The Volokh Conspiracy

The New York Times Room for Debate Forum has an interesting symposium on the role of religion in presidential elections. In his contribution, polling expert Andrew Kohut cites a 2007 Pew survey showing that atheism is viewed more negatively by voters than virtually any other possible trait of a presidential candidate. A whopping 63% of respondents said they would be “less likely” to vote for a presidential candidate who “doesn’t believe in God” (3% said they would be more likely_. This easily exceeds the percentages who say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who never held elected office (56), a Muslim (46), a homosexual (46), a person who had “used drugs in the past” (45), or a Mormon (30). Opposition to female, black and Hispanic candidates is several times lower (ranging from 4 to 14 percent, though some racists and sexists probably hid their true attitudes from the pollster). A more recent 2011 version of the same survey gets very similar results when it comes to atheists (61%), though there is less hostility towards gays (33%).

By contrast, 39% in the 2007 survey said they would be more likely to vote for a Christian candidate, compared to only 4% who said they would be less likely. However, many voters apparently don’t want a candidate who seems too closely associated with religion. The same poll found that 25% would be less likely to vote for a candidate who has been a minister, while only 15% said they would be more likely to support him. The questions about Christians and ministers were not repeated in the 2011 study.

The data cited by Kohut reinforce other evidence showing that atheists are by far the most widely hated religious or ethnic minority in modern America. The evidence suggests that hostility to atheist candidates is primarily the result of bigotry rather than information shortcuts (e.g. – opposing an atheist candidate because one assumes that he’s probably a liberal), though the latter is certainly a factor for some voters. In this 2006 article, I explored some of the reasons for that hostility and also explained why it isn’t justified.

The President also said that he did not believe “in the literal truth of the creed as it is recited in the orthodox evangelical churches.” He did, however, believe that Jesus had set forth an outstanding system of moral precepts.

Although the general views above were shared by Thomas Jefferson, the President quoted above was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909-13, and later as a very good Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Americans today tend to congratulate themselves for being more tolerant and open-minded than their ancestors of a century or two ago. Yet those earlier Americans elected the great Jefferson twice, and elected Taft once. Taft is not today remembered as a great President, but he at least he did much less harm to the United States than the man who succeeded him, Woodrow Wilson.

I find it disgusting that a Gallup Poll found 22% of Americans (18% of Republicans, 19% of Independents, and 27% of Democrats) say that they would not vote for a well-qualified candidate of their party who happened to be a Mormon. That’s actually an increase compared to 17% who gave the same answer in 1967.

If some Christians want to take the theological view that Unitarians, or Mormons, or, for that matter, Catholics are not true Christians, that’s their privilege, and it’s very legitimate source of religious debate. I don’t think that whether a candidate fits a voter’s definition of orthodox Christianity is a legitimate basis for voting for a public official.

Kudos to Mitt Romney, in his speech today at the Values Voters summit, for denouncing the “poisonous language” of Bryan Fischer, another invited speaker at the event, who makes the idiotic claim that the First Amendment was not intended to protect non-Christians.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court held oral arguments in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, a key religious freedom case that Eugene Volokh blogged about here. SCOTUSblog has a round-up of coverage of the argument. I found this exchange particularly telling, as the federal government did itself no favors by taking the extreme position that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment isn’t even implicated when the state uses antidiscrimination law to challenge the firing of church employees – even if the latter are ministers or have religious duties:

At one point, Justice Elena Kagan asked Ms. Kruger whether she believed that a church has a right grounded in First Amendment religious protections to hire and fire employees without government interference.

Kruger answered that the government was basing its argument on the freedom of association, rather than the parts of the First Amendment that deal with religious freedom.

“We don’t see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such,” Kruger replied. “We see it as a question of freedom of association.”

The position surprised several justices, including Justice Kagan, the Obama administration’s former solicitor general, who said she found the comment “amazing.” After the hearing, one representative of a religious association called the government’s position a “full frontal assault on religious liberty.”

Chief Justice John Roberts first raised the issue when he asked whether the administration considered anything “special about the fact that the people involved in this case are part of a religious organization.”

Ms. Kruger said, no, that there was no difference whether the group was a religious group, a labor group, or any other association of individuals.

“That’s extraordinary. That is extraordinary,” Justice Antonin Scalia declared. “We are talking here about the free exercise clause and about the establishment clause, and you say they have no special application?”

We don’t think that the job duties of a particular religious employee are relevant to the inquiry,” she said.

Even former Obama Solicitor General Elena Kagan was “amazed” by the Administration’s position. Obviously, however, the justices could potentially rule in favor of the EEOC on narrower grounds, though I am cautiously optimistic that they won’t.

Since this issue is at the outer edge of my range of expertise, I think I will leave the real heavy lifting on this case to the law and religion experts, lest I violate my own rules about choosing blogging topics. But I did want to highlight this part of the oral argument for interested readers.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I participated in a moot session for University of Virginia Law professor Doug Laycock, who represented the Lutheran Church in this case. I thought he did a great job at both the moot and the actual oral argument itself.

From a WorldNetDaily article:

Secret U.S. experiments to prompt 2nd Coming? …

Secret experiments now underway in the U.S. and elsewhere are sparking fears of a potential extinction-level event hastening the 2nd Coming of Jesus ….

The possibility of humans eradicating their own existence through technological advancement has some Christians cracking open their Bibles to see what Scripture has to say on the matter.

The 24th chapter of the Book of Matthew is often cited, as Jesus talked specifically about the end of the current human age, saying, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” (Matthew 24:21–22)

Britt Gillette, the Virginia-based Christian publisher of End Times Bible Prophecy, has been studying transhumanism in the light of Scripture, and says:

Continue reading ‘Upcoming 2012 Mayan Apocalypse Upcoming Transhumanism-Triggered Second Coming of Jesus?’ »

This report (Values, Dreams, Ideals: Muslim Youth in Southeast Asia, with a pointer to the questionnaire and the raw data) struck me as interesting, because Malaysia and Indonesia are often mentioned as places in which a more moderate form of Islam is generally practiced, and because Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. The results are pretty complicated, so let me just give a couple of reported results, based on the questionnaire and raw data document (many of these items don’t seem to be mentioned in the report, though perhaps I missed them):

1. The statement “Terrorism gives Islam a bad image” was endorsed by 55.3% to 27.2% among Indonesian youths and “Terrorism gives Islam a bad name” was endorsed by 59.3% to 39.8% among Malaysian youths.
2. The statement “Suicide bombers are needed to defend Islam” was rejected by 77.5% to 15.5% among Indonesian youths and 55.8% to 43.3% among Malaysian youths.
3. The question “Do you think the Quran should replace the 1945
   constitution?,” was answered “no” by 75.3% to 20.4% of Indonesian youths, but “In your view, should the Quran replace the constitution of your country?,” was answered “yes” by 71.6% to 25.2% among Malaysian youths.
4. The statement “It’s OK to be gay or lesbian” was rejected by 98.8% to 0.6% among Indonesian youths (though note that the question did not ask about whether such behavior should be outlawed), and 99.4% to 0.5% among Malaysian youths.
5. The statement “The cartoonist who drew the image of the Prophet Muhammad had freedom of expression” was rejected by 70.5% to 19.7% among Indonesian youths and “The cartoonist who made the Mohamed-Cartoons had freedom of expression” was rejected by 82.8% to 15.5% among Malaysian youths.
6. The statement “Osama bin Laden is an Islamic liberation fighter” was endorsed by 51.1% to 28.1% among Indonesian youths and “Osama bin Laden is a freedom fighter” was endorsed by 62.4% to 33.3% among Malaysian youths. This makes me wonder whether the endorsement of “terrorism gives Islam a bad image” tends to include the view that Bin-Laden-style terrorism gives Islam a bad image, or tends to exclude it because so many view Osama bin Laden as a “freedom fighter” and thus presumably not a “terroris[t].”
7. The statement “I like the US more since Barack Obama became president” is endorsed by 50.2% to 40.5% among Indonesian youths, but rejected by 60.8% to 35.8% among Malaysian youths.

There’s a lot more there in the questionnaire and raw data file; check it out yourself, and please let me know if I erred in any of my summaries above. Many thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.

Leah Libresco has now posted many of the questions and answers for the next round of her Turing Test for religion. They are available at her blog. In the previous round, her fifteen test participants (some real atheists, and some Christians) answered four questions about atheism, trying to persuade readers that they are genuine atheists. In this round, the same people answer four questions about Christianity, seeking to persuade readers that they are genuine Christians. The eight questions are available here.

Readers will be able to vote on which respondents are the real Christians and which the fakers.

Atheist blogger Leah Libresco has now begun to implement her Turing Test for religion, which I previously wrote about here. At her blog, she has recruited fifteen test participants who will first answer four questions about atheism, trying to persuade readers that they are real atheists. They will then answer four questions about Christianity, seeking to persuade readers that they are genuine Christians. The eight questions are available here. Some of the participants are actual atheists and the rest are Christians.

Readers will have the opportunity to see each test participant’s answers and then vote on which “atheists” they think are real and which ones fake. Later, they will also vote which answers to the questions about Christianity are given by real Christians and which ones are atheists pretending to be Christian. Leah plans to offer a prize to the atheist who persuades the most readers that he or she is a genuine Christian, as well as to the Christian who most successfully mimics an atheist.

The fifteen sets of answers to questions about atheism are now up at Leah’s blog, and you can vote on which ones you think are written by genuine atheists here.

Inspired by Bryan Caplan’s ideological Turing Test, atheist blogger Leah Libresco proposes a religious Turing test to measure the extent to which Christians and atheists understand the arguments of the other side [HT: Bryan Caplan]:

Just like Caplan, I’d like to put my money where my mouth is and play in an ideological Turing Test against a Christian blogger. We could both answer a selection of questions posed by Christians and atheists or we could each write an argument for and against the side we support and then briefly rebut the two arguments the other one had produced. I’m flexible and open to suggestions.

Debates over religion have many parallels to political debates. Public ignorance about religion is almost as widespread as political ignorance. And most people react in a highly biased way to evidence and arguments that go against their position on either subject.

A religious Turing test, however, poses challenges that a political one does not. Liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism are rough equivalents of each other in as much as all of them are ideologies that try to delineate the appropriate role of political power in society. Atheism on the other hand isn’t really an equivalent of Christianity in the same sense. Atheism is just denial of the existence of God; it is not a comprehensive moral system. That’s why thinkers as divergent as Ayn Rand and Karl Marx could both be atheists. By contrast, Christianity goes far beyond merely asserting that God exists. It also incorporates many other theological doctrines (e.g. – that Jesus Christ is the son of God), and various ethical commands. The same goes for Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and many other religions. Thus, simulating a Christian who is well-informed about the arguments for his religious views is a tougher challenge than simulating an atheist who is comparably knowledgeable about atheism. Christianity covers a much wider range of issues than atheism does.

Nonetheless, last year’s Pew survey of public knowledge of religion suggests that atheists and agnostics are, on average, more knowledgeable about religious doctrine than theists. Atheists and agnostics (an average of 6.7 correct answers out of 12) even outscored Christians (6.0) on questions that specifically tested knowledge of Christianity. Though it’s also fair to note that some subsets of Christians such as Mormons (7.9) and white evangelicals (7.3) did better than the atheists and agnostics did. Mormons (20.3 correct answers out of 32) also achieved a statistical dead heat with atheists (20.9) on the overall survey, as did Jews (20.5). I speculated on the reasons for these groups’ relatively high knowledge levels here.

Knowledge of basic facts about religion is not the same thing as knowledge of more detailed arguments for and against various religious claims. I think I understand the most basic tenets of Christianity (the kind of information covered in the Pew survey). But I know very little about the arguments for them that Christian theologians have developed (with the partial exception of arguments for the existence of God). Libresco’s proposal might give us some evidence on the extent to which atheists and Christian’s understand their opponents’ more in-depth arguments; though obviously it would be a mistake to generalize too much from one small-N study. She reports that at least two Christians have expressed interest in participating in her experiment. So stay tuned.

UPDATE: Libresco describes the details of her experiment in this follow-up post.

UPDATE #2: Obviously, as in the case of political ideologies such as liberalism and libertarianism, there is a good deal of internal diversity among Christians. For example, there are significant theological differences between Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians, and also between theological conservatives and liberals within each of these groups. That further complicates the the task of the Turing simulator. There is also some diversity among atheists as well, though perhaps less than among Christians because atheism, as such, covers fewer questions than Christianity does.

Before:

After:

Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) has the story, with links:

In a strict reading of Jewish laws on modesty, the Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung, published in Brooklyn, has a policy that it will not publish photos of women. The Washington Post reported yesterday on the controversy that this has stirred when the paper altered the now-famous photo of Hillary Clinton, the President and others in the White House situation room watching the progress of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. The paper’s version (shown by Failed Messiah blog) removed Hillary Clinton and the only other woman in the photo, Audrey Tomason. It turns out that this violates the White House terms distributed with the photo that: “The photograph may not be manipulated in any way….” Der Tszitung has issued a statement (full text from Washington Post) reading in part:

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion…. In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status. Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.

Well, yes, they do have the First Amendment right to refuse to publish photos of women. Nor do I think the White House terms are likely to preclude that, since the photograph is likely a government work and not copyright-protected, and even if it’s owned by the photographer, the use is likely to be a fair use, given the free distribution of the unaltered work. But we have the First Amendment to think that, if this policy really represents the denomination’s religious doctrine, (1) it’s a pretty zany policy, and (2) it doesn’t speak well of the opportunities that the religious denomination allows to its female members (despite the newspaper’s protestations to the contrary).

Religious freedom scholar Nina Shea reports that the United Nations Human Rights Council recently ended consideration of a resolution requiring states to ban “defamation of religion.” The Organization of the Islamic Conference decided not to push for a vote on the resolution, which had passed in each of the several years, when it became clear they didn’t have the votes to win this year.

This is a notable (and sadly rare) victory for freedom of speech and religion at the UN. In previous posts, Senior Conspirator Eugene Volokh and I have pointed out the threat that this resolution poses to individual freedom (see here, here, and here). The resolution is also a prime example of how repressive authoritarian regimes use international human rights law to try impose their despotic norms on the international community. For reasons John McGinnis and I explained in this article, the problem goes far beyond this particular resolution.

Unfortunately, this defeat may not be the end of the “defamation of religion” resolution. The OIC and its allies could try again in future years. The UN General Assembly adopted a similar resolution in November.

There is no easy solution to the challenge posed by this sort of international “human rights” initiative that seeks to undermine freedom rather than protect it. But the beginning of wisdom is to recognize the nature of the problem. We should also act to prevent the use of international human rights law influenced by dictatorships to override the domestic law of liberal democracies.

From yesterday’s Atchley v. Atchley:

The trial court addressed the following inquiry to the husband.
Q. Now, you said you attend a Morning Star Church?
A. Correct.
Q. Do you donate money to the church?
A. I don’t donate money to the church.
Q. Do you—does [husband’s girlfriend]?
A. No, she has not yet.
Q. Okay. Do either of you serve in any ministry that the Morning Star Church is involved in, whether some sort of charity work or teaching kids or anything like that?
A. No, not at this time.
Q. Do you have prayer in your home?
A. We pray at the dinner table.
Q. Bible study?
A. Not in the home, no.
Q. You’ve described yourself as a secular humanist, right?
A. Correct.
Q. Okay. How does—how does a secular humanist determine what’s right and wrong?
A. I mean, it’s a—it’s a—that’s a very deep question. I mean, I think people innately have an idea about what’s right, what’s wrong and you have to—you have to look at it from the perspective of not just, you know, what’s good for me, but what’s good for those around me, am I doing a greater good. I mean, I can have morals and make correct decisions without having a religion per se.
Q. What’s the authority though that you submit to?
A. Just my basic philosophy in life which is that I think humans can help each other solve their own problems. I don’t think we need to look elsewhere. I think if we work hard at it, then we can make a better society and we can all get along and we can solve problems and we can improve how it is we live, what the human condition is.
Q. But ultimately what you’re telling me is that the authority for what you think is right and wrong comes from you?
A. Yeah, I mean, it’s—it has to come from me. I mean, you have to think—but you have to be—you have to try to be, you know, objective about it. Yeah, I don’t have a book or a sheet of paper with a list of tenets or anything I should follow.

Continue reading ‘Judge Grilling Parent in Child Custody Case About the Parent’s Secular Humanism’ »

Cert was denied in Cooke v. Tubra, 10-559, but the Court has relisted in the other case I bored you about last week, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v EEOC, 10-553, suggesting the Court is taking a careful look at it.  Hosanna-Tabor involves whether the judicially recognized “ministerial exception” to the Americans with Disabilities Act, bars review of the termination of a parochial school teacher who teaches the full secular curriculum, but also teaches daily religion classes, is a commissioned minister, and regularly leads students in prayer and worship.

I understand that two other cases involving the ministerial exception will be considered at the same conference, Weishuhn v. Catholic Diocese, 10-760, and Skrzypczak v. Roman Catholic Diocese, 10-769.  But I suspect that Hosanna-Tabor is the most likely grant of the three.

UPDATE (3/3): Both of my readers may be interested to know that on March 1, the Court called for a response in Skrzypczak; the Diocese had waived.  It will be interesting to see whether the Court goes ahead and acts on Hosanna-Tabor at tomorrow’s conference or whether it holds all the cases until the opp comes in in Skrzypczak.

I see that two religion cases I’ve been watching are both on for the Supreme Court’s case conference tomorrow.

Cooke v. Tubra, 10-559, which I’ve previously written about here, presents the question whether the First Amendment bars a pastor’s defamation claim against the church that employed him when the claim is based entirely on statements made by church officials within the church explaining to its members why the church disciplined and terminated the pastor. The case appears to implicate a longstanding split about how much courts constitutionally may involve themselves in employment disputes involving clergy.

Here are the petition, the brief in opposition, and the reply brief.

In addition, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v EEOC, 10-553, involves whether the judicially recognized “ministerial exception” to the Americans with Disabilities Act, bars review of the termination of a parochial school teacher who teaches the full secular curriculum, but also teaches daily religion classes, is a commissioned minister, and regularly leads students in prayer and worship. In addition to the express statutory defenses for religious organizations created by the ADA, courts of appeals have recognized a constitutionally rooted “ministerial exception” barring adjudication of certain claims regarding the employment relationship between religious institutions and ministers and other ministerial employees.  The Sixth Circuit held that the fired teacher’s “primary duties” were secular and not ministerial and so the ministerial exception did not apply.

The petition was filed by UVA Professor Doug Laycock, a respected expert on religion issues, and the case has attracted quite a bit of amicus attention—three amicus briefs have been filed. The government’s opp acknowledges “some variations in courts’ articulations of the governing test,” but maintains that “there is no conflict that warrants this Court’s review.” A harder hurdle to overcome will be the government’s contention that petitioner “did not adequately preserve her challenge to the validity of the ‘primary duties’ test”—it doesn’t take much to scare the Court off a case if there are vehicle problems or if the claim may not have been properly preserved.

Here are the petition , the EEOC’s brief in opposition, the reply brief  (which responds to the SG’s claim that the argument wasn’t preserved), and two of the three amicus briefs.

The New York Times recently ran an interesting article on the Secular Right blog, which I commented on here back when it was first established:

As a child, Razib Khan spent several weeks studying in a Bangladeshi madrasa. Heather Mac Donald once studied literary deconstructionism and clerked for a left-wing judge. In neither case did the education take. They are atheist conservatives — Mr. Khan an apostate to his family’s Islamic faith, Ms. Mac Donald to her left-wing education.

They are part of a small faction on the right: conservatives with no use for religion. Since 2008, they have been contributors to the blog Secular Right, where they argue that conservative values like small government, self-reliance and liberty can be defended without recourse to invisible deities or the religions that exalt them….

Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review, noted that conservatives throughout history have esteemed “mediating institutions” like schools and churches, sources of authority other than the state. “If that’s the way you’re thinking, concern for the strength of organized religion follows pretty naturally,” Mr. Ponnuru said.

I do have a small bone to pick with the article and possibly with Ramesh Ponnuru. There is a difference between being an atheist and having “no use for religion.” One can deny the existence of God, while simultaneously recognizing that religious institutions sometimes serve useful purposes. Being an atheist doesn’t prevent me from seeing that the Catholic Church runs an excellent system of private schools, for example. It also doesn’t prevent anyone from recognizing the value of “mediating institutions,” including religious ones.

At the same time, it is also the case that organized religion has often contributed to grave injustices, providing support for slavery, gender inequality, and occasionally (in the case of “Liberation Theology”) even communism. Whether a mostly secular society will be better off than a mostly religious one depends on the values advocated by the religious and secular ideologies in question. Atheism doesn’t require anyone to believe that every conceivable secular belief system has better social consequences than every conceivable religious one. One can be an atheist while still believing that Catholicism, Judaism, or Mormonism is less harmful than Marxism, for example.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that the Vatican has refused service of process in a widely-followed priest child abuse case. 

The Vatican has refused service of a federal lawsuit over its handling of the notorious sex offender Father Lawrence Murphy – a move that could delay the Milwaukee lawsuit for months if not years, victims’ advocates said Monday ….  But a California-based lawyer for the Vatican dismissed it as a procedural step in keeping with U.S. laws on diplomatic relations that allow states to choose how to be served in lawsuits.

What’s the diplomatic aspect of this?  The Vatican is a sovereign state, complete with a seat at the UN, diplomatic immunity for its officials, and it benefits from doctrines of foreign sovereign immunity.  The service was attempted in the ordinary way for private parties, through the mail.  With the Vatican having refused service, the plaintiff must now go through the State Department.  This will almost certainly lengthen the time before service is completed.  There is another complicated legal question here as well, as to whether the Vatican is the right party in the lawsuit, or whether instead it should be aimed at one or another legal entities of the Catholic Church in the US responsible for supervision of the priest at issue, and which actually own the assets of the Church in the United States.  For the Catholic Church as for many American religious denominations, the legal and asset ownership structure of the religion across the various congregations, parishes, dioceses, etc., is hugely complicated and tangled. 

The broader question is whether it is justified for the Vatican, alone among religious denominations in the world, also to be a sovereign state.  The argument is that it is simply a historical fact that the Holy See was and is a state, independent of its status as the head of a religious denomination.  If there was a point for a question about its status in the modern world, it was at the point of the formation of the UN, when there was a question of membership criteria for joining.  But even at that point, it was a state, and a state that otherwise met the criteria for membership in the UN. 

In the past, I probably would have said, well, it is not rational or strictly logically justified, but particularly at the UN, many things are simply the result of historical contingency and not worth doing battle merely for the sake of symbolic consistency.  Today, however, one striking aspect of the international system is that states are increasingly reflecting a world in which religion, and particularly Islam, is resurgent.  Resurgent in a particular way – viz., as an identity that is taken by many people as beyond rational discussion as to the content of belief, akin to immutable identity characteristics such as race.  The number of explicitly religiously founded states – the Islamic Republics of X or Y - is rapidly gaining in numbers and in legitimacy as a concept.  Secularism is less a feature of international law and diplomacy than it was, and it is largely in retreat.  So in that sense, the Vatican as sovereign state is a form of back to the future.

I am far from happy about this, because I think it erodes the underlying legitimacy of liberalism.  Liberalism is not necessarily an insistence on affirmative secularism (in, say, the French meaning), but it is about the functional (at least) separation of church and state, the private and the public, as the conditions for religious toleration.  That is rather than the apparently preferred alternative in today’s increasingly religiously-defined international community - ”multicultural internationalism” gradually taking over from “liberal internationalism,” and global “communalism.”  Global communalism takes as its aim the (presumably peaceful) coexistence of global religious communities, where religion is taken as the primary identity of individual as well as state.  It thus contrasts with liberalism’s insistence that in the public sphere, at least, religion is not the identity that publicly matters as far as the state is concerned – however important privately to individuals, it is not the identity with which the state is concerned.  That is precisely the sense that is eroding, in my experience, in the so-called international community.

Back in August, I wrote a post criticizing efforts to use government power to stop the building of the Ground Zero Mosque and explaining why I see no good objection to having a Muslim cultural center or mosque near Ground Zero. But I was also highly critical of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the mosque project. My main objections to his record were his tendency to draw a moral equivalency between the US and Al Qaeda, his claim that the US government was an “accessory” to the 9/11 attacks, his praise of Iran’s repressive government, and his refusal to admit that Hamas is a terrorist group. In this recent National Review piece, conservative columnist Henry Payne claims that Rauf’s record has been misrepresented:

[A]s Rauf repeated — again — on Frank Beckmann’s conservative radio show last Friday, he strongly opposes Hamas and terrorism. “Hamas is a terrorist organization. They have committed terrorist acts,” he told Beckmann in an impassioned denunciation of Islamic extremists who “pose more of a threat, in fact, to Muslim-majority societies,” where bombings have killed thousands of innocent people…..

In an interview last September on Larry King Live, Rauf told guest host Soledad O’Brien, “I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism. And Hamas has committed acts of terrorism….”

“The reason we were supported by many of the masses of the ex-Soviet countries is because publicly we called their leadership — Reagan called them — an ‘Evil Empire,’” Rauf told Beckmann in urging American leaders to denounce corruption in Muslim nations. “This had great appreciation among the masses. We called their leadership for what they were.”

Since I wrote my August post, Rauf has indeed denounced Hamas as a terrorist organization, and he deserves credit for that. It is interesting, however, that he pointedly refused to do so before the Ground Zero Mosque controversy became a major national issue. Cynics might interpret his new stance as an effort to appear moderate and allay criticism. Payne claims that the Park51 project website denounced Hamas as a terrorist group earlier than September. But I found no record of such a denunciation when I looked in August.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Rauf is insincere when he denounces Hamas today. It could be that he had a genuine change of heart on the issue. Alternatively, maybe he believed that Hamas is a terrorist group all along but refused to publicly admit it until recently (perhaps for fear of alienating potential Palestinian supporters of his group). On balance, I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt on this issue, unless and until we get substantial proof that he’s insincere.

On the other hand, Payne’s column says nothing about any of Rauf’s other objectionable statements. As far as I know, he has not retracted them. It is true, as Payne says, that Rauf praises American religious freedom, denounces Al Qaeda, and urges various Muslim governments to become less repressive. I noted these points in my original post. But that does not address his comments on 9/11, moral equivalency, and Iran. As I noted in the earlier post:

I don’t think the man is a radical Islamist or a defender of terrorism. Nonetheless, Rauf’s statements are sufficiently troubling that there is good reason to to be skeptical about his mosque initiative unless and until he retracts the above comments or proves that he was somehow misquoted. To borrow from [Charles] Krauthammer’s Treblinka analogy [which I criticized earlier in the post], it is as if the hypothetical German cultural center there had a leader who claimed that US and British efforts in World War II were morally comparable to the crimes of the Nazis, asserted that Jewish leaders were “accessories” to the rise of Nazi anti-Semitism, refused to describe the SS as mass murderers, and praised the ideology of a fascist dictatorship. Even if he also denounced the Holocaust, claimed to oppose anti-Semitism, and urged fascists to drop some of their most objectionable policies, we could legitimately harbor serious doubts about his organization. The same goes for Rauf and his Islamic Cultural Center.

In sum, I think that the jury is still out on Rauf and his record. I have not kept close track of all his statements over the last several months, so it’s possible that he has retracted or reinterpreted his other objectionable comments as well. If so, readers will have to judge the sincerity of any such retractions for themselves.

To avoid misunderstanding, however, let me reiterate what I said here and here: Even if Rauf does have deeply objectionable views, the use of government power to shut down his Islamic Cultural Center would still be an immoral and unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and property rights. A government that violates such rights when it seems popular to do so is far more dangerous than a mosque run by an imam with views like Rauf’s – regardless of where it is located. At the same time, it should be possible to defend Rauf’s rights while also being skeptical about his record and his credentials as a Muslim “moderate.”

Proof of Nice

Santa Claus showed up at the end of the Children’s Mass at our parish church tonight (ably aided by Tod Lindberg).  Santa (let it be noted for the official record) pronounced Your Correspondent “Nice” and presented him with a candy-cane.  I’m not Catholic, and so am not schooled in the deep matters of Catholic theology.  However, I was curious as to the arrival of what I presumed to be a pagan demi-god at Mass, and indeed coming up to the altar – and, as I recall a couple of years ago, processing out with the priest.

Your Faithful Correspondent made inquiries as to the theology of all this.  At some (many?) Protestant services – I imagine this would be true of the Mormons, for example – the arrival of Santa in the liturgy of the service might be considered a nod toward paganism, at least (responding to Matt’s comment below) insofar as it happened in the course of the religious service itself.  It was pointed out to me that, for Catholics, however, Saint Nicholas is a saint.  True, the connection between the historical St. Nicholas and Santa Claus is a bit hazy; but My Religious Informant thought it close enough for a children’s Christmas Mass in which part of the purpose is religious instruction as to the importance of saints.  For St. Nicholas to process out with the priest, red suit and all – I do not, of course, speak for the Church – is apparently within bounds of the liturgically and even theologically acceptable.

(Added:  To be clear, My Religious Informant did not think this was an example of syncretism – of a kind that has always been true of Catholicism and thought to be an important mechanism for bringing people to the faith – but instead was directly an affirmation of its own saint.)

And, just to reiterate in case it was not ultra-clear, Your Correspondent falls on the “Nice” side of the “Naughty-Nice” divide.  And so, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

(The “Nice” side!)

The United Nations General Assembly Third Committee recently passed another resolution urging nations to ban defamation of religion [HT: Elizabeth Cassidy of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which criticized the resolution here]:

A U.N. General Assembly committee once again voted to condemn the “vilification of religion” on Tuesday, but support narrowed for a measure that Western powers say is a threat to freedom of expression.

The non-binding resolution, championed by Islamic states and opposed by Western countries, passed by only 12 votes in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights, 76-64 with 42 abstentions.

Opponents noted that support had fallen and opposition increased since last year, when the Third Committee vote was 81-55 with 43 abstentions. The 192-nation General Assembly is expected to formally adopt the measure next month.

The resolution was amended from versions passed in previous years in an attempt to secure support from Western nations. Instead of defamation of religion, it speaks of “vilification.” It also condemned acts of violence and intimidation due to “Islamophobia, Judeophobia and Christianophobia.”

Senior Conspirator Eugene Volokh and I explained why previous incarnations of this resolution pose a threat to freedom of speech and religion here, here, and here. As I have pointed out previously, this is an excellent example of the ways in which repressive governments seek to use international human rights law to suppress freedom rather than protect it, a problem I have written about in two articles coauthored with John McGinnis (see here and here). Most of the support for this resolution comes from authoritarian and repressive regimes, many of which have terrible records on religious freedom. The resolution was sponsored by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Most OIC members are authoritarian states, and many are notoriously intolerant of non-Muslim religions, secularism, and even versions of Islam at odds with that espoused by their rulers.

The new text of the resolution is slightly altered from previous versions, this time targeting “vilification” of religion rather than “defamation.” Advocates claim that this change represents a concession. In my view, it actually makes the resolution worse. At least in Anglo-American and European law, the term “defamation” implies a false statement. Truth is a defense to a defamation action. By contrast, “vilification” may encompass even true charges against a religion. Whether intentionally or not, the sponsors have managed to make a bad resolution even worse. Moreover, the new text still explicitly urges states to “prohibit the advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or
violence.” Almost any strong criticism of a religious organization or its beliefs could qualify as “incitement” to “hostility” or “discrimination.”

Although the resolution is nonbinding, many scholars and advocates of broad interpretations of international law see such UN resolutions as contributing to “customary international law” norms that all states must obey, even if they have not explicitly ratified them. There is little danger that the resolution will undermine freedom of speech or religious freedom in the US in the near future. But it poses a greater threat in nations where resistance to domestic incorporation of customary international law norms is weaker. More generally, the debate over this resolution highlights the need to forcefully oppose efforts to use such dubious “norms” to override the domestic law of liberal democracies.

The Jawa Report reports. NPR likewise mentions the traitor (Samir Khan), though in passing, in a story that begins this way:

The single biggest change in terrorism over the past several years has been the wave of Americans joining the fight — not just as foot soldiers but as key members of Islamist groups and as operatives inside terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.

These recruits, a number of whom are profiled in this “Terror Made In America” series, are now helping enemies target the United States….

France’s Constitutional Council recently upheld the constitutionality of a law banning the wearing of veils in public places. The text of the decision is available in French here. Despite the importance of the issue and the large potential infringement on religious freedom, the opinion is very short and conclusory. For those of our readers who understand French, here is the key passage:

[L]e législateur a estimé que de telles pratiques peuvent constituer un danger pour la sécurité publique et méconnaissent les exigences minimales de la vie en société ; qu’il a également estimé que les femmes dissimulant leur visage, volontairement ou non, se trouvent placées dans une situation d’exclusion et d’infériorité manifestement incompatible avec les principes constitutionnels de liberté et d’égalité.

Roughly translated, this means that veils can be banned because the legislature has determined that they pose a “danger to public safety” and because wearing a veil, even “voluntarily,” puts women in a “condition of exclusion and inferiority manifestly incompatible with the constitutional principles of liberty and equality.”

Later in the opinion, the court concludes that, given the public interests served by the law, the punishment imposed on violators is not “manifestly disproportionate” and therefore it doesn’t violate the religious freedom guarantees in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man.

I am no expert on French constitutional law, so I have little to say about the legal correctness of the ruling. I should also note that the institution of judicial review is much weaker in France than in the US or in some European nations such as Germany. Thus, the court’s highly deferential posture and cursory dismissal of the religious freedom issues involved may well be a correct ruling under French law.

I will say, however, that if the decision is not mistaken, it is a serious indictment of the French constitution that its protection of religious and personal freedom is so weak. The justifications offered by the court for a massive infringement on the religious practices of hundreds of thousands of French Muslims [update: probably "only" thousands, depending on how many actually wear veils and what kinds of headgear are actually covered by the ban] are at best extremely dubious. For example, it is simply not true that women who voluntarily wear veils necessarily end up in a “condition of exclusion and inferiority manifestly incompatible with the constitutional principles of liberty and equality.” Right here where I live in northern Virginia, there is a substantial Muslim population and many (though by no means all) all of the Muslim women wear veils. That doesn’t prevent them from having jobs outside the home, getting an education, and participating in politics and government in much the same way as unveiled women do. Some other religious groups, such as Orthodox Jews, also impose fairly strict requirements of modest dress on women. They too are not thereby blocked from full participation in society.

European Muslims are, on average, less well integrated into the economies and societies of their countries than American ones are. Nonetheless, it is difficult to believe that European Muslim women’s full participation in society is somehow precluded by wearing veils. The French Constitutional Council offers no evidence whatsoever to the contrary.

I can understand the idea that covering one’s face poses a danger to public safety in some instances (e.g. – where security personnel need to carefully screen anyone who enters a particularly sensitive area). But a blanket ban on all wearing of veils in public seems manifestly disproportionate to any such legitimate security concerns. Here, too, the Council doesn’t give any evidence or analysis to justify the conclusion that a blanket ban on public veiling really is necessary.

Finally, while I agree that radical Islamism is a serious danger, banning veils is a poor way to combat it. Forbidding the wearing of veils in public won’t persuade any Muslims to reject radical Islamist ideas. What you wear on top of your head doesn’t determine what you believe inside it. The ban might, on the other hand, increase the attraction of radical Islamism to at least some wavering Muslims who are likely to be embittered as a result. It will also strengthen the perception that Western society is somehow biased against Muslims. Our goal should be to try win over Muslims (and others) to the ideals of liberty, tolerance, and religious freedom. Heavy-handed restrictions on what people can wear do much more to undermine that objective than advance it.

It is not my view that the veil ban is wrong merely because Muslims might be offended. However, a free society should not impose a severe restriction on religious and personal freedom unless there is a very strong justification for doing so. The arguments offered by the French government and Constitutional Council don’t even come close.

NOTE: My French is fairly fluent, but still very imperfect. So I welcome correction by any fluent French speaker who notices that I have mistranslated something, or possibly missed an important part of the opinion. I also welcome input from readers expert in French law.

UPDATE: Various commentators point out that the ban covers only headgear that covers the entire face. I agree and did not mean to suggest otherwise. The term “veil,” in English at least, implies something that covers the entire face, or at least most of it (as opposed to, say, a headscarf, which only covers the top of one’s head). Nonetheless, many Muslim women do in fact wear veils that cover their entire faces, and the law is still a severe infringement on their religious freedom, even if a less sweeping one than a hypothetical ban that also covered headscarves.

UPDATE #2: The text of the law forbids the public wearing of “une tenue destinée à dissimuler son visage.” I tentatively translate this as “clothing designed to conceal one’s face.” It’s not clear to me that this necessarily requires concealment of the entire face, as opposed to merely a large part of it.

UPDATE #3: A commenter notes that I didn’t translate this part: “et méconnaissent les exigences minimales de la vie en société” ([wearing the veil] “is not in line with the basic requirements of living in this society”). Fair enough. But this argument adds very little to the justification for the veil ban. A woman who wears a veil certainly can meet the basic requirements of living in France or any other Western society, including having a job, participating in politics and civil society, and so on. This argument only helps justify the law if keeping one’s face uncovered is itself circularly defined as one of the requirements of “living in this society.”

I’m not up on the theology behind this, but I thought I’d pass it along:

You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward. Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.

We are currently active in 24 states. Our representatives have been screened to ensure that they are atheists, animal lovers, are moral / ethical with no criminal background, have the ability and desire to rescue your pet and the means to retrieve them and ensure their care for your pet’s natural life….

For $110.00 we will guarantee that should the Rapture occur within ten (10) years of receipt of payment, one pet per residence will be saved [I take it that's not in the theological sense of "saved" -EV]….

Thanks to Arvin Tseng for the pointer.

As I noted in a recent post, the Pew Research Center survey of public knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics, Jews, and Mormons are the groups with by far the highest knowledge levels in this field. The disparity between these groups and the rest of the population persists even after controlling for education.

What explains the difference between these three groups and the general population? Jamelle Bouie and Matthew Yglesias argue that it is their status as religious minorities. As Bouie puts it:

To me, it’s no surprise that the highest scorers — after controlling for everything — were religious minorities: atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons. As a matter of simple survival, minorities tend to know more about the dominant group than vice versa. To use a familiar example, blacks — and especially those with middle-class lives — tend to know a lot about whites, by virtue of the fact that they couldn’t succeed otherwise; the professional world is dominated by middle-class whites, and to move upward, African Americans must understand their mores and norms. By contrast, whites don’t need to know much about African Americans, and so they don’t.

Likewise, religious minorities — while not under much threat of persecution — are well-served by a working knowledge of religion, for similar reasons; the United States is culturally Christian, and for religious minorities, getting along means understanding those reference points. That those religious minorities can also answer questions about other religious traditions is a sign of broader religious education that isn’t necessary when you’re in the majority.

I am skeptical. If Bouie’s theory were correct, the disparity between the three highest-scoring groups and the rest would be mainly the result of their strong performance in knowledge of Christianity – the majority religion in the US. Mormons (an average of 7.9 correct answers out of 12), atheists/agnostics (6.7) and Jews (6.3) do indeed score better on questions about Christianity than Christians do (6.0). But in the case of the Mormons, this is in large part accounted for by the fact that Mormons are Christians themselves, even if of an unusual kind. The 12 questions about Christianity are primarily about the Bible and its doctrines.Mormons recognize the Bible as one of their holy books (though they differ from other Christians in also paying deference to the Book of Mormon). In the case of atheists/agnostics and Jews, their main knowledge advantage over Christians comes from their much higher levels of knowledge about non-Christian “world religions” (mainly Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism). Jews got an average of 7.9 questions out of 11 in this category, atheists/agnostics 7.5, and Christians a mere 5.0 (the Mormon average was 5.6). While Jews, atheists and agnostics also outscored Christians on knowledge of Christianity, the margin was much smaller.

Thus, the main knowledge advantage of these three religious minorities came on questions that had little if any connection to “survival” as religious minorities in an overwhelmingly Christian society. Moreover, even the minority groups’ edge on knowledge of Christianity cannot be entirely attributed to this factor. After all, several of the questions about Christianity covered parts of the Bible that are also Jewish holy scriptures. Jews have reasons to know about them that are unrelated to their minority status. As for atheists and agnostics, a high percentage of them were raised Christian or Jewish and therefore might have acquired some biblical knowledge that way. In sum, the Bouie-Yglesias theory probably accounts for only a small percentage of the difference between the three high-scoring groups and the rest.

What does account for the difference between these three groups and the rest? I suspect that it is their greater cosmopolitanism. Jews, atheists, and Mormons are all notable for their unusually high levels of interest in other cultures, religions, and philosophies. In the former two cases, this is well-known. Mormons, by contrast, may strike some people as insular. However, the Church actually puts a high emphasis on education and many young Mormons spend two or three years as missionaries abroad, which exposes them to contact with other cultures and religious traditions. Although very different in their religious and (median) political beliefs, Mormons, atheists, and Jews are similar in their higher than average commitment to education and cosmopolitanism. For these reasons, it’s not surprising that these groups outscore the rest on measures of religious knowledge.

A Recent Pew Research Center survey of American’s knowledge about religion shows widespread ignorance. The study asked 32 mostly relatively basic multiple choice questions about various religions (including a few on religion and public life):

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life…..

More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.

In addition, fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Fewer than four-in-ten (38%) correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. And only about a quarter of all Americans (27%) correctly answer that most people in Indonesia – the country with the world’s largest Muslim population – are Muslims.

There is also widespread ignorance about constitutional restrictions on the teaching of religion in public schools. Most survey respondents believe that the Supreme Court has banned the teaching of the Bible even as “literature,” and most believe that public schools are not allowed to have “comparative religion” classes:

[A]mong the questions most often answered incorrectly is whether public school teachers are permitted to read from the Bible as an example of literature. Fully two-thirds of people surveyed (67%) also say “no” to this question, even though the Supreme Court has clearly stated that the Bible may be taught for its “literary and historic” qualities, as long as it is part of a secular curriculum. [J]ust 36% of the public knows that comparative religion classes may be taught in public schools.

I. Who Knows the Most About Religion?

Which groups have the highest knowledge levels? It turns out that it’s atheists and agnostics (an average of 20.9 correct answers out of 32), though Jews (20.5) and Mormons (20.3) scored almost equally well. The differences between the three groups are statistically insigificant. Atheists, Jews, and Mormons still score higher than other groups even after controlling for education.

Interestingly, atheists and agnostics (6.7 correct answers) score significantly higher than Christians (6.0) on the 12 questions that cover knowledge of Christianity and the Bible. Mormons (7.9) and white evangelicals (7.3) are, however, clearly the high scorers in this subcategory.

II. Is Ignorance About Religion Rational?

In some ways, ignorance about religion may be rational, just like the equally widespread political ignorance. For most voters, it is rational to be ignorant about politics because most people aren’t much interested in politics, political knowledge is rarely useful for everyday life, and the chance of any individual vote determining the outcome of an election is infinitesmal. Of course, individually rational decisions not to spend much time acquiring political knowledge may lead to bad collective outcomes, such as poor electoral decisions and terrible public policies.

In the case of religion, theological knowledge has little utility for everyday life, most people have only limited interest in religious doctrine, and any one individual’s ignorance about religion probably has very little effect on society. Thus, it’s possible that most people are ignorant about religion for much the same reason that they are ignorant about politics. However, economist Bryan Caplan – a leading scholar on public ignorance – has some reservations about this analysis:

If people sincerely believed that their eternal fates hinged on their knowledge of religion, their ignorance wouldn’t be rational. If you could save your soul with 40 hours of your time, you’d be mad to watch t.v. instead. Unfortunately for religious believers, this leaves them with two unpalatable options:

1. Option #1: Deep-down, most religious believers believe that death is the end. (This is consistent with the fact that even the pious mourn their loved ones at funerals, instead of celebrating the good fortune of the deceased)….

2. Option #2: Most religious believers are so stupid and/or impulsive that they’ll knowingly give up eternal bliss for trivial mortal pleasures. But why then do so many believers show intelligence and self-control in other areas of life?

An alternative possibility is that most Americans believe that in order to be saved in the afterlife you just have to be “spiritual” in some vague way. So long as you believe in God (or perhaps multiple gods), the precise details of religious doctrine don’t matter too much. This is consistent with survey data showing that most Americans believe that a variety of religions can lead to salvation, but 50% say that you can’t be a good or moral person if you are an atheist. If all you need for salvation is a kind of vague general religiosity (plus, perhaps, some good works), then you don’t need much actual knowledge of religion.

This, however, still leaves open the question of why most people don’t make more of an effort to determine whether this kind of ecumenical spirituality is actually true. After all, many great religious leaders (e.g. – Luther and Calvin) argued that your soul can only be saved if you embrace the one true faith. Some atheist writers (e.g. – Christopher Hitchens) contend that you are more likely to become a moral person if you reject religion altogether. It may not be rational to reject these possibilities without investigating them in greater depth than most of the American public apparently has. On the other hand, it’s possible that getting at religious truth is so difficult that most people rationally choose not to study it in depth because they know they are unlikely to increase their chances of salvation very much even if they do.

On balance, I think that religious ignorance is somewhat less rational than political ignorance, though far from completely irrational. But the issue is complex and deserves further study.

UPDATE: Some argue that in many religions, it’s faith, not knowledge that determines salvation. This, however, doesn’t really counter Caplan’s point. You need knowledge to know which theological doctrines are the ones you have to have faith in. Should you have faith in Christ, Vishnu, or the doctrines of the Koran? It’s hard to make an informed choice unless you have at least basic knowledge of Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam.

UPDATE #2: The Atlantic has a summary and links to various commentaries on the Pew survey.

The Brisbane Times reports that:

A Queensland University of Technology lawyer[,] … Alex Stewart[,] has taken leave from his non-academic position as a QUT [Queensland University of Technology] commercial contracts lawyer after controversy erupted over a YouTube clip in which he smokes self-made cigarettes rolled in pages from the [Koran and the Bible] before rating which “burns better”….

The Daily Telegraph (UK) reports,

[Stewart] on leave following a meeting on Monday and is facing an inquiry.

“The university is obviously extremely, extremely unhappy and disappointed that this sort of incident should occur,” vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake said.

Stewart’s point was apparently to argue (among other things) that people shouldn’t venerate books to the point of getting upset about others’ supposed mistreatment of the books. “Is this profanity? Is it blasphemy? Does it really matter? I guess that’s the point with all this, this crip — it’s just a [bleeped out] book. Who cares? Who cares?” I quote here a video accompanying the Brisbane Times article, which includes a short excerpt from Stewart’s YouTube clip. But I do not know where one can find the full clip; if you can point me to it, or send me a file containing it, I’d be much obliged.

Note that the Brisbane Times video also quotes a police spokesman who is saying that Stewart’s actions were likely not a criminal offense. Thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.

UPDATE: Just to repeat what the title says, Stewart is a lawyer working for the university, not a professor.

Ann Coulter’s column today argues that Obama is not a Muslim; rather, he ”is obviously an atheist.” The gist of the argument is “The only evidence for Obama’s Christianity is that he faithfully attended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years….Attending Wright’s church is the conscious, calculated decision to immerse yourself in hate-filled demagoguery and call it ‘Christianity.’”

I disagree with both the facts and the conclusion. Coulter is accurate in calling Jeremiah Wright ”a racist nut.” However, that does not prove that Wright (and by extension Obama, to whatever extent Obama believes in Wright’s theology) is not a Christian. Some practitioners of “liberation theology” (including the black liberation theology variant) may simply be Marxists looking for some broadly-appealing rhetoric to add to their political program. Other practitioners, however, may be sincerely and otherwise-orthodox Christians who truly believe in both Christianity and Marxism, and in the liberation theology fusion of the two. For example, liberation theology was popular among many Catholics in Latin America from the late 1960s until 1984, when it was condemned by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I think it is implausible to believe that, pre-1984, the many Latin American American bishops, priests, nuns, and Catholic lay people who embraced  liberation theology were all closet atheists. It seems much more reasonable to conclude that at least some of them were orthodox Catholics who, until 1984, could consider liberation theology to be one legitimate way of expressing the Catholic faith.

Similarly, I would suggest that many of the pastors in slave states in antebellum America who taught that slavery was legitimate because of the slaves’ inherent racial inferiority were also sincere Christians, albeit grossly mistaken in their teachings on this matter.

Ergo, belief in the racist, Marxist philosophy of black liberation theology is not necessarily incompatible with being a Christian who has orthodox beliefs on most matters of Christian doctrine (e.g., the trinity, the resurrection, virgin birth, and so on).

Second, the record of President Obama’s Christianity is not limited to his record of attendance at Reverend Wright’s nut-house. For example, this year, the President spoke at a prayer breakfast on Easter Sunday, on what the resurrection means to him personally. His remarks about “the Easter celebration of our risen Savior…and what lesson I take from Christ’s sacrifice” were entirely straightforward statements of orthodox Christianity. I doubt that any normal Christian, of whatever denomination, could theologically disagree with a single word President Obama said.