This is a genuinely interesting piece on the difference between liberal and conservative religious peoples:
A number of years ago I discovered a root cause of America’s culture war. It came to me as I debated professor Alan Dershowitz about issues of Jewish concern before a 1,000 Jews at the 92nd Street “Y” in New York City. With the exception of support for Israel, Dershowitz, a Harvard liberal, and I agreed on nothing, political or religious. Toward the end of the evening I came to understand why.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I announced, “the major difference between Alan Dershowitz and me is this: When professor Dershowitz differs with the Torah, he assumes that he is right and the Torah is wrong. When I differ with the Torah, I assume that I am wrong and the Torah is right.” Dershowitz responded that for the first time that evening he agreed with me.
That realization was an epiphany for me. I have come to realize that the great divide in values is not between those who believe in God and those who do not but between those who believe in a divine text and those who do not.
This explains in large measure the great culture war in the United States. Americans, of course, are divided not so much by religion as between right and left. Jews and Christians on the left agree with each other on just about every political and social question, and Jews and Christians on the right do the same.
So what distinguishes leftist Jews from rightist Jews and leftist Christians from rightist Christians? It essentially comes down to their belief in the Bible, not their belief in God.
Yes, this is a simplistic breakdown of differences, but there appears to be a lot to this. Any thoughts?
sal
They’ve forgotten the message, and worship the creed.
The The
ppgaz
It’s a fascinating subject, and one that I fear is out of scope in this setting. I’m reminded of the story of blind men examining an elephant. IMHO we’re all blind, and there is a herd of big-ass elephants and other big things out there that we don’t understand very well.
I don’t think it’s entirely, or even mostly, a divide along the lines that you suggest. I think it has much more to do with a relatively unexamined aspect of the larger problem set. Namely, the relationship between the human mind, and … well, everything else, but especially, mystery.
I don’t think, for example, that is any longer useful to organize thought into neat piles called things like Philosophy, Science, Religion, Neurology, Mental Health. I think that these are the mutterings of blind men examining elephants. The truth, I suspect, is that the next breakthroughs in a search for truth will be the discovery that the truth lies in a set of ideas that cut across those dividing lines and incorporate some parts of all of them in ways we do not expect.
My instincts tell me that a large portion of what passes for religion, theology and spirituality is actually the thrashing of the human ego. I find huge self-centeredness in a lot of religious material.
We’re in a funny (as in funny ha ha, and funny weird) time. We’re allowing people like the Dobsonites to monopolize the bandwidth on these topics (we being Americans, of course). A large part of the world is allowing the Bin Ladens and the Ayatollahs to do the same thing. When I listen to men like these, I hear one thing: Me, me, me. It’s all about their egos, their insistence that their belief systems are the only right ones … and then, the punchline: If you don’t agree with me, I’ll kill you (Bin Laden) or I’ll get power over you (Dobson).
To me there is nothing about God in any of that. There is everything about men with very large egos wanting to have power over other people.
So the discussion about tactics, such as “God” versus “Text”, is a small subset of a much larger set of things. A large mystery.
I can believe in the existence of God without believing that there is even one text — written by human beings — that properly represents God. And, I do. I find all the texts to be dripping with the shortcomings of the humans who wrote them. I admire their efforts, but I cannot consider find any of them to be dispository or authoritative.
The answer to your proximate question is, IMO: Oh yes, there is a lot to this. There is everything to this, and I’m really tired of listening to self-appointed authorities preaching at me about it.
russell
Yes, this is very simplistic analysis. I will offer additional overly simplistic analyses to round it out.
Rather than “believe in the Bible vs don’t believe in the Bible”, I would suggest “have a literal hermeneutic vs a non-literal hermeneutic”. These two statements are not the same.
Perhaps more relevant than hermeneutic are the following:
Emphasize judgement vs emphasize mercy.
Believe that the state should have a role in enforcing morality vs believe the state should stay the hell out of it.
Cheers –
lily
I am thinking along the same lines; it’s the difference between being, at base, a concrete operations thinker vs an abstract thinker. Also, the difference is between those who seek a conclusion and those who seek.
varda
If you have ever studied text (say Torah) you will see that reaching a determination of what is right and wrong is very difficult. Orthodox Jews have reached one set of conclusions based on centuries of investigation. Other people reach different conclusions. The orthodox and perhaps conservative people in general assume that the interpretations of their own group are correct to the exclusion of all else, but they simply say that the text is correct in justifying these conclusions.
Shera
It seems to me that some right-wing Christians tend to confuse their own desires for God’s more than mainline religious people. So many of the things they seem to be comfortable with in themselves, from weird sexual practices to corrupt business dealings to forms of intolerance for others, seem to have little relation to the teachings of Jesus (though they certainly can be found in some of the racier portions of the Bible).
Stormy70
I find the above comments very thought provoking. I attended a religous University for a time, and was exposed to the preaching of many famous Christians. Instead of students taking what they were saying as gospel, we would try to critique their message, and pick out the flaws in their teaching. I learned that alot of these preachers were charlatons, and I was getting nothing from them to feed me spiritually. I also learned to never criticize or proclaim one religion better than another one. Only God knows what is in the hearts of men, and a person’s walk with God is a very private and personal matter for some. I disagree with alot of people politically, but I will never question their religous credentials, unless they are using their religion as an excuse to kill and subjigate infidels.
Kimmitt
This is merely another restatement of the the fact that fundamentalists reject modernism (and its messiness) for medievalism. So, yeah, he’s right.
varda
If you have ever studied text (say Torah) you will see that reaching a determination of what is right and wrong is very difficult. Orthodox Jews have reached one set of conclusions based on centuries of investigation. Other people reach different conclusions. The orthodox and perhaps conservative people in general assume that the interpretations of their own group are correct to the exclusion of all else, but they simply say that the text is correct in justifying these conclusions.
ketel
Not all prominent religious figure thinks they own the truth and bows to their ego.
“There are five billion human beings, and in a certain way, I think we need five billion different religions. I believe that each individual should embark upon a spiritual path that is best suited to his or her mental disposition, natural inclination, temperament, belief, family and cultural background.”
-The Dalai Lama
Jon H
Prager may believe that the right follows the Bible to the letter, but they actually don’t.
The right tends to get hung up on the few injunctions against homosexuality, but tend to ignore the Old Testament bits that are inconvenient and New Testament bits that approach an endorsement of socialism. And then there are the condemnations of usury, which suggest that the religious right should have fought the bankruptcy bill.
The left tends to ignore the strict Levitican rules, putting the anti-gay rules in the same class as the anti-shellfish rules.
Both sides pick and choose.
Kimmitt
Right, but the liberal sects admit that they pick and choose, which seems far more useful.
Jon H
“Right, but the liberal sects admit that they pick and choose, which seems far more useful.”
Good point. This lets them ignore, or even contradict, Christ’s teachings on wealth, yet insist that their kids not be exposed to anything that suggests Noah didn’t actually ride a boat with two of everything and then some.
ppgaz
Well, yes, JonH. One of the problems with the texts is that they are every bit as “messy” as kimmit suggests that modernism is. Worse, maybe. No, worse, period.
lily has it exactly right. The text-huggers are looking for answers, or so they believe, and once they find the ones they already are disposed to like, they stop seeking answers and start seeking mortar to set the bricks into their walls of beliefs.
I have to stop now, I am getting blocked in by my own masonry metaphors.
Josh
I agree with the last few comments, but I was raised liberal Mennonite (they do exist) and found just the same picking and choosing without any of the admission of such that Kimmit talks of. The interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount was VERY strict, while the vast majority of the Old Testament and that verse about “I have come not to bring peace but a sword” were glossed over, if mentioned at all (usually with some ridiculous explanation attached).
Yehudit
” I find all the texts to be dripping with the shortcomings of the humans who wrote them. I admire their efforts, but I cannot consider find any of them to be dispository or authoritative.”
And most of us who study divine texts are well aware that our interpretations are full of shortcomings. We can still recognize them as being divine, or divinely inspired.
“The text-huggers are looking for answers, or so they believe, and once they find the ones they already are disposed to like, they stop seeking answers.”
This is a condescending simplistic reductionist misunderstanding of what Jewish text study actually consists of (I can’t speak for Christians).
ppgaz
Since I didn’t specify, why would you assume I was talking about serious Jewish text study, and cobble up a slight based on that assumption?
I was of course talking about the only text study with which I am personally familiar, namely, American, present-day retail Christian.
And in that context, I stand on what I said. It’s the context of the “great culture war” referred to in the parent article to this thread. This so-called culture war is entirely the fabrication of what I call the Dobsonites, or if you prefer, the “700 Club” style of Christianity. Or, what is represented as Christianity, but which I take to be not a little un-Christian in its behavior.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Maybe a better way of stating the division is whether people think their source of moral authority, being divine, is infallible. Even the most fanatical devotees of the US Constitution would never hold the document out as “perfect”, but tens of millions are trying to get some version of the biblical Creation story (which, in a point the Bibolators will never concede, is completely inconsistent internally) taught as “science”.
Even in Orthodox Judaism, there is a long history of struggle over who has the power to interpret (and change) the rules.
Rick
The religious left is more involved with building the State. The religious right is ostensibly concerned with building the soul.
But I’m pretty much a heathen, so I pick my fights without any dog in them.
Cordially…