For I was hungry and you gave a shitload of money to these people who talk about supporting this guy who talks about how good it would be if I got fed

So there's this new PAC doing this thing.

A fund-raiser is being held tonight in Washington for a nascent political action committee that is hoping to reach out to Christian communities on behalf of Senator Barack Obama.

Reaching out to Christian communities ain't cheap: "the suggested contribution is $1,000", and I guess that's per person.

The PAC is called "The Matthew 25 Network". As in:

The new group’s name takes its inspiration from the 25th chapter of the gospel of Matthew in which Jesus talks about how he will select people like a shepherd separating sheep from goats, saying, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Really? When I look at the list of acts which Jesus demands in that there parable, it seems to me that voting and campaigning are conspicuously absent, never mind holding fundraisers "in which the suggested contribution is $1,000". Now, I grant that I could see someone (assuming they are sufficiently untouched by cynicism) coming to the conclusion that they can best answer the parable of the sheep and the goats by supporting the Obama campaign. After all, the American president has the capacity to affect the well-being of people throughout America, and the rest of the world as well; and one might well hope that Obama as president would use that capacity to especially good effect, perhaps even altering the sorts of economic structures (etc.) which underlie problems of poverty (etc.), in a way that the normal individual cannot hope to do, and whatnot.

On the other hand, someone who is in the habit of participating in $1000 Washington fundraisers isn't someone I'd expect to take the parable of the sheep and the goats seriously. (Classmate Mark has this idea for a great new heresy: anyone who makes and keeps over something like $150K / year is ipso facto on the way to hell.)

This isn't the only biblically branded project to come out in connection with the Obama campaign (e.g.), and I gotta say that this whole thing where you slap religious brands onto political campaigns isn't making me any happier now that it's the Democrats doing it.

On a dark Midwest highway

I ride a long, dark line, in a deep, dark time.

For Christmas is a dark time, and the Indiana toll road is a dark place. At a time like this, in a place like this, a man is given to forking over cash to a fast food chain for the first time in nearly four years, and drinking foul-tasting lightly-coloured water masquerading as coffee.

And a bad brew on a dark road in a dark time can turn a man's mind to dark thoughts....

Dark thoughts, like about how the Pope can get into the news for declaring that terrorism is bad.

Dark thoughts, like about how holy crap can be not only atrocious, but also very creepy (via).

Dark thoughts, like about how crafty Mike Huckabee is to play innocent about his sectarian political ad, spinning it into a little War on Christmas riff (via). Said he to the flock at Cornerstone Church (that being the church of that great fat cat for Christ, John Hagee): "I got in a little trouble this last week because I actually had the audacity to say 'Merry Christmas.'" That's right—and you could be next—unless of course there's someone like Huckabee around to stand up for you.

Don't worry: he may have been in a church, but he said it wasn't a political appearance. And if you can't trust Huckabee to tell the difference, who can you trust?

Not that he's the only one to walk that fine line this season.

For it's a fine line, the line between church and state. But it's a bright one.

Not like the Indiana toll road. No, that's a long, dark line, snaking between Nowhere... and Hell.

(I mean, not literally Hell—just Gary.)

A vote for Huckabee is a vote for Christmas

Oh no, Huckabee's campaign ad has a subliminal cross in it!

Oops, did I call it a "campaign ad"? I meant, "innocuous message of holiday cheer paid for with political campaign dollars and run in the three states with the earliest primaries".

But about that cross: who cares? Of course it was intentional. But, hey, how about the fact that the perfectly explicit, not at all subliminal, content of the ad is something like: God Jesus God Christmas Christ Jesus I'm a Christian (psst, not a Mormon) Jesus Jesus Jesus I like God Christ yay Christianity God P.S. vote for me.

(Paraphrasing roughly there.)

The "subliminal" cross is there to communicate a message, but it's not exactly a hidden message. A blind person could probably listen to that ad and figure out what's happening on screen. "Are they showing a Christmas tree? A cross? Is he wearing a sweater?"

Well, I, for one, applaud this ad: how it repudiates even the slightest pretense, even the thinnest veneer, of actually addressing a genuine political issue; how thoroughly it embraces pure, unadulterated sectarianism; how it expresses with such refreshing honesty the state of so much political discourse in America today. Kudos to Mr Huckabee.

Rorty among the believers

Naturally, there have been many posts about Rorty's death on philosophy-related blogs, like here and here and here (which even links to little old me). But I'm impressed by how often the news has been mentioned on blogs which don't have all that much to do with philosophy. I knew on some level that Rorty was fairly popular outside of philosophical circles, but I've still been surprised. (Some philosophers would say that this is owing to the fact that Rorty's appeal was limited to the philosophically ignorant. Which, I suppose, I was when I first became a Rorty fan.)

In particular, I'm surprised by how often he's been mentioned, and treated with respect and even admiration, on religion-oriented blogs like SoMA, Jesus Politics (in a series of links), Levellers (link via Jesus Politics), and the conservative First Things (link via Levellers). Rorty was an outspoken atheist who clearly didn't see religion as any sort of personal option, thought that it was about time that modern culture grew up and got over the religious urge (and here he included secular imitations of religion--e.g., what he saw as a tendency to treat scientists as a replacement priesthood), and took a hard line against there being any role for religion in the public political sphere. Yet there are apparently quite a few theists who found him worth reading, and worth engaging on something more than a merely polemical level. (I have in the past detected some distinctly Rorty-flavoured vocabulary coming out of the local divinity school. Of course, I'm unconvinced that the divinity school is particularly religious, so that might not mean much.)

It might even be possible that he managed to convince some theists to reconsider the wish that God had more of a place in political discourse. Well, that's pure speculation on my part, but he presented a good case (the same case that you'll find in Rawls or Habermas--but with better rhetoric). I'm thinking that maybe the "new atheists" should take some notes, assuming they have any interest in going beyond mere polemics, and saying something potentially useful. From the Levellers post:

As a believer, I also appreciate having atheistic dialogue partners like Rorty, rather than the current wave of angry atheists (fundamentalists of unbelief!) like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

But I suppose an "angry atheist" might think that this just shows that Rorty was too soft on religion.

(Incidentally, as I've said before, I don't think Dennett belongs on that list. The basic idea of the book--that the phenomenon of religion should be subject to empirical examination, and that the religious shouldn't shy away from that--sounds fine to me, as far as it goes. Though I suppose I should probably actually read the thing before I really pass judgment on it. Dennett was another big philosophical influence on me, back in the day, so I'm not entirely unbiased here.)

Enough said

The Christian Century interviews Bill Moyers and asks:

Some people on the left think the Democratic Party needs to be more explicitly religious. What do you think about that counterstrategy?

If you have to talk about God to win elections, that doesn't speak well of God or elections. We are desperate today for cool thinking and clear analysis. What kind of country is it that wants its politicians to play tricks with faith?

(h/t JP)

Blessed are you when you are given pizza and a nice toilet

Via the NY Times, some striking examples of church-state-conflating faith-based-nonsense, such as this one:

Life was different in Unit E at the state prison outside Newton, Iowa.

The toilets and sinks — white porcelain ones, like at home — were in a separate bathroom with partitions for privacy. In many Iowa prisons, metal toilet-and-sink combinations squat beside the bunks, to be used without privacy, a few feet from cellmates.

The cells in Unit E had real wooden doors and doorknobs, with locks. More books and computers were available, and inmates were kept busy with classes, chores, music practice and discussions. There were occasional movies and events with live bands and real-world food, like pizza or sandwiches from Subway. Best of all, there were opportunities to see loved ones in an environment quieter and more intimate than the typical visiting rooms.

But the only way an inmate could qualify for this kinder mutation of prison life was to enter an intensely religious rehabilitation program and satisfy the evangelical Christians running it that he was making acceptable spiritual progress.

I suppose the "E" in "Unit E" stood for "Evangelical".

"Unit E" was run on tax dollars, and was of course clearly unconstitutional. So much so that, when it was brought to court, the judge not only cut off its funding, but also ordered that the ministry repay the $1.5 million it had already received, on the grounds that "the constitutional violations were serious and clearly foreseeable".

Given that the program was so blatantly unconstitutional, why would anyone have tried it in the first place? I can't help wondering if it occurred to some clever soul that they should give this a shot, so that, in the likely event that it got shot down in the courts, then at least pastors of a certain politicized stripe would have something to get the flock riled up about. After all, it was helping inmates, and wasn't doing any harm.

Well, no harm apart from, say, this:

One Roman Catholic inmate, Michael A. Bauer, left the program after a year, mostly because he felt the program staff and volunteers were hostile toward his faith.

“My No. 1 reason for leaving the program was that I personally felt spiritually crushed,” he testified at a court hearing last year. “I just didn’t feel good about where I was and what was going on.”

This isn't too surprising, given the attitude that many evangelical Christians seem to have towards Catholics. (Are they even Christians? They seem to worship an awful lot of idols. Even so, they still might not deserve to be "spiritually crushed".) Presumably someone who didn't lay claim to any form of Christian faith at all wouldn't have made it into the program in the first place.

Setting aside the political point of view, I'm wondering what, from a religious point of view, could make anyone think this program was a good idea. Are the privileges of "Unit E" supposed to prod the inmates along a path of "spiritual progress" (as judged by the people who run the program, naturally)? Are these material comforts meant to help convince these inmates to love God? I'm not sure how that could work, but maybe they're operating on the logic of Pascal's Wager - except instead of the infinite reward of heaven, they dangle the carrot of private toilets, live music, and food from Subway.