NYTimes.com Article: One Nation, Enriched
by Biblical Wisdom
From: franksmith
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:18 am
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: One Nation, Enriched by Biblical
Wisdom
The article below from NYTimes.com has been
sent to you by franksmith.
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One Nation, Enriched by
Biblical Wisdom
March 23, 2004
By DAVID BROOKS
Tomorrow the Supreme Court
will hear arguments about whether it is constitutional for public
school teachers to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, including the
phrase "one nation under God," in their classrooms.
So tonight's reading assignment is "A Stone of Hope"
by David L. Chappell.
"A Stone of Hope"
is actually a history of the civil rights movement, but it's
impossible to read the book without doing some fundamental rethinking
about the role religion can play in schools and public life.
According to Chappell, there
were actually two camps within the civil rights movement. First,
there were the mainstream liberals, often white and Northern.
These writers and activists tended to have an optimistic view
of human nature. Because racism so fundamentally contradicted
the American creed, they felt, it would merely take a combination
of education, economic development and consciousness-raising
to bring out the better angels in people's nature.
The second group, which we
might today call the religious left, was mostly black and Southern.
Its leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., drew sustenance
from a prophetic religious tradition, and took a much darker
view of human nature.
King wrote an important essay
on Jeremiah, the "rebel prophet" who saw that his nation
was in moral decline. King later reminded readers that human
beings are capable of "calculated cruelty as no other animal
can practice." He and the other leaders in the movement
did not believe that education and economic development would
fully bring justice, but believed it would take something as
strong as a religious upsurge. Because the experiences of the
Hebrew prophets had taught them to be pessimistic about humanity,
the civil rights leaders knew they had to be spiritually aggressive
if they wanted to get anything done.
Chappell argues that the civil
rights movement was not a political movement with a religious
element. It was a religious movement with a political element.
If you believe that the separation
of church and state means that people should not bring their
religious values into politics, then, if Chappell is right, you
have to say goodbye to the civil rights movement. It would not
have succeeded as a secular force.
But the more interesting phenomenon
limned in Chappell's book is this: King had a more accurate view
of political realities than his more secular liberal allies because
he could draw on biblical wisdom about human nature. Religion
didn't just make civil rights leaders stronger - it made them
smarter.
Whether you believe in God
or not, the Bible and commentaries on the Bible can be read as
instructions about what human beings are like and how they are
likely to behave. Moreover, this biblical wisdom is deeper and
more accurate than the wisdom offered by the secular social sciences,
which often treat human beings as soulless utility-maximizers,
or as members of this or that demographic group or class.
Whether the topic is welfare,
education, the regulation of biotechnology or even the war on
terrorism, biblical wisdom may offer something that secular thinking
does not - not pat answers, but a way to think about things.
For example, it's been painful
to watch thoroughly secularized Europeans try to grapple with
Al Qaeda. The bombers declare, "You want life, and we want
death" - a (fanatical) religious statement par excellence.
But thoroughly secularized listeners lack the mental equipment
to even begin to understand that statement. They struggle desperately
to convert Al Qaeda into a political phenomenon: the bombers
must be expressing some grievance. This is the path to permanent
bewilderment.
The lesson I draw from all
this is that prayer should not be permitted in public schools,
but maybe theology should be mandatory. Students should be introduced
to the prophets, to the Old and New Testaments, to the Koran,
to a few of the commentators who argue about these texts.
From this perspective, what
gets recited in the pledge is the least important issue before
us. Understanding what the phrase "one nation under God"
might mean - that's the important thing. That's not proselytizing;
it's citizenship.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
[long link]
...................................................................................................................................
From: winters_diana
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:57 am
Subject: Re: NYTimes.com Article: One Nation, Enriched by Biblical
Wisdom
from:
One Nation, Enriched
by Biblical Wisdom
March 23, 2004
By DAVID BROOKS
I agree with (or at least found useful) much
of this, just wanted to point out:
The lesson I draw from
all this is that prayer should not be permitted in public schools,
Prayer is permitted in public schools
in the US.
It would be hard to stop it. (Kinda like kicking
soccer balls. Which would be easier to prevent, actually, if
you just took away the balls. You can't take away the content
of kids' heads, or the teachings of their parents and church.)
The only thing that is not permitted is for
the school to organize the students to pray in a particular time
and place, to require specific prayers, and to turn the prayer
into a communal, school- sponsored activity. That is as it should
be, because (sorry to put it in such almost child-like language,
but the point seems often missing from public discussions of
this) - the kids know a lot of different prayers. Their families
pray different prayers. That is as it should be. It should not
be up to the state to teach them to pray. It is the basis of
religious freedom.
Diana
...................................................................................................................................
From: Jo Ann Schwartz
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2004 12:54 pm
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] Re: NYTimes.com Article:
One Nation, Enriched by Biblical Wisdom
Diana wrote:
One Nation, Enriched
by Biblical Wisdom
March 23, 2004
By DAVID BROOKS
I agree with (or at least found useful)
much of this
Hi Diana,
Like you, I agreed with a lot of the article,
however, I would point out the same problem you found with the
passage on school prayer exists in the following passage:
Chappell argues that the
civil rights movement was not a political movement with a religious
element. It was a religious movement with a political element.
If you believe that the
separation of church and state means that people should not bring
their religious values into politics, then, if Chappell is right,
you have to say goodbye to the civil rights movement. It would
not have succeeded as a secular force.
Separation of church and state does not
mean that people should not bring their religious values into
politics -- how could one avoid doing so?? -- it means the State
should not impose religious values on the people. Funny
how often folks forget about this -- at least until it's someone
else's religious values that the State wants them to consider....
Musing on the how freedom sometimes requires
restraint....
JoAnn
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