Yeah, but Pagans are Per Se More Tolerant
By Mona
.
Chuck Colson has nothing good to say about any religion other than his own version of Christianity, and strict Judaism. Not news. And mistakes of the silliest, most embarrassing sort are often found even at the blogs of the best and most insightful folk. But this Colson screed was not published at a blog sans editor, but rather, at Washingtonpost.com at the “On Faith” section, as mediated/edited by Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn:
It is debatable whether paganism is a religion, per say.
The “arguments” that follow track the intelligence of the illiterate error in that sentence.
Comment by matthew hogan —
July 5, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
I guess Colson never read the, um, Bible:
“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. . . . So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. . . .” Acts 17: 16, 22
Comment by Gary Farber —
July 5, 2007 @ 10:33 pm
“And mistakes of the silliest, most embarrassing sort are often found even at the blogs of the best and most insightful folk.”
I think Colson is a bigot, and utterly wrong, but it’s not clear to me that his opinions can be best described as a “mistake,” insofar as they they do consist of subjective opinions. There’s no objectively factual aspect as to what a “religion” is or is not, so far as I’m aware; it’s not a falsifiable condition. So it doesn’t seem to be an error of fact, which is what I’d commonly take a “mistake” to be. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding in some way, though.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
July 5, 2007 @ 10:40 pm
I don’t think the definition of “religion” is so vague that we can’t say Colson is wrong. I can’t find my dictionary, but I doubt that it says anything that would support Colson’s viewpoint. He’s free to come up with his own idiosyncratic definition, but it’s not one that should be taken seriously when discussing which religions deserve to have chaplains in the military.
Comment by Michael —
July 5, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
Sure. In the same way that Christianity isn’t a religion, but a broad label for dozens of major and probably hundreds of minor religions.
Brother Colson might benefit from a visit to ReligiousTolerance.org, but I’m not holding my breath. Two of the seven definitions they mention are not religions per se, so perhaps he may be considered 28% accurate, which puts him roughly in line with Bush’s level of support.
Comment by Mona —
July 5, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
The idea that paganism is not a religion is too stupid to rebut. So let me be stupid and point to two entries at the UVA religious movements homepage.
Comment by Madeline F —
July 5, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
“Human sacrifice”? ::sneeerk:: This from a guy who, every Sunday, eats the flesh and drinks the blood of his god? Seriously, it is to giggle.
Comment by Tuna —
July 5, 2007 @ 11:15 pm
Well, at least I can find “paganism” in the dictionary which is a bit more than I can say about the phrase ‘per say’.
I can understand not wanting to elect an explicit Wiccan to office, though. I prefer implicit Wiccans myself. Their grooming tends to be a bit more, er, “Westernized” per se. (Seriously, explicit Wiccans should try studying at the altar of Brazilian Wax sometime. WTF do you need all that body hair for?)
Comment by rapoli —
July 6, 2007 @ 12:15 am
“The more difficult question is whether I would vote for a pagan for public office.”
What gives this convicted felon the right to vote anyway?
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
July 6, 2007 @ 12:54 am
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding in some way, though.
Yes, you are, in a small way; the embarrassing, silly mistake is “per say” instead of “per se, not the +/- “paganism NE religion” statement.
Comment by bad Jim —
July 6, 2007 @ 2:04 am
Perhaps only a pagan would vote for a “pubic orifice”.
Comment by James —
July 6, 2007 @ 6:31 am
I might add: even “per se” would have been wrong. He would then have been saying that it is debatable whether paganism is a religion in itself. What is that supposed to mean? Is paganism clearly a religion, but only in some metaphysically extrinsic way?
Comment by cleek —
July 6, 2007 @ 7:46 am
if paganism isn’t, then atheism surely can’t be. good to know we won’t be hearing that canard, at least, from Colson.
Comment by The Modesto Kid —
July 6, 2007 @ 7:57 am
Gary — I took the sentence you quote to be Mona’s apology for poking fun at Chuck Colson using “per say”, not an apology for calling him out as a bigot.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
July 6, 2007 @ 8:20 am
From TFA:
Without self restraint, free governments cannot succeed.
Written by a supporter of the current administration. Who said irony is dead?
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
July 6, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
No James, the sentence written correctly, would be correct semantically. Per se modifies religion, not paganism, and is being used to distinguish religion “in itself” from things commonly associated with religion, like ritual and adherents.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
July 6, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
(Sorry, Farberism seems to be contagious.)
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
July 6, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
And of course, the statement is correct in terms of content as well. Paganism is not a religion, it’s a catch-all term for a variety of non-monotheistic religions.
Comment by Khadjair —
July 6, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
While semantic arguments are lovely in their own right, especially when one is making a point at the distinct lack of editing shown by a clear typo, it does sidestep the main question, which is “in a situation where people have given some measure of implicit or explicit consent to an outside body to convey “legitimacy”, is it or is it not acceptable to list one group of beliefs that share some basic premises (monotheism, the notion of an embodied savior, acknowledgement of at least some of the same scriptural elements) and not another group that similarly shares basic premises in their beliefs?”
Frankly, on this test, Colson’s argument is about as ethereal as the beliefs he attempts to place in a priviledged position. And -that- is the point. For a man who speaks on religion and power, he knows very little about the nature of either, and only some about the exercise of both.
Comment by abb1 —
July 6, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
And of course, the statement is correct in terms of content as well.
True, but this is not the intended meaning. He’s arguing that any polytheistic religion should not be recognized as religion.
May Zeus strike him down with a thunderbolt.
Comment by Iron Lungfish —
July 6, 2007 @ 5:33 pm
What gives this convicted felon the right to vote anyway?
Jeb Bush, who pardoned him a few years ago. Although as a Florida resident, he would’ve gotten the vote back with the Crist administration anyway.
Comment by James —
July 6, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
Lemuel, that’s wrong, it’s just not what “per se” means. It would be like saying that something was not “a baseball game per se”, to contrast with the thing’s being, say, some peanuts. It’s not semantically correct at all.
Comment by Gary Farber —
July 6, 2007 @ 6:29 pm
“I don’t think the definition of “religion†is so vague that we can’t say Colson is wrong. I can’t find my dictionary, but I doubt that it says anything that would support Colson’s viewpoint. He’s free to come up with his own idiosyncratic definition, but it’s not one that should be taken seriously when discussing which religions deserve to have chaplains in the military.”
I’m not entirely sure this was in response to my comment, Donald, but I do note that it doesn’t contradict anything I said; everything you said is true, but it’s also still true that an assertion of an opinion isn’t an assertion of a fact. Opinions can be wrong, right, inapplicable, and anywhere in between those three; at no time can they be errors of fact.
On the other hand, I wrote “I think Colson is a bigot, and utterly wrong,” but I’m really unclear what Donald’s “I don’t think the definition of “religion†is so vague that we can’t say Colson is wrong” is in response to. Oh, well; me being slow again; sorry.
That Colson’s opinion is bigoted and stupid doesn’t make it an error of fact, though, to be clear.
On a second reading, I theorized that Mona was referring to “per say” as the “mistake,” but since she didn’t say so in comments, I’ll now assume that that’s incorrect.
Anyway, pure trivia; I just tend to get hung up on usage and making sense of people’s word choices, usually more than I should, when they’re not writing professionally.
Hmm, Thomas and Modesto Kid suggest that my alternative theory was correct, after all. Well, best forgotten, I suppose, anyway. Never mind.
Comment by Derek Copold —
July 6, 2007 @ 6:29 pm
Colson’s sentence alone is correct. It’s as correct as saying “Monotheism is not a religion, per se.” But the rest of the column indicates that he means Wiccans, which, for all their New Age loopiness, are part of a religion and should qualify for a chaplain, provided their military presence justifies it.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
July 6, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
Gary, I was saying that Colson is making an error of fact.
But that’s my opinion.
Comment by Jeremy Lott —
July 7, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
Ugh.
1. > Mona: “Chuck Colson has nothing good to say about any religion other than his own version of Christianity and strict Judaism.”
Ever heard of Evangelicals and Catholics together? Colson was one of the Protestant signatories. Prison Fellowship, the organization that he founded, hires Christians of all stripes.
2. > Madeline F: “‘Human sacrifice’? ::sneeerk:: This from a guy who, every Sunday, eats the flesh and drinks the blood of his god? Seriously, it is to giggle.”
And if he was Catholic or Orthodox or Lutheran, it would even make something resembling sense to giggle.
Comment by Mona —
July 7, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
Jeremy Lott:
And I neither said nor implied otherwise. Conservative Catholics, Lutherans and Evangelicals, along with conservative Jews, get along fine these days — even the Klan now let’s Catholics join. Sociallu conservative Catholics belong to the Christian Coalition. That is what I meant about Colson’s “kind of Christian.”
As for Madeline’s crack about “eating the flesh and drinking the blood of god,” you are on target there. Only Roman Catholics, the the Orthodox, take it as literally being the body and blood of Christ (well, with Anglicans/Episcopalians it may be a close call).. For evangelicals it is a purely symbolic exercise.
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
July 7, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
Well, it’s not purely symbolic for all evangelicals. It is consider a sacrament in the Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Episcopalian churches. Although the Eucharist does not actually become the body and blood of Christ, it is a channel of grace and a sacrament of the church. So it is more than just symbolism.
For Baptists and Methodists, though, they do consider it only to “show the death of the Lord until his return”.
Comment by Mona —
July 7, 2007 @ 7:37 pm
Joshua Holmes: that is all fair enough, and is the transubstantiation (mostly Catholic, literally the body and blood of Christ) v. consubstantiation (not literally so) distinction that Jeremy Lott objected to in Madeline’s comment. Colson does not adhere to transubstantiation.
Comment by Glaivester —
July 7, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
I think most people today take per se to mean “as such,” or “in the sense that we usually mean,” which is probably the source of Colson’s error.
Comment by Mona —
July 7, 2007 @ 8:07 pm
Exactly. Whatever the denotative definition, connotatively it means “as such.”
Comment by Jeremy Lott —
July 8, 2007 @ 6:47 am
Mona,
> even the Klan now let’s Catholics join
Boy, that’s a revealing comparison.
Best, Jeremy
Comment by Mona —
July 8, 2007 @ 9:41 am
It isn’t a “comparison.” It’s an accurate observation. In the 60s and 70s, the hue and cry from right-wing protestants was opposition to the “ecumenical movement.”
That emphasis dissipated to near extinction with the rise of the religious right as a political force beginning in the Reagan era. Now, the enemie are, as Bill O’reilly likes to put it, “secular progressives,” usually Muslims, and anyone outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also those within it deemed to be “too liberal” to properly qualify.
The Klan example is illustrative of this phenomenon, and I did not intend to imply they are akin to Colson’s prison ministry program.
Comment by Derek Copold —
July 9, 2007 @ 11:28 am
It isn’t a “comparison.†It’s an accurate observation. In the 60s and 70s, the hue and cry from right-wing protestants was opposition to the “ecumenical movement.â€
That’s because the liberal Christian “ecumenical movement”, represented by organizations like the WCC, pretty much died from lack of interest among the laity.
Comment by Derek Copold —
July 9, 2007 @ 11:33 am
Now, the enemie are, as Bill O’reilly likes to put it, “secular progressives,†usually Muslims, and anyone outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also those within it deemed to be “too liberal†to properly qualify.
All of those groups have been criticized by the “religious right” well before Reagan. The only exception might be the Mohammedans, but that’s because they’ve only shown up on the radar relatively recently.
Comment by Mona —
July 9, 2007 @ 11:38 am
Perhaps so, but is irrelevant to my point: since the 80s right-wing Xians like Colson, the Christian Coalition & etc., are very happy to work with any other conservative Xians, regardless of denomination. The shrieking about “ecumenism” died and the new enemy is the “secular progressives.” Chuck Colson and his ilk regard conservative Xians of any denomination and Jews as acceptable now. Now, the enemy is liberal Jews and Xians, and those horrid, terribly evil “secularists” and pagans.
Jeremy Lott’s observation that Colson aligns with certain Catholics to work on prison ministry & etc., is beside the point in this new dynamic.
Comment by Mona —
July 9, 2007 @ 11:41 am
Yes, but again, besdie the point. Opposition to ecumenism has given way to happy pan-denominational attacks on those groups.
Comment by Derek Copold —
July 9, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
Opposition to ecumenism has given way to happy pan-denominational attacks on those groups.
What do you mean by “ecumenism”? Do you mean one body of Christ with several different, but equally valid, members? Or do you mean working relationships in the secular world on points of agreement, like abortion? The latter, yes, has occurred. The former, which was the big bugaboo IIRC, has not.
I know these may seem like quibbles to you, but to believers the differences are very important.