dagblog - Comments for "Religious tolerance"

No holy war forthcoming

artappraiser — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:31:45 +0000

No holy war forthcoming between us, as I conaider your comment just food for thought challenges, and very helpful ones at that. I doubt I will change my mind much on these matters, having thought on them many years, but some tinkering and refinement is always welcome.

Adding some random thoughts,

Emma Zahn — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:56:25 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

Adding some random thoughts, just to get them out of my mind, though I think reading Wills rather than me would be time better spent. :-)

I took your advice and spent quite a bit of time reading the Wills links. I really enjoy reading history and historians perspectives. Thanks

Personally, I think you are getting waylaid with this approach: that Islam literally means submission while the United States, America, stands for and prizes liberty.

Possibly, but please note that I was commenting on Josh's comment about a subgroup of Muslims who do in fact hate America and its freedoms enough to want to blow things here up. And yes, we do have many communities here that are into submission and not only religious ones.

My thinking has been heavily influenced by Erich Fromm. Fromm's first book was a study of the Fear of Freedom and desire to Escape from Freedom, the UK and US titles, respectively. Fromm was drawn to the subject out of curiousity as to why so many Germans were willing to surrender their wills so completely to Hitler. Basically he argues that negative freedom from without a positive freedom to is very frightening and anxiety producing and makes people susceptible to authority figures, a vast oversimplification of this thesis.

The book was written in 1941 so some of the psychology sounds dated. It was not the first Fromm book I read. That would be his 1955 The Sane Society followed by his 1956 The Art of Loving. (That is when they were published, not when I read them.)

The fear of freedom theme is revisited throughout most of Fromm's work, last in 1976s To Have or To Be four years before he died. If you are interested but unfamiliar with his work, that would probably be the best place to start. I have the book but much of it is repetitious to me since I have read many of his other works. A discussion of the difference between rational and irrational authority is there.

Yes, Quakers etc. were persecuted here prior to the establishment clause. And it also a big deal that demagogues flamed, because everyone enjoyed being far away from the British crown, setting up their own little governments, just like the Taliban taking over a town in the northwest provinces of Pakistan these days

I think it is worth noting that not all colonies were set up like Talibans presuming you mean specifically religious settlements. New York, Virginia and the Carolinas were business ventures. Georgia was a combination business venture, social experiment. Since their original populations were drawn from specific areas it is not surprising they shared a common religious outlook.

I do think you are confusing what the founders thought of as "liberty" with secularism and elite Enlightenment philosophy. Isn't it you that is applying a 20th century filter onto the issue? Do you really think they thought that everyone in their new nation was going to turn into an Enlightenment values guy? You don't think they could foresee Quakers and Puritan sects at each other's throats? Even at the start, Massachusetts was begging for help with military action, and Pennsylvania didn't want to give it to them, following their non-violence creed. All they did was try to find some way to make a nation where everyone agreed to a smallish set common laws. (And what a good one it turned out to be, going 200+ years now.)

I don't think so. I have always thought the original (founding if you will) concepts of liberty and equality were much smaller and narrower than what is commonly conceived of them today. Liberty was about political liberty, independence from British authority, self-government by elites. Equality was more about not having to tug your forelock or step off a sidewalk into the mud when meeting someone of higher rank or second sons sharing in inheritances. The Bill of Rights wasn't even part of the founders' original Constitution, hardly on their radar at all.

Although I have been heavily influenced in my thinking about freedom by 20th century Fromm, the concepts of negative and positive freedoms were familiar to the founders. Discussions of them can be found as far back as 1651 in Hobbes' Leviathan.

We always run into problems when demagogues fan the flames of difference for political reasons, aims or goals. They can do this with any "tribe," not just religious ones.

Yes, there will always be demagogues taking advantage of the chaos they themselves create. They capitalize on irrational authoity and the fear of freedom. Until we can somehow create a saner society we will have to do as you suggest: Everybody's got to work at this every day, every single day, that's how this nation is set up. It's not ever going to be hunky dory all the time, no religious tolerance rainbow was expected. Wasn't in the past, isn't now.

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ps I will try to find excerpts on rational/irrational authority by Fromm but may not succeed before the Cafe closes. Fromm has a first-rate mind and education. Highly recommend reading him.

Madison did in fact respond;

diachronic — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 01:46:43 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

Madison did in fact respond; Madison's reply is typically subtle.

http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_mad1668&person=mad

It is amazingly good reading.

Thanks for the heads up. I

moat — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:47:47 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

Thanks for the heads up.
I was very impressed with Wills' "Negro President."

Wow. Are we about to have

Emma Zahn — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:38:24 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

Wow. Are we about to have our own holy war? :O

Maybe.

I have to go to a birthday party now. Be back later.

Adding some random thoughts,

artappraiser — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:33:17 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

Adding some random thoughts, just to get them out of my mind, though I think reading Wills rather than me would be time better spent. :-)

Personally, I think you are getting waylaid with this approach: that Islam literally means submission while the United States, America, stands for and prizes liberty.

We have lots of religious communities in the U.S. that are into "submission" and always have had them. We've got ultra submitters, like nuns taking vows to be the bride of Christ and living in communes, Hasidim who lead their lives according to the dictates of a single rebbe who also tells them how to vote, Jehovah's Witnesses who run into trouble with the government when their kid needs a blood transfusion, and Amish who have problems with obeying Social Security tax laws. They all still get one person, one vote.

There are also lots of Muslim sects, much less individual Muslims, that don't take the submission thing whole cloth as you are taking it, just like all the immigrant "papist hordes" of the late 19th century didn't end up to be following the orders of the pope to infiltrate and change our society as some ruling WASP's feared. Some U.S. Catholics still do follow all the orders of the pope, by the way. There are Muslims who hate fundie Muslims with a vehemence, just there are Christians who hate fundie Christians with vehemence and there are American Jews who hate Israeli settlers with a vehemence.

Yes, Quakers etc. were persecuted here prior to the establishment clause. And it also a big deal that demagogues flamed, because everyone enjoyed being far away from the British crown, setting up their own little governments, just like the Taliban taking over a town in the northwest provinces of Pakistan these days.

The founders saw that leaving things that way wasn't going to work to make a union. So did Janet Reno when she invaded the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. It goes both ways, there's got to be a balance.

I do think you are confusing what the founders thought of as "liberty" with secularism and elite Enlightenment philosophy. Isn't it you that is applying a 20th century filter onto the issue? Do you really think they thought that everyone in their new nation was going to turn into an Enlightenment values guy? You don't think they could foresee Quakers and Puritan sects at each other's throats? Even at the start, Massachusetts was begging for help with military action, and Pennsylvania didn't want to give it to them, following their non-violence creed. All they did was try to find some way to make a nation where everyone agreed to a smallish set common laws. (And what a good one it turned out to be, going 200+ years now.)

We always run into problems when demagogues fan the flames of difference for political reasons, aims or goals. They can do this with any "tribe," not just religious ones.

Everybody's got to work at this every day, every single day, that's how this nation is set up. It's not ever going to be hunky dory all the time, no religious tolerance rainbow was expected. Wasn't in the past, isn't now.

It's a strong possibility that it could get much worse now as demagogues have it so much easier with the internet podium making it easy for them to go viral, when in the past their views and actions would have not been known. A Muslim center would have been built in downtown Manhattan no sweat if Osama bin Laden hadn't demagogued it into a holy site to other religions including the secular religion, just as the AlKhoei Islamic Center rose next to LaGuardia airport without any opposition.

We always run into problems when demagogues fan the flames of difference for political reasons. They can do this with any "tribe," not just religious ones. Osama Bin Laden is one example. So is the Koran burner, but he hasn't even had to do all the work and the big production Osama bin Laden did, he just took advantage of the current media hysteria in a viral age. It's actual gotten quite ridiculous, how much a little nasty guy can seize the day:

Even before national religious leaders and Gen. David H. Petraeus condemned Terry Jones’s plan to burn the Koran on Sept. 11 at his Gainesville church, grass-roots opposition had begun to swell....
“He represents only 30 people in this town,” said Larry Reimer, a local pastor, noting the size of Mr. Jones’s church, the Dove World Outreach Center. “It needs to get out somehow to the rest of the world that this isn’t the face of Christianity.”

from
In Florida, Many Lay Plans to Counter a Pastor’s Message,
byy Damien Cave, New York Times, from September 7, 2010

Thanks for the recommend.

Emma Zahn — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:26:49 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

Thanks for the recommend. And he is at Emory. Good to know.

It is always a pleasure to

Emma Zahn — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:13:25 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

It is always a pleasure to read Jefferson. Did Madison respond to his request? Reading that would be equally enjoyable.

This letter is a well spring of ideas, words and phrases that can be taken out of context and used to foster intergenerational conflict. Please don't show it to No One Really. :/

I will be reading it a few more times. There is much there to think about but I do not see that it mirrors Paine.

Jefferson's letter is primarily about property rights, things like primogeniture and perpetuities as well as the heritability of encumbrances. We owe him a lot for his efforts in ending and/or curtailing those.

On the other hand, it appears the Paine v Burke debate is about ideology and social institutions, at least according to Kristol. I have not read enough of either to reach a definite conclusion. It does however seem that we are living Paine's dream of social norms and mores shifting with each generation. Just now that does not seem to be working out very well.

there is also podcast

artappraiser — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:19:59 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

there is also podcast interview on it here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14986005

Judging from this thread, you

artappraiser — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:18:21 +0000

In reply to Religious tolerance

Judging from this thread, you might like to read Garry Wills' book topic if you haven't:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/books/review/Allitt-t.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/oct/10/entertainment/et-rutten10

Not the least of which because he has also done a lot of work on St. Augustine.