Why The Youthful Turn From Religion?

God and Politics
Illustration by Gluekit
Joshua Ets-Hokin / Getty Images
Russell Tate / Getty Images
Newsweek

This week's Newsweek presents an article by David Sessions on "The GOP's Secularism Problem" (Oct 15, 2012):

The latest sign came in a Pew study released last week that found that one in five American adults now claims no religion, and that 34 percent of those younger than 30 consider themselves irreligious.

What's the Republican Party got to do with this?

The GOP's own base may be partly to blame. The data echoes a landmark 2010 study, American Grace, by political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell, which linked the new chilliness toward organized religion to the rise of the religious right. Other recent studies bear out their hypothesis: in March, Pew found that a majority of the electorate, including nearly half of Republicans, is uncomfortable with the amount of religious talk in political campaigns.

Not all Republicans like religion in politics, then, and the shift is linked to the battle over homosexuality in the culture war:

The shift away from religion is especially pronounced among those younger than 30, who began abandoning churches in greater numbers at exactly the moment conservative Christians made gay marriage their signature issue.

As I implied in a couple of previous blog entries, whereas the older generation of evangelicals sees homosexuality as a moral issue, the younger generation sees it as a human rights issue. Even Christianity Today has begun to recognize the crisis, for in "The Love We Dare Not Ignore," a book review of Justin Lee's Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate (Jericho Books, 2012), Wesley Hill insists:

It's a profound mistake to neglect our gay brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.

Justin Lee is a gay evangelical, and as one might well have guessed, Wesley Hill himself has come out:

Full disclosure: I am a celibate gay Christian. Like Lee, I grew up Southern Baptist. Like him, I discovered during puberty that I was exclusively attracted to others of my own sex.

These two gay evangelical Christians differ over the issue of celibacy, but both argue that Christians need to change their attitude toward homosexuals, and note well, these two are those of the younger generation who don't turn to secularism!

The issue isn't just about homosexuality, of course, but the larger tendency on the political right to mix religion with politics in an attempt to force people to be "moral," As the Newsweek article notes concerning the increasing secularization of America, "Some evangelicals are openly worried about the trend," and it cites "the late Chuck Colson, a religious-right leader, [who] said [shortly] before his death":

"We made a big mistake in the '80s by politicizing the gospel . . . . Now people are realizing it was kind of a mistake."

I vividly recall the so-called "Moral Majority" of the early 1980s, some of whose more unrealistic members wanted the federal government to pass laws against adultery and use police to enforce such laws! Neither they nor the evangelical right got all that they wanted, but they did succeed in re-branding Evangelicalism, which had previously emphasized persuasion, into a force that promised coercion.

Iranian theocrats found that the mixing of coercive religion and politics turned people against Islam, and something similar may be happening with Christianity in the US for mixing religion and politics.

Sex Slavery Again . . .

Sheikh Awn with Concubine-Bride
Pundicity

In an article originally published by the Gatestone Institute, "Egypt's First 'Sex-Slave' Marriage" (Pundicity, July 5, 2012), Raymond Ibrahim describes an event broadcast on Egyptian television:

Last Monday, on the Egyptian TV show Al Haqiqa ("the Truth"), journalist Wael al-Ibrashi began the program by airing a video-clip of a man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, "marrying" his "slave." Before making the woman, who had a non-Egyptian accent, repeat the Koran's Surat al-Ikhlas after him, instead of saying the customary "I marry myself to you," the woman said "I enslave myself to you," and kissed him in front of an applauding audience.

Is this the new Egypt? We've seen calls by other Islamists for sex slaves, but this is the first actual instance of one, so far as I've heard. With this sort of Islamist 'marriage,' the wife's dress code differs from the usual rules for Muslim women:

[E]ven though she was wearing a hijab, her owner-husband declared her forbidden from such trappings, commanding her to be stripped of them, so as "not to break Allah's laws." She took her veil and abaya off, revealing, certainly by Muslim standards, a promiscuous red dress (all the other women present were veiled).

You see the 'husband' removing the abaya in the photo above. Apparently, this man is still too prudish, still breaking Allah's laws, for he appeared on the same television show immediately after the video had shown, and from what follows as justification also implies that the good sheikh didn't go far enough, despite his attempt to follow precedent:

Even stripping the sex-slave of her hijab, the way Awn commanded his concubine-wife, has precedent. According to Islamic jurisprudence, whereas the free (Muslim) woman is mandated to be veiled behind a hijab, sex-slaves are mandated only to be covered from the navel to the knees—with everything else exposed. During the program Awn even explained how Caliph Omar, one of the first "righteous caliphs," used to strip sex-slaves of their garments, whenever he saw them overly dressed in the marketplace.

Sheikh Awn neglected to follow the letter of Allah's law, as his own justification reveals, for he failed to strip his sex-slave down to the navel! Nevertheless, he went too far, according to another Islamist:

The other guest on the show, Dr. Abdullah al-Naggar, a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at Al Azhar, fiercely attacked Awn for reviving this practice, calling on him and his slave-wife to "repent" and stop dishonoring Islam, arguing that "there is no longer sex-slavery" -- to which Awn responded by sarcastically asking, "Who said sex-slavery is over? What -- because the UN said so?"

The report doesn't reveal Dr. al-Naggar's response, but the question is an excellent one, and I'm glad that Sheikh Awn raised it, for this is precisely the issue faced by Islam in our modern world: Which takes precedence, Islamic law or human rights' legislation? We see from the encounter between the two Muslims on this television program that particular Islamic laws embarrass some Muslims even as other Muslims attempt to revive such laws as part of the current resurgence of Islam. Those who wish to revive such embarrassing laws can accuse the embarrassed of not being sufficiently Islamic since these laws are there in the Muslim sources and cannot be denied.

Upon such an Archimedian point, the entire Muslim world can be moved . . . but which way, toward modern human rights or toward medieval Islamic laws?

UPDATE: Long-time commentator "Erdal" explains that the scene was scripted:

This is a "scripted reality" show and the man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, is an actor-pawn of the presenter, who plays out this story to frame the scene for the studio-talk and the street interviews, who all predictably slam him down. It's a morality play in sensationalistic TV format. Even the man's name, Abd al-Rauf Awn, is a pun, meaning roughly "he who serves as an assistant, and we know it."

So . . . never mind.

Friedrich Naumann Foundation's 2010 Freedom Prize: Necla Kelek

Freedom Prize for Necla Kelek

Awarded by Friedrich Naumann Foundation

Ms. Kelek flanked by Wolfgang Gerhardt und Jürgen Morlok

(Image from Friedrich Naumann Stiftung)

I've mentioned in a few blog posts that I met my wife partly through the auspices of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, for we accidentally sat next to each other on a train headed for that foundation's orientation seminar after we had been awarded doctoral research grants. We were sponsored by the Naumann for three years and attended numerous seminars on free enterprise, democracy, and human rights, among other topics of concern for the foundation. At the time, multiculturalism was a much debated concept, but what had not yet become clear, to me anyway, was the distinction between a moderate multiculturalism intrinsic to Europe and a radical multiculturalism extrinsic to it.

I'm scheduled to teach a course next semester at Ewha Womans University for the Division of International Studies on European unification and some of its difficulties, so I've been looking into these issues, which include radical multiculturalism and its denial of universal values. I was therefore interested to note that the Naumann Foundation has awarded its 2010 Freedom Prize (Freiheitspreis) to the Turkish-German feminist Necla Kelek.

In her acceptance speech, "Let's Speak about Freedom" ("Lassen Sie uns über Freiheit sprechen"), Ms. Kelek notes a problem posed for human rights by Islamism in Europe, which I translate somewhat loosely below:

Human dignity, equality between men and women, freedom of expression, conscience and religion, of assembly and freedom of association, the separation of church and state were thenceforth [i.e., after the liberal Revolution of 1848] principles of European society. Although delayed [in full acceptance], equality and freedom came to be reflected in [European] constitutions and laws, and they shaped the value orientation of civil society and constituted European identity, and constitute it even now. Political Islam -- and I mean, for example, the 45 states [actually 57] of the Organization of the Islamic Conference -- place human rights under the rule of sharia, Islam's divine law. The Islamic organizations in Germany emphasize their retention of sharia. Islam and Islamism are thus difficult to separate from each other, for a rejection of secularism and the culture of the West has not only a militant variant, but is at the core of the policy of almost all Islamic institutions.

(Die Würde des Menschen, die Gleichberechtigung von Mann und Frau, Meinungsfreiheit, Gewissens- und Religionsfreiheit, Versammlungs- und Koalitionsfreiheit, die Trennung von Staat und Religion waren fortan Prinzipien der europäischen Gesellschaft und Gleichheit und Freiheit schlugen sich mit Verzögerung in den Verfassungen und Gesetzen nieder und prägten die Wertorientierung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, machten und machen die Identität Europas bis heute aus. Der politische Islam -- und ich meine damit zum Beispiel die 45 Staaten der islamischen Konferenz -- stellen die Menschenrechte unter den Vorbehalt der Scharia, ihres göttlichen Rechts. Auch die Islamverbände in Deutschland betonen den Scharia-Vorbehalt. Es ist deshalb schwer, Islam und Islamismus voneinander zu trennen, denn die Ablehnung der Säkularität und der Kultur des Westens hat nicht nur eine militante Variante, sondern ist Kern der Politik fast aller islamischen Institutionen.)

In stating that "Islam and Islamism are . . . difficult to separate from each other, for a rejection of secularism and the culture of the West has not only a militant variant, but is at the core of the policy of almost all Islamic institutions," Ms Kelek touches on an issue that I've also broached, namely, my view that Islamism is radicalism at the core of Islam.

Unfortunately, I lack time today to go further into this speech and its issues, but for those who know German and wish to read more, there's a pdf of the original speech at the Naumann site (as noted above, and also videos). An edited German version titled "Aus Muslimen müssen freie Bürger werden" ("Muslims Must Become Free Citizens") appears in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (November 9, 2010), so if one knows no German, then one can easily copy and paste at Google Translate and get a fairly decent translation.

One can also read a complete English translation of the FAZ edited version at the blog Gates of Vienna, and there may be other sites, possibly translating the original version, but I've not yet found any.

Has Robert Park Crossed a Line?

Remember Robert Park, the Korean-American evangelical who "crossed a frozen river border [from China] into North Korea on Christmas Eve last year with a message of 'love and forgiveness' for leader Kim Jong-il"? Remember his appearance from photos before he crossed over into the North?

Consider the photograph above, borrowed along with the "love and forgiveness" quote from Donald Kirk's article "American missionary allegedly held by North Korea. A 'gift' to Pyongyang?" (The Christian Science Monitor, December 29, 2009). Although published during his captivity, it dates from before that misstep of his, specifically, December 22, 2009, in Seoul, two days before he crossed over into North Korea from China.

He looks sedate enough, though one surely ought to have had doubts about his good judgment. I know that I did at the time that I saw the photo, just after he'd crossed over, and felt my doubts confirmed by his capitulation under the North's finely tuned pressure. After his release, he hinted at sexual torture -- or possibly sensual temptation (if not consensual relations), for he never specified what his North Korean captors did -- and he is said to have attempted suicide.

Well . . . he's back, and this time with less "love and forgiveness" for Kim Jong-il.

That's him below, in a photograph published last Friday, December 3, 2010, in Yahoo to accompany an article titled "US missionary smashes portrait of N.Korea leader Kim":


I realize that Yahoo probably has a vested interest in depicting Park as a holy-rolling maniac if not a frenzied madman -- since that's news that sells well -- but given that he reportedly tried to kill himself several months ago, I do wonder if this man is stable. He does look rather frenzied:


I hope that he's not thinking of crossing the line again . . . though he may have crossed a mental line some time since last December. You can view a slideshow (slides 10-14) of his actions in Seoul last Friday and reach your own conclusions. But perhaps he's more sane than many of the rest of us:

On Friday he knelt in prayer outside the [Chinese] embassy [in Seoul] and repeatedly shouted "Save North Koreans!", while holding up a placard reading "Stop the North Korean holocaust".

After his prayer, he showed reporters pictures of North Korean refugees and cited the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

The missionary also held up portraits of Kim and a North Korean child and then smashed the framed picture of Kim against the embassy gate.

"International leaders should choose between these two. I choose this child," he said.

I can't fault him for much of that.