{"id":28021,"date":"2015-05-24T19:36:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T23:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=28021"},"modified":"2015-05-24T19:36:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T23:36:39","slug":"culture-warriors-vs-the-common-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/05\/24\/culture-warriors-vs-the-common-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture warriors vs. the common good"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It\u2019s Pentecost, which makes it an ideal day to discuss yesterday\u2019s joyous referendum in the Republic of Ireland<\/a>, in which an overwhelming majority flooded the polls to enshrine the right to marriage equality for same-sex couples.<\/p>\n

Pentecost is sort of like the Christian church\u2019s birthday. It\u2019s the day when we remember what the New Testament tells us \u2014 that the church is a new community that\u2019s so mind-bogglingly inclusive that it makes everyone think we\u2019re raving drunk. Ireland, yesterday, was a little picture of Pentecost \u2014 people from all walks of life, and from the far-flung diaspora, coming together in an intoxicating display of unity. (\u201cWe are not drunk, as you suppose,\u201d the apostle Peter said to the people of Jerusalem, \u201cfor it is only 9 o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d I\u2019m not sure that argument works as well in Dublin.)<\/p>\n

\"NapalmInTheMorning\"<\/a>
Smells like victory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Americans accustomed to the politicized culture-warrior bishops of the American Catholic church, it is startlingly to watch a pervasively Catholic country like Ireland mobilize in such a massive expression of support for the rights and dignity of LGBT people. After three decades of watching our nation\u2019s Catholic bishops scrambling to enlist in\u00a0the partisan culture-war of the white evangelical religious right, we\u2019ve started to accept the American hierarchy\u2019s claim that their church is, or must be, intrinsically right-wing and anti-gay. The news from Ireland is a reminder that this claim has never been true. The right-wing American hierarchy is a culture-war vanguard without an army.<\/p>\n

\u201cIrish Catholicism supports same-sex marriage<\/a>,\u201d Mark Silk writes in a smart column after the Irish vote. But he also notes that American<\/em> Catholicism supports civil rights and human dignity for LGBT people too: \u201cIt\u2019s no accident that Catholics in the U.S. \u2014 white, Hispanic, and otherwise \u2014 support same-sex marriage at the same rate as the Irish voted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cCatholic position\u201d on marriage equality turns out to be a lot like the \u201cCatholic position\u201d on contraception. There\u2019s the official line promoted as dogma by the clergy, and then there\u2019s the actual belief and practice of the overwhelming majority of the laity. And it\u2019s not just that the laity disagree with the hierarchy, but that they find the hierarchy\u2019s official stance to be immoral<\/em> \u2014 sinful, harmful, and wicked.<\/p>\n

Silk also argues that the Catholic bishops in Ireland tend to be more \u201clinked to the populace\u201d than their counterparts here in the U.S., and thus weren\u2019t interested in becoming soldiers \u201cin a culture war that divided their country.\u201d<\/p>\n

American culture-warriors will likely shrug that off, thinking, \u201cYeah, that\u2019s why they lost.\u201d But it\u2019s still surprising, and refreshing, to look at what some of the Irish bishops were saying before their country\u2019s vote and to see how different it is from the sort of thing we hear in the U.S. from our spiritual-leaders-turned-culture-war-snipers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would hate for people to vote no for bad reasons, for sort of bigoted reasons, for nasty reasons, for bullying reasons,\u201d Donal McKeown, the bishop of Derry, said before the referendum<\/a>. McKeown voted no himself, and he wanted others to vote no as well, but not \u201cfor bad reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

A culture-warrior could never say that. For a culture-warrior, a vote for your side is simply a vote for your side \u2014 no matter what the motive. If the bigots and nasty bullies can help your side win, then you need their votes. You need to make sure they stay fired up and turn out. Maybe you even need to fuel their bigotry and bullying a bit. Heck, if bullies and bigots turn out to be a reliable, vital swing vote for your side \u2014 the right<\/em> side, the good side, God\u2019s<\/em> side \u2014 then maybe it\u2019s even right and good and godly to increase the size of that voting bloc, making whatever appeals or dog-whistle statements are needed to nurture whatever motives (good, bad, bigoted, bullying) will ensure the proper desired outcome in this cultural battle.<\/p>\n

To a culture-warrior, McKeown doesn\u2019t sound like a pastor or a bishop, he just sounds like a loser<\/em>. And that\u2019s why he lost. If you want to win, you can\u2019t refuse the help of any co-belligerents \u2014 no matter how bigoted or resentful or deluded. You have to marshal all of those allies and to generate more of them, if need be. And then, after victory is assured, you can stand triumphant on the scorched landscape that used to be the common good.<\/p>\n

Every culture-warrior knows that the common good is like B\u1ebfn Tre. Sometimes you have to destroy the culture in order to win it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I would hate for people to vote no for bad reasons, for sort of bigoted reasons, for nasty reasons, for bullying reasons,” Donal McKeown, the bishop of Derry, said before the Irish referendum. A culture-warrior could never say that. For a culture-warrior, a vote for your side is simply a vote for your side — no matter what the motive. If the bigots and nasty bullies can help your side win, then you need their votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,53,52,28],"class_list":["post-28021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-equality","tag-gay-rights","tag-homosexuality","tag-religious-right"],"yoast_head":"\nCulture warriors vs. the common good<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""I would hate for people to vote no for bad reasons, for sort of bigoted reasons, for nasty reasons, for bullying reasons," Donal McKeown, the bishop of Derry, said before the Irish referendum. A culture-warrior could never say that. For a culture-warrior, a vote for your side is simply a vote for your side -- no matter what the motive. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Culture warriors vs. the common good","description":"\"I would hate for people to vote no for bad reasons, for sort of bigoted reasons, for nasty reasons, for bullying reasons,\" Donal McKeown, the bishop of Derry, said before the Irish referendum. A culture-warrior could never say that. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}