The War for Reality: Christian Nationalism, Abstinence Education and the “Culture War”

In the rational world, there is public truth and personal truth. Personal truth can be derived by following the strict teachings of a religion, or it can be found through a lifetime of introspection and moral inquiry. Everyone has a personal truth that works for that individual and that individual alone. Respect for other people’s personal truth is one of the most important things we can achieve as human beings. Public truth — the realm of facts, statistics, science, empiricism and research — ensures that we all have space to develop our personal truths.

That’s why when someone’s personal truth begins to codify itself and overrun public truth, we have a problem.

My good friend Mark recently sent me a New York Times op-ed piece by Amanda Robb that references all the research that shows that abstinence-only education actually causes more teenage pregnancy, more unprotected sex and more sexually transmitted diseases. The problem with citing this research is that it doesn’t really matter to the Christian nationalists that support publicly funded abstinence education.

Why? Because they don’t care about facts — the very mainstay of public truth. Instead, they conflate public truth with personal truth. A very illustrative example of this is laid out in Michelle Goldberg’s chilling investigative report about the rise of Christian nationalism in America, Kingdom Coming.

On pages 135-136, she cites a 2003 speech by abstinence “educator” Pam Stenzel at the Reclaiming America for Christ conference. Here is the sub-chapter about Stenzel in its entirety:

At Reclaiming America for Christ, Stenzel told her audience about a conversation she’d had with a skeptical businessman on an airplane. The man had asked about abstinence education’s success rate — a question she regarded as risible.

“What he’s asking,” she said, “is does it work. You know what? Doesn’t matter. Cause guess what. My job is not to keep teenagers from having sex. The public schools’ job is not to keep teens from having sex!”

Then her voice rose and turned angry as she shouted, “Our job should be to tell kids the truth!”

People of God,” she cried, “can I beg you to commit yourself to truth, not what works! To truth! I don’t care if it works, because at the end of the day, I’m not answering to you, I’m answering to God!”

Later on in the same talk, she explained further why what “works” isn’t what’s important — and gave some insight into what she means by “truth.”

“Let me tell you something, people of God, that is radical, and I can only say it here,” she said. “AIDS is not the enemy. HPV and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy. I will not teach my child that they can sin safely.”

The crowd applauded.

Of course, Stenzel isn’t just teaching her child.

Stenzel’s is the most arrogant, small-minded definition of truth. It takes personal truth and projects it onto the whole of civilization. In this speech, Pat Stenzel is quite literally saying, “it doesn’t matter what anyone else believes. It doesn’t matter what science says. It doesn’t matter that children will suffer as a direct result of the education we give them. All that matters is what we elect — we few who know the special truth — believe. We have no evidence to back up our claims about human sexual mores. All we have is personal truth, and our personal truth is more important than public truth, or anyone else’s personal truth.”

I support Pam Stenzel’s right to her personal truth. The Constitution protects it, because personal truth is a fundamental component of the pursuit of happiness. I would die to protect Pam Stenzel’s right to her personal truth.

But Pam Stenzel and her ilk are doing more than trying to legislate morality with abstinence education. They are trying to change the very definition of truth. They are telling America that facts don’t matter — that public truth, science, research and empiricism are irrelevant in the face of the special and unverifiable tenets of their brand of Christianity.

This isn’t a culture war, it’s a war for the very nature of reality.

Today’s Intelligent Design: “Sneaky Deep” Conversion Strategy of the Christian Right

There’s something you don’t know about me. When I was in high school, I was taught…intelligent design. But this wasn’t anything like the pseudo-scientific flim flam being passed off today in courts and school districts around the country. It was a decent, honest attempt to reconcile science with belief in God.

Mrs. DuPen, our beloved biology teacher at Holy Names, had a banner posted above the white board of our freshman biology classroom. It read, “The likelihood that the universe was created by accident is equal to the likelihood that the Oxford English Dictionary was created by an explosion in a print shop.”

We weren’t taught that evolution contradicted the idea of God as creator. Rather, we were encouraged to investigate empirical matters scientifically while allowing ourselves private beliefs where matters of faith were concerned. It was a wonderful way to teach science while respecting religion, and I do understand evolution very well. My own personal reconciliation of evolution and faith–one that I shared with many of my classmates–was that God set evolution in motion because God was wise and knew that this was the best way to create vibrant, healthy, thriving species.

If we are to allow for the possibility of God in American science classrooms, I would suggest Mrs. DuPen’s method as the way to do it. But the current intelligent design movement isn’t about allowing for the possibility of God. It’s about converting a generation of American children to Christianity.

If Evangelical Christians were really only concerned with the idea of intelligent design, then they would adhere to the 1987 Supreme Court decision that creationism could not be taught alongside evolution because it disobeyed the Constitution by promoting a specific faith in public schools. They would simply fight for the allowance of the possibility of God and leave the matters of specific faith or non-belief up to individual children and their families.

Instead, they are continually working against their own political interests by trying to advance a “sneaky deep” message about the rightness of only one religion: theirs. This is all part of the larger goal of converting the entire world to their particular way of believing.

I’ve been thinking and reading a great deal about doctrinal fundamentalism–both religious and social–lately. I have come to the conclusion that it is one of the biggest threats to the future of humanity. Any ideology which leaves no room for doubt, variation or individual conscience cannot be allowed to impose itself on a democratic system of governance. Such an eventuality would be an assault upon human dignity and liberty.

Why Militant Atheism Bothers Me

I am a science-minded person. I am less skeptical of assertions that are backed up by good scientific research. I see the phrase “incontrovertible evidence” as an oxymoron. Science never proves anything. It only comes up with good theories backed by mutually supporting evidence. This has led our society to such wonderful innovations as antidepressants, PHP and synthetic fabrics.

And yet, despite the irrationality of it, I believe in a loving God. Call me simple-minded. Call me naïve. I just can’t shake the personal feeling that we are not alone in the universe.

I object to militant atheists like Richard Dawkins, because they lump all people of faith together. If I hold beliefs that can’t be backed up by reason — no matter how reasonably I integrate those beliefs into my choices — Dawkins and his ilk would paint me as a dupe, or a charlatan.
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Republican Presidential Debate

The Republicans held their second Presidential Debate last night. The party is in completely disarray and the base has pretty much been looking for a sign from God. Well, they actually got one last night.

Yes, God spoke last night. And his words were clear. CRASH! BAM! Lightning struck several times throughout the debate. The most notable instance was when Guiliani, the only pro-choice candidate, was asked about his abortion stance from a Catholic Bishop. Lightning struck and Guiliani’s mike actually went out mid-sentence.

The rest of the debate was pretty standard stuff from the Republican candidates. Here’s a summary below:

Why Believing in God Works For Me

I am not an atheist. Nor am I an agnostic. I’m pretty much convinced by my own anecdotal evidence that there is a God and that he cares about me.

That said, I’m also well aware that my belief in God is completely illogical. There is no concrete evidence that God exists. It cannot be proven to anyone else. I wouldn’t even attempt to try.

I’m comfortable with this inherent contradiction. That’s because I’m not a terribly religious person. I don’t think believing in God a matter of salvation or damnation. I think we’re ultimately forgiven no matter what we do because God — being omnipotent — has the power to enlighten us posthumously, purify us completely, and bring us back to him.

I see scripture as inherently flawed and for the most part completely unreliable. I think that religious tenets and prescriptions for behavior are for the most part dreamed up by power-tripping humans with too much confidence in the universal correctness of their own perspectives. If I engage in religious behavior, it’s because it works for me and not because anyone told me to. And when it comes to the will of God, I think he’d rather I try to do right by my fellow living creatures, past, present and future.

So how do I know what the right thing is? I trust my gut. I acknowledge that I am imperfect, and therefore my gut is an imperfect instrument for discerning right from wrong. But it’s the best tool at my disposal, so I listen to it, try to think logically, learn from experience and then make the best decision that I possibly can.

What works for me may not work for others. I understand that some people need rigid strictures to live their lives to the fullest. Some people thrive in structured environments. Others need more freedom and flexibility. All I ask is that they don’t try to impose their beliefs on me, and I won’t try to impose my beliefs on them.

I guess the bottom line is that life is illogical. The world is a very messy place and, for me, it takes a messy approach to live effectively in it. God seems to fit nicely into that messiness. Life wouldn’t feel right without him, so there he stays.

Cho Seung-Hui: I Was There Once, Too

Andrew Sullivan posted today about the loner in all of us. He links to two posts that reminded me so very much of myself.

Like Cho Seung-Hui, Ross Douthat was in the midst of a bleak depression in November of 2001:

In November 2001, I was rattled, like a lot of people, by the news of the world. But I was also hit by what now seems like a laughably minor personal “tragedy,” namely a young woman broke my heart in the massive soul-crushing way that only an adolescent can really appreciate.

“I was depressed. Dangerously depressed, I’m afraid,” he wrote. He spoke of long hours in his basement apartment, reading and listening to “Photobooth” on endless repeat.

Apparently, some caring friends alerted his mother to his predicament. She took off from work immediately and showed up at his apartment, snapping him out of his daze:

On the rare occasions when I reflect on those really rough weeks I think about how lucky I was to have friends who were attuned to my pitiful mood, and to have a crazy, wonderful mother who’d go to tremendous lengths for me. So when I hear that Cho Seung Hui was “a loner,” my heart hurts.

Blogger Rod Dreher read Douthat’s post and responded:

Reihan’s entry put me in mind of the spring of 1986, when I was in my second semester as a college freshman. I was living alone in a dorm room, and seriously depressed. I was still pining away over unrequited high school love, and felt incredibly and crushingly alone in the world. I was in such a state that I couldn’t concentrate on my classes, and would walk to an off-campus bar most nights, and drink until I couldn’t stand any more, then stumble home and listen to the Velvet Underground until I fell asleep.

By the grace of God, I got pulled out of that hole by the advent of a marvelous life-loving lunatic from New Orleans named Joe Zahavi, who became my roommate and my friend. And I got out of it by starting down the road to religious faith after discovering Kierkegaard, and Thomas Merton.

But Reihan’s post got me to thinking about 19 year old me, lying there in the darkness and solitude of that dorm room, filled with self-hate, listening to sad music, unreachable. My anger and depression was never directed against other people, only myself, and I doubt I ever seriously thought about suicide. But I was closer to that trap than I ever have been, and it’s a little frightening to think back at how things might have turned out for me had I continued drifting down that dark river.

After reading those two posts, I felt that I would be derelict in my duty as a blogger if I did not respond with my own story. Because I’ve been close to the edge, too.

Like Cho Seung-Hui, I was a loner. Throughout much of my childhood, I was academically obsessive, ostentatiously unique and extremely awkward. Needless to say, I was picked on brutally from preschool to high school. My parents divorce certainly didn’t make my profound sense of isolation any more tolerable.

When I left for college in the fall of 2001, I was reeling from the recent death of my beloved grandmother. Then, nine days after I arrived on campus, the terrorist attacks on the United States undermined my already tenuous sense of security. This set the stage for my first experience with romantic rejection.

In late March of 2002, I drove up Route 39 into the San Gabriel mountains north of Azusa, CA. I pulled over on a turn-off and aimed the wheel of my 1995 Toyota Camry at a precipice overlooking the dam at the south end of the Morris Reservoir. I sat with the motor running, my foot on the gas pedal. I was fairly certain that the fall would kill me, and I was fairly certain that I wanted to die.

I imagined pressing my foot down. I imagined my car’s powerful engine pushing the little sedan over the edge. And then I imagined how I would feel after I had passed the point of no return. I realized that the second I had no choice in the matter, I would want to live.

So I turned the car off and cried for a long time. Then I started the engine and drove back to Claremont. I crawled into bed and vowed that I would try to make things better.

I’m not going to lie and say that it was an overnight transformation. It took me a long time and a lot of work to get back from the edge of that cliff. I had relapses. I had a couple more run-ins with the guy who broke my heart. On one particularly low night, I flew into a rage over a laughably minor slight and stabbed the broken shards of a mix CD he had made me into the cork board outside his door. It was a real uphill battle.

But very slowly, I reached out and made friends. I fell in love with Andy. I wrote a lot of stupid sad songs. Five years later, I look back on it all and I thank God that something He put inside my heart made me turn off that engine.

I remember hearing somewhere that “depression is rage turned inward.” That statement makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes I feel angry one moment, only to start beating myself up the next. Even after all the positive changes in my life, it’s a relatively easy trap to fall into.

Like Douthat, when I heard that Cho was a “loner,” my heart broke a little. Obviously, nothing can excuse what he did two days ago. But I know all too well the feelings of rage and self-loathing that plagued him. With a little more testosterone and a lot less compassion for other people, I might have wound up very much like him.

My prayers are with the victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy and their families and friends. I am also praying for Cho’s family. And my prayers are with Cho. God has a capacity to forgive that transcends anything we mere mortals can hope to achieve. Wherever he is, I hope he has received that forgiveness.

And if you found this post because your long, lonely road has led you to Google Cho’s name some depressing night, my prayers are with you, too. I promise you, it’s never too late to get help and turn your life around.

On Empathy, Saddam and Death

My friend Deborah commented on my last post about Saddam Hussein’s execution that, “sympathizing with saddam even for humane reasons is doing a major disservice to the memory of his victims.”

But I’d like to point out that there’s a difference between sympathy and empathy. I feel no sympathy for Saddam. If I had been able to stop his execution, I’m not sure I would have. But I do understand and feel the weight of what has been done by executing him. Evil or not, deserving or not, a violent death is always a sad thing. When it comes at the hands of the state, it is especially disturbing. Just as the deaths of Saddam’s victims-slaughtered at the hands of the state-is cruel and disturbing.

But being able to empathize with a condemned, albeit evil man does not render me incapable of empathy for his victims or their families. They all deserve our sadness and our prayers. In death and in the eyes of God, nobody is above any other no matter what they have done.

Call me half-witted for saying this, but I truly do believe that God will sort it out. Somewhere right now, Saddam could be honestly and humbly seeking forgiveness from those he slaughtered. Somewhere right now, the people into whose lives he brought enormous suffering could be giving him that forgiveness. I pray that it’s true for the sake of this messed-up, crazy world.

I recognize that this view may not be popular, and it’s not one I expect anyone to share. But I do hope you will at least respect it and give it some consideration.

What Widgets Does God Have on His Dashboard?

Just a few moments ago, I was looking at the sunlit earth widget on my dashboard and I was momentarily blown away by the thought of so many people in light and in darkness all around the world.

It made me wonder if God has an Apple–as He surely must–then what widgets are on His omniscient dashboard?