Pagan Problem
This column was written by Michael Knox Beran.
Barack Obama talks a lot about faith. Curious as to how his spiritual inspirations might concretely affect his politics, I went to his website and clicked on "faith." I found the usual boilerplate about "the global battle against AIDS" and a call - now familiar to connoisseurs of the Obama style - for "deeper, more substantive discussion." I also found an exhortation to "religious people" to translate their "concerns" into "universal values."
Few values can be more universal than that of human freedom. Few have historically been as intertwined with religious sensibility. Yet Obama, the candidate of faith, has done little to oppose modern liberalism's embrace of a secularizing agenda that has weakened the power of religion to promote the "universal value" of freedom at home and around the world.
The free institutions we enjoy in the West today are in part a by-product of the traditions of Judaism and Christianity, which insist on the innate dignity of each and every human life. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him," says the Book of Genesis. Even the weakest among us, Christ taught in the Beatitudes, has value in the eyes of God.
Hundreds of years passed before the West translated this belief into political institutions that recognize that all human beings are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
It took a while, but it happened. The question today is whether these institutions can flourish in the face of rapid secularization.
A Judeo-Christian cultural heritage is not, to be sure, a sufficient condition for free institutions: witness Russia. Nor is it a necessary condition: witness India and Japan. Yet the idea that animates those institutions is intimately related to the spiritual culture of the West.
Take a look at Freedom House's 2008 map of the world, and it's clear that free institutions are strongest in Europe, in what was once the seat of Christendom, and in places colonized by European nations - the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, India, and South Africa. Perhaps free institutions will one day prosper throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. At present they do not.
"If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God)," T. S. Eliot said, "you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin." Eliot's warning has not been taken seriously by liberals, among them Obama himself, who in five areas of current controversy sides with the secularists:
Area one: Beginning with New Deal justice Hugo Black in the 1940s, liberal judges have banished emblems of Judeo-Christian faith from the public square and have imposed a state-sponsored cult of secularism on public schools. Obama, far from taking a stand against the jurisprudence that descends from Black's opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, is critical of two judges who have resisted the judiciary's attempt to secularize society, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Two: Liberal philosophers have embraced a theory of "value pluralism" that has degraded the West's traditional notions of good and evil and provided a philosophical framework for moral relativism. Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, rejects the idea of "absolute truth" and argues that the Constitution rejects it too. It follows that if nothing is absolutely true, then nothing is absolutely right, and nothing absolutely wrong.
Three: Liberal historians have worked to deny or, where denial is impossible, to lament the influence of Judeo-Christian ideals on the development of Western political institutions, and have in particular disparaged the notion of original sin, which figured prominently in the statesmanship of the Founders. Obama, seeing himself in messianic terms, rejects the politics of limits that the Founders, wary of the imperfections of human nature, embedded in the Constitution.
Four: Liberalism's celebrity elites have spawned an artistic culture that makes a fetish of what is hellish in human nature: in contrast to the art of Dante and Baudelaire and Dostoevsky, the new poetic culture of Warhol, Madonna, and their imitators offers its devotees no insight into the possibility of transcending, through divine grace, what is hellish in us. Obama worked to "block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion."
National Review Online Barack Obama talks a lot about faith. Curious as to how his spiritual inspirations might concretely affect his politics, I went to his website and clicked on "faith." I found the usual boilerplate about "the global battle against AIDS" and a call - now familiar to connoisseurs of the Obama style - for "deeper, more substantive discussion." I also found an exhortation to "religious people" to translate their "concerns" into "universal values."
Few values can be more universal than that of human freedom. Few have historically been as intertwined with religious sensibility. Yet Obama, the candidate of faith, has done little to oppose modern liberalism's embrace of a secularizing agenda that has weakened the power of religion to promote the "universal value" of freedom at home and around the world.
The free institutions we enjoy in the West today are in part a by-product of the traditions of Judaism and Christianity, which insist on the innate dignity of each and every human life. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him," says the Book of Genesis. Even the weakest among us, Christ taught in the Beatitudes, has value in the eyes of God.
Hundreds of years passed before the West translated this belief into political institutions that recognize that all human beings are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
It took a while, but it happened. The question today is whether these institutions can flourish in the face of rapid secularization.
A Judeo-Christian cultural heritage is not, to be sure, a sufficient condition for free institutions: witness Russia. Nor is it a necessary condition: witness India and Japan. Yet the idea that animates those institutions is intimately related to the spiritual culture of the West.
Take a look at Freedom House's 2008 map of the world, and it's clear that free institutions are strongest in Europe, in what was once the seat of Christendom, and in places colonized by European nations - the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, India, and South Africa. Perhaps free institutions will one day prosper throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. At present they do not.
"If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God)," T. S. Eliot said, "you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin." Eliot's warning has not been taken seriously by liberals, among them Obama himself, who in five areas of current controversy sides with the secularists:
Area one: Beginning with New Deal justice Hugo Black in the 1940s, liberal judges have banished emblems of Judeo-Christian faith from the public square and have imposed a state-sponsored cult of secularism on public schools. Obama, far from taking a stand against the jurisprudence that descends from Black's opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, is critical of two judges who have resisted the judiciary's attempt to secularize society, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Two: Liberal philosophers have embraced a theory of "value pluralism" that has degraded the West's traditional notions of good and evil and provided a philosophical framework for moral relativism. Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, rejects the idea of "absolute truth" and argues that the Constitution rejects it too. It follows that if nothing is absolutely true, then nothing is absolutely right, and nothing absolutely wrong.
Three: Liberal historians have worked to deny or, where denial is impossible, to lament the influence of Judeo-Christian ideals on the development of Western political institutions, and have in particular disparaged the notion of original sin, which figured prominently in the statesmanship of the Founders. Obama, seeing himself in messianic terms, rejects the politics of limits that the Founders, wary of the imperfections of human nature, embedded in the Constitution.
Four: Liberalism's celebrity elites have spawned an artistic culture that makes a fetish of what is hellish in human nature: in contrast to the art of Dante and Baudelaire and Dostoevsky, the new poetic culture of Warhol, Madonna, and their imitators offers its devotees no insight into the possibility of transcending, through divine grace, what is hellish in us. Obama worked to "block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion."
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There are no gods. Time to grow up people.
Aww, come on. Zgomer is just the full flower of the crop Bill O''Reilly and others have been cultivating for 20 years! You know that guy that shot up a Tennessee church a few weeks ago during a childrens performance? Zgomer. That''s what Limbaugh, Coulter, O''Reilly, and the rest have been training and creating for 20 years now. It seems unfair to discourage such ''talent'' thats been 20 years in the making. Even anarchy deserves expression, after all. How could billions of advertising dollars get expended without such a pinacle of violence being reached? Go for it, zgomer, follow the path Saint O''Reilly has charted for you.
At least 40 virgins await you in heaven, should you take that path...
Posted by zgomer at 12:41 PM : Aug 24, 2008
How about showing us this intellectual brilliance that Christians have managed to keep from public display for more than 2,000 years?
Posted by ndpindent-ru at 05:37 AM : Aug 24, 2008
It''s a fundamental question: Who owns the fetus? Not society, not the state. I think it''s the body from whose womb it is taken. Even if there is another woman willing to accept the fetus and take it in her womb, the disposition of the fetus remains with the woman responsible for conceiving it.
A fetus is not a person. Granting it the civil rights of a person will destroy the rights of the woman carrying it.
While you have a right to your opinion, is this really the forum for it? "--Posted by ubrew12
Yes indeed. This article is a diatribe about how people who are non-Christians are somehow ruining America. A slander against people who choose to worship something other than a mythical Middle East import.
Just turning the tables. You can believe what you want. But you don''t own America, you don''t own western cultural values.
The West has flourished most since it expelled the Church from control of its political institutions, and allowed freedom of belief.
It''s the hidebound Christian heirarchy who brought us the dark ages. That''s what NRO wants a return to.
"People killing, people dying,
Children hurtin'', you hear them crying,
Can you practice what you preach,
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father father father help us,
Send some guidance from above,
Cause people got me, got me questioning:
Where is the love?"
Black Eyed Peas
mainedoggie-so if you''re liberal than your tolerant of others, right?? I thought liberal meant open minded or is that just for other liberals. See, your side is full of double standards. Then, one should be proud of ones views. Me, reformed lib and proud of it and I tolerate your point of view. Hey, I bet you support the fairness doctrine, don''t you??
As for the use of certain words, I do believe the term "nazi" wins out. So, I guess you take the term liberal as a slam, here I thought you were proud.
As for Kansas, toto, bet you love the corn.
What BS from the article above. Religion was never about "human freedom". Gimme a freaking break.
Religion is the opposite of human freedom and that''s why it was invented: To tell people what they cannot and should not do, however irrational it might be.
And ever since when is to have a secular society a bad thing?
This is exactly what''s wrong with Republicans, they only use religion to make themselves look better than others just to win political office so they and their corporate buddies can run this country for their own benefit.
What hypocrisy.