I guess this reference to torture is amusing if you have spent your life encased in the protected world of the university. As someone who was captured and held for over a week by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the 1991 Shiite uprising in Basra and then turned over for my final 24 hours to the Iraqi secret police-who my captors openly expected to execute me-I find this glib talk of physical abuse repugnant. Dershowitz and Harris cannot give us a legal or historical precedent where such a case as they describe actually happened. But this is not the point; the point is to endow themselves with the moral right to abuse others in the name of their particular version of goodness. This is done in the name of reason. It is done in the name of a false god, an idol. And this god-if you want it named-is the god of death, or as Freud stated, Thanatos, the death instinct, the impulse that works toward the annihilation of all living things, including ourselves. For once you torture, done in the name of reason, done to make us safe, you unleash sadists and killers. You consign some human beings to moral oblivion. You become no better than those you oppose.
The danger of Sam's simplistic worldview is that it does what fundamentalists do: It creates the illusion of a binary world of us and them, of reason versus irrationality, of the forces of light battling the forces of darkness. And once you set up this world you are permitted to view as justified military intervention, brutal occupation and even torture, anything, in short, that will subdue what is defined as irrational and dangerous. All this is done in the name of reason, in the name of his god, which looks, like all idols, an awful lot like Sam Harris. "Necessity, "William Pitt wrote, "is the plea for every infringement of human freedom."
Sam ends his book with a chapter that can best be described as Buddhism light. His spirituality, which apparently includes life after death and telepathy, fuels our narcissistic obsession with our individual unconscious. I am not against solitude or meditation, but I support it only when it feeds the moral life rather than serves as an excuse to avoid moral commitment. The quest for personal fulfillment can become an excuse for the individual to negate his or her responsibilities as a citizen, as a member of a wider community. Sam's religion-for Sam in an odd way tries at the end of his book to create one-is in tune with this narcissism. His idealized version of Buddhism is part of his inability to see that it too has been used to feed the lusts of warriors and killers; it too has been hijacked in the name of radical evil. Buddhist Shinto warrior cults justified and absolved those who carried out the worst atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanjing. By the end of World War II Buddhist and Shinto priests recruited and indoctrinated kamikaze (divine wind) pilots in the name of another god. It is an old story. It is not the evil of religion, but the inherent capacity for evil of humankind.
The point of religion, authentic religion, is that it is not, in the end, about us. It is about the other, about the stranger lying beaten and robbed on the side of the road, about the poor, the outcasts, the marginalized, the sick, the destitute, about those who are being abused and beaten in cells in Guantanamo and a host of other secret locations, about what we do to gays and lesbians in this country, what we do to the 47 million Americans without health insurance, the illegal immigrants who live among us without rights or protection, their suffering as invisible as the suffering of the mentally ill we have relegated to heating grates or prison cells. It is about them.
We have forgotten who we were meant to be, who we were created to be, because we have forgotten that we find God not in ourselves, finally, but in our care for our neighbor, in the stranger, including those outside the nation and the faith. The religious life is not designed to make you happy, or safe or content; it is not designed to make you whole or complete, to free you from anxieties and fear; it is designed to save you from yourself, to make possible human community, to lead you to understand that the greatest force in life is not power or reason but love. As Reinhold Niebuhr wrote:
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, Therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
AFTERWORD
JEFF SHARLET
It's not working.
But it could.
The "it" in those two short sentences-diagnosis and prognosis-is the Religious Left that's at the heart of this book, the movement-that- is- not- (yet) -a-movement. Too many of the recent books about the Religious Left declare easy victory, the triumph of modest faith and mild-mannered reason over vulgar fundamentalism. This one predicts a hard and uncertain fight, against not just a Religious Right more vital and sophisticated than commonly imagined but also the limited imagination of the Religious Left, as currently constituted. The essays gathered here draw on memory-most powerfully that of Martin Luther King, Jr.-and hint at a new vision even as they proceed from the unavoidable conclusion that American religious leftists lack one. This book isn't the vision; that's still to come. Rather, it's something more exciting, more kinetic, more democratic: a collection of clues, leads, lessons learned, successful experiments, potential tactics, glimmers of-there's no other word for it-that much-abused, worn-thin, still-sparking notion, "hope."
But hope, the cultural critic Cornel West reminds us, isn't a symptom of imminent victory, it's what you have when reason alone leads you to despair. As writers including Frederick Clarkson, "Pastor Dan" Schultz, and the Reverend Osagyefo Sekou make clear in these pages, the weak alliance of amiable evangelicals, well-intentioned mainline Protestants, old school social justice Catholics, and Michael Lerner that's currently heralded by mainstream media as a resurgent Religious Left is neither left nor surging. Rather, it's a centrist coalition of the willing that's reporting for duty-not to the task of prophetically challenging power but to a Democratic Party bent on peeling off undecided voters. The religious centrists call this initiative "faith outreach," an ironic label for a process that is neither faithful-to the core value of both democracy and most of the believers involved, which is that everybody counts-nor particularly reaching anyone.
As the Reverend Barry Lynn reminds us, the Religious Right remains strong, if in flux. Religious conservatism's new interest in global warming and AIDS aren't signs of a chastened movement but of an emboldened one, a movement broadening its concerns and its influence as it discards the angry old men whose fury propelled it into the mainstream. The Religious Right isn't dead; it's been institutionalized.
And the lukewarm Democratic Party appendage that passes for a Religious Left isn't so much offering a different vision than the Religious Right as a different version. It's an ostensibly "kinder, gentler way to do politics," as Pastor Dan notes, that in truth is simultaneously cynical and naive: a crass attempt by Democratic Party hacks to make of religious leftists a loyal and unquestioning base; and a sincere effort by self-declared centrists to "transcend politics," as if the rough and tumble of democracy, the sharp elbows of real debate, and the painful truths of prophecy were unpleasant distractions, best euphemized and then euthanized, sacrificed for the sake of "common ground."
But life, Darwin reminds us, is not a value, it's a fact, and one defined not by harmony but by struggle. The good news is that that is the good news: the rowdy, pluralist approach to politics embraced by religious leftists is the fundamental faith of America. Not perfect harmony; glorious cacophony. "The noise of democracy," according to President James Buchanan, who was a failure in nearly every respect but for the high regard in which he held the American sacrament of arguing.
Brothers and sisters: Let us argue. It's what we do best. "The genius of the Religious Left,"Pastor Dan proposes, "has never been in organizational heft or the ability to mobilize campaign contributions or stick to talking points pumped out of the blast-faxes of subur
ban Virginia. Progressive faith has been generative instead in its eternal, persistent, damnably disruptive questioning of the seemingly self-evident way things must be."That's Dispatches from the Religious Left. It's not ameliorative; it's damnably disruptive. Just because we don't believe in "culture war" doesn't mean we're all on the same side.
Several years ago, my friend Peter Manseau and I wrote a book called Killing the Buddha: fl Heretic's Bible, for which we spent close to a year wandering what we came to term the "margins of faith" in America, interviewing not (self) important religious leaders but just living and occasionally praying with ordinary believers: a divinely inspired tornado chaser in Oklahoma, a pagan "crone" retired from the Air Force in Kansas, a "cowboy preacher" in rural Texas. The cowboy preacher, a rancher named George McVeigh who led a little church in a manger, literally, happened to be of a fundamentalist persuasion. Apart from his conviction that cattle enjoyed a standing before Christ equal to that of humans, his theology matched up neatly with that of his better-known Texas colleague in ministry, John Hagee. And yet, he welcomed us into his church. He prayed for us. Hell, he even prayed for our book, even though he had no illusions about its contents or its authors.
That's not quite right; he mistook us for a gay couple. Pastor George didn't much like the idea of homosexuality, but he liked us well enough. And it wasn't one of those "hate the sin, love the sinner" bait-and-switch kind of deals, either. It was a matter of honest disagreement: about who you're allowed to have sex with, what happens when you die, and whether cows go to heaven. George made converts of us on that last point, but there was no reconciliation to be had otherwise. And still, George prayed for us. He didn't transcend anything. He stood his ground and respected us for standing ours.
That's what this book does. The writers and activists gathered here span the spectrum from liberal to left, from electorally-inclined to the theologically revolutionary. But none of them are willing to give an inch on that core value of both democracy and American faith: the conviction that everybody-soccer moms and sex workers, cowboy preachers and radical faeries-counts. The new religious centrists too often forget that fact. What we learn from this collection is that for the Religious Left to merit capitalization, for it to be a real movement, it's going to need to bring the liberals and leftists and all the wild-eyed ones together.
The movement that can do that doesn't exist. But it could. The pieces are all around us. Frederick Clarkson reminds us that many of the foundations have already been laid-and built upon by organizers who recognized that democracy is not something that just happens on its own but something you make fresh every day. In Fred's home state of Massachusetts, groups like Neighbor-to-Neighbor and Boston Vote are making democracy happen. Jean Hardisty and Deepak Bhargava raid the Religious Right to reclaim the strategies they adopted from the activist left-not "message discipline" but ideological diversity and a recognition that electoral politics are nothing more than a means, never an end. And numerous writers report on the small victories that, gathered together here, begin to reveal a pattern, the possibility of greater things. "Hope is specific, not abstract,"Marshall Ganz reminds us. "What's the vision? When God inspires the Israelites in Exodus, he doesn't offer a vague hope of `better days,' but describes a land `flowing with milk and honey' and what must be done to get there. A vision of hope can unfold a chapter at a time."
So here's another chapter, but the vision is far from complete. It's not even coherent, yet. This book doesn't give us the vision. This "chapter" isn't a manifesto. It's a manual for writing one. Or two, or a thousand. If you've read this far, you probably have a better idea of what it might look like than any one of the contributors on his or her own. Which means, of course, that next chapter is yours. The Religious Left is waiting.
CONTRIBUTORS
Frederick Clarkson is an independent writer, editor, and lecturer who has written about politics and religion for twenty-five years. He is the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy (Common Courage Press, 1997); co-author of Challenging the Christian Right: The Activists Handbook, (Institute for First Amendment Studies 1992; Ms. Foundation edition, 1994); and editor of A Moment to Decide: The Crisis in Mainstream Presbyterianism (Institute for Democracy Studies, 2000). His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including Salon. com, Mother Jones, Ms., Church & State, Conscience, Sojourners, and The Christian Science Monitor, and his-op-eds have been nationally syndicated by Knight Bidder. He is the co-founder of the group blog Talk to Action (www.talk2action.org) and was a founder of Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts. He is a member of the editorial board of The Public Eye magazine. He has appeared on The CBS Evening News, ABC's 20/20, NPR's All Things Considered, Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, Democracy Now, and many other domestic and international radio and television programs.
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell is the Director of the Department of Religion at the Chautauqua Institution, a 134-year old center for art, education, religion and recreation. As the Director of Religion, she serves as spiritual leader and chaplain for the Institution. Dr. Campbell, formerly General Secretary of the National Council of Churches USA, and Director of the US Office of the World Council of Churches, is an ordained minister with standing in the American Baptist Church and the Christian Church Disciples of Christ.
Jeff Sharlet, an associate research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media, is the author of a bestselling history of elite Christian conservatism, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart ofAmerican Power, (Harper Collins, 2008), and coauthor, with Peter Manseau, of Killing the Buddha: AHeretic's Bible (Free Press), named by Publishers Weekly one of the ten best religion titles of 2004. Sharlet is a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone, the creator of 7heRevealer.org, a review of religion and media, and co-founder of Killing7heBuddha.com, an online literary magazine about religion and culture. His work has also appeared in Mother, Jones, Nation, New Republic, New Statesman, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Jewish Forward, Religion Dispatches, and Pakn Treger, the world's only English-language magazine of Yiddish culture. Ann Coulter has dubbed Sharlet one of the "stupidest" journalists in America.
Chip Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates in the Boston area. For over 25 years he has written about civil liberties, social justice, right-wing groups, prejudice, systems of oppression, and scapegoating. Berlet is co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (Guilford, 2000) and editor of Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash (South End Press, 1995), both of which received a Gustavus Myers Center Award for outstanding scholarship on human rights and bigotry in North America. Berlet's byline has appeared in publications ranging from the New York Times and Boston Globe to the Progressive and Amnesty Now. He has appeared on Nightline, The Today Show, NPR's All Things Considered, Democracy Now, and many other radio and television programs.
Frank L. Cocozzelli is a private practice attorney who lives with his family in New York City. He is a director of the Institute for Progressive Christianity, on behalf of which he co-authored with Eve Herold the White Paper, An Unholy Alliance: How Neoconservatives and the Religious Right Have Joined Forces to Fight Stem Cell Research. He is also the author of a 2008 study published in The Public Eye magazine, "How Roman Catholic Neocons Peddle Natural Law into Debates about Life and Death." He writes a weekly column on neoconservatives and the Catholic Right on the Talk to Action website, and is currently working on a book on contemporary liberalism.
Kety Esquivel has over ten years of experience in the domestic and international non-profit, private and political sectors. She directed the Latino outreach for the Clark Presidential Campaign and served as the Communications Director for Latinos for America. She spent three years coaching executives on issues of human capital and diversity with Kodak's U.S., Canada and Latin American regional operations. She graduated from Cornell University where she served as the elected student representat
ive on the Board of Trustees. She is pursuing graduate studies in public policy and is co-author and co-editor of the forthcoming books, Crashing la Pachanga: The Dawn o fa New Latino/a Movement, and The Coming ofAge: Passing the torch ofthe Latino Movement. She founded Cross- Left.org and is the Board Chair of the Institute for Progressive Christianity. She serves on the boards of the New Leaders Council; the Backbone Campaign; and is a founder of The Sanctuary.
Dr. Marshall Ganz, the son of a Rabbi and teacher, grew up in Bakersfield, California, but left Harvard College in 1964 before completing his studies to volunteer in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, where he discovered a vocation for organizing. In the fall of 1965, he joined Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. During his sixteen years with the UFW, he learned union, community, issue and political organizing, became Organizing Director, and served on the national executive board for eight years. He has since designed organizing programs with union, electoral, issue, and community groups; formed an institute to recruit, train and develop organizers; researched causes of decline in civic engagement, and worked with mayoral, Congressional, Senate, and Presidential campaigns. In 1991 he returned to Harvard, completed his undergraduate work, and went on to earn an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in sociology. He currently serves as a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School. He has published in the American Prospect, American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, Social Science History, and elsewhere. His first book, co-authored with 7heda Skocpol and Ariane Liazos, What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality, was published in 2006. A new book, Why David Sometimes Wins: leadership, organization and strategy in the unionization of California agriculture, is forthcoming from Oxford.
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