ideology<\/em> of pluralism.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s new in the modern age isn\u2019t the reality of competing faiths: \u201cThe presence of contrary faiths and practices within a society often causes formidable problems, as America now experiences with unwonted intensity but as has always been the case. With due respect to some pop theologians, none of this is newly discovered: Isaiah or St. Paul knew more about the theory and practice of a religiously and ideologically plural world than do all of the seminary and religion faculties of California\u201d (25).<\/p>\n
Even the ideology of pluralism isn\u2019t new, but arises in the imperial age of late antiquity. As an ideology, pluralism is \u201ca rule for deciding what ideas or practices, besides pluralism itself, are to be approved. Tolerable ideas and practices are those that lead us unreservedly to applaud the fact of pluralism, and good ones are those that actively promote the proliferation of pluralism both factual and ideological.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ironic effect of this rule is that it silences many people: \u201cThe more pluralist the ideology that rules, the less are certain convictions admitted to the public arena.\u201d This is widely recognized. Jenson is more interested in probing what sorts of speech is excluded as offensive:\u00a0\u201cSo far as my observation reaches, the silenced are almost always those who if they spoke would say something characteristically Jewish or Christian or Islamic. Try, for example, arguing that unrestricted permission to abort the unborn is a social and political evil at a party in Manhattan or a college town in Minnesota. Your arguments will not be rebutted; heads will merely be turned as from one who has audibly broken wind. If, on the other hand, you argue what is in fact the conventional opinion, you will be praised for courage and compassion\u201d (26).<\/p>\n
Then, on fundamentalism.<\/p>\n
Jenson points out that the term has a recognizable meaning when used of early 20th-century American Protestants. Applied to Jews, the term has to stretch beyond normal bonds; when applied to Islam, he says, the real meaning of the term comes into focus:<\/p>\n
\u201cwhatever would an Islamic <\/em>fundamentalist be \u2014 in the commentaries and news releases the very worst and most prevalent kind? Islam has a rigorously simple message: \u2018There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet.\u2019 How are fundamentals and nonfundamentals to be distinguished here? Talk of Islamic funda\u00admentalism finally betrays what the speakers are doing. The phrase \u2018Islamic fundamentalists\u2019 turns out, on inspection of its use, to denote Muslims who discountenance the existence of a society or state independent of God\u2019s will, who find God\u2019s will stated in Quran and Sharia, and who therefore think that the state should conform society to Quran and Sharia. But this is the definition simply of a Muslim; \u2018Islam\u2019\u00a0means <\/em>universal individual and collective submis\u00adsion to God\u2019s will\u201d (28).<\/p>\n\u201cFundamentalist Muslims\u201d are just \u201cfollowers of the Prophet who have not been cap\u00adtured by the cultural imperialism of the modern West, or are trying to recover from such captivity, and who therefore do not approve a wall between church and state, absolute individual autonomy, and other Western Enlightenment principles.\u201d If pluralism were truly pluralistic, \u201cwere not pluralist ide\u00adology what it hiddenly is, pluralists would love them for their differences from us\u201d (28).<\/p>\n
\u201cFundamentalism\u201d is a tool of the ideology of pluralism, a label attached to those deemed irrational and socially disruptive, who are deemed to be violate the rules of pluralist engagement.<\/p>\n
Jenson highlights the astounding theological claim made by pro-choice advocates, and now enshrined in Supreme Court jurisprudence:<\/p>\n
\u201cPro-life attempts to call their opponents pro-abortionists, as if being pro-abortion were worse than being pro-choice, are misguided. The decision whether or not to abort is indeed a choice uniquely important for the pregnant woman; and merely therefore <\/em>it must, according to the devisers and defenders of present law, be in her individual sole discretion. That is the whole and singular argument and position, and no other considerations are allowed to count against its force. What is in fact at stake for those who demand a right to abort at will is the understanding and practice of individual choice itself as the ultimate value of life, superseding even justice and even justice in a lethal matter, if it comes to that.\u201d<\/p>\nThis reaches almost self-parody in Planned Parenhood v. Casey<\/em>, in Kennedy\u2019s famous mystical statement that liberty is \u201cthe right to define one\u2019s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.\u201d<\/p>\nJenson finds the language strangely familiar: Believers will \u201crecognize this supposed liberty to define existence, meaning, the universe, and human life as the freedom these theologies ascribe uniquely to their God. It is in fact a freedom of which no one ever dreamed apart from the influence of these theologies. According to the Abrahamic religions, there is indeed one whose personhood is defined by such liberty \u2014 and only one\u201d (32).<\/p>\n
In short, \u201cJews and Christians and Muslims stipulate the difference be\u00adtween God and what is not God by recognizing a particular mode of freedom in God and denying it to all else; the National Organi\u00adzation for Women and its allies claim explicitly and precisely that freedom for themselves, and the court has now written that claim into our law. What is asserted by \u2018pro-choice\u2019 ideologists and the court is straightforwardly a theology, one of an explicitly anti-bib\u00adlical sort\u201d (32).<\/p>\n
Finally, Jenson says that behind the so-called culture war is the real war, which is about modernity\u2019s rejection of the God of Abraham: \u201cthe swirl of cultural storms has a cyclonic center: the memory of cultural authority exercised by the biblical God, the God of Abraham. We are at war about culture just insofar as culture is the body of religion.\u00a0It has finally come to this: After centuries of love-hate between biblical religion and the Western civilization it has enabled and regularly perturbs, we are increasingly pressed to be either for the Lord or against him\u201d (24).<\/p>\n
The issue in our cultural battles is a theological one: Do we or do we not acknowledge that there is a God who has His own thoughts, makes His own plans and choices, independently of us, a God who is not a projection, neither a dream nor a nightmare, but a living, jealous God with whom we must reckon<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some typically sharp observations from a 1995 essay by Robert Jenson (Either\/Or). First, on pluralism and the ideology of pluralism. What\u2019s new in the modern age isn\u2019t the reality of competing faiths: \u201cThe presence of contrary faiths and practices within a society often causes formidable problems, as America now experiences with unwonted intensity but as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":7853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[830],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-war"],"yoast_head":"\n
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