PEG Answers Bill Keller On Religion
Retiring New York Times editor Bill Keller has a column out arguing that candidates should be asked “tougher” questions about their religion.
Tim Carney mocked the column for labeling the Catholic Rick Santorum an Evangelical Christian, and indeed it’s easy to mock the secular Times as seeing all Christians as the same. And sure, though he never comes out and says it, it seems that there’s a bit of a “let’s pin those crazy theocrats” undercurrent to Mr Keller’s column. But I do think the column’s central point — that religion in general, and Presidential candidates’ in particular, matters, and thus should be treated seriously — is quite right.
If “hard secularists” and religiously-motivated political actors have one thing in common, it’s that they think religion is important, and that’s as good a starting point for discussion as any.
In a blog post attendant to the column, Mr Keller lays out a few questions he’d like presidential candidates to answer. Although I haven’t officially formed my exploratory committee, allow me to say how I would answer if I was a presidential candidate. (And also how I would like a Christian presidential candidate to answer.)
1. Is it fair to question presidential candidates about details of their faith?
It’s absolutely fair to question presidential candidates about anything that could affect what kind of president they will be.
2. Is it fair to question candidates about controversial remarks made by their pastors, mentors, close associates or thinkers whose books they recommend?
Sure.
3. (a) Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a “Christian nation” or “Judeo-Christian nation?” (b) What does that mean in practice?
I’m not sure what I can say about the words of unnamed “religious leaders.”
I can tell you what I think.
I think that the principles on which America was founded draw on a number of intellectual traditions, including ideas that are common to the Judeo-Christian faiths. I think that the ideals of self-determination and individualism, and indeed of the separation of church and state, have many roots, but one of the main roots is the Bible. It was Jesus who said his kingdom is not of this world, and who said we should give back to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, and implicit in the New Testament is the idea that a person’s choices determine their fate, not their station at birth.
I think that many people came to America specifically to practice their religion in peace and freedom, and that therefore our history and collective imagination is weaved through with religious fervor in a way that is unique among nations, and that this is good. I think that religion plays a positive role in American society and culture in getting people to care for their fellow Americans, their communities, and yes, sometimes to work towards policies that they believe are best for the common good.
I think that America should and does welcome everyone, regardless of religious belief or ethnicity. I think that the fact that many of our principles come from the Judeo-Christian tradition does not mean that they’re not universal; indeed, the opposite.
4. If you encounter a conflict between your faith and the Constitution and laws of the United States, how would you resolve it? Has that happened, in your experience?
Here’s the oath of office of the president: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s the job I aspire to.
I also aspire to promote policies that, to my mind, are the best policies for the common good of the American people. I hope to make the case for these policies on grounds that all Americans can understand. And I hope that’s how Americans will judge me.
5. (a) Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? (b) What about an atheist?
Here are my criteria for nominating judges: whether I agree with their philosophy of legal interpretation; whether I think they are outstanding Americans of great integrity.
6. Are Mormons Christians, in your view? Should the fact that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons influence how we think of them as candidates?
I honestly don’t care.
7. What do you think of the evangelical Christian movement known as Dominionism and the idea that Christians, and only Christians, should hold dominion over the secular institutions of the earth?
I think that Dominionism exists largely in the minds of a few agitated cooks and of a lot of media editors based on the coasts of the United States.
And for the record, no, I don’t think Christians, and only Christians, should be able to hold political office. That would be unconstitutional, un-American. And also very stupid.
8. (a) What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution? (b) Do you believe it should be taught in public schools?
a) My attitude toward the theory of evolution is that as far as I can tell it’s settled science, and so I accept it as such. For the record, this is also the stance of the Catholic Church to which I belong. But that’s not why I accept evolution as settled science.
b) I think public schools should teach all kinds of sciences.
9. Do you believe it is proper for teachers to lead students in prayer in public schools?
The federal government’s deficit last year was over a trillion dollars. The national debt is almost fifteen trillion dollars. The unemployment rate is 9.1%. I can’t even keep track of the number of foreign wars we’re in (do drone strikes over Yemen count?).
All of which is to say: I really, really don’t care.
“implicit in the New Testament is the idea that a person’s choices determine their fate”
The Christian god is omniscient. I think that is undeniable. It’s clear in the Bible that the Christian god knows the future. If the future is known, then it is impossible for people to make choices. These choices have been made, already, and God knows what they are! Your fate is already determined. You can’t make choices. You aren’t even responsible for your actions! So how can there be sin, and redemption?
Complete nonsense, at the very heart of Christianity.
The Christian god is omnipotent. And perfect. I also think this is undeniable. And yet he created an imperfect world. How is this possible? But Christians say the world is fallen because God gave us Free Will. But that is impossible! God is omniscient, God knows everything, including the choices you will make! So there cannot be Free Will.
Unless God is not omniscient. But he is! What Christian would deny this?
Complete nonsense, at the very heart of Christianity.
— Socrates · Aug 28, 01:14 PM · #
Socrates:
OMG! I’d never looked at it that way! This entirely new line of reasoning is a clear rebuttal the entire Christian religion.
— PEG · Aug 28, 01:32 PM · #
PEG,
pretty much exactly the set of answers i’d hope to hear from a candidate. unfortunately you probably need to check out the “natural born Citizen … thirty-five Years” clauses before you formally declare.
— gabriel · Aug 28, 02:16 PM · #
I find this post a bit peculiar.
The whole point of Keller’s column is that presidential candidates should answer these questions since they are running for president and the answers to these questions will be a guide to how they behave in office.
That being the case what’s the relevance of PEG’s answers to these questions? You aren’t running for President and I doubt you have plans to do so. So if you aren’t and these are your personal answers, why should that have any bearing on what a presidential candidate may say? Unless you are suggesting that Rick Santorum et al would answer them the same way you would? We already know that Herman Cain, for example, would be VERY unlikely to appoint a Muslim to a political office or judgeship.
Now I personally don’t actually find these questionnaires or its cousin the pledge particularly useful guide to a candidates actions once in office. I go from the elementary point that a candidate runs for president because they went to get elected (protest candidates like Ron Paul aside). Therego, they will answer/or not answer these questions sign/or not sign a pledge based on the political calculation of whether this helps or hinders their election efforts. Once elected, they’ll adhere to the pledges/questionnaires in as much as they fear the constituency whose pledge or questionnaire they signed/answered.
For example, once elected to office Republicans take Grover’s anti-tax pledge very seriously (unless its a payroll tax cut apparently). On the other hand, Obama apparently doesn’t give two hoots about the answers he gave concerning civil liberties and presidential powers.
— Joseph · Aug 28, 02:34 PM · #
gabriel:
Thanks.
And yes, I probably won’t ever be President of the United States, thank God.
Joseph:
I think that’s (roughly) how a Christian presidential candidate should answer, as I say in the post.
— PEG · Aug 28, 02:38 PM · #
As every skeptic of religion is aware, there’s a difference between the arguments against Christianity that Christians have successfully refuted, and the arguments against Christianity that they simply ignore because they’re very inconvenient (or, perhaps, assume that some other Christian has already refuted them.)
As you’ve just demonstrated the contradiction between omniscience and free will is one of the latter.
That’s fair. If I can just bring up a related issue, here’s the APA Oath for Pharmacists. How, in your mind, does that square with pharmacists who assert that they have the right to refuse to dispense birth control or abortifacients due to the conflict with their religious beliefs?
The connection here is that religious individuals have already carved out an implied cultural and legal exemption to carrying various oaths of office that they may take, if doing so would contradict their religious principles. In other words a pharmacist may aspire to a job involving the dispensation of birth control and abortion drugs and yet decline to perform that job due to religious principle. If a pharmacist can do it, it’s not clear that the President cannot. So simply affirming the oath of office isn’t sufficient; voters have a right to know if a potential president is taking that oath with his religious fingers crossed. That’s what’s being asked, and your response doesn’t address that. I’m thinking that your perspective as a person of faith makes it difficult for you to understand the concerns of secularists.
— Ch3t · Aug 28, 04:07 PM · #
“As you’ve just demonstrated the contradiction between omniscience and free will is one of the latter.”
Yes! Thank you.
— Socrates · Aug 28, 07:43 PM · #
PEG,
Your argument that the American social order has roots in the Christian moral tradition is just silly. Capitalism, liberal democracy, and social individualism have (at best) nothing to do with Christianity, and in fact I’d argue that they’re not terribly compatible with Christian moral teaching. A genuinely Christian social order would (I think) look much more socialistic than capitalist, and much more paternalistic than democratic. The libertarian/capitalist/liberal democratic order presumes that people are well qualified to decide what is good for them, while the Christian teaching about original sin, and the corrupt human will, implies that we aren’t.
As a matter of historical fact, most of the founders of the American political orders were deists, not Christians (deism is, in my view, just a short step from atheism), and some, like Jefferson, were extremely anti-Christian.
— Hector_St_Clare · Aug 28, 08:56 PM · #
Another very inconvenient question for Christians, from Hector. Excellent.
— Socrates · Aug 28, 11:20 PM · #
While Jefferson was not the sort of Christian Michelle Bachman would make him out to be, he certainly was not “extremely anti-Christian.” Rather, he despised all the mystical stuff and hallucinatory prophesy. He interpreted his bible quite selectively, emphasizing Jesus’ moral teachings, dispensing with the miracles. Also, obviously, he abhorred state Religion.
Privately, was he skeptical of a the existence of a good, intervening God? I think there is much in his writings to suggest this, but to describe him as “anti-Christian” is quite a stretch.
As for “most of the founders,” only a fraction in fact were openly deist. This is what makes it all the more remarkable and revolutionary that they had the wisdom to leave God out of the Constitution.
— Tammy · Aug 28, 11:35 PM · #
Tammy,
The miracles and ‘hallucinatory prophecy’ are ESSENTIAL to Christianity, they’re what Christianity is about. If they aren’t true, then Jesus Christ was just another failed preacher, no different in principle from Confucius or the Muhammed. Jefferson denied pretty much every article in the Nicene, Apostle’s and Athanasian Creeds, as far as I can tell, (which are the closest things to basic statements of what Christians are supposed to believe) and he embraced a kind of warmed-over Arianism.
Now, I don’t have a particular problem with atheists, Jews, Muslims, or whoever else believing that Christ was just a man, but I have a big problem with people that want to peddle that as ‘Christianity’. That’s an attempt to distort and contaminate the Christian faith, so yes, that does make you anti-Christian (not just ‘not a Christian’). Jefferson also devoted a lot of time to mocking core Christian beliefs about the Trinity, the Mother of God, and other doctrines.
And by the way, I don’t think Jefferson cared too much about the moral teachings of Jesus and the Apostles either, because I don’t think sexually abusing slaves or exterminating Native Americans were particularly Christian things to do. In a broader sense, Jefferson’s radical individualism is, in my view, pretty incompatible with Christian moral teaching as well.
Do you really think that modern-day United States of America has much resemblance to the teachings of Jesus?
— Hector_St_Clare · Aug 29, 12:45 AM · #
Why does he have to be? Can’t you decide for yourself what philosophies and creeds it is best for you to follow without some pretend divinity to nominate one for you?
To be Christian is to follow Jesus. You don’t have to take my word on this, I guess, but surely it’s possible for someone – like Jefferson – to have considered Jesus worth following on the basis of his ideology, not because some charlatans – oh, but the right charlatans – made claims about his divine origin.
Who says those are “core Christian beliefs”?
— Ch3t · Aug 29, 01:38 AM · #
HSC,
I follow what you’re asking about Christianity. How many parts of scripture can an adherent excise before he’s not specifically Christian, anymore? Once he balks at Genesis, virgin birth, resurrection, and the extraordinary weirdness/viciousness of Revelation, hasn’t his faith succumbed to a TKO?
Maybe so. Still, I don’t believe a gutted Christianity is the same thing as anti-Christianity.
Whatever his elegantly phrased qualms with many Christian mythologies, Thomas Jefferson didn’t shed his cultural bonds to institutional religion. Attending church, as he often did, can’t be entirely dismissed as sham practice. And remaking the bible as he did doesn’t indicate someone who renounced Christianity, but someone who was trying, convincingly or not, to square its origin myths with his own present age.
On many occasions, Jefferson also expressed his misgivings about— even downright horror of— slavery. In spite of this, who would call him anti-slavery? (Okay, right, one prominent GOP candidate for the presidency would, but she suffered justified embarrassment for that— okay, right, that is if she could feel embarrassment.)
To your last question, I don’t know if Jesus is compatible with any nation. Seems he operated too much as an outsider, renouncing as trivial or contaminated most of human hierarchies, to ever look with approval on a state, no matter how externally just it is.
I have no desire to see the USA aspire to Jesus’ example, nor do I have any fear it will. Contrary to Gobry’s assertion, it’s not at all evident that Christianity makes people better. At its essence, I believe Christianity is not defined as much by its miracles and prophecies as it is by its rejection of earthly striving. As Christians often reckon, this life is a mere vale of tears. Ultimately, Christianity in most of its forms is too preoccupied with the sweet hereafter to care that much about justice here and now. That’s why it’s fortunate the founders provided protection for a man-made state against those who would impose the priorities of a heavenly kingdom.
None of this, however, is reason to reinterpret Jefferson’s efforts to insulate church and state from one another as a straightforward opposition to Christianity.
— Tammy · Aug 29, 02:38 AM · #
Re: Who says those are “core Christian beliefs”?
The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.
Tammy,
I’m not saying that Jefferson’s attempts to separate church and state are, necessarily, anti-Christian. Christians can disagree with each other, and have disagreed from the beginning, about the appropriate relationship of church and state. I’d call him anti-Christian because of his attempts to pervert and defile what Christianity is.
(Separation of church and state is perhaps off the topic here, but I’d point out that while it has some good points, it’s not an unqualified good: it’s helped lead us to the state where we have legalized abortion on demand, for example).
I’m not sure what Jefferson attending church has to do with anything. Lots of people attend church for a variety of different reasons (like their spouse or their parents want them to) without actually subscribing to the Christian faith. If Jefferson didn’t (in any sense) believe in the Creeds, or even in the divinity of Christ, then it’s hard to see how he could be called a Christian. Plenty of Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims think that Jesus Christ was a wise moral teacher, does that make them Christians too?
Re: And remaking the bible as he did doesn’t indicate someone who renounced Christianity, but someone who was trying, convincingly or not, to square its origin myths with his own present age.
I’m not sure what ‘origin myths’ have to do with anything, since we haven’t been talking about Genesis here, but rather about Jefferson’s perversions of the New Testament. And I really don’t see what ‘his age’ has to do with anything, unless you mean that Jefferson was a creature of the culture of his time, rather than someone who thought for himself. Plenty of people smarter and more moral than Mr. Jefferson, over the past two centuries, have had no problem accepting the basic historicity of the Gospels and the miracles recounted therein.
— Hector_St_Clare · Aug 29, 03:50 AM · #
Tammy,
Let’s put it this way. Most orthodox (or even semi-orthodox) Christians would hold that Arius was an enemy of Christianity, because the ideas he proposed (that Jesus Christ was a created being, the greatest of all creatures, but something less than fully divine) would have warped and damaged Christian truth, and removed a key element of our faith. Jefferson went even beyond Arius, denying not only the divinity of Jesus but all the miracles he performed as well, and tried to peddle his nonsense as a new and better Christianity: how is that not at least as damaging to Christianity as the Arians were?
The fact that you refer to Christian ‘mythologies’ is perhaps why we seem to be talking at cross purposes. If you accept the events of the Gospels as historical truths (and, say, the Revelation to John as genuine inspired vision), then of course you are going to object when someone purporting to be a Christian tries to deny those historical truths and inspired visions, and to say they’re fictional or unimportant. If, on the other hand, you think Jefferson was right that those things were mythologies, then perhaps Jefferson’s perversions of the New Testament will seem perfectly acceptable.
— Hector_St_Clare · Aug 29, 04:05 AM · #
HSC,
Regarding “origin myths,” I wasn’t alluding to Genesis, which would be an origin myth Christianity absorbed from Judaism. Rather, I meant the myths specific to Christianity’s origins— the life of Jesus, including his alleged virgin birth, resurrection and miracles.
I take your point that for many Christians, the supernatural details of Jesus’ existence are essential. To reject them is to reject the core of the faith. For these Christians, Jefferson’s edition of the New Testament is heretical and subversive. I doubt, however, that Jefferson took the trouble to rework the narrative purely out of hostility to the faith. It’s quite possible he saw his endeavor as an attempt at reconciliation with what I vaguely called “his age.” By that, I mean he saw himself operating in the modern spirit of his time, not that he didn’t “think for himself.” He attached great importance to natural law and the individual’s trust in his own capacity to reason. He disdained the supernatural.
Even if I accept your weird assertion that “smarter, more moral” men than Jefferson believe/have believed in the divinity of Jesus, what does it matter? Conversely, plenty of mental midgets read the bible literally. This doesn’t automatically make them dupes any more than the high intelligence/noble behavior of certain adherents vindicates the “truth” of scripture.
Virtually any thoughtful reader of scripture is inevitably selective. She can’t help but interpret what she reads, finding more resonance here than there. How does a Christian determine what incidence of doubt is permitted before the threshold into unbelief is crossed? Does she depend on interpretations made by a council of 4th century men? If so, does he do this out of simple obedience to church hierarchy and doctrine? If so, is this not rather blind and arbitrary? What gave these old church fathers the arrogance to believe they had access to such extraordinary, divinely-sanctioned wisdom, that they could sort out what was metaphor and what was truth in God’s mind? Why should she believe them?
— Tammy · Aug 29, 05:11 PM · #
You will need to preview and then submit your comment in two steps. Please make sure you click “Submit” after the preview. Either an email address or a website is required to post a comment, but rest assured we will never publish your email.
— air max 2009 · Sep 6, 06:19 AM · #