Have You Heard of Linusian Christianity? I Hadn't Either Until I Made it Up

What is this thing called Linusian Christianity? Its founder is the character of Linus from Charlie Brown’s Christmas, and its foundational text is the famous soliloquy. The Peanuts gang has become exasperated with its attempts to produce a more elaborate version of the Christmas story. Charlie Brown has become the scapegoat for the failures of the production, even though the problem is the ADHD distractions of the gang. Desperately, he calls out “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!” and Linus responds as if providing revelation:

And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings o great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men.

What is important in the CBC story here is the minimalism of the presentation. Linus asks for a spotlight, and gets one so subtle that it barely distinguishes him from the surroundings. The theme is apparent to adults and children alike: Christmas is about removing oneself from the appearances of piety by keeping it real with childlike humility. Further reflection sees this expressed ironically in the Book of Luke story itself. The shepherds are surrounded by the appearance of glory and worldly power only to be presented with an example of humility and helplessness. Unfortunately, it seems many still miss that irony. We look to the heavens when we should have been just looking around us. Linus’ spotlight is not transcendent and overpowering.

What is also important about the text itself is its theological minimalism. It says that a savior is born; it says little else. It doesn’t involve arguments for the correspondences among other biblical texts in establishing a cosmology; it doesn’t suggest specific moral claims, supported by ecclesiastical tradition and bible study; it doesn’t recommend a foundation for an elaborate system of religion. The point of the the text is the same as that of the CBC story: to be religious is to look for peace and humility among chaos and cheeseball glorification.

More radically expressed, it requires us to set ourselves apart from religion. Indeed, evangelicals have been saying for years that Christians need to avoid religion and focus on the savior. What evangelicalism seems to do, however, is build up the Bible as a regal edifice. On the contrary, even the bible should be seen as a humble, relatively weak attempt by people to understand the religious spirit. Linus gives one of the stories from the bible, without referencing the bible. To do more would be distracting from the beauty he is describing.

Philosopher William James identifies the essence of the religious impulse in a simply need for deliverance. After providing anecdotes showing how “man’s original optimism and self-satisfaction get leveled with the dust”, he identifies “the real core of the religious problem: Help! help! No prophet can claim to bring a final message unless he says things that will have a sound of reality in the ears of victims such as these.” Charlie Brown has been ridiculed and forsaken by friends, and even by his dog. The call for help is answered simply: you must remove yourself from the chaos of exaggerated expectations about religious truth. The savior is found in a community working cooperatively in creating beauty. The frantic expectations for perfection are replaced by the frenetic hands that work a failing tree into a beautiful display.

I offer just three tenets of the Linusian faith: 1) The Christ child saves us. This is ironic, because we expect to be saved by something more dramatic. 2) This Christ child wants peace and good will for humanity, and to see this we must be willing to remove ourselves from the ordinary world of unreflective religious displays. 3) The Christ child creates peace and good will through the community itself.

--Tadd Ruetenik

Xenophobia's Paradox

"Immigration without assimilation is invasion."

This phrase, spoken frequently by presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, has a pleasant, familiar sound. It has the same form as the more famous American slogan "taxation without representation is tyranny"--that is, x - y = z, where x is "something kind of bad," y is "something acceptable" and z is "something really scary bad."

Jindal is privileged to be able to say such things with relative impunity. One might call him an Indian-American except that he does not like such hyphenated descriptions. His assimilation says everyone is just to be described as an American, or, if you will, a Melting-Pot American.

I heard Governor Jindal speak at what looked like a cabin near Iowa City earlier this month. The small setting reflects ominously for him, but fortuitously for political geeks like me, who get access to famous politicians without having to brandish press credentials. I asked Jindal about Christianity, the death penalty and military strength, trying to go all Pope-Francis on him, since he's a Catholic Republican. I was unable to rattle him, though. He was gracious and well-reasoned, and responded to my kind challenge with kind dignity. His answer, at least about military spending, is that the world is safer with a strong American military, because America has proven itself a gracious world player, by not, for example, taking territory from the vanquished. He answer was persuasive enough that I did not write him off as what I take to be a typical Republican pandering to Big Military. So any differences between our views are just religious, since I do not see how what he says about the military is a Christian view. (It sounds to me more like the philosophy of pagan Rome.)

I wish I had asked him about the immigration quote, though. His belief in assimilation falls into what I am calling Xenophobia's Paradox. Zeno's Paradox is a familiar philosophical mind-trip. Like the taxation-representation quote, it has relatively unimportant origins and various forms. In one form, a person is running, say, one mile, and has to by necessity travel one half of that distance before they reach the goal. Yet in order to reach that half, they have to travel half of that distance, and so on. Since we cannot just half-up space forever, the conclusion is that motion is an illusion.

Xenophobia's Paradox is this: If everyone should assimilate, then national identity is an illusion. There is no point at which an original model can be determined. This is evident from the quip found on the cartoon that has a white man pointing out the problem with illegal immigrants, and having a Native American look on. Yet as satisfying as this, one has to also appreciate how it is unsettling this is culturally. After all, what claims does the Native American have to primacy of culture? Jindal (and other politicians to be sure) seems to be talking about conforming to a culture, but we don't know where to begin in identifying an appropriate culture to which to assimilate.

Should immigrants assimilate to English, or to Algonquin, or to Proto-Algonquin? Should they wear business suits, bluejeans, or moccasins, or walk barefoot? Undoubtedly, the crowd to whom Jindal was speaking would stipulate either business suits or bluejeans, but definitely English. For his part, Jindal wore bluejeans and spoke in a southern-state American-English accent. Had he worn a headdress I would have been both appalled and impressed.

I couldn't think of a good, succinct question to ask on this topic, though. Later, it occurred to me what to say: "President Obama recently changed the name of Mount McKinley to Denali. Don't you think that is a great step toward assimilation?!"

--Tadd Ruetenik

 

Carly Fiorina and Pro-Life Feminism: New Ideas in the Quad Cities

When presidential candidate Carly Fiorina spoke to a crowd at St. Ambrose University September 25 as part of a Quad Cities New Ideas Forum, there were indeed new ideas presented. I will mention three that didn't get picked up by the larger media:

1) Singing "Happy Birthday" to a unstable audience member. Carly deserves credit, both personally and professionally, for handing a difficult situation creatively and compassionately. As soon as she took the podium, a vociferous veteran loudly introduced himself to her for some reason. She gave the obligatory thank-you-for-your service line and asked him to wait for the questions, at which time he walked to within 10 feet of Fiorina (making security jump) and spoke, somewhat incoherently, about low wages and destroying ISIS. When he mentioned something about the Chinese people and said "cutting his head off on national TV" Fiorina wisely interrupted him and asked him politely to sit down. As he left, with a cordial "yes, ma'am," he noted that it was his birthday, and she encouraged the crowd in the most awkward rendition of "Happy Birthday" that ever was sung.

I tried to look up his reference, having recorded a portion of his question, and found a site called "Now the End Begins: The Magazine of Record for the Last Days." This site has a story about the Chinese government warning its people about ISIS with a big screen TV showing the beheading of journalist James Foley. I of course do not know if this is precisely the site that informed him, but many, including Fiorina, were surely concerned that this would be another unbridled Trump-supporter moment, with dangerously ambiguous references to getting rid of "them." What makes this different is that the man was more obviously mentally unstable. I talked with the Super PAC staff and they said he claimed to be homeless, smelled of alcohol, and asked for money. The Trump supporter was personally stable, but just an apparent listener to mentally unstable right-wind radio. Either way, as the conservative rhetoric intensifies, so intensifies the likelihood that some Smerdyakov will actually do the dirty work that they imply. The hawkish conservatives managed to sing their way out of this one.

2) Medical marijuana and Military Service. An advocate for medical marijuana challenged Fiorina about her position. A few alternative news sources, like American Green Zine, picked up on this. The headline is telling: "Veteran Confronts Carly Fiorina Over Medical Marijuana." When the woman stated she was a nurse and veteran with high security clearance, Fiorina forgot to also give the thank-you-for-your-service line to her. This woman was not unstable, but not on Carly's side. Fiorina's honest response, "you're not going to like my answer ..." began her criticism of medical marijuana.

What is interesting to me is the headline. What does the fact that the woman is a veteran have to do with the topic? When SAU Librarian Stella Herzig asked Fiorina about long work hours and lack of maternity leave, the QCTimes did not mention she was a librarian. And yet American Green Zine obviously regards being a veteran as helping make its criticism of Fiorina stronger. As admirable as the questioner's background is, it still remains irrelevant. In philosophy, we call this an illegitimate Appeal to Authority. Among Republicans especially, the military is an authoritative figure for American values.

3) Pro-life feminism. Politicians develop a friend-or-foe sensor as powerful as our earliest ancestors who were hunted by saber-toothed tigers. When the vociferous military veteran first stood up, Fiorina at least perceived a friend. When two women lined up later, she likely saw foes. Hippie, progressive, and hipster in appearance, they probably looked like a challenge, and her heart rate went up again.

Fiorina is a pro-life conservative. Two of the questions from the audience were from women who were part of pro-life feminist groups. One of these groups, Feminists for Non-Violent Choices
challenged Fiorina about economic matters that affect women and child-bearing. I talked with the questioner afterward, and we discussed how she was anti-death penalty, anti-war, and, even personally, a vegetarian. FFNVC is no disingenuous group of conservatives wearing "feminism" like knock-off fashion. These are serious and respectful progressives who see anti-abortion as a natural part of their beliefs. This is a welcomed departure from the entrenched pro-choice people who obnoxiously confronted Fiorina Sept. 26, saying "How can you, as a woman, not support our health care?," failing to understand that what constitutes appropriate health care is a matter of dispute. This is as unhelpful as if someone were to confront Bernie Sanders by saying "How can you, as a man, not support patriarchy?"

Unfortunately, at least one local newscast merely stated how Fiorina defended her pro-life position at the event. If that were true, then indeed there would have been no new ideas presented at the Quad Cities New Ideas Forum. For example, Fiorina just towed the Republican foreign policy line that the USA should support its allies and intimidate its enemies. (This is, incidentally, a departure from Jesus' belief that we should love our enemies, and a flouting of Jesus' saying about how even the Pharisees love those who love them.)

By being presented with pro-life feminists from the Quad Cities, Fiorina now has the opportunity to be truly new and antiestablishment in her views. When I talked with her afterward, I mentioned I was a philosophy professor, and she noted her interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, at least in part, was focused on philosophy. I admire that. I hope she uses that training to step outside of ordinary political categories. If so, even I, who have only voted for one Republican in my life, would consider her candidacy.

--Tadd Ruetenik

Feelin' the Bern at Liberty University: When You Point, Three Fingers Point Back at You.

When Bernie Sanders spoke recently at Liberty University, among the most conservative Christian schools in the nation, he received appropriate praise from those enamored with his unconventional campaign. Of course Liberty University deserves praise as well for entertaining a speaker so seemingly antithetical to its beliefs. Progressive states schools, on the other hand, have a record for being intolerant of certain beliefs.


The great thing about St. Ambrose University is that it is none of the above. It tends to be both progressive and Christian, thus avoiding the double-edged hypocrisy of both progressives and conservatives. Consider the following description of the event at Liberty. 

David Nasser, the university's senior vice president for spiritual development, asked Sanders directly to "reconcile" his view that he wants to safeguard the most vulnerable without protecting "the child in the womb." A deafening applause erupted for more than 20 seconds.
But Sanders, in his typically stern tone, didn't shy away and gave a vigorous defense for his views on abortion rights.

"I do understand and I do believe that it is improper for the United States government to tell every women in this country the very painful and difficult choice she has to make on that issue," Sanders said. "And I honestly, I don't want to be too provocative here, but very often conservatives say, 'Get the government out of my life, I don't want the government telling me what to do.'"

A small section of the crowd cheered in support of Sanders.

At UC-Berkeley or Michigan State, for example, the distribution of cheers would surely have been reversed. Yet there is a profound hypocrisy in both cheers--provided the group of cheerers were mutually exclusive sets. I think Bernie is great, but needs to be called out for his pro-choice advocacy. If anyone, a socialist like him is best able to be anti-abortion with a good conscience. In his world of economic justice (which I firmly support) the choice to abort becomes less justifiable. Instead, his answer to his hypocrisy is just to hypocritically point out the conservatives' hypocrisy. 

I've heard Bernie speak, and he stresses the family-value morality of having maternity leaves. When Democrats claim Republicans only support babies when they are in the womb Republicans can throw the poop back at them by saying that Democrats only care about babies when they are out of the womb. Christians, it seems to me, can stay out of that monkey match by being anti-abortion and socialist. There is support for both of those in both scripture and tradition.

Economic justice is a moral matter. Transnational welfare is a moral matter--and insofar a conservatives are Christian, they are hypocritical. I think single payer health care--or at least Obamacare, whose idea was originally promoted by Republicans--is also a moral matter worthy of Christian concern. So is not going to war, and not executing criminals. Bernie gets just about everything right, but he refuses to be thoroughly unconventional until he--and all other Democratic presidential candidates--forsake the stale pro-choice rhetoric. Choices are not ends-in-themselves. 

--Tadd Ruetenik

Gay Marriage and the Christian Conscience: What is that Kentucky Clerk Doing in the First Place?

A Christian woman is refusing to give marriage licenses to gay couples. “Kentucky Clerk Is Wrong to Deny Gay Marriage Licenses, Says Same-Sex Marriage Opponent” is the headline of a recent article in The Christian Post. http://www.christianpost.com. When many people want to respond to the case of this Christian womanwith empty statements like “get to work,” “do your job” or “do your job, bitch!,” it is encouraging to see that clear and independent thinking is being done. As with many things, behind the dumb-gut reactions on either side is a more complicated—and even philosophically interesting--situation. 

The opponent says that the woman is justified in personally exempting herself, but that she has no basis for making a policy for the whole office. I personally am skeptical of having religious exemptions for things. Pacifist though I am, for example, I would not require the state to protect me from military service if it were required. I would take my legal consequences. The early Christians were martyred; the least I could do is endure fines and jail time.

This is what the Kentucky clerk is facing right now. Unlike the marriage opponent of the article, I see no need to protect her legally. Yet I also do not see a need for ad hominem arguments. In the meme below, the answer “because Jesus” is indeed sufficient. Those who are on the side of compassion—which generally include the progressive people who support gay marriages—should not argue with the Christian idea of forgiveness. Indeed the woman has been married 4 times, and there is evidence of adultery in her past. Nonetheless, her subsequent conversion to Christianity is important, or else we do not ultimately believe in Christianity. Sure, one should judge not lest you be judged, but I also believe we should judge not those who judge--lest we be judged for that judging! Let he who is without hypocrisy throw the first stone.

And there is no hypocrisy here. Her statement to those demanding licenses is that God is giving her authority (presumably through her interpretation of the Bible) and she will face her worldly judgement just as the gay marriagers will face their otherworldly judgment. If any homosexual came to repentance, gave up homosexuality and the desire to marry, then she would (we hope) have no problem with them. Perhaps she would even be happy simply with a homosexual couple who repented only from the desire to marry.

In this case, you have to admire her. This is, in her mind, part of Christian civil disobedience, and we need to quarrel with her politics rather than her principles. What can we learn from her? As I argued before we can learn something even from Westboro Baptist Church (see January 2015 post here). In the case of the Christian clerk, we are forced to consider this question:

Why is the government involved in licensing marriages in the first place?

Marriage is a paradox. When people decide to get legally married, they are saying that they love each other so much that they must legally coerce each other into staying together. This is indeed odd, since marriage I think we are often confused about the concept of marriage to begin with. The idea of love in marriage is relatively new to human history. The essence of marriage is found in ancient ideas of possessing people.

In order to possess someone now, we think of contracts. The philosopher and lifelong bachelor Immanuel Kant talked about marriage—without any kinkiness, we presume—as the mutual ownership of each other's sexual organs. We have more romantic notions, however. For us, marriage is about two things: love, and a legal relationship. But this is a confused idea. Love shouldn't be about the sanction of the state. At most it should be an affirmation of the community, and not just the couple. But this is not a legal matter as much as a communal matter.

So here is what we should do: Instead of worrying about who should be considered married according to the state, and who should not, we need to get the state out of the concept of “marriage.” To protect people's rights when they are sharing property, we should have domestic contracts covering anything we would like regarding what we previously regarded as marriage. Gay or straight should be able to enter into such contracts. All of the other mystical union-of-bodies stuff we should just leave to the churches, and all of that sentimental love stuff we should just leave to the greeting card industry.

--Tadd Ruetenik

An Ounce of Prevention: Victim Blaming and Revenge Porn

As of this week, the UK can now prosecute perpetrators of “revenge porn” with up to a two-year prison sentence. Revenge porn is the act of posting videos or photographs after a breakup that were taken consensually during the relationship. To be revenge porn, the new UK law requires that the distribution of videos and photos of a sexual nature must be done without the consent of the person in them and must have the intention of causing distress to the person featured. Prior to this, although there were over a hundred cases of complaints reported in England and Wales, in the 2 1/2 years leading up to September 2014, only six of those incidents resulted in any kind of police action. There are websites devoted to this and earlier this year an American, 2004 Moline High School graduate Kevin Bollaert, (qconline)was sentenced for his part in a revenge porn site that posted these videos and then charged women to remove their images from the web. 

Women are typically the victims in these situation, with their images posted by former boyfriends or ex-husbands. But this is not exclusively the domain of men. In October 2014, a Virginia woman was charged for posting the nude photo of her ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend to Facebook. This followed a similar but inverted case two months prior, also in Virginia, where a woman posted her current boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend on Twitter and Instagram. These women were both charged under a new law that had been put in place in July of 2014 and represents the kind of legislation active in a handful of states – about 12 – that have any kinds of laws regarding posting on such sites. In most US states, federal law absolves websites of responsibility for material posted by third parties. Even in the states that do have legislation, pinpointing who the poster is can still be an obstacle to prosecution. Furthermore, the origin of the photo may make a difference – some states won’t protect content that was shot by the victim. 

Some victim advocates, including Dr. Fiona Vera-Gray of the End Violence Against Women coalition, have said that changing legislation has the effect of turning the tide away from blaming the victim and instead focusing on how the intent of the poster is really what makes this situation problematic and wrong. (The Independent) Others, such as Dr. Peggy Drexler, have noted that because the laws are unclear and largely ineffectual, they return the focus to victim blaming because the only way to be sure your private photos remain private is not to take them in the first place. She writes: “This is the philosophy behind most common advice given to teens, among whom the rates of “sexting” continue to rise.  Trust no one.  Share nothing.  Even better: Take nothing.  While we’re at it: Don’t leave the house.  After all, you could get mugged, or raped.  You’d better not fly on a jet, either…swim in the ocean?  No way: sharks!  It’s ridiculous logic.”  Drexler 2014 

Drexler goes onto say that the “blame for a crime lies not with the victim but with the criminal.” I think this is true for two reasons. First, the perpetrators of revenge porn, both those who are posting it and those who are encouraging its posting, are guilty of sexual exploitation in a way that is particularly egregious because the people are being victimized without even knowing it is happening. Someone’s image or private video could be accessed thousands of times online without the victim being aware that it was posted and the way that they are most likely to find out is via the source of the greatest humiliation: someone they know seeing it. 

Second, the fact is that the video or image was created in a certain context for a certain purpose and revenge porn is knowingly and maliciously taking that visual data and applying it in another context.  I would argue that this is as much a case of defamation or libel as was the Shirley Sherrod case where she alleged that Andrew Breitbart had posted highly edited video of her making racist justifications for her work decisions at the USDA. 

In the case of revenge porn, whether the creator of the image was the poster, the victim, or some third party, those in the video were consenting (and I am limiting my remarks here to images that were taken consensually) to the recording of their image with one intent in the context of a relationship of some sort. Whether the poster participated in the video/photograph is irrelevant to whether they are able to provide full informed consent to the posting. Unless all parties portrayed agree to consent to this change of content/intent then the image should not be able to be posted.  (This could potentially raise some questions about the content that is posted on Facebook or Tumblr but I’m not sure that isn’t a conversation worth having.) In any case because of the private nature of the images in question I think the demand of informed consent becomes more salient. In the case of revenge porn, while the images were recorded with consent, either explicit or implicit through their voluntary participation, that consent was for the purpose of private use. They cannot possibly have given legitimate informed consent to the posting of those images on publicly accessible websites if they were not informed at the time of consenting that this was the intended purpose. 

I think this is particularly relevant to the issue of victim blaming. While the victim did consent to having their image recorded, that consent was given in a certain context – with certain intent.   As Illinois State Representative Scott Drury (D-Highwood) told the Huffington Post “They’re not taking that consent back – they never gave it to begin with.”  (Huffington Post) Because the poster has altered the conditions that the images are being used for, the victim’s consent no longer applies to these cases and as such, the victim bares no moral or legal responsibility for the posting and their subsequent humiliation. 

However, I disagree with Drexler insofar as I don’t think it is out of line for someone to caution people against taking images that they don’t want distributed. I don’t think this is victim blaming because I think the notion of blame implies moral or legal obligation and I don’t consider this caution to be expressing a moral or legal obligation but rather a prudential consideration. I wouldn’t write down my credit card information and hand it to a friend to use. This is because while I may trust my friend, she doesn’t have the same incentive to protect that information as I do. If I were to write down the information and she were to lose it, this is her moral responsibility, but it was certainly an unwise thing for me to do. My choice to share sensitive information with another person demonstrates risk-taking and personal judgment. In this case, I judged my friend to be trustworthy and I was mistaken. We can be mistaken about judging romantic partners and anytime there is the potential to be mistaken about something it is reasonable to be cautious to the extent that our mistakes could have bad consequences – the greater the consequences the greater our incentive to be cautious (and that isn’t even factoring in the possibility of cloud hacking.) If someone is going to be mortified by the distribution of private photographs or videos, it makes sense for them to avoid taking them. That is not the same as saying they are morally or legally to blame for their distribution. However, that may be cold comfort to someone who has been the victim of revenge porn.

--Jessica Gosnell

In Defense of Short Attention Spans

When I hear complaints from people my age and older about the lack of attention spans in today’s youth, I wonder whether this is just the inevitable disconnection that happens with generations, or whether indeed today’s youth have short attention spans.

    I then wonder whether this is really a problem. The idea of an attention span presumes that there is something to be traversed. Here in the Quad Cities, the Centennial Bridge spans the Mississippi River, and it would be a bad thing if the bridge began in Illinois but failed to make it to Iowa. In the case of consciousness, however, the thing being spanned is more difficult to determine. If it is a vital task, then poor attention spans are a bad thing, but if we are talking about intellectual topics, then I am not sure a lack of a span is a bad thing.

    The world seems to be getting increasingly pluralistic. There are multiplicities of truth systems, many religious beliefs, and sundry tastes in art and politics. It seems natural to me that consciousness would tend nowadays to jot among these various things, sampling more than savoring.

    It does seem to me that savoring is the goal of the old school consciousness. The epitome of intellectual savory is the novel, or the treatise, or the tome. These are all names for long written works that are focused more or less on one topic. But there are also the poem, short story, and aphorism. These are short works whose topics have small spans.

    I propose that literature return to the short story, and philosophy return to the aphorism. Attention spans are indeed shorter nowadays, but attention remains constant. In fact, consciousness is always on some object, and the only real deficit of attention we have is when we are not conscious. Otherwise, consciousness is sampling rather than savoring. And what is wrong with sampling many things, especially when the world we live in is so pluralistic? We might be better off adapting ourselves to knowing relatively little about a lot of things than focusing our attention on one thing.

I could continue this post with an extensive review of the literature on attention, but that would be too boring. You have other things to think about, including the other posts on this blog. 

--Tadd Ruetenik