Bohemian South

The Washington Post writes in an editorial:

IMAGINE YOU ARE in the stands at a high school football game, and the cheerleaders hoist a paper banner painted with the Bible verse “I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.” The football team then runs through the sign to start play. With whom would you think that religious message was associated? The school-sponsored cheerleading squad holding the sign and lined up around it, obviously. The school-sponsored football team, probably. The school administrators who allow the banner prime space in a pregame ritual, maybe. Surely not just the individual cheerleaders who painted the sign. Yet that is what the parents of 15 Kountze High School cheerleaders in Kountze, Tex., claim you should think.

No matter what your religious views, or lack of them, you should feel uncomfortable about this kind of display at a high school. Most obviously, if you’re not an evangelical Christian, you will feel offended, But, even if you are, you should recognize that you would not want people with other views taking similar stands in this context. Separation of church and state protects non-believers and alternative believers, but it also protects the religious from beliefs that might not square with their own. 

[Nathan] De Lee [an astronomer at Vanderbilt University] is one of a growing number of Unitarian Universalists, a group of people who believe in organized religion but are skeptical about doctrine. The denomination grew nationally by 15.8% from 2000 to 2010, according to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Although they remain small in total numbers with about 211,000 adherents nationwide, Unitarians believe their open-minded faith has a bright future as an alternative to more exclusive brands of religion. They might be right, said Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. Bass, who has studied thriving progressive churches, said Unitarian Universalists can fill a niche in conservative religious cultures such as the Bible Belt. “I think there is a role for these kinds of more open and liberal spiritual groups,” Bass said. “They provide a nice counter-cultural community.”

The Boston Globe, writing in an editorial about Mitt Romney’s Tuesday night statement on the events in Egypt and Libya:

Romney was wrong on the facts. The alleged expression of sympathy was issued not by President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but by the US embassy in Cairo, in response to protests in Egypt. It came before protesters had breached the walls of the Cairo embassy, and before any reports of deaths in Libya. Romney was wrong on substance. The statement from the Cairo embassy said the United States condemns “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” In the midst of massing protests, this statement was a wise act of diplomacy. It sought to correct the notion that the US government was somehow responsible for the YouTube video. It aimed to quell the protests and prevent bloodshed. Romney was wrong as a matter of policy. As the candidate explained at a press conference Wednesday morning, he lashed out at the Cairo statement because it amounted to “an apology for American values.” Romney has relentlessly portrayed Obama’s efforts to present American actions in terms likely to lessen tensions in the Middle East and elsewhere as “apologies,” without any real evidence. He still has none. The Cairo statement was, in fact, an affirmation of an American value — the freedom of religion.

The contrast between the Catholicism of Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Ryan perfectly represents the ongoing debate about the Catholic vote going back to the Reagan years. Indeed, the choice between these two types of Catholic politicians could not be any more plain. Biden is a “social justice” Catholic who claims to know how to connect with blue-collar Democratic Catholics, like those in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. … Paul Ryan, it appears, never had a “progressive” phase in the development of either his politics or his Catholic faith.

I have some problems with the way this story summarizes the debate. But the statements I’ve highlighted do pose the conflict, and I think the social justice Catholics have a much sounder theological basis for their beliefs.