10-22-2005, 06:04 PM
reading this article made me want to run out and buy the book. The article speaks to some of the struggles I see in our communities as we attempt to bring people of passion and priniciple from all parts of the world together to create one society... so somewhat immigration relevant :)
Finding common ground can counter the militants
Douglas Todd,Vancouver SunOctober 22, 2005
How can the West combat Osama bin Laden and the world's growing legions of religious militants?That's one of the questions Princeton University's Jeffrey Stout, an acclaimed professor of religion, will try to answer in a four-part lecture series on religion and secularism that begins next week in B.C.
Stout believes part of the solution to religious extremism lies in North Americans and Europeans finding a way in which people who are firmly religious and those who are strongly atheist can bring their conflicting views to the public square.
In today's climate in the West, Stout says too many secularists, including top philosophers like Richard Rorty, have asked religious people to keep their faith out of public debate.
They argue religion is a "conversation stopper" that will never permit compromise on issues such as abortion, homosexuality or even taxation levels and what constitutes a just war.
At the same time, Stout believes the religious "new traditionalists" -- including many fundamentalists, but also noted Christian thinkers such as Duke Divinity School's Stanley Hauerwas -- no longer want to bother trying to engage non-religious liberals.
Such people are convinced religious people must operate by their own agenda without ever expecting a secular stamp of approval.
For different reasons, this religious-secular divide is emotionally tearing up France, Holland and Britain, where secularists are doing battle with Muslim leaders. It's also occurring in the United States, where evangelical leaders, including President George W. Bush, are creating foreign policy based on their religious beliefs, and secularists are saying they have no right to do so.
We see the secular-religious split in a different way in Canada, where many minorities, from aboriginals to Muslims, evangelical Christians to Sikhs, feel like outsiders, sometimes retreating to self-imposed ghettoes frustrated that "secular" society seems to be working out their fate.
What's this religious-secular split got to do with the roots of international terrorism?
Stout says bin Laden doesn't garner widespread support among far-flung Muslims only by claiming the U.S. and its allies shamelessly protect their global interests by using mass military power against innocent people.
The terrorist mastermind, Stout argues, also lures in followers by claiming western culture is hopelessly secular and decadent, and will never allow people who are truly religious to work toward their vision of a Godly ethical kingdom.
Stout believes countries such as the U.S. and Canada must prove to people drawn to bin Laden that western democracies can live up to their self-definition as just and tolerant nations, where everyone, no matter what their religion or ethnicity, gets a seat at the proverbial table.
In other words, Stout believes the West has to do a much better job of selling democracy -- in which pluralism is real, and perhaps even hard-line fundamentalists get a chance to be heard (an act of listening that may eventually transform them into non-fundamentalists.)
However, for democracy to work, he says people with ideologies (in other words, all of us) have to cut back on the polarizing. As I maintained in last week's column, it's essential that all of us be ready to transcend our religious, ethnic and economic identities to search for common ground.
In his award-winning recent book, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton Paperbacks, $25.95), Stout outlines how that shared position is the ideal of being a responsible citizen.
In his challenging book, Stout charges secular liberals -- who are currently appalled by conservative religious groups' stands on abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment and foreign wars -- caused some of the current war with religionists and undercut their own allies, progressive religious people.
Stout is thinking of religion-rooted activists such as civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi and Canada's Tommy Douglas, founder of universal health care, as well as the early American Calvinists, who campaigned for universal schooling, and Canadian Catholic leaders, who were effective in having Parliament oppose capital punishment.
"Secular liberalism has unwittingly fostered the decline of the religious left, by persuading religious intellectuals that liberal society is intent on excluding the expression of their most strongly felt convictions," Stout writes in Democracy and Tradition.
On the other hand, Stout says the religious "new traditionalists" are off track when they argue that one person's particular religious values can be absolute -- and potentially essential for all people at all times.
It is destructive, he says, to believe the United States, or any modern country or region, could ever be unified by a single religion, or single understanding of right and wrong.
"No nation the size and complexity of (the U.S. or almost any other modern country) can realistically imagine itself as a group bound together by agreement on a ranking of its highest values, a religious vision of the good or a big story about the origins and destiny of a people."
That's why Stout asks both religionists and secularists to take a deep breath, overcome their own "fear and resentment" toward each other and find common ground in the concept of democratic citizenship.
For Stout, that shared place should include commitment to national constitutions, like those in the U.S. and Canada; to allowing opponents to hold us responsible for our actions, and to crafting political arrangements that allow diversity.
Stout holds up his own New Jersey neighbourhood as a metaphor for a healthy democracy -- where people of different ethnicities and religions meet, for instance, on the soccer fields and baseball diamonds, sometimes competing, often joining the same teams, working out ways to live together, despite tensions, in imperfect peace.
Even though passionate secularists and religionists, of all stripes, nearly always claim to be humble and compassionate, Stout suggests all camps can become far less so when they're forced to deal with each other's ideologies -- particularly on an international level.
As Stout says, for western democracies to truly become a beacon to the world and an alternative to bin Laden's violent vision, its citizens, both religious and secular, must do more than boast they are the ones most committed to justice, democracy and tolerance.
"The world suspects that we [western societies] believe in technological might, oil, money and entertainment. Our deepest apparent commitment is simply to having our own way," Stout says.
"In the long run, the ideological-moral front is the one on which the struggle against terrorism will be won or lost, and we are now losing it very badly."
Stout concludes: "We must find it in us to become the people we are claiming to be."
"dtodd@png.canwest.com"
Finding common ground can counter the militants
Douglas Todd,Vancouver SunOctober 22, 2005
How can the West combat Osama bin Laden and the world's growing legions of religious militants?That's one of the questions Princeton University's Jeffrey Stout, an acclaimed professor of religion, will try to answer in a four-part lecture series on religion and secularism that begins next week in B.C.
Stout believes part of the solution to religious extremism lies in North Americans and Europeans finding a way in which people who are firmly religious and those who are strongly atheist can bring their conflicting views to the public square.
In today's climate in the West, Stout says too many secularists, including top philosophers like Richard Rorty, have asked religious people to keep their faith out of public debate.
They argue religion is a "conversation stopper" that will never permit compromise on issues such as abortion, homosexuality or even taxation levels and what constitutes a just war.
At the same time, Stout believes the religious "new traditionalists" -- including many fundamentalists, but also noted Christian thinkers such as Duke Divinity School's Stanley Hauerwas -- no longer want to bother trying to engage non-religious liberals.
Such people are convinced religious people must operate by their own agenda without ever expecting a secular stamp of approval.
For different reasons, this religious-secular divide is emotionally tearing up France, Holland and Britain, where secularists are doing battle with Muslim leaders. It's also occurring in the United States, where evangelical leaders, including President George W. Bush, are creating foreign policy based on their religious beliefs, and secularists are saying they have no right to do so.
We see the secular-religious split in a different way in Canada, where many minorities, from aboriginals to Muslims, evangelical Christians to Sikhs, feel like outsiders, sometimes retreating to self-imposed ghettoes frustrated that "secular" society seems to be working out their fate.
What's this religious-secular split got to do with the roots of international terrorism?
Stout says bin Laden doesn't garner widespread support among far-flung Muslims only by claiming the U.S. and its allies shamelessly protect their global interests by using mass military power against innocent people.
The terrorist mastermind, Stout argues, also lures in followers by claiming western culture is hopelessly secular and decadent, and will never allow people who are truly religious to work toward their vision of a Godly ethical kingdom.
Stout believes countries such as the U.S. and Canada must prove to people drawn to bin Laden that western democracies can live up to their self-definition as just and tolerant nations, where everyone, no matter what their religion or ethnicity, gets a seat at the proverbial table.
In other words, Stout believes the West has to do a much better job of selling democracy -- in which pluralism is real, and perhaps even hard-line fundamentalists get a chance to be heard (an act of listening that may eventually transform them into non-fundamentalists.)
However, for democracy to work, he says people with ideologies (in other words, all of us) have to cut back on the polarizing. As I maintained in last week's column, it's essential that all of us be ready to transcend our religious, ethnic and economic identities to search for common ground.
In his award-winning recent book, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton Paperbacks, $25.95), Stout outlines how that shared position is the ideal of being a responsible citizen.
In his challenging book, Stout charges secular liberals -- who are currently appalled by conservative religious groups' stands on abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment and foreign wars -- caused some of the current war with religionists and undercut their own allies, progressive religious people.
Stout is thinking of religion-rooted activists such as civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi and Canada's Tommy Douglas, founder of universal health care, as well as the early American Calvinists, who campaigned for universal schooling, and Canadian Catholic leaders, who were effective in having Parliament oppose capital punishment.
"Secular liberalism has unwittingly fostered the decline of the religious left, by persuading religious intellectuals that liberal society is intent on excluding the expression of their most strongly felt convictions," Stout writes in Democracy and Tradition.
On the other hand, Stout says the religious "new traditionalists" are off track when they argue that one person's particular religious values can be absolute -- and potentially essential for all people at all times.
It is destructive, he says, to believe the United States, or any modern country or region, could ever be unified by a single religion, or single understanding of right and wrong.
"No nation the size and complexity of (the U.S. or almost any other modern country) can realistically imagine itself as a group bound together by agreement on a ranking of its highest values, a religious vision of the good or a big story about the origins and destiny of a people."
That's why Stout asks both religionists and secularists to take a deep breath, overcome their own "fear and resentment" toward each other and find common ground in the concept of democratic citizenship.
For Stout, that shared place should include commitment to national constitutions, like those in the U.S. and Canada; to allowing opponents to hold us responsible for our actions, and to crafting political arrangements that allow diversity.
Stout holds up his own New Jersey neighbourhood as a metaphor for a healthy democracy -- where people of different ethnicities and religions meet, for instance, on the soccer fields and baseball diamonds, sometimes competing, often joining the same teams, working out ways to live together, despite tensions, in imperfect peace.
Even though passionate secularists and religionists, of all stripes, nearly always claim to be humble and compassionate, Stout suggests all camps can become far less so when they're forced to deal with each other's ideologies -- particularly on an international level.
As Stout says, for western democracies to truly become a beacon to the world and an alternative to bin Laden's violent vision, its citizens, both religious and secular, must do more than boast they are the ones most committed to justice, democracy and tolerance.
"The world suspects that we [western societies] believe in technological might, oil, money and entertainment. Our deepest apparent commitment is simply to having our own way," Stout says.
"In the long run, the ideological-moral front is the one on which the struggle against terrorism will be won or lost, and we are now losing it very badly."
Stout concludes: "We must find it in us to become the people we are claiming to be."
"dtodd@png.canwest.com"