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I don’t have much time to read these days.  For this reason, I find audiobooks really convenient–I can listen to them while I’m doing something else.  It’s a real time-saver.

So it occurred to me that I’m probably not the only person who doesn’t have time to read much.  And that led me to realize maybe my readers would find it convenient to have audio versions of some of my really long posts.

While recording some of the poetry readings I’ve posted, I also recorded a reading of one of my recent posts on geopolitical and religious history. (The original post is here.)

And so now you can listen to me pontificating about various subjects while you are doing other things.  It’s like having a little Ruined Chapel RSS feed running in your mind, as if a dystopian government had placed a propaganda chip in your brain.

Uh… bad analogy.  Never mind.  Anyway, try it out if you like.

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[The video above is substantially the same as the text below.  The text has more links and a few additional notes.  The video may be more convenient for some.]

Nicholas Kristof wrote a very interesting column imagining a conversation between Jesus Christ and Speaker Paul Ryan. There will no doubt be controversy as to whether it is brilliant satire or blasphemy.

Kristof’s point is that Ryan is a hypocrite for professing to be a Christian and yet supporting a health care bill that would result in poor people losing health insurance coverage.

The theme is one that Democrats have hammered on for decades: how can the Republicans get such strong support from Christians, and vocally proclaim their own devout Christianity, while simultaneously pushing policies that appear to be in opposition to what Christ taught?

Not being a religious person, I don’t really consider myself qualified to get involved in this argument.  What I can do, though, is talk about the historical and philosophical background of this apparent hypocrisy.  As my readers know, I like to try to understand things in their historical context.

In this case, we are going to need some 2000 years of historical context to properly understand what’s going on here.

Buckle up.

(more…)

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Sir Thomas More (image via Wikipedia)
       Kim Davis (Image via Gawker)

Every once in a while you just get a stroke of luck as a blogger.  I was thinking about Thomas More because of my post last week, and then the news this week has been dominated by the story of Kim Davis, the Kentucky Clerk of Courts who refuses to certify marriage licenses for gay couples in her county.

For background: More refused on religious grounds to acknowledge King Henry VIII’s annulment from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn.  He resigned his post as Chancellor because of his refusal to compromise his beliefs.  That wasn’t good enough for the King, who ultimately had him executed over his continued refusal.

I’m not even a religious person, but I do kind of admire More’s guts.  Somebody really did need to stand up to the King.

Fast forward about five centuries: Kim Davis also refuses to recognize marriages on religious grounds.  Is she an outstanding example of defending one’s principles, like More?

Nope.

Notice the bit above where More resigned.  Davis refuses to do that.  She is effectively saying that her beliefs trump the rule of law.  More never said that–he just said that he would not carry out something that violated his beliefs, and refused to be part of a system that required him to do so.  Davis is trying to have it both ways: be part of the system and put her beliefs over and above the system itself.

And that is the difference between being a principled martyr taking a stand and somebody just trying to make a scene.

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I was wandering through the library the other day, and as inevitably happens when I do that, I wound up in the History section. I started looking at some books on the English Civil war.  I began by looking for a book on Oliver Cromwell, but ended reading some about his opponent, King Charles I.

I really know very little about the period, so almost all of it was new to me. (I didn’t check any of the books out, so I can’t remember who wrote them, sorry) What I gathered from my cursory reading was that the main causes of the war were (1) Parliament’s belief that King Charles had too much power and (2) religious differences between Parliament and the King. Parliament was Puritan–or at, least Cromwell was–and the King was Anglican, and seen as having ties to the Catholics, or ‘Popists’, as they were apparently called.

In one of the books, I came across the assertion that after King Charles was removed and Cromwell created the Commonwealth of England, it ushered in a new era of Religious Toleration.

Now, for all I know, this is true. But it sounded weird to me.  The Puritans were many things, but as far as I was aware, they weren’t really famous for being the most tolerant bunch.  Now, I can believe that Puritanism was tolerated more under Cromwell et al. than it was under King Charles, but was religion in general more free?  That I’m not so sure of.

Anyway, I’m about to embark on an internet odyssey to find out more about the English Civil War, because until this week most of my knowledge of the period came from Monty Python’s song about Oliver Cromwell. So stay tuned; I’ll probably be doing more posts about stuff I should have learned in school.

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Whenever the issue of gay marriage comes up, you’ll often hear the opponents talk of it meaning “re-defining marriage”.

Does it really mean that?

I’m not so sure.  All I ever heard all my life was that you were supposed to marry the person you fell in love with.  For a long time, this has always been the standard.  Now, society assumed for centuries that you could only have romantic love between a man and a woman.  But gays obviously show that is not the case.  So, if you have two people of the same gender in romantic love, the logic suggests they should be allowed to marry, under the current definition.

Of course, marriage was not always based on romantic love. In other cultures through history, there have been examples of arranged marriages, or marriages made to cement some treaty or alliance between families or some such.  So, it’s true that at some point, a re-definition of marriage went on.  But it obviously happened quite some time ago; as for centuries now people have been getting married based on love.

I talked before in this post about why opponents of gay marriage use the Bible to justify their position.  And I’ll say this: given the circumstances of the tribes wandering in the desert, the Biblical prohibition of homosexuality makes sense.  The mortality rate must have been extremely high back then, so I figure they knew that they needed everyone who could reproduce to do so, regardless of preference. “Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, and all that.

But of course, that was then, and this is now.

The same sort of thing applies to this “re-definition” claim. It would be right if this were five hundred years ago.

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Peter Hitchens is one of my favorite conservative writers.  I do not agree with him on very much, but he is an intelligent man, who usually analyzes political and social matters very well, even if he comes to very different conclusions than I do.

That said, sometimes he makes some pretty wacky assertions. For example, in his column today, Hitchens writes:

I am worried by the TV popularity of George R.R. Martin’s clever fantasy Game Of Thrones.

Mr Martin’s imaginary world is frighteningly cruel. The society it describes is far worse than the Middle Ages, because its characters are entirely unrestrained by Christian belief. [Emphasis mine] There’s a lifeless, despised religion but nobody takes it seriously.

I fear it will make those who watch it worse people than they were before.

I never watched this show, or read the books it is based on.   Yet, I still find this statement very, very difficult to believe.  There were a lot of bad things done in the Middle Ages, and its hard to see how George R.R. Martin could have invented something crueler than any one thought to do back then.

My core disagreement with Hitchens is that “Christian belief” made the Middle Ages more restrained.  He would have been correct if he had said that people who practiced Christian teachings were more restrained–“All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword“, after all–but the fact is there have been many people throughout history who professed Christian belief without ever letting the tenets of such belief color their actions in any way.

I think it’s pretty clear there were people in the Middle Ages who were unrestrained by Christian teaching.  And I am only talking about in the places that were generally “Christian” lands–that becomes even more obvious when you consider all the non-Christians in the Middle Ages.

Is April Fools’ Day on the 6th this year? Or am I missing  something?  I wish Hitchens would have gone into more detail about what cruel acts the Christian restraint of the Middle Ages prevented, because I frankly can’t come up with much evidence for the claim.

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This week, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse to serve gays for religious reasons.

The question that has always fascinated me about Gay Rights controversies like these is: why is it such a huge deal?  There are not really that many gays in the population, and yet Conservatives make it sound like (for example) allowing gay marriage would mean the end of civilization itself.

Personally, while the anti-gay groups frequently resort to citing scripture, I have always believed this is simply a red herring.  The Bible is one of the most-read (and believed) books in the world, and happens to have a few passages forbidding homosexuality, which are convenient for them to cite.  If it had nothing whatsoever to say on the topic, I think they would oppose gay rights just as vehemently. (The same thing goes on with the NRA and the Second Amendment–if it didn’t exist, they would be no less zealous in their opposition to gun control laws.)

My reason for thinking this is that the Bible also forbids, for example, the loaning of money at interest, and yet I haven’t seen any preachers holding rallies to condemn banks.  Indeed, the Republican party as we know it would likely destroy itself within a day if the social conservatives ever decided to enforce that particular point with the same force they do the issue of homosexuality.

So, if not religious, what exactly is their reason for opposing gay rights so strongly?

In the past, I’ve occasionally mentioned how nationalists (which I believe is what the Republican rank-and-file is) believe in a society based on blood and heritage.  Naturally, this prejudices them against gays, since by definition they cannot contribute to the heritability based society.

I bring this fact up not because it is terribly significant in its own right–the social conservatives oppose gay rights, nothing new here–but rather because I think it helps give the interested political observer a better idea of the logic behind the social conservatives’ policies.  Contrary to appearances, I don’t believe they just picked a random part of the Bible to passionately uphold, but rather, it is part of their larger worldview.

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As I think I’ve mentioned before on here, I don’t have cable TV.  I just get the major networks, PBS, a few local channels and a bunch of Christian channels.  The last are mostly devoted to people on elaborate stages giving speeches and asking for money.  However, the other day on one of these channels, I saw a different sort of program.

I don’t know the name of the show or the channel, otherwise I’d tell you.  All I know is that it was some older fellow standing in the middle of the desert on the outskirts of Jerusalem, reading from a bunch of papers he was holding and trying to keep from blowing away.  The production values were, to say the least, horrifying.  If any of you readers can guess what show this may be, feel free to tell me.

 
What the guy had to say, however, was somewhat… interesting.  He was talking about how many intellectuals, especially in the atomic age, desired a “one world government”.  He dated this impulse  back all the way to Nebuchadnezzar II, and said that they [the intellectuals] did not believe you could have many strong countries, you could only have one government.  (I’m paraphrasing.)  I got the impression he was getting towards the point that these intellectuals were wrong, and one world government was a very bad idea, and that the Bible had predicted all of this.  He was taking his time about it though, and I had work in the morning, so I didn’t get to hear how it all ended up.

(The politics on these religious shows are always interesting.  One day, while channel surfing I saw a show claiming that people were now placing their faith in government instead of God.  What we need, according to the Bible, so they said, was less government.  Smaller government.  In fact, watching some of these shows, you get the impression that they feel the Republican Party platform is the word of the Almighty.)

“One World Government” is a phrase conspiracy theorists throw around a lot to mean all sorts of wild things.  But I think it is true that many people would like to see more international cooperation and conflict resolution by some means other than wars between nations.  I think this train of thought really started because of World War I, which showed a lot of the problems that can arise with multiple competing nations.

In Europe, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, you had lots of strong, independent nations–strong empires, even–such as Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Germany and so on.   The peace among these nations, such as it was, was kept by treaties the countries made with each other.  Unfortunately, this system of treaties proved to be unstable in the face of rebellious nationalist agitators and military build-ups between competing nations, and thus, through a complicated series of events, the treaties dictated that a massive war broke out.

In the aftermath, people looked around and said, quite logically, “how can we make sure that this doesn’t happen again?”  That very intellectual President, Woodrow Wilson, even proposed the League of Nations, though ironically the U.S. did not join it.  Of course, the League failed to prevent ultra-nationalist sentiment in Germany from igniting another, even more terrible war.

The League was replaced with the United Nations after World War II.  And ever since, nationalist sentiment has opposed the U.N., fearing that it will destroy all of the country’s traditions and create a one world government.  As some readers know, I am fascinated by conspiracy theories, even though I do not believe in any of them.  And, as I said, there are a lot of conspiracy theories about the “one world government”, and I think the root reason for all of them is the nationalist elements’ fear of being governed by cosmopolitan intellectuals.

Having said all that, I think really all most people actually want is some international way of resolving conflicts without having to go to war. People, both nowadays and especially in the immediate aftermath of the World Wars, just don’t want to see a repeat of that.  Seems hard to blame them, really.

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A new poll has come out showing that only 49% of Americans think President Obama is Christian.  17% think he’s Muslim.  James Rainey writes:

The lingering questions about Obama’s faith likely come from people of two mind-sets. One is those who have an intense dislike of the president and find confirmation of all their fears in a fever swamp of conspiracy websites. Where a birth certificate is not accepted as proof of someone’s place of birth, forget about verifying something as intangible as a statement of faith.

The second factor driving up Obama’s “Muslim number” is doubtless the urge of some respondents to stick it in the pollsters’ ear — to commit a small act of defiance by giving an answer the voter knows is untrue. When the interloper in the Oval Office is deeply loathed, why credit him with anything, least that he is a Christian?

Rainey focuses his attention largely on 17% who think he is Muslim.  Probably this is because it really is incredible that anyone could honestly believe he is a devout Muslim, as so many of his actions are inconsistent with that faith.

What I wonder about is the people who answered “don’t know” or “other” in the poll.  Is there also a conspiracy theory that Obama is secretly Buddhist?  Actually, most of the people I’ve talked to who doubt Obama on this suspect that he’s an atheist, not a Muslim.  Not sure why those people would answer “don’t know”, though.

As for the results on Romney’s religion, I was surprised how many didn’t know it.  It’s one of the most notable facts about an otherwise fairly dull politician.

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Image via Wikipedia

“Gentlemen, this is a football.”  Thus did the famous coach Vince Lombardi supposedly begin every first team meeting of the season, while holding up same.   The point being, you always start off with the basics. However, I don’t know about the AIFA; some of their players might be seeing a football for the first time.

The other day, somebody got to this blog by searching for the terms “how would max weber view american football”. I don’t know if he was even thinking of the same Max Weber I’m so fond of, but regardless, I thought to myself: “Heck, I would like to read that article.”  So, here is a cursory attempt at writing it.

Of course, it’s hard to figure out the answer without a Ouija board and some arcane black magic.  And even then, it would probably only be something simplistic like “the competitiveness reflects the Protestant ethic” or “the Browns are 6 and 10 this year, best case.”

I’m not too familiar with his most famous writings about religion; I’ve mostly studied Weber’s contributions to political thought. Long-time readers probably remember his three types of authority:

  1. Charismatic authority
  2. Traditional authority
  3. Legal authority

Well, I suppose he’d think that coaches like Rex Ryan and players like Tim Tebow have charismatic authority, whereas coaches like Belichick and players like Ray Lewis rely on a sort of traditional authority–they have enjoyed a lot of success, so people are supposed to automatically respect them.  The equivalent to Legal authority is, well, the referees and the commissioner. (As the Saints are discovering.)

But this doesn’t tell us anything about the broader social phenomenon of football. Maybe Weber would note the similarity of the sport to religion.  After all, some fans follow it with the same zeal that people follow religions. They even collect artifacts and relics relating to the heroes of the sport.  And then, of course, there’s the ubiquitous Mr. Tebow. (I know I’m breaking my vow here. I’m sorry. But I promise you one thing: you will never see another blogger try as hard not to mention him as I will try the rest of the off-season.)

I once saw an NFL Films show about the Pittsburgh Steelers championship run in 2005.  It started off with this quasi-hymn or chant-like music that sounded religious and very eerie all at once. Imagine “Duel of the Fates“, only way creepier.  It seemed pretty serious for a bunch of football highlights.  But there are people who definitely see football as nearly as important. (Another Lombardi line, of which there are some variations: “All that matters is your God, your family and the Green Bay Packers”.)

Still, Weber studied religions as a way of highlighting differences in cultures and people’s philosophies.  The superficial resemblance of sports fanatics to religious fanatics is obviously more about the features of fanaticism than religion.  So we’re still at a dead end.

Let’s approach this from a different direction: we know that American football, though wildly popular in the United States, is not the number one sport in any other country. Perhaps the reasons for this are tied to “American exceptionalism”.  But this is more Tocqueville than it is Weber. (Where is that Ouija board?) And unfortunately, I cannot find much that Weber had to say about America.

So once again, I am frustrated.  I leave it to you, blogosphere and distinguished commenters, to sort this problem out.  What would Max Weber think of American football?