The Book of Doctrines and Opinions:

There is a new book by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell called AMERICAN GRACE: How Religion Divides and Unites Us 673 pp. Simon & Schuster. $30. The book is not earth shattering but it will be standard work that needs to be footnoted and it will be the accepted starting point for discussions.

Putnam whose prior work Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community – showed the breakdown of social networks in the United States. We don’t have bowling leagues, Moose lodges, synagogue men’s clubs, or continuous community activities compared to prior decades. (Anyone dealing with the rise of the new online social networks would need to use this as a base.)

In this new book, Putnam together with Campbell argue that we went from the loss of the religion in the 1960’s, the return in the 1980’s, and then the reaction against the repressiveness in the late 1990’s by people claiming to be atheist or post-evangelical. None of this is new to readers of this blog.

Second, They show that increase in social contact with any group leads to an acceptance into one’s social network. Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews each now accept each other and assume the others are all going to heaven.

Along the way they gather much of the tidbits about religious life in the US we know from the various surveys. Jews are the most accepted of any group and that most people are both somewhat feminist and religious. (The ADL fleeced American Jewry out of 54 million last year by arguing for the virulent Antisemitism everywhere..) I have included various citations from the NYT review and the review by Peter Steinfels.

There are may other reviews out there but I have also included an interview with Putnam by Albert Mohler the conservative Baptist. It is interesting to show how a conservative Evangelical deals with social science data, especially the fact that his own positions have driven people away. This is interesting because Centrist orthodoxy does not usually allow social data to interfere with ideology.

America has experienced three seismic shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s religious observance plummeted. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s a conservative reaction produced the rise of evangelicalism and the Religious Right. Since the 1990s, however, young people, turned off by that linkage between faith and conservative politics, have abandoned organized religion entirely. The result: growing polarization.

That reaction to “the long Sixties” has been extensively analyzed. Less so the second great aftershock, the rise of the “nones” after 1990 when young people, in particular, began rejecting identification with any religion, though not necessarily with a variety of religious beliefs and practices. More and more young Americans, according to polls, came to view religion as “judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and too political,” overly focused on rules rather than spirituality.

“The Richter rating of this second aftershock is greater than that of the first aftershock and rivals that of the powerful original quake of the Sixties,” Putnam and Campbell write.
Putnam and Campbell write, “By the 2000s, how religious a person is had become more important as a political dividing line than which denomination he or she belonged to.”

Here the authors explain the observation they started the book with: America’s religious diversity hasn’t generally involved much intolerance. Indeed, believers seem willing to bend basic doctrines in the name of interfaith amity. Most Christians, even most evangelical Christians, ¬believe that non-Christians can go to heaven, notwithstanding the New Testament’s repeated assertions that Christ is the only path to the Kingdom of God.

The authors’ explanation for this bigheartedness is common-sensical: “Most Americans are intimately acquainted with people of other faiths.” Americans have, on average, at least two friends who don’t share their faith, and at least one ¬extended-family member who fits that description. And who wants to tell friends or relatives that they’re going to hell — or even believe that a friend or relative is going to hell? More broadly: getting to know an adherent of an otherwise alien faith tends to humanize the aliens.

They conducted surveys with the same large pool of people in consecutive years and tracked changes in both social milieus and attitudes. They conclude, for instance, that gaining an evangelical friend leads to a warmer assessment of evangelicals — by seven degrees on a “feeling thermometer,” to be exact — and gaining a non¬religious friend brings four degrees of added warmth toward the nonreligious.

“Most Americans today are religious feminists.”
Jews are the most broadly popular religious group in America today.

A whopping 89 percent of Americans believe that heaven is not reserved for those who share their religious faith.

Americans are reluctant to claim that they have a monopoly on truth.”

The discussion between Putnam and Mohler is useful for Orthodoxy. If we apply Putnam’s conclusions to orthodox Judaism then the new skeptics, the post-orthodox, and the fault lines in the community are all due to strong political rabbinical control in which rabbis over extending their bounds by banning Slifkin or Avi Weiss. The turn to right wing politics in both American and Israeli politics was not good for keeping people. Putnam argues that this has not been a secularization trend but a break from the conjunction of religion and politics. The young still like relgion just not the political form in which it was presented. Putnam has the data that this change away from the institutional structures will be as great as the 1960’s losses. (I have been working that assumption with that since this blog started but now I have a footnote.)

Putnam thinks that a successful religious leader is likely to arise who could combine a liberal framework with Evangelical relgion- getting the best of both worlds. Think of combining the Torah and spirituality of Orthodoxy with an open political- social base. The conservative Evangelical Mohler acknowledges that there is wisdom in sociology but then clergy need to learn what to do with the data. Evangelicals should not jump to become judgmental before they have the understanding of what is actually going on in the field.

Mohler askes: if this is true, then what does the future of mission look like? Mohler then hems and haws about what to do with this and states that he is based on the text of the bible and must separate the true message from what may have not been expedient. But he cannot go much further than this.

Putnam: Well you know it’s interesting, if you just read the raw data you have to say we’re in a period, and have been for the last twenty years, of a sharply increasing secularization mostly because the younger generation, unlike previous younger generations, have just stepped sharply away from organized religion. And many people, especially many people on the secular side think of this as finally America’s becoming a secular nation. I actually don’t think that’s quite right.

Many of these young people in their private beliefs have quite conventional religious beliefs. I think they’ve been very turned off, as I said, by the conjunction of politics and religion.. they’ve essentially said well if that’s all religion is about is just about republican and conservative politics that’s not me, I’m out of here.

And if you ask me, I bet you quite a bit that over the next ten, fifteen, twenty years, some successful religious entrepreneurs, people who want to save a lot more souls will be looking at that pool saying, I think I know the kind of religion that would be attractive to them. It would be, it might very well have a lot of the accouterments and liturgy and so on of evangelical religion.

Mohler: One of the most important acts of intellectual stewardship is to learn how to read a book. And as I often say to my students we need to read a book for all it’s worth. And that means putting into context, understanding it’s purpose, being able to judge its credibility, and then considering what kind of intellectual impact it should have on our lives and our thinking…Now we’re going to be looking at this and inevitably evangelical Christians are going to be reading it with a lens, a focus, that is intensely and unapologetically theological, that’s really important, that’s where we have to begin, and that’s where we have to end. But we need to read a work of sociology as a work of sociology. So phenomenology attempts not to make a value judgment of whether people are right or wrong, but simply to come to an accurate understanding of what they believe and why it matters.

I think the genius of this work and where evangelicals are going to find an awful lot of fodder for thought is in the second aftershock

But what Putnam and Campbell come back to demonstrate is that there was another aftershock that began in the 1990’s a response not to the sixties but to that second aftershock. These were folks who said we don’t like the way that conservative Christians would take this country. And indeed, we don’t like what we hear. And he points out some things that evangelicals really need to pay attention to. For instance, he suggests that the growth in evangelical momentum ended in the 1990’s and thus for a period that could be as long as twenty years, we have been in an era of evangelical retreat.

How do we communicate our message? How do we tell people the truth in a way that is hearable and in way that is understandable? Did you notice when he talks about the religious predictor factor of voting.

He said something that I never heard said by a scholar in this field of inquiry before. He said that they determined that when an individual had an incommensurate set of positions with religious beliefs on one hand and political convictions on the other, it was not the case that the religious convictions would drive a change in the political positions. Instead it turns out that the political positions drive a change in the theological worldview. Now for evangelical Christians that comes as an explosive bomb. This is something that needs to get our attention immediately.

A theological lens, we have to look at it with a missiological lens. We have to look at it first of all as Christians and come to understand that when we look at this kind of data it’s telling us what is, not what ought to be. We gain out understanding of what ought to be and what ought to be believed first and foremost from the bible. We’re a people of the book, and so if we’re looking for what to believe we don’t look to this data we indeed look to the word of God. We also look at it with a theological worldview that given our last conversation of the issue about whether it’s the political position that draws the theological conviction or vice versa , we’re the people who know it better be the theological and biblical conviction that drives all the rest.

Thoughts?

Continued from Part I- here.

Beck notes that in the era of cosmopolitanism – liberal tolerance that keeps religion out is not the model anymore. Religion is back, but we want it to be moderate enough not to hurt anyone. Beck notes that many in each faith have to learn to civilize themselves, abjure violence, and commit to mutual tolerance.

Beck notes how the Pope functions as an NGO and that the pope was able to criticize Bush in the name of religion for supporting war and sweatshops. Rabbi Sacks is serving some of the same function on a smaller scale.

Beck offers five models for a more civilized religion. He seems to appreciate all of them and encourages all of them.

1. The first is based on Thoreau, an acceptance of religious civil disobedience. Social action disagreements as positive because the disagreements overcome depersonalization and denationalization.

2. His second is the market model, we need to get along to make money.

3. Third is Hans Kung’s idea world ethos- we all accept of the Golden Rule and each religion should stress the Golden rule within their relgion.

4. Fourth, is Gandhi’s religious cosmopolitanism- a combination of syncretism and universal rights and universal reason over ethnicity.

5. Finally, Jurgen Habermas has argued to let each religion argue in the public sphere based on public discourse. It creates a religiously neutral state in which no religion is enfranchised.

I would add to this that Zygmunt Bauman thinks in an era of “willful ignorance” we need at least a minimum of Levinas’ concern with the other. We turn our faces from atrocities around the globe or that our products are made in sweatshops. Tzvetan Todorov thinks we need to stress a positive humanism toward others, knowing full well the fragility of it all. And interfaith encounters are on the upswing around the world as a means of moderation and civilization since much of the intolerance is religious based.

One of Beck’s new points is his observation of the rise of reflexive fundamentalism. In the new cosmopolitan age, fundamentalisms clash in violent ways different than the traditional versions. What are the characteristics of the new reflexiveness.

1. There is a rediscovery of unquestioning acceptance of relgion. The more religion the less self-reflexive questioning in the classroom. For Beck it functions like a strong brand allegiance.

2. There is a totalitarian immediacy of God. Believers offer submission to whatever variant is popular in order to gain a direct line. They replace objective world with the subjective world, and use the language of scientific rationality for religious certainty.

3. There is demonization of believers in other faiths

4. Finally, globalization allows a transnational network and operation

To Beck, I would add Arjun Appadurai’s observations that now we can be tolerate where we live and project out intolerance on a homeland that we visit regularly. His example is Hindu’s who are tolerant in the US and project intolerance onto Kashmir. Appadurai also notes our ability to have small televised flashpoints like Kashmir or Hebron that allow an unnatural focus. He also notes the breakdown of nationalism has lead to a fear of minorities, in which he observes that the “Fear of small numbers” causes a demonization.

Beck wishes us to replace truth with peace. (190-194)
1. Modernity advocated toleration of religion of those I disagree with. They are wrong but I tolerate them. For Beck, this requires a state to enforce it. It needs governmental programs.

2. Another option is to return to the double religion of masses and elite. The elite are taught a universalism- like in the older days- and the masses are left alone. Think Plato, Averroes, or Vivekananda.

3. We should return to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing parable of the ring from Nathan the Wise. We avoid all discussion of absolute truth in the name of peace. We live as if there is no true ring.

4. We should accept God as mediator. To think that God is greater than any one religion, so we cannot totalize our religion. (Rabbi Sacks has this one) Create universalist interfaith leaders.

5. Advocate grassroots co-operation as a form of religious secularism. Encourage people to separate out good works and making the world a better place from dogma. Get people to help one another on economics or climate despite the religious differences.

There will not be a return to people living secular lives in the public sphere.

EJ in his comment on the first post already perceptively noted how hard this will be for Haredim. He also noted the potential reframing for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Someplace in my online classes on the Varieties of Modern Orthodoxy, I mentioned that I would like to give a similar class on the Conservative movement. Well, someone who listened to the series invited me recently to give the talk. So I was looking at some recent Conservative religious thought and here are some thoughts, specifically relating to Orthodox matters. They are not the content of my talk – they are are observations that loop back to things discussed here. These thoughts are impressions of an outsider and maybe over generalized.

For those who want some decent reading of where things are at and going- here are some good links. Arnold Eisen’s March 2010 vision for the movement, an assortments of current pulpit rabbis giving their important sermons (lots of good stuff in there), and the 2007 short visions for the movement.

The first thing I noticed is that the phrase Covenantal approach to Judaism has been gaining traction in the last three years. Covenantal meaning that there is an ongoing relationship with God and hearing God’s word. The traction is not in the name of the movement but in the thinking about applying tradition.There is a subtle shift from “tradition and change” or any legal theory of change to a relationship model. Many of the pulpit rabbis use the phrase to describe the uniqueness of the movement. Eisen speaks of going beyond the sovereign self to the broader commitments of covenant, mizvah, and community. In the debate between emphasizing the head or the heart, the winner seems to be emphasizing people’s lived narratives.
Orthodox should not be projecting legal theory from prior eras onto contemporary Conservative rabbis. Human dignity and ongoing relationship with God is cited more than Catholic Israel.

Second, I noticed that the big tent is not spoken about anymore. Rabbi Alan Silverman, one of the short list of candidates to be the new chancellor mentioned the need to going back to being a big tent that embraced the full spectrum of positions. That is distinctly absent from out Arnie Eisen’s rhetoric. Eisen did visit Hesder Yeshivot in his preparation year but did not go that route. I have also noticed a hesitancy about Talmud as a discipline from some of the speeches. Originally, the Conservative movement was focused on peoplehood with influence of Ahad Haam, Dubnow, and others. Someone started calling the movement halakhic in the 1980’s , (I suppose to compete with Centrism’s recent use of the term)That rhetoric has now shifted more to covenantal. I am speaking about those official statements- those fellow travelers who do not affiliate are more likely to use the term- halakhic.

It is interesting that spirituality is tolerated but not part of anyone’s agenda. The bigger news is that everyone seems to now have caveats on the value of wissenschaft. Pure research in Jewish Studies is left for the university. Now, scholarship has to be balanced by concern for people’s everyday lives.

Once upon a time, Marshall Sklare was the best analysis of the Conservative movement. It was a practical and pragmatic need to care for the masses of Eastern European immigrants guiding them in their Americanization and then suburbanization. There was nothing overly ideological about the movement. Sklare pointed out the lack of theory, consistency, or roots to Europe. Mordechai Waxman in his Tradition and Change also had a pragmatic understanding of the movement. One of the critiques that Orthodoxy had about the Conservative movement was that it was non-ideological and solely a pragmatic logic. Now, Orthodoxy invests the Conservative movement with an anachronistic heavy ideological mission from the first day. It seems that the debates between Reform and Orthodoxy in the 1840’s have been projected onto the Conservative movement. (I assume everyone has read Sklare and Waxman already).

But just as Reform and Orthodoxy were at their nadirs in 1970, I assume that Conservative movement will regain their traction after retooling. But the biggest question today that keeps coming up in discussions is that the best and brightest, those most committed to Torah study, prayer, and community work are not officially affiliating with the movement. There are many independent minyanim doing well, many political action groups, many dynamic young rabbis, and places like Hadar. Yet, there is a trend not to want to affiliate with the movement. The movement has an image of still too much old time suburban synagogue of the cantor leading everything, responsive reading, no spirit, no learning and still has a post WWII feel. But there is a new active generation.

When I compare this to Centrist Orthodoxy, the moment of alienation was eclipsed by writing the past off. Back in the early 1980’s, the majority of Orthodox synagogues meant old synagogues in the Bronx, hundreds of small town synagogues in New England and the Midwest, synagogues in declining neighborhoods. Centrist Orthodoxy basically wrote them all off and focused on 10-12 major communities of professionals who send their kids to day schools and have possibly spent a year in Israel. Orthodoxy went from Shapiro’s wine to Cabernet Savignon, from clerks to physicians, and from old time Jews to the new heroic halakhic Jew. Yiddish, nostalgia, and looking backwards were jettisoned. Even synagogues where the former rabbis were important rabbis were ignored if they were in declining neighborhoods. The past was effaced and the word modern was temporarily dropped to be Centrist. No one had a problem doing this because the new generation was frum, learned, and correct in a way the old-timers were not. No one in the creators of Centrism had a problem with ignoring the old Jews in the old shuls. (They also ignored most of the West coast, allowing the vacuum to be filled by Chofetz Chayim, Chabad, and Ner Israel- but that is another story.)

To return to what I see, as an outsider, in the Conservative movement. The movement is still holding on to its old haunts and habits in Long island and North East so that the new generation has a disconnect. It still projects Chaim Potok more than contemporary novelists and artists. The movement has everything to gain by embracing all these new dynamic leaders, but they have no need to return to decay of the movement. So things appear less than the sum of the parts. As several of their leaders have noted there is no central organization for seeding and directing social planning. One thing we learned from watching the decline of the mainline churches is that any Church with valuable property like Episcopalians did better than Methodists with their suburban property. Carved Stone buildings in the city are more stable socially than modest wood buildings in the burbs. The movement has inertia.

Finally, the rise of websites like Kosher.com that delivers kosher food to anywhere, allows congregations to exist in communities without kosher butchers, bakeries, or kosher delis and pizza shops. Will that change the observance levels in way out of town communities?

For my Hebrew readers, there are several recent articles on college that came out this week in Israel. They offer an interesting parallel to the American debates. Dr. Aviad HaCohen defends the academic enterprise against those who blames the ills of society on college such as R. Avraham Wasserman of Yeshivat Ramat Gan. And there is a great interview with Rabbi Shabbtai Rapaport of the Bar-Ilan Kollel on how the college can have both religious and non-religions and that it creates a respect for the Jewish tradition teaching that Judaism is not for the Datiim alone. That he has no problem bringing Academic tools into the study hall. And the section quoted below is a little diatribe against the ignorance of our age.

The h/t goes to Rav Tzair and here is a quote from his post with the links.

.לפני כמה ימים הצצתי באתר כיפה וראיתי מאמר של ד”ר אביעד הכהן שבו הוא תוקף את:
ניסיונם של כמה רבנים, שהדי דבריהם נשמעו באחרונה ברמה, לתלות את כל חוליי החברה הדתית בלימודים האקדמיים.  לראיון שהתפרסם באתר הארץ עם הרב אברהם וסרמן, ר”מ בישיבת רמת-גן ורב קהילה בגבעתיים, על מאמר שהוא כתב בעלון “עולם קטן” כנגד יתר האקדמיזציה הפושה בציבור.

– עם או בלי קשר לידיעה הקודמת, היום התפרסם באתר YNET ראיון עם מו”ר הרב שבתי רפפורט, העומד כיום בראש המכון הגבוה לתורה (הידוע בכינויו “הכולל”) של אוניברסיטת בר-אילן. אני בטוח שלא מעט מתלמידיו יתקשו להאמין שהוא אמר את המשפט הבא:
זו אוניברסיטה שמנסה לחנך. היא לא פונה רק אל השכל, אלא גם אל הלב ואל ההכרה וזה האופי המיוחד שלה. המסר שעובר כל הזמן הוא חשיבותה של המורשת היהודית. וכל הזמן , תוך כדי, לא דוחים אף אחד. לא אומרים לאף אחד בגלל זה אתה לא יכול ללמוד כאן, אלא אומרים אנחנו אוניברסיטה שהתורה עניין מרכזי בה, בוא ותראה. בבר אילן את התפיסה הזו נושמים באויר.
(לשם ההגינות אבהיר שאני לא זוכר אי פעם שהרב שבתי התבטא כנגד לימודים בבר-אילן או בכל מוסד אקדמאי אחר)
הראיון מסתיים במשפט שהוא מאד מאד משקף את האיש:
אני חושב שהחיסרון הגדול של דורנו זו הבורות שנובעת מחוסר חשיפה לתורה. זו אינה בורות של חוסר ידיעה, אלא מתוך הכרה שזה יהיה לי קשה. אני חושב ששונאי ישראל האשימו אותנו בהרבה דברים, אבל אף פעם לא בטיפשות. עם ישראל הוא עם חכם. אני חושב שצריך לפתח את תחום התורה והאמונה והמורשת ולא רק ללמוד אותם. יש לנו מחויבות להוריש לדור הבא משהו עשיר יותר ממה שקיבלנו.

These are notes to myself on a new book that will be required in courses on the topic. If you have an interest n theory of relgion read on, if not wait for me to post a less academic post. Ulrich Beck offers a social definition of the changes of religion in the last decades. Why is it an era of post-secularization? And why does that make orthodoxies a good choice. Let me know what you think about his theories. I received a pre-publication copy and am still digesting it, so there will be more personal comments in an eventual part II. (I assume ej ordered a copy when I gave him advance notice in a comments thread.)

This is the one book to read this year about religion in the world. Ulrich Beck, an important German sociologist of globalization, cosmopolitanism, and secondary modernity has written a synthesis of the various works on post-secularism of the last decade. He integrates Habermas’ allowing religion into the public sphere, Jose Casanova’s critique and reformulation of secularization, the gang over at Immanent Frame (Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, Arjun Appadurai et al)along with the sociology of Zymunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, and Pierre Bourdeau. This book is almost a summary study of the writings on religion of the last decades and into the future. Beck is interviewed often and has many quotable quotes. (There are many more interviews out there.)

Beck’s opening point is clear. Most sociology of religion has been functional and accepting. They explain why people have beliefs without judging the value of the beliefs. Sociologists are equally open- minded toward any manifestation of religion -new age, Evangelicals, revivalism, and magic. Beck argues that we need a sociology of the effect of religion on society and to examine the cultural productivity and destructiveness of religious beliefs. The contents of religious beliefs as an “autonomous force and reality, their vision of a different humanity and their power to make whole worlds tremble, are so rarely exposed in their full ambivalence to the gaze of sociology.” Beck is a confirmed European secularist, yet he seeks to capture the power and hold that religion has today.

Beck’s conclusion about contemporary religion is that everyone has a” God of one’s own.” This God is not an omnipotent God, rather God needs mans help to be acknowledged and to make the world a better place. God himself is “impotent and helpless in an apocalyptic age” We turn to God to seek solace and dignity not safety or solutions.“We wish to chain our personal God to our own desires, traumas, hysterias, fears and hopes and at the same time, we want to keep these chains in our own hands.” (13)

Beck considers taking refuge in dogmas of faith that are incompatible with our “individualized experiences and ambivalent feelings” is a form of self-deception- it fails to acknowledge individualism. Rather one needs to recognize the empirical and historical fact that the God of one’s own correspond to the space of one’s own life and life of one’s space. Man is at the same time believer and God. Modern life is fragmented with an alterity of own’s own life. (15) One’s own life is another name for the contingent and reflexive nature of that life

Beck declares that the collapse of secularization theory is greater than fall of the Soviet Union (21). Heavily reliant of the essays that Habermas wrote in 2007 – 2008, Beck declares a post-secular age. orthodox and conservative religions are gaining ground everywhere. (24) The new religious movements are based on changing psychological schools cobbled together to form Gods of their own. Asian and archaic elements are accepted by even the most modernized people. (27)

The visit of Pope Benedict to the US or Britain was a mass media event of papacy- a cosmopolitan event. It filled no churches and does not stop decline but it becomes a major cultural event even for atheists. God in the age of technical reproduction is adapted for mass media- there is an aura given by the Pope (37-8)

Beck is one of the leading theoreticians of globalization. Habermas’ reflexive modernity (and Bauman’s liquid modernity) is defined by Beck as having three elements – risk society, individualization, and cosmopolitanism. Beck prefers the term cosmopolitanism to that of globalization since there is an erosion of clear boundaries, an involuntary confrontation with the other, and a new need for a hermeneutic of the other. (67-8) This time it is a choice of enriching mutual recognition or violence.

Cosmopolitanism is defined as a product of powerful economic, political, and mass media developments at the start of the 21st century. There is a simultaneous abolishment of older boundaries between people and the creation of new ones. Erased are the old boundaries , the new overrides the pre-existing hierarchies of class, caste, exclusion. In turn, it creates new boundaries of violence and tolerance or new sets of competing religious universalism or a dualism of good and evil that withholds dignity to outsiders. (52-54)

Individualization does not mean Bellah’s individual, and egoistic choice, nor is it Enlightenment autonomy and it is not the market’s conscious choice or individual preference.(see Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman).Individualization is imposed on the individual. There are no more specific roles in a marriage, ways to act at work, or paths in life. Until recently, men were the legal bread winner and women had to cook. Now that that is not legally mandated, Individualization is the process of deciding in a marriage of the routine of chores, roles, place to live, finances. A similar need for choice, negotiation, decision making applies to all aspects of our lives.

The third element risk society is to recognize that these changes are not better nor worse (Giddens vs Toraine), rather that we are forever seeking to minimize or deal with risk in our lives. Individualization creates risk. We live on a circus high wire act trying to balance marriage-divorce, several jobs over the course of a life, self-praise and marketing, the need to be flexible and resilient to change. We always have risk and are making decisions – evening meal, insurance, who takes out the trash, old age, medical decisions, university training, what house to buy, who to have as neighbors. There is a new immediacy to our lives and we need to make choices
Here is where religion comes in—submission to orthodoxy is part of a strategy of decreasing risk- The effect of religion in the public sphere is to help mediate risk society.

Beck’s core thesis about religion in an age of cosmopolitanism: 1] religious belief spreads in proportion to insecurity 2] religious subjective anarchy of new age, spirituality, pop psych– churches have made their peace with it 3] Religion is similar to individualization of family and social classes 4] Religion has broken away from an elite or priestly model -people write the religion in their own words 5] It is a fallacy to link declining membership and lack of commitment to any form of decline in relgion or secularization. People are interested in religion in their own terms, even without membership or commitment. (85ff)

Individualization creates a God of one’s vision outside of church- against the secure backdrop of the welfare state and modern technology. Religion is an empowering of the believing individual who with the aid of doctrine creates commonality with others that creates new borders.

Authority is based on personal commitment. But the asking for individual commitment blurs lines of church and self. (The old kehilah system or even the synagogue system of the 1950’s no one asked if you wanted to join or for any personal commitment).

Originally, we had doctrines, rules and rites and then we asked a second order question who is a Christian? Doctrines were universals, differences of individuals were not considered. Now in the age of cosmopolitanism, we ask who is a Christian? and then what are the doctrines and rites?

[For a Jewish equivalent, we used to ask what does Judaism say or require? Then ask who buys into it? Individual lack of commitment did not play a great role. Now we ask Who is Orthodox? And then determine the lines of the doctrines and practices. Commitment comes before the system. There used to be starting universals like peoplehood, yiddishkeit, or even to follow torah and mizvos, now we start with particulars.]

And now that everything is a matter of personal commitment then we deny dignity to others who don’t share our belief. If I believe then you are wrong, then there is no philosophy, institution, or universal that transcends my belief. Religions today are more exclusive specifically because they are more personal and based on commitment.

Thirty years ago, people thought that religion was certain knowledge against the egoistic individualism of what Bellah called “Sheilaism.” Now, from a post-secular perspective, all the individual commitments to Evangelicalism, Orthodox Judaism, revivalism, and spirituality are all forms of personalized commitment similar in content to Sheilaism, but good for risk management in an age of forced individualism.

To be continued in part II with tolerance and the political elements of religion.

In the meantime any thoughts?

This is a first draft. Not completely thought through so it may change in a few days. I am not wedded to any section, so I may retract whole sections. Yet, I think there is something here.

When I first started this blog, the New York Times Sunday book review had an issue dedicated to the 1930’s depression featuring books about the attitudes toward the downtrodden masses . Many of the opinions featured corresponded to the positions of the Conservative rabbis of the era and their decision for the law to respond the masses. (My thoughts on the 1930’s will show up in a more professional venue, eventually). This week’s New York Times book review has two articles about the Tea Partiers. As I read those articles, it sounded much like the rhetoric on the orthodox blogs and orthodox editorials which blame the Rabbinic administration for the high cost of yeshiva tuition. It seems like we are heading for some form of Tea Partying about rabbinic authority.

It seems that the economic difficulties are generating a sense of outage that is taken out on the current leadership, in our case day school administrators. The important line in the book review is that “the objects of their outcries …are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.” There are problems and the objects of anger are not the cause. So the question is: When will there be a Rabbinic leader who is playing a tea-partier role? Since we have had rabbis in the 1950’s hunting communists, in the 1960’s wearing Dashikis, in the 70’s advocating “do your own thing” in the 1980’s cozying up to the Moral Majority, becoming libertarians in the 1990’s, and rabbis sounding like Evangelicals today, then it is only a matter of time until we start hearing Tea Partier sermons about Rabbinic leadership.

People are angry that they cannot afford to live the frum lifestyle they want, because if one is frum then one is guaranteed the lifestyle. Someone has to be at fault. If you create a community that requires the members to be in the top 6% of US income, and makes one comfortable only if one is in the top 3% then you have a social problem. The objects of blame are a side show, but if the blogs are an indication then there is some of the blame is being placed on leadership.

From the NYT

Anatomy of an Uprising By ALAN BRINKLEY October 8, 2010
Listening to the many and diverse demands and ideas that the Tea Partiers express in their rallies, pamphlets and oratory does relatively little to explain why so many Americans are so angry… Similar outbreaks of outrage and blame have accompanied most major economic crises over the last century and more…. The Great Depression produced multiple movements that reviled the power of bankers and the concentration of wealth. In both cases, as in our own time, the movements soon became immersed in innumerable other grievances and prejudices.
The Tea Partiers are right to be angry. But the objects of their outcries …are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.

But let me recount another Sukkot story. We had as a guest an NCSY BT from the 1970’s who is RW MO, as are his kids. He now lives in an agudah neighborhood somewhere in the US where 4 bedroom houses cost 180, 000. He was complaining that the synagogues here in Teaneck don’t allow drinking. He was adamant in his declaration that: who do the rabbis think they are telling us what to do! Rabbis have no right to forbid anything! He proclaimed that the tradition to drink on Simchat Torah goes back to the Gemara since the gemara says we do birchat Kohanim at Shararit because the kohanim will be drunk by mussaf. (I did not correct him about the Gemara or tell him what the Mishnah Berurah actually says, it was too good of a diatribe). Over the course of the meal, he complained about NY orthodox, its day schools, and the cost of living in the NY community. There was a sense of the Torah being one thing and the Rabbis as administrators as another. There was also a sense of how alienated some parts of out of town Orthodoxy are from the NYC enclaves.

There is a certain distrust of the elites in America and so too in certain parts of Orthodoxy. Many people feel outside or looking up at the elites who are disconnected from their lives. And many want freedom – a core value in America. Our enclaves are conformist and dont hear their needs.

The Beat Generation and the Tea Party Lee Siegal
Still, American dissent turns on a tradition of troublemaking, suspicion of elites and feelings of powerlessness, no matter where on the political spectrum dissent takes place.
Like the Beats, the Tea Partiers are driven by that maddeningly contradictory principle, subject to countless interpretations, at the heart of all American protest movements: individual freedom. The shared DNA of American dissent might be one answer to the question of why the Tea Partiers, so extreme and even anachronistic in their opposition to any type of government, exert such an astounding appeal.
More seriously, the origin of the word “beat” has a connection to the Tea Partiers’ sense that they are being marginalized as the country is taken away from them. According to Ginsberg, to be “beat” most basically signified “exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out . . . rejected by society.”

There are people out there who fell that they are not represented in the Rabbinic elite, just like Tea Partier’s have “a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington.” This movement or moment is likely to come from the right wing side – a call to follow Torah and not Rabbinical organizations, Rabbinical administrations, and the politics generated by rabbis. (It will probably still deeply respect Gedolim, Zaddikim, and Rabbinic authority in general-just not the political manifestations of lower levels of the hierarchy.)

In the past when there was an economic gap and a blaming of the Rabbinic leadership it led to varied results. In the 1740’s, there was a critique of Rabbinic leadership and the newly wealthy and new lands of Podolyia created Hasidism. People broke from the Kehillah to form shiblach. In the 1880’s, it lead to a variety of secular solutions that fled the Rabbinate to Zionism, Socialism, Bund, Folks Party. The story of Kotso shel Yod by Yehudah Leib Gordon conveys a sense of the alienation. By 1921, it lead to young Rabbis choosing the Mizrahi movement that preached job training, education for productivity, and secular studies. The Great Depression created a generation of Conservative rabbis who spoke of social realism and helping the masses.

Now, what will come from the economic crisis of the last few years. There will certainly be the creation of Orthodox communities that allow one to make lower than the top 6% of income. Centrism may be cast as having been a rich man’s religion. But the interesting point is that the blaming of the Rabbis as an object of scorn for the economic difficulties will lead to a distancing from the seemingly aloof rabbis. (It does not matter if it is true at all, just that it is perceived that way).

Now from where will the change occur? There are three choices: (1)the places with 180K homes far from NY who are alienated from the economics and education required for Centrism. (2) the new places in the Sun belt devoid of seminaries, rabbinic elite, and direct contact with the North (3) the heart of places such as Bergenfield where the economic inequities are being felt. This corresponds to (1)Those who fundamentally disenfranchised from the community (2)Those in a new place without a strong leadership base (3) those in the center who feel the greatest dissidence and that their expectations not met. Hasidism started in a place like the second choice, Secularism, Bund, and Mizrahism in the third, but those leader found fertile ground for their ideas in the first group.

Let me know when you start hearing from some young Rabbi who thinks we need to scale back Rabbinic authority or that the Rabbinical supervised enclave is not needed. Not a liberal Orthodox Rabbi who never had a strong sense of authority, rather someone who has a tea-party rhetoric against the elites who are not concerned for the needs of the people. Look to the right not the left. Someone with Tea Party politics and a strong sense of Torah.

I am not interested in discussing American politics, rather to gather the voices of the new Jewish generation.

There is a major under-reported story that will effect Jewish religion in America.
Hebrew College in Boston just announced that their 32 million dollar debt has been renegotiated. (see Update below) see here and here. This is where they were 10 months ago..

Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann, the college president who is a YU musmach, took over in 2008 to a 32 million debt left by the previous administration. The institution did not meet the interest payments the year Lehman took over and paid operating costs on credit. They will enter 2011 with a clean slate. he was able to do this in the midst of a recession. This will give Lehmann and the Rabbinical school headed by Arthur Green an ability to emerge as the premier non-orthodox non-denominational rabbinical school. (This makes Lehmann into one of the top fundraisers out there right now – worthy of the comparison to Norman Lamm who renegotiated YU’s debt and then raised funds to make YU one of the wealthier institutions.- see update that negates this line.) Currently JTS remains with a much smaller debt, but one that it cannot get out from under.
If Lehmann can keep this up, he can design from almost scratch any type of new Jewish institution he wants. One not tied to any denomination or burdensome institutional tradition. Knowing his track record, he will succeed. He built the new Jewish HS in Boston from scratch.
The Rabbinical school under Green will definitely draw students from HUC JTS, and RRC. We will see if he makes a pitch to attract liberal YU students like himself. His interests include music- he is likely to develop the existing music program. Expect his 2011 graduation-end of year speech to give a vision of where he is taking the institution and American Jewry.

Update- It seems that Hebrew College had to give up the building to pay off the debt. 32 million was not raised, rather they gave to the banks the ill conceived building that Gordis built. There is still no clear indication if the building was repossessed or if there is a lease to stay at that location. (I should know not to trust Rabbinical school announcements about their finances, oh well. ) If they vacate, where will they go? I stil have fond memories of their former location in a run-down mansion in Brookline. So, it shows strong leadership and does not show massive fund raising. Either way- they are now free to build Jewish programs when other seminaries are strapped for cash.

This speech tic of speaking of the new generation is not going away so fast.
There is a new Avi Chai Report:
Generation of Change: How Leaders in Their Twenties and Thirties Are Reshaping American Jewish Life

Much of the results is old hat already and the write up has too much of Jack Wertheimer’s preaching rather than Steve Cohen’s sociology.
The report introduces three types of activities: protective, progressive, and expressive. They are also working with a clear divide between establishment and non-establishment. Since I filled out the survey form, from their write-up it seems that my answers were included in the statistics for the older establishment group. 🙂

Organized Jewish life in the second half of the twentieth century was focused around protective activities…
It is simply not true, as some contend, that younger Jewish leaders want nothing to do with these organizations and their protective causes. Many do, especially among those who are socioeconomically more secure and relate positively to the networking culture of the established Jewish organizations; political and religious propensities also dispose some younger leaders to identify with protective causes.

Two other agendas are simultaneously at work among young leaders. “Progressive” causes appeal to some: Jewish leaders involved with start-ups are especially apt to identify with broader social causes—environmentalism, service to the downtrodden (mainly non-Jews), and a variety of social justice causes, including what they regard as justice for the Palestinians.

The third agenda might be labeled expressive: Young Jewish leaders want to help their peers find personal meaning in being Jewish. There has been an explosion of interest in Jewish culture—including everything from foods of various Jewish communities to an interest in Jewish languages and folkways to a celebration of Jewish books, music, film, and other artistic productions. A small but noteworthy minority is drawn to experimental forms of Jewish religious expression, usually found outside of conventional synagogues. And more broadly, younger Jewish leaders have created a wide range of opportunities for their peers (and others) to study Torah, explore spiritual questions, and probe what being Jewish means to them.

The emphasis leaders place on protective, progressive, and expressive types of Jewish activities sets groups apart from one another. Put differently, the mix of these three elements shapes the particular culture of organizations for young Jewish adults, whether they are sponsored by establishment organizations or non-establishment ones.

Nonestablishment Programs: Over the past ten to 15 years, a large network of new programs and institutions has been
created by Jews in their 20’s and 30’s. These so-called start-ups tend to be characterized by the following:
1. They do not hesitate to question the status quo.
2. They seem highly attuned to their clients—younger Jews.
3. They experiment.
4. They network with one another and arrive at
innovative solutions.
5. They have the agility to associate seemingly unrelated
fields and causes.

From Christian Century (this is a very non-Catholic list)
Essential theology books of the past 25 years

We posed this question to eight theologians: Suppose someone who hasn’t been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years now wants to read the most important books written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?

Here are their responses:—Click on the name and you will get their 5 recommendations with explanation

Stanley Hauerwas

Amos Yong

Emilie M. Townes

Lawrence S. Cunningham

Sarah Coakley

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

George Hunsinger

Willie James Jennings

Here is an excerpt from a an Pentecostal philosopher who does philosophy from within his commitment to speaking in tongues. What would happen if a Breslover were to write philosophy of science based on his faith commitment to outpouring of the heart? Or an NCSY’er would grow up to write a theology based on circle time, ebbings, and ruah? Or what about a philosophy of science written by a practitioner of Abulafia techniques? I am trying to understand, and to evaluate. What would be good about this? I do think there are many good aspects. And what would be problematic verging on the ridiculous? If the starting point of a lamdan was halakhah, then what would be the starting point of a modern Hasid, or a kiruv professional? Can it create something rigorous or only silly? Read the short interview and then try the thought experiment of doing the same thing to a reader of Izbitz acting in accord with God’s will.

Q&A with Jamie Smith on Pentecostalism
September 17, 2010

Calvin professor of philosophy James K.A. Smith has recently written two books focused on the subject of Pentecostalism: Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Theology and Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences.

What would you say is the pentecostal contribution to Christian philosophy?

Well, so far, not much! But I hope this is a beginning. The whole project was actually inspired by Alvin Plantinga’s important article, “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” which I read while I was in college. In that article—which was his inaugural address at Notre Dame—Plantinga argued that Christian philosophers should have the courage to begin philosophizing from their specific convictions as Christians. I have simply extended Al’s argument and made it more specific: What would it look like for Pentecostal and charismatic philosophers to begin with some of the basic convictions of their unique worldview? Thinking in Tongues tries to answer that question.

I argue that there are unique elements of a pentecostal worldview: an openness to God’s “surprise;” a kind of “enchanted” theology of creation which sees the Spirit continually active in the world; an affirmation of embodiment as seen in the emphasis on physical healing as well as the “physical” shape of charismatic worship; a special place for story, narrative, and testimony in how we know; and a unique emphasis on eschatology and mission. So following Plantinga’s lead, I argue that these elements of a pentecostal worldview would affect philosophical thinking about knowledge (epistemology) and the nature of reality (ontology). So the goal is to explore how a pentecostal starting point makes a difference for philosophical thinking. That’s why, rather playfully, I talk about “thinking in tongues!”

You’ve also just co-edited a related book: Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences. Can you briefly describe this book?

For some people, a book on Pentecostalism and science might sound like an oxymoron! But that’s precisely why we launched this project. Both science and Pentecostalism are “globalizing” forces, and while one might expect there to be an inherent tension between the two, we try to show otherwise.
Science and the Spirit grew out of a grant we received from the Templeton Foundation—so the book is the fruit of a multi-year research initiative that brought together a team of scientists, theologians, and philosophers from Pentecostal and charismatic traditions to consider some of the big questions at the intersection of Pentecostalism and science. On the one hand, we wanted to show how and why Pentecostals should engage and pursue science; on the other hand, we also wanted to show that sometimes scientists try to smuggle in assumptions about science that would seem to preclude certain Pentecostal beliefs, such as belief in divine healing or the realities of demons. So the book’s not just about getting Pentecostals to submit to the unquestioned authority of science. We’re also encouraging Pentecostals to think critically about some of the assumptions in the sciences. It’s a two-way street.

source here
His blog

Phillippa Foot died yesterday. Once upon a time, Rabbi Walter Wurzburger force fed me platters of Phillippa Foot’s philosophic writings on ethics. For Wurzbuger, the writings of Foot were basic for formulating a contemporary philosophy of halakhah. Unlike the Kantians and Utilitarians, Foot stressed the lived elements of human life and purposeful aspects of ethics. Similar to Prof. Isadore Twersky’s presentation of the law in Maimonides, halakhah has a telos. Foot also taught the non-reducibility of ethic to a single factor. Like halakhah, there are always multiple variables to be considered. Foot rejected subjectivism, helping Wurzburger formulate an Orthodox rejection of Buber. Finally, Foot turned to the importance of Virtue Ethics and Wurzburger followed suit. Even though no one in the US cares about a philosophy of halakhah anymore, it is still nice to remember the attempts. Now I must get back to Hilary Putnam.

Obituary from The Guardian – full text here

The moral philosopher Philippa Foot, who has died aged 90, started a new trend in ethics. She challenged, in two seminal papers given in the late 1950s, the prevailing Oxbridge orthodoxy of AJ Ayer and Richard Hare; and, for the next few decades, passionate debate over her naturalism, as against Hare’s prescriptivism, occupied most moral philosophers in Britain and America. She was also one of the pioneers of virtue ethics, a key development in philosophy from the 1970s onwards.
From her essay Moral Beliefs (1958) to the collection Moral Dilemmas (2002), and throughout her academic life at Oxford and universities in North America, she was always passionate that “the grounding of a moral argument is ultimately in facts about human life” and in what it is rational for humans to want.
Yet her comparison, in a well-known paper (Morality As a System of Hypothetical Imperatives, 1972) between Immanuel Kant’s view of moral law as “inescapable” in some special way, and the demands of etiquette, was intended to argue that people who follow either morality or etiquette without questioning them “are relying on an illusion, as if trying to give the moral ‘ought’ a magic force”. Later, she rejected this position, and was irritated to be still credited with it. Moral constraints, she came to believe, were indispensably a rational part of flourishing as a human being – in this, they did not resemble etiquette.
Foot pooh-poohed what she called the “rigoristic, prissy, moralistic tone” so frequent in moral philosophy, and the way it had lost touch with real life. “I do not know what could be meant by saying that it was someone’s duty to do something,” she said, “unless there was an attempt to show why it mattered if this sort of thing was not done.”
But she opposed such theories not just because they were too wide, but because they were too narrow. In the 1950s she had begun, along with Anscombe, to shift the focus away from what makes an isolated action good or bad, to the Aristotelian concentration on what makes a person good or bad in the long-term. Morality, she argued, is about how to live – not so much a series of logically consistent, well-calculated decisions as a lifetime endeavour to become the sort of person who habitually and happily does virtuous things. And “virtuous”, for Foot, meant well-rounded and human. She condemned as moral faults “the kind of timidity, conventionality and wilful self-abnegation that may spoil no one’s life but one’s own”, advocating “hope and a readiness to accept good things”.
Foot continued, and modified, her onslaught on subjectivism in ethics throughout her life. She also attacked utilitarian theories, which see goodness as a matter of actions’ consequences, and tend to equate the badness of failing to prevent an evil outcome with perpetrating it.

This is taken from a longer article addressed to college faculty about how to adjust to the new generation of students. It is from a list serve for faculty development. In response, my colleagues are busy creating online dimensions to courses and FB pages to their courses. They are redesigning for this generation. My question is what if we think about the same issues for teaching Torah? What sort of synagogue would you design that fits this student? What sort of rabbi? (I am assuming that modern Orthodoxy followed the lost generation and Centrism followed the gen x.- not the topic for this post.) What synagogue will keep them busy and plugged in but acknowledge that they have no interest in books, introspection, or rebellion? They are not deep minds or deep psychologically. They dont like authority but like emotional parental units and respect expert knowledge. What does the rabbi need to teach? What do you offer those who are action centered? (shechitah lessons?) Would rabbis need to have a techie knowledge of some aspect of Judaism? They all expect to not have their self-esteem broken, so I guess no stories of older Lithuanian rabbis calling people horses when a wrong answer is given. They respect rules. So do we give them a Judaism of rules and leave them free the rest of the time OR do we engage their materialism? Their boomer parents thought they valued introspection, intellect and rebellion but instead settled into materialism and emotionalism. What halakhah would you offer this group? Which Jewish thinkers would you teach?

This generation comprises children born between 1982 (some say 1980) and 1995 to the late baby boomers. These parents kept their children’s lives busily structured with sports, music lessons, club meetings, youth group activities, and part-time jobs. In their spare time, young millennials spent many hours on the computer, often the Internet, interacting with peers, doing school work, playing games, shopping, and otherwise entertaining themselves…They received a weaker K-12 education than previous generations.

Of course, blanket statements about an entire generation always apply to only a portion of its members.