What Makes a Liberal? Plus, the Ugly Separation of Religion and Morality

With the end of Charlotte Hays' Loose Canon blog last week, we introduce David Klinghoffer as Beliefnet's guest blogger for the week of March 6 to March 10. Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and the author most recently of  "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History" (Doubleday).

What's a Liberal?
March 10, 2006 6:05 p.m.

What makes a liberal a liberal, and a conservative a conservative? A perceptive book review in the Miami Herald implicitly raises the question.

It's a review of a couple of books from "a successful new literary sub-genre: the liberal, Bible-based counterattack." The books under review are Michael Lerner's The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right and Dan Wakefield's The Hijacking of Jesus: How the Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudice and Hate. To these two, add Rev. Jim Wallis's God's Politics: Why the Right Gets Its Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, and a forthcoming title Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church, a "humor" title by a not very funny liberal Christian writer, Becky Garrison.

All these books want to wrestle out of the hands of religious conservatives the claim to represent the most authentic Biblical politics. The book I'm supposed to start in on writing next month (for Doubleday) is Why God Is a Republican: An Honest Look at the Politics of the Bible. These liberal books could all be strung together under the title Why God is a Democrat.

Who's right? Of course there's always some self-righteous killjoy who will harrumph, "God isn't a Democrat or a Republican!" OK, OK, obviously true. But the question still stands: If forced to choose, would you say a conservative or a liberal political outlook comes closer to representing the politics of the Bible.

Readers, please give me your thoughts. Just don't be a wimp and duck the question.

My own view starts from the observation that clearly there is something, a deeper issue or concern, that unites the seemingly disparate collection of opinions we call liberalism. And there is a deeper issue or concern that unites the opinions we call conservative. There must be, otherwise how can we explain the strange fact that if you ask someone for his view on, say, gun control, from this you can nearly always guess what his views will be on taxes, abortion, and immigration. What's one got to do with the others?

It's not for nothing that you meet few genuinely eclectic political types. Few people mix and match political opinions of the left and right. Generally most of us line up on one side or the other. And you can't explain this with, again, the self-righteous harrumph that "Well, most people are sheep, they don't think for themselves--unlike me!" Because obviously there are many liberals and conservatives alike who transparently are not sheep, who obviously do think for themselves, and yet they accept the whole package of views associated with their ideological community.

My favorite explanation, which I've heard articulated best by Michael Medved, holds that what unites liberal positions on apparently unrelated issues is materialism.

In almost every familiar liberal political position, there is what you might call the privileging of a materialist perspective over a non-materialist one. By materialism I don't mean greed for luxuries but rather a single-minded focus on material stuff.

Some examples include:

Gun control: liberalism sees the material artifact (the gun) as the problem. Unwanted pregnancies: liberalism sees a material solution (abortion) to the problem rather than a spiritual one. Gay rights: liberalism sees a material substrate (the hypothetical "gay gene") as determining sexuality and sexual activity rather than moral choices. Crime and punishment: liberalism sees sickness and other biological problems (heredity) as determining criminality rather than, again, moral choice. End-of-life medical issues: liberalism sees the human individual as a purely material being that, once its brain has deteriorated to a certain point, may be ethically killed just like any other animal. And so on.

This, by the way, may help explain why intelligent design is currently being fought over so fiercely in the courts and in the media. Darwin's evolutionary theory is the keystone of the modern "religion" of materialism, a/k/a secularism. It provides confirmation, in the form of an origins narrative, for materialism in the same way the story of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis (which may be understood in more important ways than a simple literal reading) underlies Biblical religion.

If you undermine people's faith in the myth at their religion's roots, the superstructure is in danger of collapse. To the extent Darwinism's influence in the culture is weakened, the roots of liberal social policies are cut off from their source of nourishment. The political importance of intelligent design is, then, potentially huge.

The Good, the Bad, and...the Religious
March 10, 2006 5:45 p.m.

In an interview in the Boston Globe, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tries to uncouple religion from morality. Actually he goes much further than merely saying you don't have to be religious to be moral, which is obvious. Quoth Dershowitz: "You need not to have religion to have morality. Morality based on religion is often no morality at all. If you do it because of heaven or hell, or because an instruction book told you to, it's not morality. It's morality when you have decided yourself, without benefits or threats, that this is the right thing to do."

I don't know how many variations I've heard on this basic theme which tries to deny that religion has anything positive to contribute to a society's moral tone. Folks like Dershowitz are entitled to their opinions, but let's at least recognize them as mere opinions with zero basis in empiricism.

Empirically--meaning, based onhard evidence derived from scientific observation--we actually know that Dershowitz is wrong. A person may be moral without being religious, but within a society or a culture, religious individuals are statistically more likely to espouse moral viewpoints than non-religious individuals. This has been shown by sociologist Rodney Stark from studies of peoples around the globe.

The hard data may be found in Chapter 7 of Stark's book Exploring the Religious Life. The same material may be found in an academic journal article by Stark, in PDF form, here.

Platinum Messiah?
March 9, 2006 4:50 p.m.

The new Matisyahu album, Youth, came out yesterday and I have not heard it mainly because I’ve always found reggae a repetitive bore and I would so much like to like Matisyahu’s music. Rolling Stone, indeed, gives the album a mixed review but the talk is that Youth will rocket to platinum status in short order, making the 26-year-old artist the best known Lubavitch hasid since the late Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Good for him--which I say mainly because I’d love to see Chabad catapulted to greater visibility as a result, this organization that is the most valuable Jewish group in the country and that offers a lesson to Christians as well.

Chabad is a Hasidic sect that focuses its amazing energies on “inreach”--basically, ministering to and evangelizing fellow Jews on behalf of a highly traditional but at the same time highly nonjudgmental form of Orthodox Judaism. It is frequently assailed, not least in Jewish religious circles, Orthodox and otherwise. The rabbi at the Reform temple where I grew up denounced the local Chabad rabbi who, the Reform rabbi felt, was seeking to poach on his congregation, thereby endangering the man’s livelihood. From the Orthodox side, Chabad used to be and sometimes still is condemned for the belief among some Lubavitchers that the late Rebbe was the Messiah, or Moshiach, that after he died in 1994 it was only a matter of time before he was resurrected to assume the Messianic mantle. There is some speculation about whether Matisyahu himself believes this.

The view from a Jewish perspective isn’t as far out as it sounds--the Talmud’s tractate Sanhedrin offers an opinion that the Messiah could indeed be someone from either the currently living or from the currently dead. For an example of a resurrected Messiah, it proposes the prophet Daniel as a hypothetically imaginable candidate. But the Lubavitch movement has overwhelmingly moved on from the “Messianist” position and rejoined mainstream Judaism which looks forward to a Messiah who is very much of the living.

More recently, Jewish anti-Chabad sniping has taken the form of the complaint that Chabad is a sellout, that is somehow cynical, that is waters down the requirements of Orthodox Judaism. The website FailedMessiah.com--a consistent Chabad-basher--carps nastily about how “Matisyahu pimps the [Chabad] image, and Chabad pimps Matisyahu.” For more instance of anti-Chabad teeth-gnashing see here, here, and here.

The nastiness is all a symptom of the success that Chabad has had since the sixth Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, arrived in the U.S. in 1940, following a miraculous escape from the Nazis. (The anniversary of his arrival is tomorrow.) Since then, the Chabad philosophy centered on unconditional love of fellow Jews has blossomed in the system of emissaries--basically Jewish missionary workers scattered around the world, I mean everywhere around the world, who provide the service of ministering to Jews--lost Jews, found Jews, all Jews--offering meals, fellowship, counseling, worship opportunities, friendship.

Chabad emissaries are omnipresent, frequently operating out of home synagogues, raising their own salaries, this most extraordinarily energetic and cheerful--truly joyous, full good humor and bonhomie--group of people I know.

Their loving acceptance of others is amazing to behold, and Jews from all walks of life respond to it. For example, I recently became reacquainted with my fourth-grade homeroom teacher, who lives in Southern California where I grew up. She self-identifies as an atheist--yeah, right--but loves Chabad and attends Chabad Sabbath services whenever she can. This is far from unusual.

I know countless Jews who, like myself, come from secular backgrounds but have been touched by Chabad’s grace, charm, sincerity, and dedication. We make up the large majority of people who attend worship services led by Lubavitch emissaries around the country and around the world. Lubavitchers serve us selflessly. There’s never any intention of making anybody into a Chabad follower. The ideal, of course, is to see every Jew joined in a relationship with God through the language of the Torah’s 613 commandments. But Chabad is patient. It puts no pressure on anyone. It assumes that the electricity that surges in Torah, if simply presented, not pushed, will exercise its own attraction. All in good time.

It is, in fact, this very patience that has got Chabad in hot water with some fellow Orthodox Jews who want standards enforced. This vein of anti-Chabad carping represents, I think, an illustration of a very human comfort with mediocrity and stasis coupled with a resistance to high-energy attempts to shake things up. This, indeed, is the history of mystical Hasidic Judaism, in its confrontation with conventional Judaism, in a nutshell.

The lesson for Christians, especially evangelical Christians, should be obvious. Spend less time preaching, more time offering fellowship, friendship, especially over meals, which is the Jewish way. Be patient. You’ll be rewarded, and so will those people to whom you minister.

No Joy in Mudville
March 8, 2006 4:45 p.m.

There is much disappointment in certain Jewish and Christian circles over the news in Jerusalem Post that two important Christian pastors, John Hagee and Jerry Falwell, don’t think Jews are going to heaven. This follows corresponding excitement and jubilation at a previous Post report that Hagee and Falwell had accepted “dual covenant” theology, which teaches that Jews and Christians have separate but equal paths to an eternal heavenly reward.

“Say it ain’t so,” is what I’m sure Falwell and Hagee’s followers and colleagues beseeched them, and understandably so - “dual covenant” makes nonsense of the basic Christian message that the new covenant or new testament supercedes the old. Like it or not, that’s what Paul clearly had in mind when he dismissed Jewish Torah observance as a “curse,” a “captor,” from which we Jews are now set free. To reject the offer of liberation - had God made such an offer, or if “liberation” from a Torah-based relationship with Him were desired - would be a poor basis for a continuing covenant of any value.

Quite consistent with his adherence to this basic Christian belief, Falwell clarified:

“I have been on record all 54 years of my ministry as being opposed to dual covenant theology...I simply cannot alter my deeply held belief in the exclusivity of salvation through the Gospel of Christ for the sake of political or theological expediency. Like the Apostle Paul, I pray daily for the salvation of everyone, including the Jewish people.”

Good for him. I’m a great believer in deepening Jewish-Christian friendship but that can’t be done on the basis of dismantling fundamental belief structures.

I know many Jews find it eerie to sit across a table from a Christian friend who thinks, unless you accept Jesus, you’re going to hell. But consider, there is a strong vein in our own religion that says much the same about them.

Yes, it’s true that Jews have a concept of “the pious ones of the nations of the world,” a category of gentiles who have an eternal reward in the world to come. A non-Jew who studies the Bible and fulfills it is held, by Jewish tradition, to be on the level of a Jewish high priest, no less. On the other hand, in his encyclopedic rendition of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides - there is no more authoritative rabbinic voice in the past thousand years - rules that Christians and Muslims have no heavenly reward. This is because they both, in their different ways, deny the authority of the Torah.

This disturbing idea about Christians and Muslims is not a mainstream belief in any Jewish “denomination.” But it is still right there on the page in a religious work (the Mishneh Torah) that as a whole is extremely mainstream.

So when Jews say it’s somehow inherently offensive of Christians to imagine us being denied God’s presence in the afterlife, I say: Oh yeah? Offensive? Go ask Maimonides.

Out of a Hat?
March 8, 2006 5:25 p.m.

Responding plaintively to my earlier post linking Woody Allen with the sinister Biblical entity called Amalek (associated with the belief that the history of life and of existence is driven by chance and randomness), a reader going by the handle revandre asks: “But, tell me, your interpretations of scripture...do you stay up nights coming up with these things?”

Presumably, revandre was puzzled by some not-obvious interpretation I cited, on the authority of “Biblical tradition.” I figure some clarification of that phrase may be in order.

The Hebrew Bible is the most extraordinarily puzzling document I know of. While translations invariably seek to hide this from us, papering over what’s so very strange, the Scriptural text is full of what one may only call editorial difficulties: everything from grammatical and spelling anomalies to factual contradictions, language that makes no sense, information that should be there but isn’t, information that seems totally out of context, and on and on. When read in the original Hebrew, the Torah especially is full of seeming editorial glitches. There’s at least one in almost every verse. I was a professional magazine editor for nine years and I can tell you that either the Five Books of Moses are the most ineptly edited work ever - or, it’s something else.

What?

Of course secularist academics insist that the Torah was edited together from older texts by an editor or editors with minute care over the course of years, decades, centuries...This theory, the Documentary Hypothesis, is implausible to anyone who’s been an editor. Then again, as I also know from personal experience, most professors can barely write, much less edit, competently. So don’t blame them for missing this.

The only other explanation of the weirdness of the Pentateuch - at least the only explanation seriously on offer--is that it is intentionally cryptic. That is, every seeming editorial glitch is like a hand with a pointed finger directing us to consult some outside source that provides the key to unlocking this otherwise locked text.

What’s the key? Well, Judaism offers what we call the oral tradition, which is said to have its origin, just as the Torah itself does, at Mount Sinai. There, Moses received not only the text of the Pentateuch but also an oral explanation from God. He was instructed to keep this interpretation oral, not to write it down. And so it remained, the inheritance of every generation of Jews, passed down from father to son, from teacher to student, for some 1,500 years.

That is, until the oral tradition, a.k.a. the Oral Torah, began to be lost. So it was written down, first in the Mishnah, about 200 C.E., later at more length in the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, then in the Midrashic books, and so on. In a real sense, the Oral Torah is still being passed down and written into our own time.

When I cite “Biblical tradition,” this is what I have in mind. This is why when you open a traditional printing of the Hebrew Bible, the text itself is surrounded by a swarm of classical commentators deploying the oral tradition to clarify the text’s veiled meanings.

I hope this helps. I know it won’t sit right with liberals. So go ahead, attack away. Tell me how you can explain the reason that the very first word in the Bible, “Bereishit,” is a grammatical error--meaning not “In the beginning” but “In the beginning of”--where the grammatical referent (“of what?”) is simply missing.

Then go on to the next error in the text, and the next, and the next. Then go on to Genesis 1:2 and proceed from there.

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