“Clash Of Civilizations”: Spiritual, Not Intellectual
From the desk of A. Millar on Sun, 2012-01-01 16:37
The words “The Clash of Ideas” are splashed across the cover of the special anniversary issue of Foreign Affairs this month. This is of course a play on the “clash of civilizations” narrative that we’ve heard countless times since 9/11, and a nod to the notion that this clash – between radical Islam and the West, or liberal democracy – is fundamentally a “war of ideas.”
I have come to believe that this diagnosis is not only wrong, but a large part of the reason why we, who believe in freedom and the rights of the individual, appear to be losing ground. (For example, we are seeing more sharia in the West, despite us knowing that full sharia demands the execution of homosexuals, the stoning of women who commit adultery, and discrimination against religious minorities. And we are seeing our right to free speech eroded, especially across Europe.)
The battle is not one of ideas. It is a spiritual battle, pure and simple.
Deploying ideas like soldiers in which the generals do not believe, the “Counter-Jihad” and anti-Islamist pundits have reduced themselves to Sunday intellectuals.
A speech by any “Counter-Jihad” spokesperson or anti-Islamist media pundit is liable to denounce the increasing liberalism and “Cultural Marxism” of the West as a symptom of the rot, and to suggest that they are fighting for a more conservative Christian West, before going on to tell us that we are also fighting for liberal ideas, such as women’s rights and gay rights.
Such speeches will only ever appeal to the converted – “sensible people” who are able to shut out one half of the message to find support for their gut instincts. Contrast this with the radical imam, who calls for full sharia in the West, and who speaks with passion and conviction, regardless of what anyone thinks.
The imam knows what the West does not, i.e., that it is about the fire in the belly and in the eyes. It is first and foremost about integrity, conviction, and spirit.
If one wants an example of the ravages of strategy, put above values and integrity, one need look no further than Britain’s main three political parties. With the exception of Brighton – a student city – which elected a member of the Green Party to Parliament in 2010, over the last few decades the members of the British public have ignored those parties that best expresses their values on the grounds that they “won’t get in.”
Instead they have made the tactical decision to vote for the “mainstream” party that seems most likely to keep out of power the one they dislike more. The result of this “tactical voting” is that the three parties have become indistinguishable ideologically, and appear to be without values or, sometimes, without any morals at all. The complaint that party leaders would “say anything to get elected” reveals only that the leaders are no less tactical than the voters.
There is also, though, a tactics of the minority, of course, who believe that some extreme minor party should be supported, and its past behavior – which is, for example, racist and anti-Semitic – overlooked. To be sure, politics across the board has changed over the last decade, and so have the political parties. But where such changes appear to be cosmetic, masking a fascist underbelly, they cannot be supported.
Like the follower of Confucius, we need to cultivate integrity, so that we’re supported in our struggle for freedom – a struggle which must, perhaps, take place anew with each generation – by an inner will, and an inner spirit.
Recently, I came across a comment on a blog that suggested violence against Muslim women was an advantage to those who opposed sharia and wanted to defend liberty, since it kept the fanatics busy. This is precisely the wrong attitude, and one that is certainly not supported by Western culture – or most other cultures.
It is completely alien to the notion of chivalry of the West, the Gentleman of Confucianism, etc.
It is the comment of one who believes strategy is to be placed above his own soul. But, without a soul, without integrity, without a clear sense of right and wrong, left only with his tactics, he is doomed to lose. His freedom will go the way of that of the Muslim women we see brutalized in Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere.
Either the West – and those who defend freedom most of all – will use this existential challenge to recover themselves, to know who they are, and to act with integrity – criticizing those who deserve it, praising those who deserve praise, and defending those who are subjugated for merely wanting freedom – or they will lose.
Types of Spirituality
I have spoken about spirituality in the Confucian and traditional Christian, European, sense. But we also need to take account of the types of spirituality that occupy the West today. We cannot pretend that the West is one hundred percent Christian, if we are serious about defending it.
In the introduction to her – in many respects fascinating and informative – 2006 book on Islamism in Britain, Londonistan, Melanie Phillips laments the decline of Christianity in the UK, and suggests that its disappearance is paving the way for radical, political Islam.
However, she also notes, somewhat contradictorily, that, so far, the vacuum has been filled by all sorts of New Age-type “cults,” neo-paganism and even Satanism. In the introduction, Phillips exclaims,
Judaism and Christianity, the creeds that formed the bedrock of Western civilization, have been pushed aside and their place filled by a plethora of paranormal activities and cults.
The observation bears reflecting upon, although we should step back from viewing this phenomenon at the most extreme fringe possible.
First of all, we need to ask why the religious vacuum in the UK has been filled – not, as Phillips herself asserts, by Saudi and Tehran-funded Islam – but by other, unorthodox, forms of spirituality?
Secondly, if unorthodox forms of spirituality have flooded in where Christianity has declined, we should ask whether this is in fact part of the character of the West that should be defended against radical religion?
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement – which has garnered much media attention over the last few months – seems to supply an answer. Religion, in the traditional sense, has been notably absent. No Bibles. No Korans. No priests. No imams. No calls for sharia. Yet, protesters have been holding mass yoga sessions. Some have been meditating even while being arrested by police. Even Deepak Chopra – a New Age megastar – turned up at Zuccotti Park to lead a meditation. The Huffington Post has also been running stories on spirituality.
Of course, Christianity remains the largest religious denomination in the West, and it is from Christianity that we obtained such bedrock ideas as the separation of Church and State. Nevertheless, to deny that very many Westerners are now simply “spiritual” or religious in a post-Christian sense (of believing in God, but not Christ) is to deny a significant part of the character of the West.
And to snobbishly condemn those practicing New Age spirituality, Yoga, and so on, is simply to disenfranchise the very people that exhibit much of the energy in the West today, and to ignore the direction in which the West has been heading for centuries. To put it bluntly, it is to deny what the West actually is, in favor of a fantasy version of it.
A Long History of “Alternative Spirituality”
Despite being absolutely modern, the spirituality of the Occupy movement is the result of a long history. It obviously resembles the 1960s Hippy movement. However, we should not stop there to find its roots.
For many centuries, non-Christian spirituality has lain just beneath the surface in the West, exerting a strong – although today largely unrecognized – influence on the cultural elite.
Since we have already mentioned neo-paganism, it will be worth mentioning that the first neo-pagan “cult” – a Druid organization – did not appear in the late 20th century, but was founded in 1717 in London. This was a century in which mystical organizations and movements proliferated across Europe, headed, usually, by aristocrats or members of the continent’s monarchies. In the 20th century, Winston Churchill – the Prime Minister that the “Counter-Jihad” movement loves to invoke – joined a Druid Order while still a young man, although this was not a religious Order per se.
Again, in recent years there has been a popular call – and an early day motion in Parliament – to make “Jerusalem” the official anthem for England. Surely, we could get no more Judeo-Christian than that? Yet, William Blake’s words – appropriated for Jerusalem later on – were inspired in large part by the works of Emanuel Swedenborg a Swedish mystic, who claimed to commune with angels, and to receive an esoteric interpretation of the Bible from them.
Again, during the Renaissance (14th-17th centuries) Hermeticism and neo-Platonism exerted a very substantial influence among the cultural elite, although its members were still Christian.
Although it would be possible to wind our way back through history, we might instead remark that if ancient Greece is the cradle of Western civilization, a few centuries BC, its culture also merged with Buddhism to create a distinct strand of the religion, known today as Greco-Buddhism. And, of course, we must also include Plato (and Socrates) and Aristotle as part of the West.
But it is important for us to challenge the assertion that the decline of Christianity – which is inferred to be the state, or officially recognized, religion – equals the decline of the West by turning to the US, still the world’s most powerful nation. Notably, many of the US’s founding fathers were Deists, not Christians per se. Several were also members of the mystical and philosophical fraternity of Freemasonry (although certainly most Freemasons were Christians at that time). The cornerstone of the US Capitol was also laid by George Washington in a Freemasonic ceremony, and much of its older architecture contains Freemasonic symbolism.
This is not because of a conspiracy by a “new world order” to announce its secretive existence at every opportunity, but because the fraternity was popular among all classes at the time, and, with no national symbolism, the early citizens of the USA appropriated what was to hand. An examination of quilting, woodwork, and other aspects of folk culture show reveal that the same symbolism was popular among the very poorest Americans.
Spirituality and cultural revival
Odd, in my view, while “interfaith dialogue” with Islamic organizations has never proved a problem for Christianity, many Christians will be deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of acknowledging New Age and related forms of Western-born spirituality. Indeed, many Christians are uncomfortable with the very idea of “spirituality.” Nevertheless, it is imperative that we grasp the essential nature of the West, its history, culture, and its spirit. To acknowledge the considerable presence of practitioners of alternative spiritualities, and to engage them in the defense of liberty, religious and spiritual freedom against a totalitarian, politico-religious movement should not pose any threat to Christianity or to Christians, and may well benefit it.
Contrary to what many conservatives aver, attacks on Christianity are not the cause of the religion’s decline in Europe and Britain, but are a consequence of its decline. While the US has a growing Evangelical movement outside of New York, Los Angeles, etc., Christianity has declined in the West precisely because it has largely refused to acknowledge and engage with its own mystical and intellectual traditions (at least outside of small circles).
According to Time and the BBC the USA’s most popular poet is the Sufi mystic Rumi. Yet virtually no one has heard of Meister Eckhart or Hildegard von Bingen, or – more unorthodox, admittedly – Jacob Boehme.
Joseph de Maistre is known only to Right-wing Catholics, and they would undoubtedly be shocked to learn that de Maistre, a committed supporter of the Papacy, was, at the same time, a committed Freemason and spiritualist. As I have said, the spiritual and religious history of the West is complicated.
Ali Mirsepassi in Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment: Philosophies of Hope and Despair reminds us that “Broadly defined, it is the New Age movement of the twentieth century that most influentially tried to propagate a popular discourse of the problem of the ‘soul’ in Western material society.” Undoubtedly its popularity accounts, at least in part, for why so many Christians, and so many churches, view the New Age as a threat to Christianity, even as they embrace Islam (which believes Jesus was a Muslim who came only to prophesy about the coming of Mohammed, not to die on the cross for our sins) as well as other religions.
Yet, if the New Age movement has been on display lately with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, it was also instrumental in reviving Hinduism and Hindu nationalism in India, and in defeating imperialism in that country. As Mirsepassi notes, Mahatma Ghandi’s worldview was partly shaped “through his contacts with people on the Western New Age movement,” and that the “views circulated in this milieu were… of a ‘spiritual’ India.”
The New Age movement in question was Theosophy, founded by Mme Blavatsky, a strange, enigmatic, though physically unattractive Russian émigré. Theosophy was spread through the talents of Henry Steel Olcott, who had been the primary investigator of the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
A largely forgotten movement today, it was hugely influential, not least of in its effect in the East. Not only did Theosophy help to revive Hinduism in India, it also helped revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka. One of Olcott’s disciples was Anagarika Dharmapala, who helped revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka and India. For Dhamapala, Mark Juergensmeyer tells us, “Buddhism was not only a movement of spiritual reawakening but also a nationalist and anti-imperialist one.”
Blavatsky and Olcott, we should acknowledge, were fervently anti-Christian. However, this was largely due to the devastating effects of imperialism that they saw in the East, especially in the destruction of national and indigenous religious culture. (It’s easy to dislike a religion that seems intent on converting people and destroying their culture.) There is no inherent reason why spirituality in the West would damage Christianity, or perhaps why it would not be able to help revive Christianity in Europe as it did Hinduism and Buddhism and national culture in the East. The situation the West finds itself in is markedly different in many ways, and, yet, remarkably similar in others.
Conflict and creative minorities
For some years now, Pope Benedict has been talking about the role of “creative minorities” in the preservation of Europe’s values. Those in the Counter-Jihad undoubtedly qualify as “creative minorities,” although there are others. Both the (allegedly Republican) Tea Party and the (allegedly Democrat) Occupy Wall Street movements believe themselves to be defending traditional and even timeless values. The phrase, “creative minorities,” as Samuel Gregg observes, “comes from another English historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975).” As Gregg notes,
Toynbee’s thesis was that civilizations primarily collapsed because of internal decline rather than external assault. “Civilizations,” Toynbee wrote, “die from suicide, not by murder.”
The “creative minorities,” Toynbee held, are those who proactively respond to a civilizational crisis, and whose response allows that civilization to grow. One example was the Catholic Church’s reaction to the Roman Empire’s collapse in the West in the 5th century A.D. The Church responded by preserving the wisdom and law of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem, while integrating the invading German tribes into a universal religious community. Western civilization was thus saved and enriched.
Like spiritual practitioners generally in the West, those who populate the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, are highly unlikely to find acceptable sharia, or, more especially, such sharia punishments as the stoning of adulterers (and even rape victims), the cutting off of the hand of a thief, or death penalty for homosexuality. Yet, they also see no reason to side with one religion (Christianity) over another (Islam).
However, the picture painted by Counter-Jihad pundits, of Christianity versus Islam/Islamism, is false. Six months before the World Trade Center was attacked, the Taliban detonated the giant sixth century Buddhas of Bamiyan statues since they were deemed to represent the “gods of the infidels.” Islamism’s war on Buddhism and Hinduism, and the mass murders, and attempted genocide, of Zorastrians and Yezidis, and the persecution of Baha’i, by Muslim extremists should be the natural concerns of those Westerners who regard themselves as “spiritual.” In 2007 350 Yezidis were killed, and 1,000 were left homeless, in one single attack on a village.
A much better job needs to be done at explaining that the clash is not between two religions (Christianity and Islam), or between two types of (religious) conservatives, but between religious intolerance and those who stand for spirituality, freedom of conscience, and pluralism.
Think tanks need to start raising the issue of the ethnic cleansing of Zoroastrians, Yezidis, and Kalash (as well as terrorist attacks on religious and ethnic groups elsewhere, such as Buddhists in Thailand). Counter-Jihad bloggers and anti-Islamist pundits need to acknowledge that a large segment of the West is “spiritual.” Acknowledging that it is not exclusively Christian does not expose some weakness. Rather it illuminates a major strength of the West.
Western conservatives have been extraordinarily snobbish in their dismissal of non-religiously affiliated spirituality – and a large section of the West along with it. Yet, some Islamists clearly recognize the threat it poses to their authority. Notably, on November 11 this year the Egyptian authorities closed the pyramids when it became known that a group of New Age practitioners were planning to hold a meditation ceremony at one of them. According to the New Age group this was to “help Mother Earth.”
Similarly, the regime in Tehran believes New Age spirituality has been exported to Iran in an attempt to destroy Islam. This is incorrect, of course, but the idea that one can have spirituality without a particular religious dogma is, in a religious society, one of enormous revolutionary potential. It changed the shape of the West, and can potentially change the shape of the Middle East.
If anti-Islamist pundits are serious about combating religious intolerance and clerical fascism, then they will need to take a lesson from the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and acknowledge that the spiritual core of the West is today is “spiritual,” not just Christian. To alienate such a large and energetic section of society is foolish. To alienate it when it might provide the best illustration of living a spiritual life without religious fanaticism and religious competition is little short of suicidal.
There are plenty of areas of agreement between “spiritual” people, Christians (and most other religious groups) and even atheists, which should be concentrated on, not for tactical reasons, but from personal conviction and for personal integrity:
- The separation of Church and State/ support for liberal democracy.
- Opposition to (state-sponsored/religious) discrimination against, and the oppression of, religious and ethnic minorities, such as the Copts in Egypt, the Yezidis and Assyrian Christians in Iraq, Zoroastrians and Baha’I in Iran, Hindus in Pakistan, Kalash in Afghanistan, and Buddhists in Indonesia.
- Opposition to the culture of honor violence, and support for women’s rights.
- Opposition to (usually anti-Semitic) conspiracy theories as peddled in the media of the Middle East (which have come to exert pressure in the West, e.g., with some high school teachers afraid to teach the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim boys who have been taught, at mosque or by parents, that the genocide of the Jews is a fabrication), and the insistence on a culture of reason and inquiry about the truth.
- The teaching of proper – not ideologically slanted – history in schools.
- Respect for the individual and the conscience of the individual, and opposition to degrading treatment and torture of prisoners in Iran, Egypt and elsewhere.
- Denunciation of the spread of Nazi ideology, and admiration for Hitler, in the Middle East.
- Support for individuals who suffer death threats, violence, etc., for leaving their religion for another or because they have adopted atheism.
- Support for science and free inquiry, and for evolution, which, as the Catholic Church, has noted in many different ways, does not conflict with faith. As Pope Benedict has said, “there is friendship between science and faith.” (This is true of Catholicism, and most other Christian denominations. It is also true of New Age spirituality, Buddhism, etc.)
- Opposition to sharia, which is being pushed in the Middle East, Malasyia, and the West. (Sharia is a complete system of law, which discriminates against women, demands execution for homosexuality, adultery, and blasphemy, and the subjugation of religious minorities. Western Governments have allowed the practice of sharia family law in some instances. However, it is unacceptable to allow legally-binding judgments to be passed when those judgments are based on a discriminatory legal code.)
- Proper, scholarly and archeological examinations of the religions and their core texts. (Christianity has a long history of such studies, as do most other religions.)
However, more important, yet, we need to acknowledge that we are in a spiritual battle – not an intellectual battle – for freedom. Like the Confucian, and the Gentleman of the West, we need to cultivate integrity and spirit by saying what we mean and speaking the truth, by standing up for what is right and opposing what is wrong, and by not compromising our values and principles. Only if we do that, becoming men and women of spirit, timeless and archetypal, will we secure our own freedom, and the freedom of others now oppressed.
I don´t like this essay. I
Submitted by memetic warrior on Mon, 2012-02-06 00:56.
I don´t like this essay. I confess that I stopped reading at the middle. It is an accumulation of names and facts without going deep to the true nature of all this modern and ancient "spirituality". And the true nature of the New Age movement as well as masonry is Gnosticism. the Gnosticism is basically an amoral set of beliefs. It is worth to read Voegeling to ascertain how deeply connected are modern and ancient gnosticism with the left. Marxism, scientism, ecologism and in general all utopian movements share the same gnostic worldview, basically, the idea salvation by an special knowledge rather than by faith or by good behaviour. Such knowledge is revealed by iluminated persons. The mere idea of Progress is gnostic.
Of course this is part of the West. Also gas chambers and concentration camps and Mt Bean are part of the West. And radical anti western emotionality is a genuine part of the modern West. The point is what kind o West we want to take iunto account. Don't count on me for saving idiots. This kind of spirituality is not part of the good West. It is part of the bad West.
Oh no! Wait! we are now looking for common grounds with the left!. Sorry for my mistake. forget that.
One thing is true: this is an spiritual clash of civilizations. And the spirit of the modern West is gnostic. If you know gnosticism, you must know that , as utopian, gnosticism is suicidal. Ancient gnostics contemplanted absence of humans in earth as the ultimate goal. Modern leftist idiots too. The combat is being lost by absence of the West.
Sorry I have no time for catholic-protestant games.
Catholic-Protestant Games?
Submitted by Capodistrias on Mon, 2012-02-06 15:14.
"Sorry I have no time for catholic-protestant games."
Games? A dynamic which has shaped world history for better or worse for hundred of years seems a rather significant factor to dismiss as a game.
Maxism-Weberism is outdated
Submitted by memetic warrior on Fri, 2012-02-10 09:45.
I think that the topic of the essay is interesting enough to not waste time revisiting Weber one more time again and again.
There is only one thing that saved protestant countries to fall in the absolute monarchies that Lutero and Calvino advocated: The geography of central Europe and England. If you stop a moment from your task of whitewashing protestantism, you will agree that absoluite monarchy and intolerance of catholics where in the plans of Luther. And a tyranny of the Just People were the program of Calvino in Geneva.
But, while the coast of spain had very little ports and the spanish King controlled all the maritime traffic with America by simply controlling only one port, the port of Seville (and the mountain pass of despeñaperros) The kings of England, Germany an Hollad coul'nt control its own territories full of swamps, canals and ports. Visiting the Indias archive in Spain you can look at the detailed account of each ship content, including the name of every person,and every object that were embarqued and disembarqued to/from America. In the meantime, Holland and Englad experimented an uncontrolled private traffic of people and goods. Even the monopolistic, state owned East India Company indulged in black market. It was out of the control of the King, using alternative ports and following alternative routes differentf from the official ones. That was possible because the greath quantity of ports in england, that the king could´nt control.
"In the 17th and 18th centuries, the East India Company established a monopolistic trade network on the high seas, gaining immense wealth and influence at home in England. Their ships sailed from Europe with silver and bullion, returning months or years later with exotic goods from Asia and Africa. Along the way, enterprising ships� captains engaged in private trading of their own, abusing company resources for personal gain. Now, researchers at Columbia University have shown that it was this illicit trading, rather than officially sanctioned activity, that was directly responsible for the creation of the first global market and the success of the East India Company"
iIlegal textile produrers in the countriside commerced in black market ports with america and elsewere, while in Spain and in a lesser degree, in France the ports and the textile producers were under the control of the King. Specially in spain, where the king had total control of traffic and commerce in the few mountain passes and ports of the Iberian Peninsula.
That si the reason of the vaunted success of the so called "protestant revolution"
That was not a matter of religion. It was a question of mere geography combined with the discovery of America that switched the center of commerce form the Mediterranean coast to the atlantic.
It is exactly the same geography that, in the mediterranean sea, two centuries before, permitted to flourishmet of the Poo valley in Italy, with Venize, Firenze etc. Because they had similar geography: (plains,ports, swamps, navigable rivers) and an intrincate coast, that was very difficult to control by a central authority.
The same happenend in Greece with the thounsands of the Aegean islands and in a lesser degree, in Egypt. Central autority promote monopolies because it is easier to collect taxes from them. That produces closed societies.
But abudance of ports, swamps, islands fluvial comunications permits uncontrolled alternate centers of production and distribution. With this competition appears, private property and commerce flourish, Inter-cultural contacts are more frequent, philosophical inquiry develops and culture in geneeral flourish. until a central ruthless authority manages to control everithing again.
So here is the role of your magic protestantism, folks, Almost nothing. If anything, Protestantism is the consequence of the change of the commerce traffic from the Mediterranean sea to the Atlantic.
Game over?
Submitted by memetic warrior on Sun, 2012-02-12 01:06.
It seems that nobody want to play anymore ;) . It looks like my theory is compelling.
Theory in a Bottle
Submitted by Capodistrias on Sun, 2012-02-12 05:47.
Mahan meme.
.If anything, Protestantism...
Submitted by memetic warrior on Fri, 2012-02-17 11:22.
..If anything, Protestantism, As I said above, is a consequence of the change of the centers of commerce from the Mediterranean sea to the Atlantic. The Protestantism as Voegelin said, was born as a consequence of the economic prosperity. and incorporated the good practices that favoured commerce: For example, tolerance of other´s ideas under the ecumenic value of money. Not before rejecting sectarin intolerance after the bloody fights between sects along Central Europe that initiated inmediately after the birth of Reformation. Because the values of capitalism, and much less of Democracy, were not in the protestant doctrinaries. Neither lutero or Calvino liked interest rates for example.
Protestantism in its infancy was sobject to a bloody process of darwinian selection with two alternatives: either closed sectarianism or to embrace the rules of tolerance and commerce that had enriched them. Torerance was an specially critical value in the inhomogeneous central Europe. Of course the efficient alternative won. So the Spirit of Capitalism was ijncorporated at the hearth of the protestant ethics. It was a matter of pragmatism.
"Games"? I'm with Capodistrias on that one....
Submitted by Libratarian on Wed, 2012-02-08 07:16.
When we look at Islam today we are all slowly becoming more and more aware of the truth of how religion shapes and, in fact, creates culture. The patterns of belief and, thus, behavior required of those beliefs replicate themselves all across the "diverse" Muslim world, generation after generation after generation. We're slowly beginning to notice that.
To believe the effects within and between the Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Buddhist, Jewish and other religious communities do not also create very distinct patterns (even for the unbelieving within such societies) arises in two things: 1) naive and very wishful thinking; and, most importantly, 2) actually Mainline Protestant dominant thought coming through all across the West to remind us that we all are "the same" and to be "respected" (as opposed to, for example, the Catholic Church or non-Mainline Protestant demoninations that teach that all who do not believe as their sect believes are not a part of the body of true believers and, therefore, errant in the worst ways and not saved. Meaning, in other words, we're not "all the same" and to be "respected.") As the stability-creating, highly admirable but, in the face of Islam, problematic Mainline Protestant story-line goes, if we are all "the same" and to be "respected" we, therefore, should not consider or believe in the cultural and, as follows, the political, behavioral, economic, familial, social, legal, and governmental effects of the differences in religion as to things that have negative outcomes; we are only to believe, discuss, and point out such as to the positive differences.
Thus, we can say: "Their families (whether Muslim, Catholic, or Orthodox) are just so much closer than ours" (Even if the fact is that "they're" actually often very dysfunctionally enmeshed and interfering in their family members individual lives). Or, we can say: "They have so much more passion for life than we do," when, in fact, "they" simply have no cultural software that tells them they must or should put others comfort, safety, or feelings above their own behavior or words and perhaps hold back certain things in certain ways at certain times. Both have negative consequences and extensive societal effects. On the other hand, we are seeing that the otherwise highly admirable Mainline Protestant tendency to "hold back", now in our confrontation with Islam, is causing some very severe problems - most especially and most markedly in Mainline Protestant countries. In any case, these ways of percieving others and the world around us, as merely two examples, come from religion and shape culture. Most, however, have no idea how or from where this "software code" comes.
Thus, even here, whether in this posting community or outside in the larger society, we don't ever want to (and most of us today are so theologically and religiously illiterate that we are simply incapable of such) examine outcomes of differences and effects within and between religions - not even between our own Western Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox societies. As I believe Capodistrias rightly alludes to, if we don't want to do so and, worse yet, we have no knowledge base of comparative theologies or religion to do so, we are doomed to be defeated by Islam and we absolutely can not understand - even today - where we as Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox have been, where we as Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox are, what we as Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox have comparatively created (or fully failed to create), and where we as Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox are going.
After the "crayons" comment, I'm not so sure you agree with me, Capodistrias, but I definitely agree with your most recent comment here. The sad fact is that it is our Western, Mainline Protestant-based -- and though otherwise highly admirable -- instinct that causes us to close down conversations about religious differences and their costly effects by using comments that discredit an honest discussion or exploration of these very important differences. It was the reason I never responded earlier. No hard feelings here, but I felt that the "crayons" comment left neither me nor the discussion anywhere to go. Regardless, we seem to agree on the main point here: If anyone thinks comparison and a discussion of these issues is some tired "game", such a person may see themselves as taking the "high road" when, in fact, they've willfully consigned themselves to the dark - and are fully unwittingly taking our entire society down with them.
Libratarian's Crayons
Submitted by Capodistrias on Sat, 2012-01-07 17:05.
Libratarian,
And such is why children are given crayons before real paints.
Your caricature and helter skelter attempt to sum up both Catholicism and Orthodoxy discredits both Luther and the vital role which Protestantism has played in history.
Luther's and other Reformational figures' criticisms of their era's Church were often dead on and true, unfortunately the fundamental truth at the heart of Christianity which both Catholicism and Orthodoxy embrace is that Christ is the head and founder of Christianity, not a mere man.
The error of asserting that a man, Luther or anyone else could represent a fundamental rebirth, a second coming so to speak, of Christianity is the heretical element that dooms Protestantism to ultimately fail on a theological and rational level. However, to assert that Protestantism is ultimately a failure is not to assert that Protestantism was not a needed movement within Christianity or a waste of historical time for Christianity, it is simply to recognize it as what it was and can still be at times: a needed corrective to the human error that can, and often does, infect the temporal and physical body of the Church. The intrinsic eternal truth of Christianity, that God not Man is the Creator, is not subject to that corrective despite your colorful attempts to proclaim otherwise.
Now, if it is merely provocation which you wish to dabble in, play around with this: Protestantism and its deification of the individual is ultimately responsible for the greatest moral catastrophe in modern human history - Abortion.
Granted, such a provocation may be going over the lines, but if we are playing with crayons such is the overexcited ways of children and innocents, at least the ones who have made it into the world.
Libratarian's highly
Submitted by Koenraad Elst on Sat, 2012-01-07 02:35.
Libratarian's highly excitable mind reads a whole lot of things into my brief comment. A reader's forum is not the right medium to answer it all. Just this:Peter Carl's qualification of the Golden Rule as "Western-Christian" is libel against all the traditions that had articulated the Golden Rule centuries before Christ, including Confucius and the Buddha. Libratarian's claim that Protestant Christianity can take credit for the abolition of slavery is false. Whatever role William Wilberforce and other Christians played in it, they cannot have gotten their inspiration from Christianity, which explicitly condones slavery both in the Old and the New Testament (as correctly pointed out by anti-abolitionists and conceded by many abolitionists). The christianized late Roman empire did away with the enslavement of fellow Christians but allowed hunting for slaves among the neighbouring Pagans. That is how the ethnonym "Slav" came to mean "slave". This became the template for the enslavement of Amerindians and Africans, admittedly triggered by slave trade with the Muslim world. Muslim apologists advance the claim that Mohammed abolished slavery, and Libratarian's claim is equally absurd.
@unrealpolitik
Submitted by Wynne on Fri, 2012-01-06 06:06.
I think you read into my comment what is not there. I deliberately avoided commenting on the spiritual/intellectual disjunction posed by A. Millar. Out of respect for the author and his thoughtful (and I think searching) essay I did not say that I believe that his argument, though interesting and altogether worth-while, is not determinative in our struggle against Islam. But I think he is on the right track.
We are not, in my view, so much short of spirituality and intellect -- whatever their relative valences -- as we are of the courage to unite and act. I would draw a distinction between spirituality and "spirit", which, while we want it to be informed, is a thing sui generis. It may be encouraged by ideas, principles and values, but it may also be crushed by fear and uncertainty. The latter, as with Hamlet, seems now to be the case. So long as we remain lone voices in the wilderness, rather than united voices in capitol cities, things will remain the same.
Recent Protestant Reformation apologetic claims...
Submitted by Capodistrias on Thu, 2012-01-05 14:00.
Now that Libratarian has crayoned Weber and the Protestant Reformation back into history, anyone care to crayolla Catholics and Orthodox back in?
Maybe Libratarian can kick it off with his weighty thoughts on: Was Shakespeare a Catholic?
I'll just sit back listening to the Nutcracker, after all it's almost Russian Christmas!
Crayons, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Shakespeare
Submitted by Libratarian on Sat, 2012-01-07 20:32.
It may sound provocative, but that’s not the reason underlying what I’ve written. There is, if we think about it, no reason to “crayon in” Catholicism and Orthodoxy into any picture of the Modern West; both dropped far behind and out of the picture so long ago. Both were and remain - all in the exact same ways Luther once complained of – counter to modern (and historical) reason, democracy/lack of hierarchy, the rule of law, transparency, individual responsibility, independent thought and inquiry, etc. To the extent a follower believes they are not, it is because they themselves have chosen, contrary to the requirements of the church, not to follow certain church doctrines.
That is NOT to say that Catholicism and Orthodoxy have made no contribution to the West. That would be ridiculous to even assert. Of course, they did and have over time. No doubt. There is enough of Christianity’s New Testament in each to have made the societies they formed to function well enough to still rise above most of the rest of the world, both in ancient and modern times. This is far more the case with Roman Catholicism. Prior to the Reformation, however, they carried Western society to a certain level, but because of their own inherent limitations on ideas and the development of ideas could carry it no further. The greatest advances in the West in the centuries and decades just prior to the Protestant Reformation were made by those who acted, thought, and discovered DESPITE and CONTRARY to Catholicism and Orthodoxy, not because they followed it. (Just as in the case of Islam today). The modern Western society we have today exists as a result of the Protestant Reformation’s reactions to (and very much despite) Catholicism’s medieval stifling of modernity, mass education, science, innovation, intellectual inquiry, social and gender equality, etc.
The main problem with each Catholicism and Orthodoxy is that they create discrepancy or perhaps better said, a disconnect, between behavior/reality and what one is told (and what their respective theologies require) one must believe. Why? For example, Popes were (and still are) infallible - yet many acted quite criminally and generally in ways the opposite of what they preached. That a human is chosen as pope and then somehow becomes “infallible” is only one of many Catholic irrationalities. It was irrational to Luther then and it’s irrational to most of us today. As well, the hierarchy under the Pope was "created by God" yet those in the hierarchy also often acted criminally, with greed, were obsessed with the comforts of this world and seemed to have no connection to the spiritual or the eternal or the poor, and were supposed to be celibate but instead openly had children and sexual relationships, etc. Today we see similar discrepancies reflected in the sexual abuse scandals that are endemic to the Roman Catholic Church and found within it in every country. No other – not one other – sect of Christianity has this problem on an institutional or endemic scale. The result is that such discrepancies create societies where, if God's laws are so regularly and openly broken (or covered up) – most especially by the church's leadership - ALL laws are seen as being breakable by all people at all levels of society within the countries and communities that follow such a doctrine.
Another modernity and transparency stifling feature within Catholicism or Orthodoxy is that individuals have neither a direct relationship with God nor are they given by the theology itself the power to read, interpret, or formally deliver scripture. Only the Pope and the hierarchy can do that. (The Pope has said he'd like to return to a fully Latin Mass and limit the post-Vatican II involvement of the laity). That means Christian reason specifically and reason in general can not be used by individuals within these Churches to explain or interpret points of the theology. It means, if you want to be and consider yourself a true believer, you must believe what history and the hierarchy tells you to believe. (It's partially the same for Non-Mainline Protestants who, for example, believe the Old Testament story of creation and are unable to reconcile scripture and scientific research and theory. They bar themselves from using reason in a reasonable way. For most of us today - including especially Mainline Protestants, we see that as simple idiocy).
If you consider yourself Catholic or Orthodox but still think you can have a direct relationship with God, interpret scripture on your own, or believe other than what the hierarchy tells you, well, you're acting contrary to what Catholicism or Orthodoxy teach. (Many Belgians are seeing this confirmed – just as it has been confirmed for centuries within these Churches across the world without change). Even so, if they or anyone else think they as Catholics have the right to do and think these theologically forbidden things within the Catholic Church, you've simply incorporated key parts of Luther’s teaching and the Protestant Reformation into your belief system now and have decided to reconcile discrepancies pointed out by Luther and begin living in ways similar to the way Protestants have lived for hundreds of years. This is, in fact, what most believing Catholics have done within themselves but not formally as congregations.
The rest (like my own father, for example, or for that matter, the entire country of France (and so many others), one could say), simply reject Catholicism specifically and religion in general because, in coming from a Catholic view of the world, religion, and relationships, it is believed that "religion" (which for them is Catholicism) is not in accordance with reason and, even worse, seen as being full of discrepancies in thought/belief vs. action. In short, hypocritical. Thus, they usually (often vehemently) reject Catholicism (and, quite incorrectly, all religion) as irrational and counterintuitive (which Catholicism and Orthodoxy are), yet, as latent “Catholics”, they still continue to act in ways that see no need to strictly adhere to principles that require them to follow or comply with laws or rules and they usually, as is convenient for themselves, either work to advance or, alternatively, destroy hierarchy by any means without respect to, for example, Christian principles of the Golden Rule, for example.
In Protestantism, contrary to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, one is required to behave very much according to what one believes - and those beliefs can (and must) be examined and accepted or rejected by each individual. If you don't want to do that, you are free not to believe. As Peter Carl pointed out, this is one of the reasons Hitler hated the “poison” of Protestantism. If a Protestant does not act consistently with their beliefs, they understand that not acting according to what is required is neither normal nor acceptable. Whether for the clergy or the laypersons. The “requirements” come not from some hierarchy or allegedly "infallible" person. For a Protestant, they come from one’s own voluntary reading and acceptance of God's love-based laws set out for him or her personally. These laws, generally, require quite the opposite of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or even Islam, for example. Discrepancies between belief and behavior are seen as a personal failure and a challenge in Protestantism, not also as a right because others (e.g. a corrupt hierarchy) fail too. Because the individual is responsible to see that one's own behavior is in accordance with what one believes, laws in Protestantism are to reflect Christian love (or be changed) and, therefore, people generally choose to obey these laws. They also better see the value in and their own personal responsibility for obeying such laws. The result is that it creates societies where laws - both God's and man's - are generally far more in accordance with one another and far more respected by those living under them. For example, in Scandinavia. Or Switzerland. Or The Netherlands. Or Scotland. Thus, the differences between the Protestant vs. the Catholic or Orthodox world.
It may seem tiresome or irksome to read this. Any resistance or agitation the reader may feel in reading this, however, comes from the same sort of Political Correctness that keeps the majority of Westerners from discussing the differences between beliefs in the West and those within Islam. Among we who read TBJ, the vast majority of us understand that all religions are not equal and that all ideas are not equal. We have no difficulty with this when we’re thinking about Islam. Or, perhaps, when considering some stone-age group of cannibals living in some rainforest, as Peter Carl points out. However, we in the West especially dislike comparing religions (because of the very same principles of Political Correctness and Carl’s “Golden Rule” applied without the “standards”) when we’re required to examine the various sects of Christianity in the West. It is one of our core principles in Western thinking that we do not like to criticize, question, challenge, or discuss another’s religion. Generally, it’s a nice idea to be kind to others and not criticize their religion; however, when one wants to better understand social policy or economic progress or human rights abuses, we are required to really take an honest look at the options (and prohibitions) various theologies plant in our minds that tell us what is and what is not possible in our behavior, thoughts, words, and actions.
As Unrealpolitik very correctly notes below (and, as he says, as Weber and many others have pointed out in the past), the statistics and numbers tell us which Western societies are the most successful, open, and innovative or the most equal, democratic, transparent, and healthy, etc. both in Europe and the world. The Protestant countries, as he points out, always land on top. The Catholic countries that are defined by Unrealpolitik below as his "Reformation-Influenced" countries follow closely behind along with some Buddhist countries. Then come the rest – basically according to religion. Yet we – even we who abhor Political Correctness so much – even we do not want to recognize, believe, or even discuss these obvious patterns. Here’s a Frenchman, Napoleon Roussell, who looked at statistics in 1855 and found the situation in Europe to be even the same then. Here's another Frenchman, Alexis De Tocqueville, saying the same things in 1835. Doesn’t it tell you something that nearly 160 years gone by and the situation and statistics are still all the same? Why? For exactly the same reason we criticize and challenge Islam today: All religions and all ideas are NOT the same. As such, even Christian countries differ in ways that follow distinct patterns. Yet we would all prefer to pretend it is not so.
Capodistrias, though your question about Shakespeare is an interesting one, I’d say that in this discussion, for me, I see it as irrelevant just here. I'll explain why. Shakespeare may have changed forever the way literary writers and playwrights approached and viewed the world of writing, but he did not do what Luther and the Protestant Reformation did. Shakespeare did not in any way change the way lay people, commoners, kings, religious leaders, teachers and educational systems, legal systems, political and governmental systems, economic systems, charities, commerce, militaries, scientists and astronomers, and philosophers perceived (or were allowed to perceive) themselves, the world, and everyone and everything in it. Yet that is exactly what the Protestant Reformation did beginning precisely with Luther and his many writings, which launched the ideas that set in motion not only the Protestant Reformation but all of the cataclysmic reactions that then followed – including the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the reform of Judaism, and so many other revolutions of all kinds that continue up through the present day.
In partial answer to the question, however, here’s an Jewish-American author who agrees it's irrelevant what religion Shakespeare followed. A reading of his writings, however, she argues as the main thesis of her book, makes clear that within Shakespeare's writings and his mind - already within decades of Luther’s death - the revolutionary ideas of Luther and the Protestant Reformation had been firmly planted. Just as are now planted within the minds of most Westerner’s today (as the Belgian Catholics referred to above bear witness), regardless of religious affiliation. To understand how Luther's writings and ideas spread so rapidly and how Shakespeare could have been effected by Luther’s writings so far off in England, here you can read Luther’s response, Martinus Lutherus contra Henricum Regem Angliæ, to England’s King Henry VIII (written a few decades before Shakespeare’s birth) in which Luther shreds Henry VIII’s despotic and irrational assertions by using Reformation ideas of freedom and reason that each of us today still hold to be true and obvious. Good reading.
No one needs to like what is written here. However, we should not be interested in whether anyone likes it or not; we should be most interested in explaining and openly examining the connection between religious ideas and social policy, innovation, the rule of law, transparency, human rights, and all of the statistics that carry the answers. To stem Islamization, one must be able to do so. To do this with Islam, however, first requires us to understand ourselves and the actual ideas that have - and have not - formed our Western societies.
infusing soul into Counterjihad
Submitted by Koenraad Elst on Wed, 2012-01-04 01:50.
Peter Carl made a good case against the identification of the pro-Islamic forces in the West with the Left, and in favour of building bridges with the anti-Islamic potential inside the Left; but spoiled this inclusive message a bit by insisting too much on Christianity as somehow the real essence of the West, and then also smuggling into his argument recent apologetic claims that democracy, science, human rights etc. are all fruits of Christianity. After reading his article series with mixed feelings, I am happy to say that A. Millar's article here is straight from my heart. Wonderful, this is the "supplément d'âme" that the Counterjihad movement needed.
Recent apologetic claims....
Submitted by Libratarian on Thu, 2012-01-05 09:23.
Mr. Elst wrote:
“…but spoiled this inclusive message a bit by insisting too much on Christianity as somehow the real essence of the West…”
“…and then also smuggling into his argument recent apologetic claims that democracy, science, human rights etc. are all fruits of Christianity.”
I haven’t read all of Peter Carl’s essays (though what I have read, I would recommend and have found it all persuasive and informative), but the only “apologetics” that seem to be taking place here are by Mr. Elst himself – an apology which, it seems, he makes for and on behalf of all of the religions of the world outside of Western Europe.
His assertion that Christianity, after the daily influence for two thousand years, is not the “essence of the West” simply wishfully and in an odd form of Political Correctness puts aside extremely large amounts of historical, social, and religious fact and, in doing so, makes apologies for every religion and people outside of Western Europe that (due to specific ideas contained in their own non-Western belief systems) had not naturally developed or made possible or valued the development of democracy, the scientific method, human rights, and so much else. And, yet, my own statement does not state the matter as specifically as it must.
Note that the first and the only countries to have developed and maintained democracies in Europe (and which were immunized against dictatorships internally), let alone in the world, are all made up of Europe’s Protestant countries and, eventually, those few Catholic countries that were forced to deal with the Protestant Reformation in a close and meaningful way (Belgium, Ireland, France, Austria, Luxembourg). Let’s call these Reformation-Influenced Europe. Note also, relatedly, that the only remaining and continually reigning monarchies in Europe are those in Protestant and Reformation-Influenced Europe. Portugal, Italy, and Spain – similar to the continuing revolutions in their colonies – (and Orthodox Greece) all violently overthrew their monarchies. This has been the case since violence has been more easily accepted in these countries (for reasons specific to Catholic and Orthodox theology, that is, that enforced hierarchy is accepted (or violently rejected) and discrepancy in belief versus behavior is also normal and accepted (or violently rejected). This has also occurred since monarchies, for these same reasons, were unjust and did not, as Protestant theology requires, recognize even commoners as equals in beings and right. All of these countries suffered from dictators late into the 1900s. Let’s call these Non-Reformed Europe.
The problems now being experienced within the European Union are a direct result of these eternally existing and continuing distinctions; Protestant and Reformation-Influenced Europe, blinded by its own religio-cultural blind spots, in creating the EU, refused to see things in other than the highly admirable universalist light that comes from the Reformation. It's not the fault of the Reformation, however. Painful things happen when our desired perceptions do not actually match reality as it exists. The same thing is now happening with respect to immigration in Europe. In any case, when the EU was formed, the Central and Northern European founders of the EU based their assumptions for Southern and Eastern Europe in the same expectations they hold for their own populations. That is, that all people “are the same”, that all people “have the same needs” and the “same” good intentions, that all people will act honestly, work hard, desire education, be innovative, and pay their taxes, and that somehow corrupt Southern European governments and citizens would somehow become less corrupt merely by being a part of the EU. This, contrary to their expectations yet at no surprise to me, has not happened. In fact, those countries and populations (because of religious-based ideas that underlie how they see they may deal with others and themselves) have continued on exactly as before they had come into the EU and, as a result, they continue to be the least productive, least open, least innovative, least educated, least transparent, and least equal (e.g. gender, etc.) than as compared with Protestant and Reformation-Influenced Europe.
Even within Protestant and Reformation-Influenced Europe, significant differences continue to exist; the Lutheran and the Calvinist countries lead and the largely Catholic countries lag behind the Protestant countries. The same is true for Eastern Europe. Those Eastern European countries which were forced to deal with the Protestant Reformation in a meaningful way lead today; those that did not, remain even more mired in the mess left by Communism and, in some cases in Eastern Europe, by centuries of Islamic attack and occupation. Religious ideas (or a lack thereof), whether latent or active, continue to determine far more in this world than most of us ever are able or equipped to recognize. The general state of religious and theological illiteracy as it exists today across the West makes these patterns and facts all the more difficult to recognize for most of us.
I would dare to suggest that all we have that is good in this world today has taken a place front and center internationally as a direct result of Christianity and the effect of the Protestant Reformation: 1) the separation and acceptance of the existence of both church and state; 2) the spread of belief only by intellectual and spiritual convincing of non-believers; 3) a core requirement of non-violence – even for one’s enemies; 4) working hard as an obligation to society and as an example to others; 5) the Magna Charta of 1215 (a demand for rights in accordance with Christian expectations and principles made by laymen with the support of the church to nobles); 6) the Red Cross, the Geneva Conventions, and the Law of Armed Conflict (Henri Dunant, a committed Swiss Protestant acting as a result of and on behalf of his religious beliefs); 7) League of Nations and eventually the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Woodrow Wilson, a committed American Protestant acting as a result of and on behalf of his religious beliefs); 8) the abolition of slavery (a movement pitting Mainline Protestant circles acting as early as 1688 (pointed out by Peter Carl) in the Northern US, England, and Scandinavia against Non-Mainline Protestants (still the least developed, educated, open, etc.) in the Southern US. Abolition, in fact, was actually merely a return to Western Christian norms since slavery had not generally been a recognized norm in Christian Europe at any time between the end of the Empire of Rome up to Islam’s first sales of slaves to European conquistadores in the late 1400s). Which part of the world, Mr. Elst, do you wish to suggest has contributed as much? Africa? Latin America? Eastern Europe? The Muslim world? India? Apologetics? Your apology for those parts of the world by attempting to place them at the same level of contribution and achievement as Western Europe is here formally rejected, I would say.
Yes, Buddhism and Confucianism have historically allowed for certain limited successes in these directions. However, for the reasons of the ideas in the teachings and beliefs that exist in these religions, advancements did not reach the level attained in the Christian West – and, for the same reasons raised by Weber, still present problems for these countries. And, yes, ANCIENT Greece developed a form of democracy for a limited time and place and a handful of individuals from that time and place made initial steps in great thought and the scientific method. However, ancient Greece did not create Western democracy or the West. It was ideas within Christianity (universalism, individualism, Christian reason, charity, love of one’s neighbor, ascetic behavior, a lack of theological restrictions on innovation or invention, etc.) which saw value in and embraced those ancient Greek ideas and thoughts. For ideas to survive, the dominant religion must at least perceive them neutrally. Christianity did not require a rejection of these ancient Greek writings. Islam, on the other hand, because the teachings of ancient Greece were not naturally in accordance with the values that inherently exist within Islam, the libraries and texts they took in their Islamic conquest of the Christian/Hellenic world were generally over time disregarded and forgotten across the Muslim world. In the Christian world, to the extent there remained any access to such or partial copies of these texts, they generally continued to be valued, considered, and discussed. The true spirit of Christianity – despite the restrictions on human, intellectual, and spiritual advancement caused by pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism – was able to shine through sufficiently so as to continue to cause higher levels of freedom, social mobility, literacy, innovation, and equality. That is, at least more so than in the remainder of the world of comparable times.
When the Protestant Reformation came and removed the Catholic hierarchy and its interference in man’s direct relationship with God, a new time and new possibilities were unleashed in the world. Each individual became personally responsible for knowing and understanding what the word of God said and required in personal and group behavior (nearly immediately creating literacy, education, personal responsibility for moral behavior, a calling or profession that would advance a good society, and personal obligations and requirements in governing and dealing with one’s fellow beings in the spirit of love). Today, the values of the Protestant Reformation have formed what we now commonly refer to (even in Non-Reformed Europe) as the “West” or “Western” values. The difference in their application today across the West has only to do with whether a country is a part of Protestant, Reformation-Influenced, or Non-Reformed Europe or not. If you don’t believe that Christianity is the essence of the West you can ask why mainly reformed and secular Jews from Germany (who were finally confronted by the realities of the Protestant Reformation beginning first in about 1780), have somehow transplanted that “essence of the West” into modern-day Israel and why now the productive Israeli democracy they formed is now being threatened by ultra-Orthodox Jews who continue to reject all of those same reforms that so long ago changed the rest of Judaism beginning in the 1780s?
According to my reading of him, Peter Carl was simply stating an obvious truth that some people with agendas (e.g. Political Correctness or their own non-Christian religious or even atheistic views) care to paper over or whitewash away. For this reason and because of this type of misleading suggestion by Mr. Elst not to mention Political Correctness and attacks on Western culture by Islam, it is only made that much more difficult to try to inform people of what exactly has existed and not existed throughout history in the West. That does very little to assist in helping people to understand why exactly anyone should have concerns about Islam or Muslim immigration to the West. The fact is, whether you are an ethnic-European who has embraced atheism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or anything else, whether you like it or not, you see the world through the prism of Protestant and Reformation-Influenced Europe. To the extent you live in Non-Reformed Europe, your view of yourself and your world has, from approximately 1945 up to now, been influenced more and more by these Protestant and Reformation-Influenced thoughts. Today, however, because of religious and theological illiteracy and the growing influence of Islam in the West, that trend is being reversed – even in the Protestant and Protestant-Influenced West. The only person I see making apologies here at TBJ with respect to these issues is Mr. Elst and his doing so does absolutely nothing to help anyone – including himself – in gaining a deeper understanding of Western religion, culture, or history.
Recent apologetic claims?
Submitted by Capodistrias on Wed, 2012-01-04 04:45.
Good luck with air brushing Christianity out of
Passive Voice
Submitted by Wynne on Tue, 2012-01-03 18:41.
"The battle is not one of ideas. It is a spiritual battle, pure and simple."
I question, as A. Millar does implicitly, whether it is a "battle" at all. What seems to have gone missing in the West is the embrace of principle and the courage aggressively to defend it.
Absent Purple Elephants
Submitted by unrealpolitik on Thu, 2012-01-05 02:27.
We read from the author, "The battle is not one of ideas. It is a spiritual battle, pure and simple." and that we need to stand up "for what is right and oppos[e] what is wrong, and [not compromise] our values and principles." And we read from Wynne, "What seems to have gone missing in the West is the embrace of principle and the courage aggressively to defend it."
At the risk of pointing out the extremely large noticeably absent purple elephant which very rightfully should be in this room at this point (which, however, when in the room, we in the West prefer not to address as it would involve a discussion and comparison of religions), what, if not ideas (as I have pointed out below), do both the author and Wynne actually think underlies our concepts of the "spiritual"??????????? Or "right" and "wrong"???????? Or "values" and "principles"????????? And what, if not ideas, causes us to "embrace principle" and give us "courage" to "aggressively defend" them????????????????
Ideas, my friends. Absolutely nothing more and absolutely nothing less. Ideas. If you want to understand why we "appear to be losing ground" in all areas - it is actually because we continuously fail and refuse to understand, from the most to the least educated among us, that: 1) all religions and, therefore, all ideas are not the equal in their efficiencies or outcomes (thereby making all cultures not equal and any attack on or challenge of ideas NOT "hate"); and 2) that our entire concept of everything and everyone around us (including of ourselves) and the rules we embrace for dealing with everything, everyone, and ourselves arise in the religion or a reaction to the religion that formed the society with which our family, region, or nation identifies.
The ideas we hold as humans in every country on this earth - and, thus, the values and principles that guide us as individuals and groups - come from no other place than our latent or active embrace of the religion that has created our respective societies (or our reactions to or rejection of it). It's the reason that the Muslim world is as it is, the Hindu world is as it is, the Buddhist world is as it is, and that the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant worlds are as they are. It's all pretty simple. Yet our own Western mindset (based in the concept of universalism) makes this very difficult for us to see let alone admit.
Follow internationally collected statistics and surveys and the patterns become fairly obvious. Compare North Korea and South Korea, France and Switzerland, Chile and all of Latin America, Scandinavia to the rest of Europe, former colonies of Protestant countries to those of Catholic countries, Singapore and Malaysia, etc. Religion (or a destruction thereof) gives us our ideas; ideas give us the worlds we do or do not imagine, see, live in, build, and eventually will hand on to our children and childrens' children (if we have any). If you don't understand and believe that, you are only contributing to the continued and ever-widening lack of understanding of - and our inability to confront - the serious problems we face now across the West.
That said, A. Millar's (as is Peter Carl's) point is fully correct. The counterjihad movement must, in order to defeat Islamization and grow the movement, be able to identify and use as main points of argument our Western commonalities based in those "Common Freedoms" and the human-rights which all Westerners of all "spiritual" and political colors share.
Ideas and the Clash of Civilizations
Submitted by unrealpolitik on Mon, 2012-01-02 08:02.
Thanks for an interesting article. I definitely agree with the "spirit" of the argument. ;-)
My own take on this is that it is both a spiritual and an intellectual conflict and, therefore, very much a conflict over ideas. I see it this way because both the spiritiual and the intellectual are made up of and based in ideas and nothing more or nothing less than ideas. Everything that we think and feel arises in the ideas that we hold within our minds and the way those ideas inform us to view ourseleves, our fellow beings, and this world. I always see a need to remind that the ideas that make up the intellectual (and cultural), however, arise in the ideas of the spiritual (religious). Not the other way around. Religious ideas expressed in belief and values (whether latent/historical or active) are what tells a group of people (whether latently or actively informed by a certain religion), again, how to value or not value ourselves, other people, thinking, inquiry, reflection, work, money, property, charity, innovation, etc. Thus, the "clash of civilizations" is very much a conflict over ideas, but, as the author correctly points out, a conflict, in this case, very much being acted out in the arena of what has happend to the ideas of the "spiritual" that have traditionally existed within Western socieity.
Most Westerners, thinking themselves to be fabulously "intellectual" when they do so, anti-intellectually dismiss the deepest thoughts of mankind (expressed in 2,000 years of Western Christianity and reaction to Western Christianity), while we mindlessly embrace and elevate everything "spiritual" that is "not Christian", assuming it to be better merely for that single reason alone. This we have been doing, as the author correctly points out, for centuries. As Peter Carl recently pointed out here in one of his essays, Gotthold Lessing, a committed Lutheran, did this with respect to both Judaism and Islam in "Nathan the Wise". Luther himself did this more than two centuries earlier in his attempts, even despite the harshest intellectual and theological challenge to other systems of belief (something we're sorely lacking today...), to see the positive in other religions and to work to treat an examination of them in a balanced manner. The tradition continues. Christianity and the Protestant Reformation gave individuals the right to interpret theology and God - which, even from the beginning though more so in modern times, was extrapoloated to the right to reject theology and God altogether. The result of this "freedom from religion" today (as well as savage attacks on religion from Marxism and fascism/Social Darwinism/science) is a religiously/theologically illiterate population across the West that has a strong tendency to embrace the spirituality of everything not "Christian" and to automatically and anti-intellectually dismiss all that is Christian or spiritual within Christianity.
As fits with ideas pointed out by Peter Carl in his recent essays here at TBJ, finding commonalities in the counter-jihad movement - to defeat the oncoming onslaught of anti-intellectual Islam and anti-human rights sharia - requires us to speak to the political and spiritual commonalities we share with other Westerners who may vehemently or anti-intellectually reject our politics or Christianity and who see Christianity as "lacking spirituality", but whose views of society, human rights, and "sprituality" are nevertheless latently Christian and human rights-based in any case. The author is correct here; the commonalities certainly exist. For the counter-jihad movement to grow and succeed, however, it must quit continually sabotoging itself by attacking and alienating its necessary allies. In the same way as the counter-jihad argument must begin from Peter Carl's "Common Freedoms" as are common to both the Right and Left, in the case of spirituality, it is simply a question of respecting spiritual commonalities and highlighting where the issues and arguments lie that will get "spiritual" Christianity-rejecting Westerners to listen (as opposed to tune out and delegitimize) and begin to understand the threat Islam and its Sharia pose to us all. The benefit of following each approach would be that the counter-jihad movement would, by doing so, cease continually painting itself with the simplistic "right-wing" or Christian-centric caricature that everyone expects to see and be able to gain the attention of the remainder of the West whose support we also very much need.