religious convictions to turn into bigotry; not saying Beckwith or Carter qualify as “bigots” in my eyes).
However, in principle, it’s still possible to respects folks’ religious convictions while still granting equality for gay people. It’s hard to do in practice because today’s government is Leviathan.
I also think it’s possible to hold to a M-F view of the “order of things” and find a place for gays in “Nature.”
May 13th, 2010 | 1:44 pm
I for one, don’t think it makes you all bigots (though I think it can be possible for anti-gay sentiments rooted in religious convictions to turn into bigotry; not saying Beckwith or Carter qualify as “bigots” in my eyes).
If the truth be told, virtually everything most of us believe–from our beliefs in democracy, constitutionalism, liberty, equality, etc.–are not the consequence of thoughtful reflection. None of us believe anything out of “whole cloth.” Our beliefs are embedded in traditions. So, for example, consider the question of marriage. Is it possible to have come up with “marriage” without millennia of practice, genealogies, families, mothers, fathers, “brides of Christ,” etc? No. Thus, “gay” marriage is no more an innovation as much as it is an attempt to copy what could not have arisen without the tradition its proponents claim is mere bigotry (present company excepted, of course). So, if belief in traditional marriage is bigotry, then so is belief in gay marriage, since the whole idea of marriage isolates and elevates that relationship over and above “drinking buddies,” “girl scouts,” or “the ensemble on Friends.” This is why, inevitably, gay marriage will end marriage itself, since marriage is by its nature a non-egalitarian institution, and egalitarianism is like a cultural acid that eats away at every recalcitrant challenger, whether it is marriage, the Boy Scouts, or Augusta National. Egalitarianism is also totalitarian, since it is something that can only be enforced and would not arise naturally. Men and women left to their own devices, marry each other in churches, synagogues, or mosques, beget children, build families and form institutions in order to protect and nurture these families. The egalitarian uses the state to smash these things and calls those devoted to such institutions as bigots.
This is why same-sex “marriage” has much in common with bans on interracial marriage. The latter, by statute, were later tinkering with the common law that affirmed interracial marriage as a liberty. (Shocking, isn’t it? I am working on an online article on this very subject that will be published soon. It didn’t shock me, however, since I already knew that racism was an Enlightenment invention defended by folks like Kant, Hegel, and Hume). It was the state–fueled by slavery’s need for racial inferiority and eventually supported by the “science” of eugenics–that had to coerce the proper ends of nature. The same is true of gay “marriage.”
May 13th, 2010 | 2:23 pm
Francis Beckwith is right that abstract “liberty” and “equality” are less compelling in the real world than tradition. In terms of tradition it is true, as Tocquevlle makes clear, that America has strong traditions of both liberty and equality, though there is necessary tension between the traditions. In truth, however, despite fulsome secular rhetoric regarding equality, the liberty to make full use of one’s talents is the dominant tradition. That’s why many Americans like sports, a field in which equality is a joke.
On the subject of homosexual marriage and behavior, the “gay” militants are dubiously attempting to merge their agenda with the far more legitimate ones of racial and gender equality. They well know that a most serious obstacle is orthodox religion based on both biblical and rational principle.
May 13th, 2010 | 2:50 pm
So, if belief in traditional marriage is bigotry, then so is belief in gay marriage, since the whole idea of marriage isolates and elevates that relationship over and above “drinking buddies,” “girl scouts,” or “the ensemble on Friends.”
Well yeah. A gay couple could say the reason why we want to get married is because our relationship is more than that of just a “drinking buddy” or “ensemble of friends.” They may be wrong; but they wouldn’t want to get married if they didn’t believe this to be so.
Men and women left to their own devices, marry each other in churches, synagogues, or mosques, beget children, build families and form institutions in order to protect and nurture these families. The egalitarian uses the state to smash these things and calls those devoted to such institutions as bigots.
The problem I have with this is most proponents of gay marriage don’t deny the premise (“[m]en and women left to their own devices, marry each other …”). They just argue, there’s room for us too in the marriage party. The radical egalitarians who want to deconstruct marriage tended avoid the gay marriage issue because they saw “marriage” as an institution as something to be transcended.
Whether they are wrong, most gay marriage proponents believe they are STRENGTHENING the institution by having gays join it.
I also look forward to reading your article on interracial marriage. While I don’t doubt some traditionalists have long recognized their validity, way back from the common law, and that some enlightenment figures did indeed hold bigoted positions, there are still many quotations on traditionalist natural law and biblical grounds that argue for separation of the races. I’d like to see how you deal with them (or whether you ignore them).
May 13th, 2010 | 3:32 pm
Jon Rowe, you rather ignore the biblical and rational truth that ideally marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman in order that they have children who are best nurtured by a father and a mother.
May 13th, 2010 | 3:35 pm
Jon writes:
“natural law and biblical grounds that argue for separation of the races.”
No doubt about it, Jon. But, what’s interesting is that these arguments come after the Enlightenment, and the Catholic Church never, ever entertains them. It is an exclusively American Protestant (and not all American Protestants, of course) phenomenon, just as in the case of the anti-alcohol craze. From my reading of the literature, the religious arguments against intermarriage were the typical attempt on the part of religious citizens to “get with the times” and be “enlightened.” This is why the arguments are never really biblically or theologically very good. They are ad hoc attempts on the part of religious folks to show that they are educated and “scientific” about race.
Interestingly enough, in the California Supreme Court, Perez v. Sharp (1948), the precursor to the U. S. Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia (1967), the couple, a black man and an Hispanic woman, partially base their case on their Catholic faith, which has no prohibition of intermarriage. It’s fascinating how that fact never makes into the press.
May 13th, 2010 | 4:34 pm
Francis,
Okay. I haven’t meticulously delved into the footnotes with this as I have other things. And I’ve learned that once you delve in, sometimes you learn the prevailing scholarly wisdom is wrong.
However, I wonder if you’ve read this article and can explain some of its claims.
http://hnn.us/articles/4708.html
In one part, the author writes:
“The first law against interracial marriage was passed in the colony of Maryland in 1664. It set a precedent that spread to the North as well as the South: Massachusetts, for example, adopted a miscegenation law in 1705. After British colonies turned into American states, they continued, one by one, to pass miscegenation laws, until, by the time of the Civil War, they covered most of the south, much of the mid-West, and were beginning to appear in western states, too. Before the Civil War, there was only one significant challenge to this pattern of steady expansion. In Massachusetts, in the 1830s, a remarkable group of radical abolitionists went out on a limb to argue that the Massachusetts miscegenation law contradicted the fundamental American principle of civil equality. For more than a decade, abolitionists urged the Massachusetts state legislature to repeal the law; finally, in 1843, they succeeded.”
Arguably the time and place of these periods are not “Enlightenment.” This wasn’t Kant, Hegel or even Locke.
May 13th, 2010 | 4:47 pm
States like Massachusetts manage adoption, which goes beyond licensing and regulation. The So the Catholic Charities were acting as official agents of the Government when they provided the adoption service. Consequently the Catholic Church needed to abide by the state’s secular (not Catholic) standards.
The Constitutional answer, Francis Beckwith, is to remove the state from adoptions and so remove the limitations upon private organizations like the Catholic Church.
May 13th, 2010 | 6:07 pm
Mr. Hampton, you’re wrong in stating that the Catholic charities were acting as an official adoption agency of the state of Massachusetts. The reality is that Massachusetts law required all adoption agencies, private or public, to be licensed by the state; to obtain a license they must certify that they would not discriminate including by sexual orientation. Cardinal O’Malley attempted to obtain a religious exemption from the ban on sexual orientation discrimination; this was denied, causing the Church to give up its excellent adoption agency. This is a perfect example of the harm caused to a perfectly reasonable private Catholic charity by secular liberal fascism.
May 13th, 2010 | 6:16 pm
“secular (not Catholic) standards.”
That’s precisely why the Perez’s were forbidden to marry in California. The secular racist standards did not allow them to participate in the Catholic sacrament of marriage.
“Secular” and “religious” do no intellectual work at all. They are an adjectival means to engage in metaphysical apartheid.
As for the Enlightenment–to answer Jon–I should have said “after the beginning of the Enlightenment,” which I trace to its roots in the 15th and 16th centuries. The decline of confidence in knowing essences and natures–beginning with the medieval nominalists which shaped the ideas of Descartes, Bacon–as well as the age exploration, made racism too good to pass up. Once you deny that our minds are capable of extracting a real human nature from our encounters with particular human beings, you become a skeptic about our ability to know there is a real human nature. And given the big differences between Western culture and what the explorers found in Africa, and the economic benefits of slavery, you had in place both the philosophical and economic incentives.
People in the Middle Ages knew of non-white and non-European cultures. In fact, there were many saints from a variety of racial grounds in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Racism, as we know it today, is a recent invention in human history. But its evil not only lies in the damage it does to its victims. It also lies in the way in which superficial characteristics have been allowed to blind us to what our untainted intellect can clearly see: we all share the same nature, and all made in God’s image.
May 13th, 2010 | 6:51 pm
Francis:
That strikes me as kinda an early place to draw the Enlightenment line.
I know Dinesh D’Souza has, for some time, argued racism as we know it an invention of Western Enlightenment thought. However, his is a specially plead definition of the concept — a reasonable definition, but by no means universally accepted (having to do with modern biological/genetic understandings).
Some of the things Jefferson said in Notes on the State of VA, in this vein (as armchair scientist of genetic differences between races) are quite cringe worthy.
D’Souza’s critics have noted the concept of ethnic or “group” oriented bigotry — not all that different from “racism” — goes back forever. What the Hutus and Tutsis had against one another may not have been technically “racism” because they are both groups are black; it’s just as bad and arguably comes from the same bad place as racism. And that kind of thing isn’t an invention of the Enlightenment.
Anyway, I’m getting back to grading papers.
Perhaps I will see you on Monday or Tuesday at Princeton?
May 13th, 2010 | 7:37 pm
The General Laws of Massachusetts
Adoption services offered by certain persons or agencies; penalty
[Text of section effective until July 8, 2008]
Section 11A. Any person or entity other than a DULY AUTHORIZED AGENT or employee of the department of social services or a child care or placement agency licensed under the provisions of chapter twenty-eight A, who causes to be published in the commonwealth an advertisement or notice of children offered or wanted for adoption, or in any way offers to place, locate or dispose of children offered or wanted for adoption, or who holds himself out in any way as being able to place, locate or dispose of children for adoption shall be punished by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars.
Chapter 28A: Section 9. Definitions applicable to this section and Secs. 10 to 16
[Text of section effective until July 31, 2008]
“Placement agency”, a department, agency or institution of the commonwealth, or any political subdivision thereof, or any organization incorporated under the laws of the commonwealth, one of the principal purposes of which is to provide custodial care and social services to children, which receives by agreement with a parent or guardian and under contract with a state agency or as a result of referral by a court of competent jurisdiction, any child under 18 years of age for placement in family foster care or a group care facility.
For the purposes of adoption placement, however, a “placement agency” shall be a department, agency or institution of the commonwealth, or any political subdivision thereof, or any organization incorporated under chapter 180, one of the principal purposes of which is to provide custodial care and SOCIAL SERVICES to children, which receives by agreement with a parent or guardian and UNDER CONTRACT WITH A STATE AGENCY or as a result of referral by a court of competent jurisdiction, any child under the age of 18 years of age for placement in adoption.
May 13th, 2010 | 8:56 pm
Mr. Hampton, that legal verbiage proves nothing. You might read Maggie Gallagher’s Weekly Standard article, “Banned in Boston
The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty.” including:
“From there, it was only a short step to the headline “State Putting Church Out of Adoption Business,” which ran over an opinion piece in the Boston Globe by John Garvey, dean of Boston College Law School. It’s worth underscoring that Catholic Charities’ problem with the state didn’t hinge on its receipt of public money. Ron Madnick, president of the Massachusetts chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, agreed with Garvey’s assessment: “Even if Catholic Charities ceased receiving tax support and gave up its role as a state contractor, it still could not refuse to place children with same-sex couples.”
The whole article is at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/191kgwgh.asp
May 14th, 2010 | 8:01 pm
Again, the Catholic Charities of MA was contracted to supply Social Services to a State Agency. It doesn’t matter if they did it pro bono or were paid because they were acting on behalf of the State to operate a governmental program. Thus the State’s rules apply.
And just like marriage, the Constitutional answer is to remove the State from the process. If you let marriage, divorce, adoption, etc. be the sole province of private organizations all will have greater freedom to act according to particular religious dictates, including the Catholic Church.
Of course this too can work against you — a hypothetical Muslim or Atheist adoption agency would be able discriminate against Christians, and Mainline Protestant Churches would be able to offer Gay Marriage as equally valid as Traditional Marriage.
Suffice it to see that the old adage is true – Freedom isn’t free. The price is the tolerance of others’ freedom and the equal treatment of all under the law. For some, that is simply too high a price to pay.
May 31st, 2010 | 11:58 pm
“The reason for the somewhat insincere publicity campaign is that it is an effective way of marginalizing religious people. If an audience can be made to believe that Christians reject science, then they must not be rational people.”
–Hunter, dear child, scientific knowledge IS the opposite of faith. We’re not “being insincere,” your faith is NOT rational.
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