It seems that the Swiss have voted to refuse to allow mosques to build minarets. There are four in the country right now, and they will be allowed to remain, but they don’t want more built because they are considered political expressions, and are thus against the Swiss constitution.
It is a strange notion that Westerners should refuse minarets while allowing mosques. If the Muslims are religious without being political, it is a benign symbol and therefore the buildings should be allowed, minarets and all. If Muslims are religious and political, then a minaret can be taken as a sign of intention to encroach, but then so are the mosques themselves, and both should be outlawed.
When are we going to admit that religious convictions are the foundations for political actions and beliefs? One has to think only for a minute to see that if the West were a culture based on Muslim belief, there would be little freedom for Christians and Jews to build their churches and temples. Why can’t we see that the Muslims are only free to build mosques in Swiss and American cities as a result of the freedom to practice religion that is based on Christian vision for a good society? A society that is free is free to do the right thing. Christians know that coercion is never going to lead to truth – people need to choose to love God, not be forced to do so. That is why we hold the political belief that governments should guarantee the free practice of religion. (of course when the founders of the US wrote that the government should not restrict the free exercise of religion in the Bill of Rights, they were intending to keep the country from establishing a national denomination – Anglican or Lutheran or Roman Catholic – I think they would have been extremely surprised that their rules have allowed the practice of Islam, Buddhism, et c. in America. This is a different world than they had, but the idea of free exercise is still a good one.)
It is a sort of cultural amnesia that allows our present political leaders, colleges, schools, even churches to think that there are no connections between the freedoms we enjoy and the Christian thinking that founded our countries. (I am not saying that everyone who founded our countries was a Christian – but the influence of faithful men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Shakespeare, Bach, Newton, Kuyper, George Washington, TS Eliot, and a thousand more, is undeniable). It is as though we have built the massive skyscraper of the West on the sound foundation of a Christian view of life, God, and man, then decided that we can make changes in the foundation without causing any effect on life at the 21st floor/century. This is the result of forgetting history.
When are we going to say, “You may live here, but understand that the freedoms you enjoy are due to the sacrifices of many generations of Christians. We require that you show respect.”? The freedom the Muslim enjoys to worship his god in his way is one of the benefits of Christian culture, not Muslim culture. We would require the same if anyone came to live in our homes. Hospitality is a two-way relationship: there are rules for the hosts, there are rules for the guests. Violation on either side can ruin the relationship.
So what are the Swiss trying to say with their ban of minarets? That they don’t mind the mosques, just the visual symbol of their presence? How does one separate the minaret from the mosque? As time goes on, the differences between the three cultures are going to become increasingly apparent.
17 comments:
Just saw a video on TED that reflects this sentiment: "When are we going to admit that religious convictions are the foundations for political actions and beliefs?" Thought I'd share, "The Lost Art of Democratic Debate".
http://blog.ted.com/2010/06/the_lost_art_of.php
I am all for considering Aristotle's approach to the nature of things, but I wish this fellow had applied the approach to the golf issue and the marriage issue as well as he applied it to the flute issue.
It seems to me that Scalia's argument was that golf had a nature, and that nature was made up somewhat arbitrarily by those who set the rules for golf. If the rules are that you have to walk the course, it is clearly intended that the walking is part of the experience of getting the ball in the hole...
Marriage has rules too, rules given by God, and the state should recognize God's authority to design marriage as He sees fit without changing it. But God or man, the principle is the same: don't go adjusting rules that you didn't set down. If you want golf with carts, go start your OWN course, game, and/or competition. If you want same-sex marriage, do as Elton John has suggested and do something similar, like civil unions.
But my point is that Aristotle's approach doesn't lead to the TED guy's conclusions as easily as he seems to think they do.
Further, if he is sincere about allowing people to bring their deeply cherished philosophically-based convictions into the public square (which I applaud as did the audience), we'll have to allow convictions that are rooted in a biblical view of man and the world as well as an Aristotelian one.
Thoughtful post, Delta -- thanks for reading and commenting. Glad to speak with you.
I never said I fully agreed with him. In fact, I'm not sure there are many with whom I find myself in complete agreement--ever. Nevertheless, his primary thesis is agreeable as well as his secondary: "convictions matter and are integral to the debate process". He implies, all said, that the floundering state of contemporary debate--reduced to little more than name calling--is a result of the nefarious belief that politics and debate ought to be sterilized of belief; what else is there, then but name calling. What I took from the lecture was a need to re-invigorate the public forum with strongly held conviction.
I really appreciate your point on the freedom of religion established by the Christian world view. I wonder what it would be like if the founders of the country had been Muslim? Would all our religious groups have the freedom to worship as they choose today? I think not...
Couldn't agree more with the idea that it is foolishness to think that public debate can be meaningful without allowing foundational beliefs into the equation. The name-calling on both sides of most political debate is the direct result of disallowing those foundational beliefs. But once allowing them, we need to have reasoned discussion about their application, and that's the problem I had with the TED guy: he missed his own point about applying Aristotle, and Scalia (who is a monumental intellect) as usual had something very profound to say on the nature of natures.
This is a great point, JHB - it is a good idea to reintroduce foundational principles into public debate, but once we do so, we are going to find that not all foundations are the same. There are qualitative and quantitative differences between a Christian foundation and that produced by Islam. The freedoms we enjoy are not possible out of Islam. You can't get an oak tree by planting grains of wheat.
Ah, but isn't application first based on conviction? Ergo, differing beliefs will pursue differing applications. These are inseparable. Abstraction, thought, reason begin in belief, which as James K. A. Smith mentions is first and foremost a place of desire. The reality isn't then that reason will prevail a single correct purpose or just solution. For John Locke writes that truth and knowledge is not the concern of mankind as is evidenced by its love of rhetoric; Augusitine, in Confessions, writes something similar that rhetoric is equally used to spread truth and falsehood. Not that we should neglect its use, but as Daniel Taylor writes in "The Myth of Certainty", we should not expect of reason to do more than it is capable; instead we should understand its limitations. Debate risks being nothing more than dialectical violence unless it is rooted in something more transcendent than rhetoric or reason with the victor being the one who is more pleasing (again, Augustine). It is important to note that reason is not synonymous with belief; reason emanates out of belief rather than the converse, and belief from desire. Therefore, to have any genuine lasting impact desires must be transformed; to do so requires that debate return to the arena of belief because then we are dealing with the category that counts. Michael Sandel, unless I am mistaken, doesn't attempt to answer the question of which is correct (though he might certainly show his bias), instead he is trying to show the different underlying beliefs that result in each camp's concept of justice. It is our job to change desires, but it becomes all the easier when both sides agree that what is being discussed is belief or desire systems rather than something that assumes an impersonal, scientific rigor that never existed in the first place. Again the synchronicity between your article and Sandel's lecture is that belief and politics are inseparable!
Delta - you are right not to ask of reason more than it can do. But neither should you ask too little of reasoning when it can do so much more. For the guy on the video to make an impassioned plea for understanding Aristotle's "natures" and then to dismiss Scalia's argument with scoffing and laughter is to misunderstand Scalia's argument. Scalia is saying that the game of golf has a nature, that nature is designed by its designers, and that the nature of golf includes walking, not riding to the holes. Therefore, the court cannot rule in favor of the golfer who wants to ride because it goes against the nature of golf. The rules of golf are completely arbitrary of course, so it may seem a small thing to change them, especially when it seems so lacking in compassion to say this fellow can't compete if he rides. However, Scalia's argument is about natures (the very subject our guy wants us to consider) and the arbitrary rules of golf are the only "nature" golf has. So, Scalia is actually calling on the very Aristotelian principles the man is hoping we will take up, only while they sounded great to our man at first, they don't lead logically to the conclusion the man wanted, so he switched principles in mid-stream to get the conclusion he wanted. My point is that the man missed his own point, and that in reality Scalia and Aristotle are on one side of the point, and our man is on the other.
So, this is not a question of the limits of reason, or the foundations of reason in sentiment. If the progression is (as you rightly say) sentiment/belief leading to reasoning, leading to action, the problem I am positing is downstream of the point you are making, as I am dealing with what I take to be an error in the man's reasoning, not with the foundations of reason on sentiment. But to respond to your thoughts on the writers you mention, we must be careful not to misinterpret James KA Smith or Aristotle -- when they say that sentiment and belief are anterior to reason, they don't mean that reason or rhetoric are simply ways to justify our feelings, or that clear reason leads only to "dialectical violence." We are not deciding what's true by our feelings and then using reason and rhetoric as tools to make others agree with us. Then all debate is violence. Reasoning about things can lead us to deeper and deeper wisdom, even given that reason cannot account for all there is. (How do we reason about the Trinity? Attempts always fall short of the reality.) But there are lots of things I have believed and even loved that I had to give up when I found they were not true (and that came about by seeing the inherent contradictions -- that is, through the blessing of reasoning).
However, it is true that there are rules to reasoning, and that being led by logic sometimes seems oppressive and misguided. But those rules are our friends, not our enemies. Uncomfortable conclusions usually come from either faulty foundations or faulty reasoning, neither of which are the fault of reason per se. For example, if you start with the principles of the Enlightenment and reason from them, it does indeed lead to violence (and not only the dialectical kind, as seen under Stalin, Mao, and Pot). But let's not blame the horse for the rider's cluelessness. It is not the limits of reason, but the limits of the soul attached in love to the wrong things that leads to that violence. But sometimes those uncomfortable conclusions lead to wisdom -- something we didn't want or couldn't see when we started. We don't want to dull a knife on the off chance that it will be used to kill instead of prepare dinner. Let's keep a keen reasoning edge, then use it in support of proper ends. Then it will assist us in understanding, and even help us to hone our sensibilities which in turn will lead us to even deeper wisdom.
A) I suppose in our culture's current ontological belief system, namely that all rules are arbitrary (are such because of a lack, according to them, of anything transcendent), what you hold to be a failing in his reason could simply be a manifestation of his belief. I of course assume here, but isn't it the basis for justice (capital punishment) being mandated in part by popular opinion and not the rules of God, which I stand behind you in advocating and protecting?
B) I would take issue with several other points you made: 1) reducing desire to feeling (is desiring the kingdom of God simply an emotional state); 2) James K. A. Smith DOES stand opposed to the Enlightenment idea of man as mind on a stick and many of his writings vehemently reject the primacy of reason. He never rejects it as a tool but does put his focus on how to shape desire rather than correct fallacious thinking. 3) Must reason be the only tool to wisdom; is it the best tool and always (wisdom seems to me to be MORE than just knowing) 4) there are many contradictions that cannot be srictly reasoned (the coexistence of predestination and personal responsibility (free-will) is difficult to overcome with reason especially of a Platonic sort; and so is the infinite God taking finite form; or the resurrection of the dead and many other scriptural concepts (not that they defy reason but certainly cannot be solved by means of reason alone)) 5) Must we equate Truth and reason; are they the same thing? I think art often speaks to what Daniel Siedell refers to as "non-rational truths".
C) All of this said I don't reject reason only its place of prominence above everything else granted to it during the Enlightment leading to Modernism. As N. T. Wright tells us "the grand narrative of the Enlightment and the grand narrative of Christianity are in conflict" and that Postmodernity is a necessary (but not final) response to the arrogance of modernity. Certainly, postmodernity is more than problematic, but as Christians we are not trying to get back to the a halcyon days of good old Hegelian thinking (the absolute pinnacle of logic and the Enlightenment). Christianity is something altogether different; not rejecting reason, but neither is identifying it as god.
ps - I think several of our posters have had trouble posting their very long posts, and have sent them multiple times or in pieces. The only time I have deleted my posts, or rejected the publishing of others' posts is when they were duplicates of one sort or another. If anyone thinks a point was sent but not posted, please let me know.
Thanks for the thoughtful responses. Quick response: as to your A, flaws in our man's thinking are flaws in his thinking regardless of his beliefs. My problem wasn't that he was against capital punishment (which we both agree must be decided on transcendent foundations that our man might not share with you and me), but rather about how he couldn't see that Scalia's argument about the golf cart case exemplified the very principle he was calling the audience to consider. Just wished he had gotten that. As for your B and C, we may be saying the same thing. Reason is a far larger category than Enlightenment Rationalism (Greeks, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas, and even Edwards are pre-Enlightenment reasoners, and would have caught the same error our TED man made). I am with you and Wright that the Enlightenment spawned an arrogance - but that arrogance is to be found in Enlightenment beliefs, not their reasoning. There needs to be a correction, but the problem I have with the Post-modernist correction is that it throws the baby of Medieval Reason out with the Enlightenment Rationalism bathwater.
I'm sure we do agree more than these short responses can reveal (though it has been quite enjoyable and stimulating), but I'm considering a thesis which might carry on our debate. While reading a book by theologian, David Bentley Hart, "The Beauty of the Infinite", I'm considering the old Apollonian & Dionysian debate (Apollonian representing high Greek thought to the Enlightenment and Dionysian representing Nietzsche forward). Really brief, as Christians we can accept neither; not that there doesn't exist anything of truth to either or that it can't be found in either (for both the Apollonian and Dionysian theories posses something of value), but that a third option--the Crucified--is so radically different from either system that we are not and should not attempt "to get back to" ancient Greek thought, principles or forms (the Bible tells us this) from our place in the postmodern; instead we should understand how disruptive Christ incarnate, dying and resurrected is to all things: ethical, aesthetic, epistemologal, ontological, etc. Certainly, the ancients as do the moderns have plenty to offer, but neither provides a solid enough foundation to build. Hart writes:
"Christian thought--whose infinite is triune, whose God became incarnate, and whose account of salvation promises not liberation from, but glorification of, material creation--can never separate the formal particularity of beauty from the infinite it announces, and so tells the tale of being in a way that will forever be a scandal to the Greeks. For their parts, classical 'metaphysics' and postmodernism belong to the same story; each, implying or repeating the other...just as two mirrors set before one another prolate their depts indefinitely, repeating an opposition that recedes forever along an illusory corridor without end...the dialectic of Apollo and Dionysus oscillates without resolution between endless repetitions of the same emptiness, the same play of reflection and inversion."
I think this stands contrary to the Schaefferian desire to hold up as some gold standard the Classical both in its concepts of beauty and thought while rejecting everything that doesn't quite fit its mold. Such a shift in thinking that there are not 2 categories but 3 provides a freedom to identify in both, Apollonian and Dionysian, the positives and negatives that are their inherent reality; for despite any distaste one might have to post-modernity it, at least, preaches the doctrine of the fall (N. T. Wright). We are not trying to get back, rather God is creating something wholly new!
Post a Comment