Garry Wills Interview Part I

I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Garry Wills on recent October afternoon to talk religion and politics. The conversation was mainly focused on his new book "Head and Heart: American Christianities," which manages to be both comprehensive and concise at once, outlining long-term trends and painting mini-portraits of protagonists in the great experiment that is America.

We talked for about 90 minutes, which equals, I think, about 5,000 words, very few of which were pedestrian. A 1,000-word story is available to clients on the wire. But some of the nuggets dropped by the historian were too interesting to let lie. So I'm posting a transcript of the conversation entire here on the blog in five parts. Here's Part One.

Q: I've counted that you've written nine books in the last five years. How do you do that?
A: Well, most of these have gestated over many years. Almost everything I've written about recently has been an interest for a long time. And some of those books, (like the books translating parts of St. Augustine's Confessions) are fairly short. It's not as if I've been writing whole big books each time.

Q: But this one ("Head and Heart") is a big one. What did you set out to accomplish with it?
A: I've taught the constitutional subject of church and state for many, many years. All of these things have come in but I've never had time to set them all out systematically. I retired from teaching two years ago and I thought that, now that I'm not doing it on a regular basis, I'll sit down and write the whole thing out.

Q: What did you want people to know about religion and America from your book?
A: I'm amazed that people that people talk about America in terms of the amount of religion. We've got a lot of religion in America. We didn't at the outset but we do now. But that's not so important, it seems to me, as what kind of religion (we have). And that shifts over the years. Sometimes you have the enlightened religion foremost, sometimes you have the evangelical; one with an emphasis on rational faith, the other with an emphasis on the private experience of the individual's salvation by Jesus and the need to preach that to others.

So, I tried to trace when and how the relations between these two shifted. There have been many times when religiosity of the evangelical sort is very salient and by accident they all happen at the beginning of the century. Partly I think that is because what leads to fundamentalism, according to Martin Marty's big study of the subject, is fear of change. And in all three cases at the beginning of all three centuries there was rapid and somewhat disorienting change.

In the 19th century, it was our tremendous expansion westward into uninhabited territory (except for the Native Americans) and this stretching out of ties and traditions, religious and other traditions, so they had to be emphasized more assertively out on the frontier.

In the beginning of the 20th century, it was the disorientations of the Industrial Revolution.

And at the beginning of the 21st century, it's the techonological revolution, tremendous changes have come about because of the new inventions, the Internet, the computer, all of those things, which challenge people who are distrustful of science and who love, for example, the revival of opposition to Darwin and science in general. so when people become frightened about their rootedness and feel that other people are trying to take it away from them, you have things like the growth of the homeschooling movement, where they don't trust teachers. They think that their children will be torn away from them by secularism, by Darwin, by sexual promiscuity, by opposition to school prayer. And the homeschooling movement has led to the creation or strengthening of a whole tier of evangelical colleges: Patrick Henry, Ave Maria, Regent, all of those, and because of the evangelical mindset of the Bush administration, young people from those colleges have gone directly into the regulatory agencies, the congressional staff, they went, as that wonderful book on the Green Zone demonstrates, into the Iraq occupation force. That qualitatively changes the kind of religion we have.

To be continued ...

Dallas Drama, Brits Get Proactive, Islam Live

A week after federal prosecutors in Dallas failed to win terrorism convictions against the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Muslim charity in the United States, Dallas hosted a less-dramatic but interesting courtroom battle this week. As Jeff Mosier of the Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday (Oct. 30), Texas District Judge Ken Curry extended a restraining order against Joe Kaufman, head of a Florida-based group called Americans Against Hate.

The original restraining order was requested by a group of Texas Muslims attending an Oct. 14 Muslim Day event at the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park in nearby Arlington, but were met by Kaufman and a small group of protestors, who accused the event’s sponsoring group, the Islamic Circle of North America, of supporting terrorism. The order, Mosier reports, tells Kaufman not to threaten, physically harm or incite violence against ICNA.

Kaufman’s website (http://www.americansagainsthate.org/), which advertises “CAIR Watch” buttons and “No jihad in our backyard” t-shirts, doesn’t mention the decision. Judges will next decide whether to issue an injunction against Kaufman.

Across the pond, Britain’s new Communities Minister, Hazel Blears, delivered her first major speech on Islamic extremism, telling some 500 government workers, police and academics that her department would invest 70 million pounds (about $145 million) to fight extremism. The money will be used for several programs aimed at Britain’s Muslim community, including training imams to better communicate with young people, incorporating women in mosque administrations, and providing literature with arguments against extremism.

“This struggle will be with us for years to come, and we must do more to support the next generation in winning it,” Blears told her audience. “That is why we will be putting work with young people and Muslim women centre-stage, giving the silent majority a voice."

Blears may want to contact Yusuf Islam, the country’s most famous convert, better known as pop star Cat Stevens. After converting to Islam in 1978, Islam spurned music and performing as prohibited by his new faith. But Islam has loosened up a bit since, releasing “Another Cup” in 2006, his first album since converting. Last week, Islam released “Yusuf’s Café,” a DVD of his March 1, 2007 performance at The Porchester Hall in London, his first live performance in 28 years. Tunes from the set include “Peace Train” and “Wild World.”

Tony Blair: Catholic by Christmas?

Word around the Vatican is that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will finally become a Roman Catholic this December, in a private ceremony at the London residence of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.

Longstanding rumors of a Blair conversion gained credibility this past June when the British leader, whose wife Cherie is a Catholic, visited Pope Benedict in the Vatican. It was widely noted at the time that Blair gave the pope three framed photographs of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th-century English convert to Catholicism.

And speaking of Newman, Britain's Telegraph reported earlier this month that the Vatican is on the verge of attributing a miracle to him, which would make possible his beatification and eventually his canonization as a saint.

Flag Folding Flap

The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued a clarification of its policy concerning flag-folding ceremonies that occur at military funerals. Words recited as the flag is folded have contained religious references, one of which prompted a recent complaint to the White House, Fox News reported. Now, the controversy over that complaint has led to the clarification.

See Fox News report here.

See VA clarification statement here.

See call to action by Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., here.

Frank Rich on Dobson, Perkins & Giuliani

Frank Rich's searing indictment of Tony Perkins, James Dobson and other "mullahs" of the religious right (his words, not mine) is well worth a read, even if you disagree with either his premise or his conclusion.

Rich asks a logical question about the "Values Vote" crowd heading into the 2008 elections:

If they really believed uncompromisingly in their issues and principles, they would have long since endorsed either Sam Brownback, the zealous Kansas senator fond of using fetus photos as political props, or Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who spent 15 years as a Baptist preacher, calls abortion a “holocaust” and believes in intelligent design rather than evolution.

But they gave Senator Brownback so little moral and financial support that he folded his candidacy a week ago. And they continue to stop well short of embracing Mr. Huckabee, no matter how many rave reviews his affable personality receives on the campaign trail. They shun him because they know he’ll lose, and they would rather compromise principle than back a loser.

Ouch.

Here's the money quote:

These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream. They don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time. Should Rudy Giuliani end up doing a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their graves.

For the Bible Tells Me So ... Or Does It?

Beckie Supiano's story about a new pro-gay documentary, "For the Bible Tells Me So," is available, courtesy of our friends over at the Dallas Morning News.

The documentary traces each family's experience of wrestling with how their child's sexuality fits in with their moral and religious beliefs. Some come to accept it; others learn to love their children while continuing to believe homosexuality is wrong.

One parent's strained relationship with her daughter ends with the girl's suicide. That mother, Mary Lou Wallner, became a gay rights activist.

“The gay kids are in the film, but it's really about those parents,” said the film's director, Daniel Karslake, at a discussion following the film's Washington premiere. The decision to focus on the parents was strategic. “The film was made with a conservative Christian audience in mind.”

Is there such a thing as too many churches?

Amy Green finds that yes, there may be, at least in Orlando.

Her recent story can be found here, via the Biblical Recorder.

Old Latin Mass news

An Italian magazine reports that the Vatican will soon issue a set of regulations regarding celebration of the "extraordinary rite," commonly known as the old Latin Mass.

In a document released this last July, Pope Benedict permitted regular celebration of the so-called Tridentine rite wherever there is a "stable group of faithful who adhere to the earlier liturgical tradition." Nevertheless, a number of bishops in the U.S., Italy and elsewhere have balked at letting priests avail themselves of this new freedom; the new rules should make it clearer when they must do so.

So reports Ignazio Ingrao in the weekly magazine Panorama, who also writes that the Vatican might be about to make changes to the 1962 Latin Missal, including removal of the controversial prayer for the conversion of the Jews in the liturgy for Good Friday.

Ingrao also reports that traditionalist followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (who broke with Rome in large part over the eclipse of the old Latin Mass, after Vatican II made Mass in local languages the norm) are hoping that Benedict will revoke Lefebvre's excommunication as early as December. A desire to reconcile with the traditionalists was one of Benedict's avowed purposes in liberalizing use of the older rite.

Vatican pushes hot buttons at the U.N.

The Holy See's representative to the United Nations has touched on a couple of controversial and politically loaded topics in recent days: the environment and the war on terrorism.

On Monday, Archbishop Celestino Migliore called protecting the environment a "moral imperative" that "must not be sacrificed on the altar of economic development." He noted that the poor typically suffer most from environmental damage: "Unable to do otherwise, they live in polluted lands, near toxic waste dumps, or squat in public lands and other people's properties without any access to basic services." This is a significant statement considering its source, since Vatican officials have often stressed a different (though not necessarily contradictory) point: that environmental protection should not take priority over improving conditions for the world's poor.

Last Friday, Migliore said that governments must not cut legal corners even in the urgent cause of fighting terrorism: "The rule of law at times is difficult to apply to terrorists who have little or no respect for it. However, states must not engage in measures antithetical to the very principles that give them legitimacy through the rule of law." We might take this as a warning against the use of torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists, a particularly controversial topic in the States right now.

I suppose it's only a coincidence that Migliore's statement came a day after the presidential candidate Sen. John McCain invoked Catholic history in his denunciation of waterboarding, which he characterized as a form of torture. "All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition," McCain said. Apparently none of his rivals has so far accused him of religious bigotry.

Evangelical Association Board: Huckabee, Yes; Hillary, No

A survey of the 100-member board of the National Association of Evangelicals finds that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's name came up most when they were asked their first choice among the current presidential candidates. Sen. Hillary Clinton's name surfaced as the one least desired. See NAE report on survey here.

There musn't be a morning-after

Pope Benedict told a delegation of Catholic pharmacists that they should exercise their right of "conscientious objection" by refusing to provide "products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia." Benedict specifically warned against the use of "certain molecules that have the goal of preventing the implantation of the embryo."

The statement follows a controversial decision by Connecticut's bishops to allow that state's Catholic hospitals to administer the so-called morning-after pill, Plan B, to rape victims without an ovulation test. The church permits contraception in cases of rape (something I didn't know until I read this), but the bishops' critics warn that giving Plan B to an already pregnant woman could provoke an abortion, which the church forbids in all cases.

Yet the pope's remarks do not necessarily refer to Connecticut in particular. Hard as it may be for us Americans to believe, Rome has a whole world to think about. As A.P.'s Nicole Winfield notes: "The issue came to a head on Monday in Chile, when the government warned it could close drugstores that refuse to sell the morning-after pill, which has been legal in Chile since last year for sale to girls as young as 14."

JP2, coming to a stage near you

Bene Cipolla's story on a New York theater festival featuring plays written by Pope John Paul II can be found here, courtesy of our friends over at the Dallas Morning News.

indigestion over the Last Supper

Miller Brewing Co. has apologized for agreeing to sponsor San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair -- specifically an ad that parodied the Last Supper with various and sundry sex toys. The annual Folsom Street event is the type of sexuality-on-public-display ("Get a Room!") that makes many roll their eyes at the city by the bay.

Organizers have covered up the ad while bemoaning criticisms of the poster.

Here's Miller's response, by way of the Milwuakee Journal-Sentinel:

"We deeply regret that we did not adhere to our own policies with regard to the Folsom Street Fair," said Nehl Horton, Miller senior vice president, in a statement. "We apologize to everyone we offended as a result. We hope people will forgive us for this serious error and have confidence we will not repeat it."

The New York-based Catholic League, which has been on Miller's case for its sponsorship, has led a high-octane protest against the company in Milwaukee and, perhaps not surprisingly, isn't satisfied.

For what it's worth, festival organizer Andy Cooper absolutely loved the poster:

"Folsom Street Events acknowledges that many of the people in the leather and fetish communities are spiritual and that this poster image is a way of expressing that side of the community’s interests and beliefs."


JS Online: Miller apologizes for street festival poster

Scaring the hell out of sinners ...

Heather Donckel's report on the Christian dilemma over Halloween -- boycott it, ignore it or accept it -- can be found over at USA Today.

Money quote:

"Sometimes we have to use extreme measures to save (God's) people,"
Cindy Cathcart said. "After all, if someone were in a burning house, would you
quietly say, `Come out, you will die'? No. You would run in there with your arms
waving and screaming to the top of your lungs, grabbing them if need be, to save
them from an untimely death."

Three isn't a crowd ... it's just the start

Andrea Useem's story on polyamory was picked up by the Seattle Times and can be found here.

Also, Andrea's Reporter's Notebook can be found here.

Abp. Gregory Reveals Prostate Cancer

Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory, arguably the highest-ranking black man in the U.S. Catholic Church, best known for steering the church through the clergy sex abuse crisis, tells his staff he has prostate cancer. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has more.

Welcome, Cardinal Foley

John Foley, always the American-in-waiting, finally gets a red hat

RNS' Francis X. Rocca profiles John Patrick Foley, who will be one of the 23 men elevated to cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI on November 24, in this week's full-text article, linked above.

Quote:

Both the lateness of Foley's elevation, and the widespread pleasure it has generated, might be attributed to the humility which admirers cite as his signature virtue.

The UMC and Transgenderism

Transsexual pastor prompts uneasy questions for Methodists

RNS' Dan Burke covers the issue of transgenderism, as the United Methodists next week consider whether the Rev. Drew Phoenix (formerly the Rev. Ann Gordon), remains eligible for pastoral appointment within the church, in this week's full-text article, linked above.

Quote:

The 40-odd members of St. John's, who say they pride themselves in being the most accepting and inclusive Methodist church in Baltimore, said their minister's sex change was no big deal. They had some questions, which Phoenix answered in individual meetings, but no large theological hang-ups.

Literal Bible Living

Man takes the Bible literally for a year -- and lives to tell

RNS' Shona Crabtree profiles author A.J. Jacobs, who spent a year following 800 Biblical rules as literally as possible, in this week's full-text article, linked above.

Quote:

Some rules proved more difficult than others.

"I think there were two types of rules that were hard to follow," said Jacobs, an editor at large at Esquire magazine. "The first was avoiding sins that we commit every day, all the time, like lying, gossiping, coveting, even stealing. ... I work in the media, and I live in New York so that's like 90 percent of my day right there. ...

"Trying not to covet was a huge challenge. I coveted everything, you know, the iPhone. I do covet that."

Reinhold Niebuhr: Man of the Hour

Reinhold Niebuhr is Unseen Force in 2008 Elections

RNS' Benedicta Cipolla analyzes the increasing influence of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr on Democrats in the upcoming presidential election, in this week's full text article, linked above.

Quote:

University of Virginia religious studies professor Charles Mathewes suggests Niebuhr "is the best theologian to think about things if you want to think about sin without being cynical." Mathewes said he sees in Obama "the complexity of the Niebuhrian outlook," but he also believes Hillary Clinton possesses "theological depth I think people don't pick up on."

What's Up With ... the Buddhist Monks in Myanmar?

(RNS) Pictures of Buddhist monks shaking their fists at riot police in Myanmar (formerly Burma) have landed on the front pages of U.S. newspapers and scrambled some Western stereotypes.
These are not the blissed-out meditators of America's imagination. Generally pacifistic, but far from passive, Buddhists have a long history of social activism in Asia.
Monks held court with ancient Tibetan kings, and in Japan, lay Soka Gakkai Buddhists bankrolled their own political party.
"I think we misperceive Buddhism as a sort of stereotypically quietistic and world-renouncing religion, which has never been the case," said Donald K. Swearer, a visiting professor of Buddhist studies at Harvard Divinity School.
In Myanmar, many young men join the monkhood, which counts some 400,000 members, for a short time and maintain close ties to mainstream society. As society's moral exemplars, they work to alleviate the suffering of others. That's why they took to the streets in droves last month to protest rising fuel prices.
Dissident groups in Myanmar say some 200 protesters have been killed, according to The Associated Press, and more than 4,000 have been rounded up and imprisoned.
When Buddhism was imported to the the West, Americans favored a more individualized Buddhism, concentrating on meditation and personal discipline.
The rising profiles of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hahn have sparked a more socially engaged Buddhism in the West. The California-based Buddhist Peace Fellowship, which works on a host of causes, including an end to the war in Iraq, now counts 30 chapters and 4,000 members.