In the rest of the interview, she basically suggests that about 60% of the evangelical community is politically conservative and won’t ever vote for a Democrat. But the other 40% will, and those 40% are worth trying to appeal to. And one way to appeal to them is to acknowledge their moral qualms about abortion even if you don’t happen to share them yourself. Like this guy:
I think that the American people struggle with two principles: There’s the principle that a fetus is not just an appendage, it’s potential life. I think people recognize that there’s a moral element to that. They also believe that women should have some control over their bodies and themselves and there is a privacy element to making those decisions.
I don’t think people take the issue lightly. A lot of people have arrived in the view that I’ve arrived at, which is that there is a moral implication to these issues, but that the women involved are in the best position to make that determination. And I don’t think they make it lightly.
That’s Barack Obama, likely the next Democratic candidate for the presidency. All he’s doing is acknowledging the moral dimension of abortion, while remaining solidly in favor of abortion choice, reducing unwanted pregnancies, and encouraging responsible sexual behavior.
Thank you for undermining Amy’s entire point in your defense of her, Kevin. (Sorry, I have to go with clever gotcha, too.)
Amy has a hypothesis. “If only,” it goes, “Democrats acknowledged that abortion is a difficult decision with moral dimensions and said they were Christians, then they would get all these votes of people who badly want to vote for them, but need to hear these magic words.”
Luckily, you can apply that hypothesis to the real world. Let’s say Democratic politicians quit crowing about their atheism and their love of abort—
What’s that you say? Democrats already talk god and moral complexity. And we haven’t gotten that 40% of the vote yet?
I’m not saying that Democrats need to give talking about faith or the moral complexity of abortion, if that’s going to hurt the voting base they’ve already got. But at this point, the only thing left to do is to give up fundamental values, like the belief that women are full citizens who deserve full rights. Which is why I suspect that Amy is cautious around the word “pro-choice”, even though she claims to be pro-choice. But even then, I don’t think becoming social conservative lite on these issues will work, because all that does is allows the Republicans to move right, and start demanding legal intervention for fornication and a termination of women’s right to vote or something.
A better strategy for getting a solid Democratic majority is to chase after swing voters and turn on apathetic non-voters, rather than give up fundamental values. If you want to wield Barack Obama as the unbreakable sword on something, I’d point out that this appears to be his campaign strategy. He’s got the requisite amount of pandering to the people who want to be told they’re superior citizens because they adopt the Christian label, but still half the country appears to think he’s a Muslim, and he’s still gaining momentum against a candidate who still has a huge “known entity” advantage.
Mike the Mad Biologist makes some points about why the god-botherer stuff is simply inappropriate, too.
To the extent that many Democrats–including religious Democrats–feel uncomfortable with religious displays by political figures, I think it revolves around the related issues of validation and exclusion.
I don’t need or want a political figure to validate my religious beliefs. On the contrary, as a member of a religious minority (and here’s where the post title comes in), I feel very uncomfortable when politicians do this, because, almost certainly, they are excluding (or invalidating) other religions, even if they don’t realize it. Granted, a non-denominational “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub! Yay, God!” type of prayer wouldn’t bother me (although I don’t really see the need for one in a politically-related setting), but it would probably bother many atheists, who would feel excluded. From personal experience, this sort of exclusion feels awful. And, most importantly, unless you feel the need for religious validation from political figures (and that’s just fucking stupid), it is not necessary.
Obama’s kicking ass with a message of unity, a message that’s undermined if you dwell overmuch on the god-botherer stuff, and openly buy into the idea that Christians are first class citizens, and members of other religions and atheists are second class citizens.
I think that the tension that Amy and other Christians like her who seek validation of their superior religious beliefs from politicians feel is not oppression, but just a decline in power. Granted, a lot of members of dominant groups make the mistake of conflating a move towards equality with actual oppression. Think about men who are still more powerful that women, but don’t have as much power as they’d like, and that feels like oppression. Or white people bitching about affirmative action. It’s true that Christins’ cultural dominance is slipping, with 16% of Americans abandoning the church altogether, and the majority otherwise being religious in name, but uninterested in their own faith to the point that they couldn’t name the 4 gospels.
And I’m absolutely fucking sick of talk about the importance of the right to treat women who get abortions, people who fight for reproductive rights, or those who provide abortion as morally inferior. I’d take the moral superiority of an abortion doctor who crawls through a pile of often gun-wielding protesters to help desperate women any day over someone who runs around saying we need to pander to people who are uneasy with women’s rights. Their churchiness has nothing to do with it.
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They also believe that women should have some control over their bodies and themselves and there is a privacy element to making those decisions.
Oh, thank you, Saint Obama! “some” control over my body and myself? I so, so appreciate your deigning to acknowledge this!
But, can you help me figure out “which” control I should have over myself and my body? I don’t know which control I should leave out of the “some.” I need a man like you to help me figure out all this yukky hard stuff.
I think you got it exactly right on the issue of power, Amanda. That’s why vague, unobservant Christians get their dicks in a knot over the idea that a town hall shouldn’t put a Nativity scene on the front lawn; they want to be #1, like they’ve always been, and they feel that sharing the pie is a tangible wrong.
A better strategy for getting a solid Democratic majority is to chase after swing voters and turn on apathetic non-voters, rather than give up fundamental values.
Indeed. And to the extend that so-called values voters may very well actually be values voters (even if we disagree with their values), they ain’t gonna cotton to our giving up our values to pander to them (the GOP already has that market cornered) and still won’t vote for us. In fact, some of the rhetoric that so-called values voters are supposed to like actually turns them off ‘cause they figure “if this guy is spouting this sorta rhetoric, how come he doesn’t think like me on abortion, gays, etc? he must just be faking the religion stuff to get the votes of people like me”.
However it is a mistake to say that appealing to a certain segment of conservatives (note: I am not saying actually getting their votes) is contradictory to going after swing voters. One way to get swing voters (at which strategy the GOP has excelled) is to be able to play “even X who is ideologically opposite party Y supports the Y candidate on issue Z”. We might never get social conservatives to vote for us without abandoning our values (and they won’t vote for us if we abandon our values anyway), but we do have many issues in which at least certain segments of (social) conservatives support us over the GOP.
For example, many conservatives think that DHS/TSA security theatre is a huge waste of resources that would better go to help the poor. If a Democrat were to stand up on such issues, rather than losing votes for being weak on security (which they all fear they would), what would happen is that swing voters would begin to think “even my conservative friend thinks the Dems. are better on TSA than the GOP” and be more inclined to vote Dem.
The challenge however is not only getting Democrats to realize that their bread is not buttered on the side of the so-called liberal media whom many Dems. seem to think is friendly when they really are not friendly at all to us (hence the Dems. should stop trying to take “tough” stances ‘cause that’s what excites the Matthewses and Russerts of the world … ‘cause the GOP has that market cornered and the Dems. just end up missing opportunities to win votes as I described above), but also for the Dem candidates to get their message out before conservatives have prejudged them. For example, Obama by all rights, given his stances on various issues, should be a candidate where social conservatives say “I’d never vote for him ‘cause he supports the right of gays to be married by imams and then have abortions … but, he’s right about the war, he’s right about poverty, he’s right about security issues, etc.” which would help win us the votes of the swing-voting friends of such conservatives (vide supra).
But, interestingly, social conservatives, who are in far more agreement with Obama than McCain on such issues as the war, the poor, etc., somehow have been convinced that McCain is a “moderate maverick” (”the liberal media loves him”) who hence will be moderate on the war, etc., while Obama is “an unexperienced moonbat who takes all the worst positions of the Democratic party without taking any of the best positions of that party” — and they have looked into the positions that Obama has taken and just not realized those positions echo what they themselves have said!
So the question is — how do we reach out to conservative voters? not to get their votes, but so that way they realize that they themselves actually agree with liberal Dems on certain issues (rather than deciding that “the liberal Dem says X, therefore I must be opposed to X” even if they have supported X in the past) so that swing voters come to know that even conservatives think the Dems. are correct about some things?
Where does the idea that there is some huge group of American voters who would vote for Democrats if they were really Republicans come from?
Do they truly believe these “values voters” and “evangelical christians” are just waiting for some secret signal, and then they switch from reliably (exclusively?) voting Reichwing and become loyal Democrats…?
Not. Gonna. Happen.
The one real (unanswered) question in this election will be:
Will the huge problems the Bushites are leaving as their legacy be properly understood as directly resulting from current (and now discredited) Republican thinking - and that electing McCain just means it gets worse?
Or will the crypto-racist inclinations of many of those voters - who say (to themselves) “I will not vote for the Black guy” - overcome their better judgment?
November can’t come too soon…
Exactly, Amanda. If the Dems showed some backbone when it comes to core liberal values like protecting the Establishment Clause, they’d make a start at sloughing off their wishy-washy reputation with voters.
But as long as the Democrats keep pandering to Xtian fantasists and safety theatre afficianados, many liberals will remain apathetic, and many swing voters will continue to choose the only group in our two-party system that shows some strength on its core values (no matter how insanely destructive those core values are).
Damnit, tinfoil! Beating me to the “some” control comment!
Heaven forbid women be allowed full control over their personal autonomy!
I really like the idea that people who are losing power think they are being oppressed, and that’s why they define themselves as a ‘minority’ when all evidence is to the contrary.
Just this morning I read a line from Neil Steinberg where he says all the optimists in his family tree are in a pit in Poland. Fundies can feel free to call themselves oppressed when they have similar stories–recent stories that is, no good calling on the Romans/Colosseum.
I’ll be honest: I think you’re kind of off-base here.
I don’t see anything to point to Amy Sullivan as a crypto-conservative except the argument that by advancing a religious dimension to political argument she is by default arguing for a rightward slant.
There is no way to support a “pro-life” political stance without directly serving the causes of patriarchy, but the reasons people would do such a thing vary on a continuum. A lot of them are essentially evil men, or women who consciously or subconsciously recognize the opportunity for “power” by selling out their own interests, but a much larger portion are just victims of a patriarchal culture, or people applying a legitimate personal moral stance to others in an illegitimate way due to ignorance. These aren’t the people picketing clinics — those people are just our enemy — but just people who lean a certain way because of how the cultural dialogue is framed. If you go to the right enclaves of isolated whiteness there are tons of people like this.
The big leftist advantage we have here is that we actually just have a better plan. A state which allows full abortion rights, supplemented with a complete committment to birth control and empowerment of women, both fully protects every woman’s moral right to control her own body and leads to fewer abortions being performed. Everybody who isn’t evil (by which I mean, both progressives and moderate swing voters persuaded by this line of argument) wins, and the hardline conservatives who do oppose abortion solely to set up shop inside women’s uteruses lose out.
I guess the real thrust of my argument here is that religious voters aren’t all hardline conservatives, even if they’ve tended to vote Republican in the past. A lot of that support can dry up if the tradition of a religious left can be resurrected and leaders who hate women lose their monopoly on religion.
Where does the idea that there is some huge group of American voters who would vote for Democrats if they were really Republicans come from?
The Southern Strategy and Reagan Democrats, probably. Mudcat Saunders has made a nice living from this.
And Kevin Drum, of all people, should not be offering advice on this issue.
This is a core difference between fundamentalists of every stripe and progressives.Progressive/liberals can imagine or live in a world where their view may be the minority or care about those who are oppressed. So even when they are Christians, the majority faith, they don’t need or want politicians to be praying or nativity scenes displayed. The political sphere is seen as a different area, and one where rights are there for all, no matter what their personal beliefs.
Fundamentalists believe in a book. The book has all the answers. They know the proper way to read and interpret the book. Everyone should be forced to adhere to its principals.
When they are in the majority, they don’t even seem to be able to imagine alternatives–how allowing a prayer to open a civic procedure might have to either be altered to be so bland as to be meaningless or might be ceded to heretics–instead of praising Jesus as the one and only road to salvation, a community prayer might be a Buddhist blessing or a Wiccan rite, might be given by a Rabbi or an Imam.
They really hate the idea of having to open a court proceding with a reading from the Koran. It scares them. But they don’t seem to be able to equate that with imposing their beliefs on others.
I read an essay once by some fundy who had lived/worked in Hawaii, and a Buddhist prayer started the football game instead of a Christian one. He thought it might just be a rotation-type deal, but when he learned that, well, no, every week it was Buddhist b/c most of the student body was Buddhist, he was so freaked he couldn’t even attend the games anymore.
Strangely, instead of simply ranting, he was warning other fundies to be careful for what they wish for, b/c winning the “right” to pray might result in heathen prayers.
Which is why it’s better to pray on your own time in your own way. If we could just get all the fundies to understand that basic American ideal–>freedom to pray means freedom from forced/established prayer–maybe we could get back to letting politicians deal with political issues instead of trying to out worship one another.
zuzu takes bingo! That is exactly right. Amy Sullivan is just another in a long line of snake oil peddlers promising to convert republicans into democrats if we smear ourselves with her magic potion. Its niche marketing of a marketer and nothing much else.
That doesn’t mean she isn’t sincere about her pathetic, whinging, christianity. I’m sure she is. But why she thinks I have to care about it I can’t figure out.
aimai
Amanda:
I think you may have misread the Pew study slightly.
Secular unaffiliated Americans account for 6.3% of the population; religious unaffiliated, 5.8%; atheists, 1.4% and agnostics, 2.4%.
While it’s true that 16% have “left the church” in the sense that they’re unaffiliated, that includes 5.8% who are “religious unaffiliated”, whatever the hell that means. 78.4% still identify as Christian.
I agree that the numbers aren’t as bad as I might have feared, but they also bespeak the possibility that nothing has really changed, or even that things have gotten worse. The study asked people about their childhood religious upbringing, and their current affiliations. The changes presented in the study — e.g. the apparent rise in non-affiliation — could be accounted for by phenomena that are consistent with steady-state near-universal religious practice.
For example: imagine if everyone in our country were raised religious, but everyone went through a phase from age 16 to age 30 where they became unaffiliated, reverting back to religion when they settled down and had kids. This could account for the entire “rise” in non-affiliation, without at all indicating a historical change.
This is obviously an extreme example, but blur the edges of that graph a bit and it probably starts to resemble what’s actually happening with these figures.
I wish I could take a hopeful message away from this data, but I’m afraid it really doesn’t tell us much.
For example, many conservatives think that DHS/TSA security theatre is a huge waste of resources that would better go to help the poor.L
Funny, the conservatives I know think that the DHS/TSA security theatre is a huge waste of resources that would better go to more tax cuts for the rich.
YMMV.
It’s not just that they don’t have enough more power, the usual step or two lead in the perpetual footrace going on in their mind and you can say, “Hey, you run with that Champ, I just happen to be jogging the same road and making my own time!”
No, they want nothing less than total control: the option to make you pull them home in the little red wagon if they get winded and see you passing them.
This is true, but Amy Sullivan isn’t arguing for a nuance. Instead, she’s urging the Dems to take a lowest-common-denominator approach on framing and language to capture a portion of that 40% of evangelicals who might (might) consider voting for a Dem. And that approach will cost the Dems more loyal supporters and independent votes than they’ll gain from the ranks of evangelists.
Amy Sullivan might not be a crypto-conservative concern troll. But she is definitely a nitwit who doesn’t think through the consequences of her “helpful” suggestions.
SO, SO, SO RIGHT ON:
“the tension that Amy and other Christians like her who seek validation of their superior religious beliefs from politicians feel is not oppression, but just a decline in power”
and
“I’m absolutely fucking sick of talk about the importance of the right to treat women who get abortions, people who fight for reproductive rights, or those who provide abortion as morally inferior.”
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, dance of yes! With pirouettes!
(sorry that I don’t know how to properly embed quotes)
Shit, you can’t get them to shut up about it. And then, when we minority atheists call it out, we get shrieked at by liberal religionists because “there’s no place for them.” blah blah blah.
by advancing a religious dimension to political argument she is by default arguing for a rightward slant.
[…]
These aren’t the people picketing clinics — those people are just our enemy — but just people who lean a certain way because of how the cultural dialogue is framed. If you go to the right enclaves of isolated whiteness there are tons of people like this.
Actually, this is my main complaint about people like Sullivan: she confirms the right-wing frame of the dialogue. Now people who actually are our political enemies can point to Sullivan and others and say, “See? EVEN LIBERAL PUNDITS agree that Democrats are morally corrupt atheists!”
She gives credence to the right-wing bullshit and keeps these potential allies leaning towards the right.
She gives credence to the right-wing bullshit and keeps these potential allies leaning towards the right.
Because she’s really a right-winger trying to pull the Democrats in that direction.
For some reason I wrote a long long comment in response to the Gah post, so I’m going to dump it here. It’s ok, you don’t have to thank me . ..
More interesting part first:
A tidbit or two from the Amy Sullivan interview -
- She does mention how we’re “starting to see the first cohort of kids who are secular and who were raised by secular parents. . . . They’re second generation. And we’ve never really seen that before” - perhaps slightly overstated, but still really interesting.
- arguing that poll data shows that most ‘no religious affiliation’ folks are in fact religious, but have been turned off by what ‘religion’ has come to mean (which I mostly agree with), she says “a good number of them, when asked, could identify a house of worship“. Now, I have to assume this means ‘identify a house or worship they’re involved in’ - but if not, that’s just sad. - Hey, what’s that big fancy building? Oh man, it has a carving of some dead dude who’s been horribly tortured - it must be a U.S. government facilty!
- the interviewer says: “Throughout the book you mention how deeply religious many Democrats are. You write that two-thirds of Democrats attend worship services regularly. And you show all these Democrats such as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John Kerry who are very committed to their religious beliefs. ”
See, this is why I want to throw yellow snow at her. According to her own book, countless major/leading figures in the Democratic Party are deeply religious. The majority of Democrats are deeply religious. Whatever their beliefs, there isn’t a Democratic politician anywhere who would get up to give a speech and “make fun of John Ashcroft or George W. Bush for praying” - this is clearly a deeply cherished fantasy of hers, but one that has no basis in reality. So what in the name of her God does she want folks to do??!
And the answer would seem to be
a) pander spoon-feed as if they were stupid bow down in reverence to, as supreme moral authorities and super-special people relate to her group in a way that at worst further undermines the precious and fragile value of secular democracy, and
b) stone put pressure on all nonreligious (or even religious) Democratic-seeming people - with limited, fringe, or no political influence - who are insufficiently respectful to religion in all its Christian manifestations. I’m actually imagining Amy hissing furiously at Amanda: ‘Shut up, you stupid girl! Look what you did! Now my friends aren’t going to vote for a Democrat, never ever, because your comment about white sticky {blanches, lip trembling, gathers herself up and goes on} is more important to them than actually reducing the number of abortions or helping the poor or saving the planet!!’
Hmm. Do you think we can introduce her to wtf? This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship . . .
ok, lemme try that again:
And the answer would seem to be
a)
panderspoon-feed as if they were stupidbow down in reverence to, as supreme moral authorities and super-special peoplerelate to her group in a way that at worst further undermines the precious and fragile value of secular democracy, andb)
stoneput pressure on all nonreligiousI don’t really see it, from what I’ve been able to find of her writing online — though I haven’t read her recently-published book, so I suppose it could be presented differently within? But I don’t think “pro-contraceptive policy reduces the frequency of abortions” or “safe, legal, rare” is really an LCD message — nor does it require yielding by allowing for restrictions on abortion availability, which I absolutely agree we need not to do. It does, however, appeal to voters who understand (or who can come to understand) why abortion needs to be legal but who will go out of their way to avoid having one themselves.
Similarly, I don’t see anything inaccurate about Amy’s description of conservative consolidation of religious power. America is not becoming more secular, and progressives who wish it was are just going to find themselves tilting at windmills. The de facto standard for religious politics has become “abortion and gay marriage” because conservatives wanted it that way and liberals couldn’t put up a persuasive alternate vision of progressive religion. If that doesn’t change then conservatives will be able to use those two issues as wedges forever.
I don’t really think this is an issue of conscious presentation and sound-biting, exactly; I just think the progressive movement needs to be more religion-friendly. I think the UCC is a fantastic organization who actively support both women’s right to choose and all people’s right to marry; I’d love to live in an America ten years hence where that comes to mind as quickly as Falwell or Dobson when “religion” and “abortion” are said in the same sentence.
Dan S.,
Sullivan fulfills the same purpose and pursues the same goals as Wallis: marginalize atheists on the left and undermine secularism. Religious faith must retain a special place, particularly religious faith that is itself most hostile to equality, secularism and modernity. It’s not enough that the society is saturated with the nonsense. It needs to be the only thing available.
[continued]
[Amanda writes in comments to Gah]”I think she’s very sincerely spiritual and that’s led her to put on blinders about the people around her when she has spiritual moments”
This seems right - I’ve noted elsewhere that she makes a very odd comment in the interview, in reference to a question about the politcization of the pulpit - folks being told they had to vote Republican to be right with God, etc.:
“Many [pastors] might have been Republicans, but you would never have heard that from the pulpit. They didn’t see it as relevant to what was going on in church. Church was all about what was going on with your soul. They focused on saving your soul. That changed probably sometime in the mid-’80s. And tragically, it went along with the rise of the religious right.”
Maybe it’s just odd/imperfect phrasing, or passing by complex questions of historical causation, but - and perhaps overanalyzing - it’s as if these are just two weirdly unrelated events that unfortunately somehow happened to collide. Doesn’t inspire confidence in her judgement.
The other thing is that there’s an side to her advice that to my ears sounds as if she’s saying her fellow evangelicals are really kinda stupid, lazy, and/or irrational. Sure, I agree there are aspects to issues that some folks would like but don’t hear - in part because of the effectiveness of rightwing framing and propaganda, and mediabubble-ing. We can always do more, including seeking more effective ways of communicating. This all is basic modern politicking.
But there’s always a part where I just want to ask her:
‘ok, low-info voters are a given (and we do need to try to reach them), but surely not all, or even most, liberal-leaning evangelicals (LLEs) are clueless (overworked, time&attention-poor)wonders, right? (If so, that’s important to know). I presume many - esp. the most likely voters - have some basic, close-enough understanding of the parties’ positions, including that the Dems’ is all ’safe, legal and rare, baby!’, and not ‘kill the babies! kill the babies! more sacrifices to moloch, hahaha!’.
If not, that’s really important to know - in which case Amy could be writing about poll data, or of having discussions with smart, active evangelicals who ask why Dems don’t want to do anything to reduce the number of abortions, and instead are offering free doughnuts/tax credits as an incentive for women to have multiple abortions or whatever: that would be useful. And yes, she keeps going, in an (even anecdotally) evidence-free way ‘people don’t know!, people don’t know!’(”And I say, “No, they don’t know that. And you don’t get any credit for it if people only hear you talking about a right to choose.”), but as pointed out, the problem is, we’ve been going on about how we want to reduce abortion, for years.
So I end up wondering ok, does Amy think her fellow LLEs are living in a delusional fantasyland, unable to grasp even the rudiments of the modern American political landscape? If not, we end up in this weird place where LLEs don’t desire the banning of abortion above everything else (if at all), grasp the basics of the Dem position, maybe even understand how we want to utilize rational, responsible evidence-tested - and even deeply moral - methods which actually do reduce the numbers (and neeed for) abortions - but will just grit their teeth and stay home/vote for Republicans because we haven’t provided some weird stroking/validation/reassurance of how very, very important they are.
Now, there are many, many ways that this could be just way off. There may be features of the evangelical electorate that throw it off - the channeling of information and atttitudes through specifically evangelical networks and institutions, for example. (I’m thinking of accounts of the Kerry campaign in Ohio, where workers were bewildered and foolishly cheered by the apparent nonexistence of any on-the-ground GOP effort, not realizing that it was going on at full speed behind the walls of rightwing churches (with all the associated social networks, etc.)It may also be that evangelical institutions are much better at getting less-likely and low-info voters to the polls, and to a specific end (authoritarianism, and even just organization). There’s also the kind of tribalism - although that’s a wider issue - that digby and tristero were talking about a bit ago.
There may also be features of the electorate in general throwing things off - all that depressing work arguing that low-info and deeply irrational voters are pretty much the norm, with support often based on superficialities and clumsy heuristics and gut feelings.
There may even be features of human cognition throwing this off - Scott Atran’s written about situations involving clashes of “sacred values” where (apparently) appeals to rational calculation and self-interest can actually make matters worse, as people react in disgust and outrage, while “token symbolic concessions” can be far more helpful. (Which is not to say I think we should be running around making such concessions, unless we are decently convinced they won’t be used to bludgeon women with.)
All of these things are entirely possible, some even likely. But in that case, it would be nice if Amy - who isn’t some random blog commenter, but a senior editor at Time - could actually make this kind of case instead of going on over years about how Democrats are big meanies who don’t respect her friends enough and say mean things about religion, and why don’t they ever mention that they want to reduce the number of abortions!, etc.
Of course, now I’m gonna look really dumb if it turns out that she’s gone over all this kind of stuff in her book (and there’s an indication or two that she might). But considering that her big thing is all about
panderingclarifying and amplifying one’s position, it’s kinda ironic - maybe she’s really all reasonable and appealing and we actually entirely agree with her, but it’s just that she never talks about it and appears antagonistic to us . . . : )Amanda “I think that the tension that Amy and other Christians like her who seek validation of their superior religious beliefs from politicians feel is not oppression, but just a decline in power.
Biscuity MAJeff: “Sullivan fulfills the same purpose and pursues the same goals as Wallis: marginalize atheists on the left and undermine secularism. . . It’s not enough that the society is saturated with the nonsense. It needs to be the only thing available.”
{Runs around office yipping ‘yes! yes! exactly! - coworkers look worried}
Correct. Bravo.I have gone back over the Sullivan article, read the Pandagon threads on them, and some of the commentary elsewhere. With respect, I think that many of Sullivan’s defenders miss some key points:
** Sullivan is merely one of the most prominent people inside the progressive tent telling us that we are better off if we abandon key tenets of progressivism: “equality, secularism and modernity”, as MAJeff so neatly put it, have got to go while we pretend that we haven’t ditched them.
** Sullivan is arguing for a privileged place in the discourse for people of faith. She is a kinder, gentler version of those who wag their fingers at atheists and secularists for being “offensive” to religion whilst never issuing similar rebukes to religious nutters who fling far worse epithets.
** The proven ineffectiveness of these approaches never seems to register with those who urge them on us: it is the Senate campaign of Harold Ford writ large. (One could call this the If We Are Just Bashing Our Heads Against A Brick Wall Then Our Only Error Is Not Picking The Right Brick To Hit!! school.)
** One of the reasons that these campaigns are ineffective is that there are large swathes of people on the right are right are going to hate or fear certain things far more than they are going to move to higher ideals like hope, adaptability. cooperation (or even cooperation’s sickly younger brother, tolerance). Again, Ford is a good example. He was a rightist social and economic and religious conservative in a red state, and he still lost in large part because enough people disliked the thought of electing a black man, even one who agreed with them in everything that mattered.
** Few people tell those of the religious right to adapt to a more egalitarian and just society; progressives are always the ones being chided to be nicer, no matter what the conduct of our opponents.
** The problem over abortion and the Democratic party is not only that it hasn’t adequately pitched “safe but rare” and alternatives (etc.) to abortion. It’s that it (a) hasn’t had the courage of those convictions; (b) there is little to no adequate coverage of such such truths; (c) for large amounts of the American electorate, “rare” is just as unacceptable as “common”, for they stand by “never!”; and (d) much of the opposition to abortion is inextricably intertwined with a complete, anti-choice package deal, often built around deceit, deliberate misunderstanding of (or disdain for) science and vigorous efforts to control women in general.
Sad fact is, people want clear choices. And watering down your own values in order to appeal to people who won’t vote for you anyways seems to be pretty damned stupid.
In the end, I can’t shake the sad feeling that Sullivan is an intelligent and progressive person who has come to a crossroads where maintaining her faith is demanding political and ideological concessions from her that she does not want to make. She has chosen to address this internal crisis in a rather sad fashion: if progressives abandon their core beliefs to kowtow to religion, then she can maintain her religion and her progressivism, because “progressivism” would now defined by people being like her.
MAJeff,
In some part, atheists who are virulently anti-religion help marginalize the entire body of atheists, agnostics, and other non-religious individuals. Formal expression of religion by government is dangerous and anti-democratic; that needs to go. But there are plenty of religious groups that agree on that point. The Unitarian Universalists (whose statement of principles explicitly allows for atheism amongst members) is an example just off the top of my head.
People’s values (and therefore, their political participation) are shaped by their core life philosophy. For many progressive atheists, that’s often some manner of rational humanism or other personal philosophy of values; for religious progressives, that’s a religious tradition that holds equality and other inalienable human rights as moral truths. Just as religion was a vital player in convincing people that the state of racial politics in America was immoral and unacceptable during the civil rights era, progressive religion is one factor that will be necessary to change America’s perspective for the better on abortion and gay rights.
And some of that is going to involve swaying people who straight up are not progressives to the position that our side is better for them than the misogynist, authoritarian, conservative bloc that’s sewn up religion as their own issue.
If you can’t see the problem in her suggestion that liberals stay away from the term “pro-choice,” or soft-pedalling support for people to make their own marital choices, or her spurious claims that Dems aren’t already accepting an admixture of church and state that would make Thomas Jefferson roll over in his grave, I don’t know what more I can say.
You call it tilting at windmills, I call it standing up for the Constitution. And it’ll take more than the revelation (so to speak) that organised religion will be with America for a good while yet to stop me from doing that.
You mentioned the UCC. You’ve also heard of the Quakers, I’m sure. And (even further to the left) I’m sure you’ve heard of Liberation Theologists. The chances of people from those churches voting for a Republican these days are slim to none.
But that’s not the sort of religion-friendly progressivism Amy Sullivan’s talking about. Instead, when she suggests that progressives and liberals become more “religion-friendly,” she’s talking about the Democratic Party targetting a specific sub-set of Xtians (evangelicals, and also devout Catholics) as a political strategy (as I noted above, a very misguided one).
The sum total of liberal friendliness to religion can be summed up by: “Read the First Amendment.”
“Do they truly believe these “values voters” and “evangelical christians” are just waiting for some secret signal, and then they switch from reliably (exclusively?) voting Reichwing and become loyal Democrats…?”
I have to get back to work, and therefore are being lazy and not looking up actual data, but I have to wonder if perhaps most of the folks Amy’s talking about might already be voting Democratic, at least occasionally or at a local level? I seem to remember seeing some surprisingly high (at least to me) numbers for evangelicals going D in the last few years. Of course, I could be completely confused here - I’m just unsure there’s some vast Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge of untouched liberal-leaning evangelical support to drill into. (Actually, probably kinda the case in the real ANWR as well, but . . .)
“I read an essay once by some fundy who had lived/worked in Hawaii,
I love that letter.
“Which is why it’s better to pray on your own time in your own way.
You know, I once read a book about some guy who said stuff very similar to this - something about praying in your closet rather than out on the streetcorner . . ..
“ But I don’t think “pro-contraceptive policy reduces the frequency of abortions” or “safe, legal, rare” is really an LCD message ”
Nope. But it’s one we already make.
mythago - nice comment. And ellie, Il love that metaphor.
Yes, I know, I know. Religion is special and atheists need to just hush up.
Swing voters care about religion too. They also are squeamish on abortion rights, barely half the country supports mostly unrestricted reproductive rights, a large plurality opposes most or all abortion.
The Dems have had a long term problem speaking about religion and to religious voters. And what has been happening over the long term? That’s right, we keep losing. The fact is that politicians must speak in religious moral terms to win nationwide elections. I don’t like it, actually I hate it, but I want the Democratic candidate to win, and I’m willing to take almost anyone into the Democratic party to make that happen.
Agreed, and the way to do that is to tell those people that their or anyone else’s religion is no political party’s issue, at least if they support the Constitution. With that explicitly out of the way, the Dems can sell those religious types who are still willing to listen (and there are many) on the superiority of their platform.
Unlurking.
The title of the post delineates what’s wrong. The left should admit what it is, and what it has been, and quit lying. Leave the lying to the right. They do it better.
Everybody’s lying. I can’t stand it.
Let me put my previous comment another way. Millions of people believe their imaginary force/essence/thing/being tells them to keep gay people down. Millions of other people believe their imaginary force/essence/thing/being tells them to love gay people and work for their social equality.
The preferred result says nothing about the imaginary aspect. But, because some folks use their imagination for good, we need to shut up.
“but I want the Democratic candidate to win, and I’m willing to take almost anyone into the Democratic party to make that happen”
Some of us aren’t content with just voting against the repub.
I certainly am not.
The “problem,” though, is actually a perception problem. That’s why George W. Bush, who rarely sets foot in a church even when he’s at “home” in Crawford, was widely perceived as more devout than John Kerry, who attended Mass every Sunday. Because Bush was a Republican, he therefore was a “real” Christian and didn’t have to go to church. Because Kerry was a Democrat, any instance of churchgoing actually worked against him because it “proved” that he was only going to advance his political career.
Democrats have been trying to show for years that they are just as religious as Republicans, and it doesn’t work because it’s perceived as a cynical strategy. Displays of religiosity actually work against us because of the way Republicans have successfully gamed the media and, by extension, the electorate.
(Yes, I’ll give you a minute to stop laughing at the thought that the Republicans’ long-term courting of fundamentalists and evangelicals was pure-hearted and not cynical at all.)
You are right on one thing: I can see how it’s problematic to shy away from the pro-choice label. (On the other hand, I don’t think you are acknowledging how many people actually have problems with the label despite sharing its values.)
I basically see the “religion problem” the Democrats have as being two related issues.
The first is that there are people who aren’t progressive, but whose values overlap as much with progressive as with conservative values; right now the conservative movement sews these people up. American Catholics are one of the groups we absolutely should be targeting because of how many left-leaning viewpoints they actually hold: they’re stridently opposed to the death penalty and to torture; they actively support efforts to reduce poverty and aid the poor. The American population skews left compared to the actual mandates of the Vatican, as many tacitly or explicitly accept contraception use, homosexuality, or the idea of female priests. These people are potential swing voters who have been lured in by abortion as a single-voting-issue; I honestly think there’s a lot of potential to help neutralize it, but not just by changing our approach on abortion.
This leads into the second part. There’s a national dialogue about religion where “religion” is tacitly accepted as representing regressive, misogynist, hysterical values. This is a perspective crafted by the right (and encouraged by the MSM) to keep voters who value their religious identity voting against their own self-interest. In order to free up those voters we have to break the frame; it has to be clear that progressives who are religious are actually better at it (because we don’t have the problems of sexual and moral hypocrisy that dog the conservatives). That’s where actively leftist religious bodies come in; we need them to be more prominent in American society so that the general perspective of religion isn’t just a range between moderate and far-right, and to help (hopefully) moving the “center” point in American politics back towards the left.
To me, “secular unaffiliated” sounds an awful lot like atheists who just won’t call themselves “atheist” (similar to Sullivan’s refusal to call herself pro-choice even though she is).
“Everybody’s lying. I can’t stand it.
I’m not lying. Oh wait, that’s a lie . . .
I do acknowledge it. And I also acknowledge that those people aren’t likely to vote for a Democrat in any case.
But liberals are already saying they’re opposed to the death penalty and torture. They already support efforts to reduce poverty and aid the poor. But it’s clear that stopping abortion and gay marriage are higher up on their list of political priorities, and they’re not going to change their perception that liberals (and by extension the Dems) are opposed to them there.
That’s the job of the churches themselves, not the Democratic Party or political liberals. But I don’t see Amy Sullivan hectoring the moderate Catholics or evangelical pastors to do that.
I do acknowledge it. And I also acknowledge that those people aren’t likely to vote for a Democrat in any case.
But liberals are already saying they’re opposed to the death penalty and torture. They already support efforts to reduce poverty and aid the poor. But it’s clear that stopping abortion and gay marriage are higher up on many Catholics’ list of political priorities, and they’re not going to change their perception that liberals (and by extension the Dems) are opposed to them there.
That’s the job of the churches themselves, not the Democratic Party or political liberals. But I don’t see Amy Sullivan hectoring the moderate Catholics or evangelical pastors to do that.
Whoops, sorry about the double paste
I don’t think you are acknowledging how many people actually have problems with the label despite sharing its values.)
Lots of people have problems with lots of things that are perfectly accurate and non-controversial descriptions of totally reasonable things. And the response to those people is to tell them that their problems are silly, and explain why. Not contort oneself trying to find a suitably less-accurate description that will make the aforementioned people feel okay about being the pro-slut-shaming kind of pro choice (while also being just a bit actually anti-choice).
Jesus Fucking Christ!! Haven’t Democrats learned their lesson after 30 fucking years of trying to be Republican-lite that it does not work!? Democrats win elections when they unabashedly espouse the liberal principles that are shared by an overwhelming majority of Americans. Wellstone, anybody?
I write: I’m not lying. Oh wait, that’s a lie . . .
Damnit, I messed that up. Now it’s just sorta mean. Was supposed to be:
Hey, I’m lying too! Oh wait, that’s a -
Ah, now it’s not funny anymore. (Ok, or ever was, really…)
—-
Clearly the issue isn’t that us atheists exist, even though that’s sort of a shame - it’s that we’re crude enough to boast about it.
{Stands in front of mirror looking for tramp stamp. And trashy wedding dress)*
* reference to earlier Pandagon post.
—–
MaJeff, that’s awesome. It’s like God cancels itself out.
Charlequin wrote (#21):
I just think the progressive movement needs to be more religion-friendly.
I’m Jewish, and the progressive movement is plenty friendly to me. Maybe the problem lies with evangelicals and not progressives?
“Maybe the problem lies with evangelicals and not progressives?”
…because they can’t just be a part of something else. They have to be the center of attention, all eyes on them, eagerly waiting to hear the latest thing we must do or else suffer in the fires of perdition.
In their minds, there can be no compromise, no acknowledgment that other points of view might be equally valid, and no adjustment of the strangling grip they have claimed on public “morality”…
“I’m Jewish, and the progressive movement is plenty friendly to me.
Ah, but remember, we secretly run the world. Although apparently there’s an exception made for Jewish atheists, ‘cause I’m always like: ‘hey, guys, can I at least get a small credit union or minor media outlet?’, and they’re all like: ‘No! Go away. But don’t forget to put your jacket and scarf on - it’s freezing outside, you’ll catch your death of cold . . .’
Yanno, she’s not much of a religion writer if she’s missed the fact that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has expressly stated that supporting or voting for pro-choice candidates is cooperating with evil. Catholics can use their consciences on other issues, but abortion is “intrinsically evil,” in the words of the bishops, and must therefore not be supported with your vote.
Mind you, plenty of Catholics use contraception, get abortions and vote for pro-choice candidates anyhow, but these aren’t the ones that Sullivan has in mind, I suspect.
What a ridiculous notion that everyone outside God’s Man in the White House and his claque is unfavorable to religion.
It’s as fraudulent an either / or as the one that tries to makes pro-choice the evil opposite to the piously “correct” and deliberately misnamed “pro”-life label.
The counterpoint to Pro-Life should be pro-Fuck The Hell Off just to get the god-machine sputtering to a stop.
if I count up my community service cred — working with peace groups, political refugees, and wrangling resources for the down and out — I’m actually more of a practicing Catholic than the rotweillers set to go off on someone’s crotch or other.
I don’t have to explain myself, much less get the sublime part of my life measured and stamped and registered by people who are vicious utter jackwads.
Everyone is making great points, and I won’t sully the conversation with my uneducated opinion. But I will say that all of my most progressive ideals I learned in church.
Lessee . . . a liberal hypocrite . . .
Would that be a person who supports:
(A) marriage equality for same-sex couples,
(B) the right to unfettered access to all legal family planning methods, and
(C) the right consenting adults engage in premarital sex,
and yet
(A) is married to someone of the opposite sex,
(B) never had an abortion and does not use The Pill, and
(C) had sex for the first time only after marrying?
Well, bring on the tar and feathers! We have ourselves a liberal hypocrite!
The opposite of not allowing abortions is forcing abortions; it isn’t just allowing choice. The problem arises, when accomodating the other side, is just how one does that. Logically, it’s their way or the highway, no compromise is available.
Pro-Life and Pro-Choice are no more different sides of the same coin than Liberty and tyranny are.
The difference between them and us isn’t what we believe in, but rather our belief in whether or not we have the right to force our views on other people. I don’t particularly like abortion but that doesn’t automatically mean that i think that I have the right to make it illegal. Hell, if I could outlaw what I don’t like in this society there wouldn’t be a Boston Red Sox.
Heh. I once worked for a boss whose mantra was, “My way or my way mad.”
Catholics generally don’t pay much mind to their bishops.
Amy Sullivan: “When you make fun of John Ashcroft or George W. Bush for praying, you are giving off a sense that there’s something wrong with that.”
You know, this is even more confused/dishonest than I realized. As we all know, in terms of the Democratic Party, this is a little fantasy of Amy’s. After all, it’s not like (Methodist, Fellowship-attending) Hillary and (United Church of Christ, who spoke of ” God’s greatest gift to us” at the ‘04 convention) Obama spent the debate trying to outdo each other in anti-theistic attacks. MAJeff’s pretty cool, but as far as I know, he’s not a powerful and influential elected official. In fact, the last I checked there was a grand total of one (1) open atheist out of all the state and federal officials of the U.S.. And indeed, the highest-ranking (and only) insufficiently polite atheist I can think of was, well, Amanda - and of course that wasn’t a case of oppression of theists, but oppression by theists - or at very least, an indication of (some) theists’ power to enforce what they deem as proper respect, in the face of certain comments by a campaign blogmistress (I live in daily fear of their power, don’t you?) made prior to being hired, and not in relation to the campaign.
So. But what’s worse is the actual example Amy used, “ make fun of John Ashcroft or George W. Bush for praying“. Now, as always there isn’t any specific context, identifiable speaker, or even paraphrased quote (in fact, I’m proud of Our Amy for not using the classic, Dear Leader-approved “some say” formulation), which makes it hard to figure out what she’s talking about, assuming she’s trying to refer to something real and outside her head. But I’m pretty sure that there haven’t been a lot of (non-official, but higher than anonymous blog comments) folks criticizing Bush and Ashcroft for praying. When it comes to that, we’re talking about attitudes that aren’t quite as far out on the fringes of political discourse as the babbling of Texas GOP officials who think that heliocentricity is a Jewish plot - but it’s kinda close.
If I remember correctly - and this is where Sullivan’s being really dishonest - the kind of stuff people were talking about were things like:
Ashcroft “anointing himself in the manner of Biblical kings, before both terms as Missouri Governor, using Crisco cooking oil when no holy oil was available” (wikipedia), an act that must have seemed extremely bizarre to most mainstream Christians, and which could be taken as having theocratic implications.
and Bush appearing to use prayer not as an aid but an alternative to judgement - indeed, as a conversation, with God telling him to go to war.
You know, Amy, when you make fun of pastors for speaking from the pulpit, you are giving off a sense that there’s something wrong with that . . .
Let me put my previous comment another way. Millions of people believe their imaginary force/essence/thing/being tells them to keep gay people down. Millions of other people believe their imaginary force/essence/thing/being tells them to love gay people and work for their social equality.
And millions of people believe in no “imaginary force” whatsoever, and still are not on your side politically and couldn’t give one flying fart in hell about your rights in any way, shape or form. I’m not sure where you got the idea that all (or even the vast majority of) atheists are politically progressive and pro-gay-rights in the same way you are (or for that matter, in the same way *I* am), because it’s absolutely false.
“In the rest of the interview, she basically suggests that about 60% of the evangelical community is politically conservative and won’t ever vote for a Democrat. But the other 40% will,”
Looking at data for the last two presidential elections, in 2000 30% of white evangelicals voted for Gore, while only 21% voted for Kerry in 2004. In fact that year Bush gained among almost every religious category - except “Other” (including folks who “never” went to church) - although evangelicals did give him the biggest bump.
27% voted Dem in ‘06. So if the 40% is accurate (and is there a reason for us to think so?) and there aren’t big measurement/definition issues (quite possibly), we’ve already gobbled up half to three fourths (at best) of that group. Certainly we shouldn’t intentionally try to drive them away. And yes, outreach is obviously always good - but there are right and wrong ways to do it, and we shouldn’t forget that just because Amy needs sociopolitical validation.
Meowser, did MAJeff say that all nontheists were pro-gay rights?
And I learned all my progressive ideals from my grandmother and my parents, who gave up any loyalty to organized religion long before I was born. In fact my grandmother once told me that meeting my father made her realize that you could have morality without religious faith.
I’m thrilled if religious beliefs move people towards progressive ideals. But in a society where we are supposed to have religious freedom and separation of church and state, using religious beliefs to argue for policy positions is a problem. I don’t mean that politicians shouldn’t mention God ever. Just that “it’s in the bible” isn’t a valid argument in debates over political issues. So if some liberal progressives believe in progressive ideals because of their religious beliefs that’s great and I’m happy to have more people who agree with me on issues like poverty, gay marriage etc. But it doesn’t mean that their opinion counts more or is immune to critique because it is inspired by religious faith. That’s exactly the card the religious right has been playing for the last few decades. And I wish the Democrats (the ones who are religious and that one out in California who admits to being an atheist) would call them on it rather than simply trying to get in on the act.
It is right here that I have to part with the “Dem or Die” crowd. I tend to vote Democrat because that party, on average, best reflects my core, Progressive beliefs. If the Dems pander to non-progressive types, actively courting them by dropping Progressive beliefs, well, there is absolutely no freaking reason for progressives like me to vote Dem. The conservatives have their party- they call it the GOP. Not everyone in the US is conservative. Maybe the Dems should… wait for it… try to cultivate their own base?
“Secular unaffiliated Americans account for 6.3% of the population; religious unaffiliated, 5.8%; atheists, 1.4% and agnostics, 2.4%.”
wait.
no really, wait a sec.
am i actually truly reading that correctly?
what do “secular unaffiliated” and “religious unaffiliated” mean?
i mean, *I* am pagan. i was raised pagan, most of my family is pagan (i have one sister who converted to catholic when she got married). where do I (and my family except the one sister) fall in this statistical set? where do Jews and Muslims and Buddists and Taoists and Hindus and everyone else fall? because i know people who are ALL of the above… i actually only know one christian who goes to church (again, not counting that one sister)
oh, wait… i forget, that the major media DO NO UNDERSTAND that one can be religious and NOT be christian. is that where the gap is?
If, in the majority opinion here, the only good Liberal is an atheist Liberal, then you might just have hit the nail on the head. Dismissiveness cuts both ways.
“If, in the majority opinion here, the only good Liberal is an atheist Liberal, then you might just have hit the nail on the head. Dismissiveness cuts both ways.”
Charlotte, I’m not sure I understand your comment. I also don’t think that “the majority opinion here [is that] the only good Liberal is an atheist Liberal,” and it’s certainly not my view. Rather, I just don’t think that being (the right variety of) theist makes one a more important class of liberal than other people, nor that not getting special rights and standing based on being the (right variety of) theist makes one a second class citizen.
denelion: The actual study does include other faiths, including pagan and Wiccan (under “Other Faiths”).
http://religions.pewforum.org/affiliations
I would have been surprised if they had left us out, since they’ve been interviewing pagan and Wiccan groups for their surveys for quite a while.
But, you are correct about media coverage of the study.
DanS, again, the issue is one of not granting “faith” the “proper respect.” When one comes out and openly says, “You know what? There are a whole shitload of religious people talking in the public sphere,” we get complaints about “no there’s not.” Here’s another one complaining that god-talk isn’t getting enough air time (Sullivan), but they’re really complaining about their form of god talk not getting more air time; and they’re even fussier about those of us who would question why god talk be given any special status at all. Just by saying that religious views don’t deserve any more consideration than any others we’re denigrating religious faith. We’re taking away it’s claim to specialness.
It’s not just that we exist, but that we say what we think.
Tricia…
first, its kinda mean of me to point out… but you spelled my name wronf :p
second - OMG, and thanx for the link. i find it interesting that there is a seperations between “other religions” and “other world religions” (or is that “otherworld” religions? klingon? Jedi?)
and it has “Orthodox”, but Orthodox WHAT? (the thingy that is to tell me what specific bits fall under each categorization appears to be broken)
its very very nifty, and you are now my new favorite internet person for linking it for me
despite any misspellings (yours or mine.)
ack! see, misspellings!!!
denelian- Orthodox as in the major Eastern branch of Christianity. Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and so on. The onion dome church folks.
heh.
denelian: I do apologize for spelling your name “wronf”[sic].
And you’re welcome for the link, I found the actual survey data to be pretty neat.
I never understood the R. move to do away with parliamentary procedures, ie the filibuster, that once they were out of power THEY’D want to use themselves.
Or their blindness that various imperial tools they were giving the presidency would be used against them too.