When a man is determined to be a fool, he keeps repeating his foolishness, as loudly and as longly as he can manage.
Take this from Gerard Henderson in Bagging religion is hardly dangerous.
Some younger commentators have little understanding of theology or religious history.
His evidence?
Leigh Sales, one of the ABC’s better journalists, was out of her depth in her essay ‘‘On Doubt’’, in which she said Martin Luther, the doctrinaire founder of the German Protestant Reformation, was into self-doubt.
Well you and I might wonder what self-doubt is, but it's such an orthodoxy for commenters on Luther, that you have to actively avoid reading anything about Luther to avoid reading about his self-doubt.
Luther was tormented with self-doubt about his own ability to fulfill God's expectations. His participation in the rituals of the Catholic church did nothing to alleviate his anguish, and he came to believe that something was fundamentally wrong with the church as governed by Rome. (here)
Indeedy, Luther was so depressed and so profoundly self-doubting that he subsequently regretted breaking with Rome on occasions because of the way he'd opened up a path to many theological errors. "I have often wondered whether it would have been better to have preserved the papacy than to see such tumult." (you can find that in Luther and Lutheranism by following a google search).
Self doubt? Apparently Henderson doesn't think so.
You might not think the Catholic Encyclopaedia the most reliable source on Luther, but it also notes:
Whether he entered "the monastery and deserted the world to flee from despair" (Jurgens, op. cit., I, 522) and did not find the coveted peace; whether the expressed apprehensions of his father that the "call from heaven" to the monastic life might be a "satanic delusion" stirred up thoughts of doubt; whether his sudden, violent resolve was the result of one of those "sporadic overmastering torpors which interrupt the circulatory system or indicate arterial convulsion" (Hausrath, "Luthers Leben", I, 22), a heritage of his depressing childhood, and a chronic condition that clung to him to the end of his life; or whether deeper studies, for which he had little or no time, created doubts that would not be solved and aroused a conscience that would not be stilled, it is evident that his vocation, if it ever existed, was in jeopardy, that the morbid interior conflict marked a drifting from old moorings, and that the very remedies adopted to re-establish peace all the more effectually banished it. (here)
Now apparently I'm not the only one to have noted this about Luther to Henderson, but one thing you can say about the ponderous prattling Polonius: self-doubt has never troubled him.
Take this as his pointless thrust at The Chaser dudes as a way of persecuting the young for lack of theological wisdom:
Likewise with Julian Morrow, who in The Chaser’s War on Everything last week, declared: "The more you read about America, it is an amazingly religious place". Not really. The US remains what it always was – essentially religious. It is Western Europe that has changed by embracing a popular culture set by what the historian Michael Burleigh in Sacred Causes has identified as the "sneering secularists".
WTF? Amazingly religious is in error, but essentially religious is a correct descriptor? Well it's one thing to be a pedant but to be an ostentatious idiot in your pedantry is surely an entirely different level of scripture.
The rest of Henderson's piece is a dull attempt to sneer at secularists and atheists, prompted by the news that the St James Ethics Centre in Sydney has announced a Festival of Dangerous Ideas for the first weekend, and scored Christopher Hitchens as the key speaker. Oh woe, Henderson's Sydney Institute has missed out.
The suggestion that bagging religious belief is dangerous is fanciful. Certainly Hitchens’s support for the invasion of Iraq was unfashionable, but believing religion is the root of all, or at least most, evil is common among the Western intelligentsia.
The people with dangerous – meaning challenging – ideas in this area are not atheists such as Hitchens but believers such as the former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin. If Palin was to open the festival it might be a lively affair. But Hitchens spruiking for atheism is somewhat predictable.
The people with dangerous – meaning challenging – ideas in this area are not atheists such as Hitchens but believers such as the former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin. If Palin was to open the festival it might be a lively affair. But Hitchens spruiking for atheism is somewhat predictable.
By golly, and there was Hitchens only in February getting beaten up by Lebanese thugs during a street brawl (here). Now you might argue that Hitchens asked for it, by defacing an SSNP sign, but you could hardly say that bearing witness to religion as a form of fascism lacks danger.
When was Henderson physically beaten up for his lack of self-doubt?
And dearie me, was it only on July 25th that Piers Akerman, fat owl of the remove, was shrieking about the dangers of being Salman Rushdie? Or anyone else who speaks out about fundamentalist Islam? (Fatwa by any other name is still murder).
But it's always a nifty trick to set up the likes of Sarah Palin as persecuted, while the minority of sneering secularists do the persecuting. Hey, as if she didn't have the choice to serve out her term, or flame out as she became consumed by wild ambition.
But then Henderson is inclined to get agitated about the smallest of slights against religionistas, especially the foul blow delivered by Anna Crabb against Invoking religion in Australian politics, in The Australian Journal of Political Science (free here in pdf form, might be tricky to download).
It's not a particularly demonic assault on religion, but Henderson is determined to be offended, especially because NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon picked up on it and used it to attack Kevin Rudd, Peter Costello and John Howard:
Her essay warned: "Politicians should exercise caution when invoking religion in Australian politics." There was no similar advice to atheist politicians to refrain from proclaiming secularism ...
... Crabb asserted this was all about gaining the "Christian vote". She did not concede that the likes of Rudd and Costello might believe in what they say. Clearly to her Rudd and Costello exhibit dangerous ideas in this area.
Crabb reflects the prevailing view about Judaeo-Christian values found in many humanities departments at Australia’s universities and colleges. A similar attitude prevails in sections of the media, not surprising since many journalists are social science graduates. Many regard religious believers as bizarre.
... Crabb asserted this was all about gaining the "Christian vote". She did not concede that the likes of Rudd and Costello might believe in what they say. Clearly to her Rudd and Costello exhibit dangerous ideas in this area.
Crabb reflects the prevailing view about Judaeo-Christian values found in many humanities departments at Australia’s universities and colleges. A similar attitude prevails in sections of the media, not surprising since many journalists are social science graduates. Many regard religious believers as bizarre.
Oh, they so lack self doubt, these idle chattering secularists. But is speaking in tongues bizarre? No more I guess than Henderson's wonderful conflation of universities, social science graduates and journalism. Writing in tongues.
Henderson himself calls Tony Abbott eccentric, but he still gets agitated about the mad monk tag, as if Abbott had never led with his chin about his Catholicism, indeed at insanely repetitive and tedious length:
Witness the reaction to Tony Abbott’s book, Battlelines. In the pre-release publicity, Lyndall Curtis, on ABC radio’s PM, introduced a story on Abbott’s attitude to an emissions trading scheme by referring to him as a "staunch Catholic" who "began training for the priesthood" and "believes in conversions". This was ridicule presented as analysis.
In his News Limited column on Saturday, Laurie Oakes referred to Abbott as "the Mad Monk". Abbott is certainly eccentric at times, but he is in no sense mad.
In his News Limited column on Saturday, Laurie Oakes referred to Abbott as "the Mad Monk". Abbott is certainly eccentric at times, but he is in no sense mad.
Mad in a literal sense? No, but really prattling Polonius nicknames are just jolly japes amongst chums. And Abbott - a name which curiously bears a relationship to a church functionary - is always banging on about religion, its importance and its role in politics.
Perhaps Lyndall Curtis was inspired by the irritation the mad monk himself felt when Kevin Rudd started mingling god and politics:
Addressing a Young Liberals' jamboree in Melbourne, Abbott piously but uncharitably went the biff on his fellow confessed Christian, Kevin Rudd. The Labor leader was trying to "commandeer God for political purposes", he said. Rudd was on a "mission to shame Christians into voting Labor"....
Rudd, a Catholic married to an Anglican, copped another smacking for "politically correct Christianity", and then came the triumphant finale: "The political migration of so many Catholics [to the Liberals] suggests the Democratic Labor Party is alive and well, after all, and living inside the Howard Government." (Mike Calrton here on why he stopped, then started again calling Abbott the mad monk).
But then Henderson still hasn't finished slagging off sneering secularists:
As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge document in their book God is Back, interest in faith is reviving in many areas of the world, no bad thing given that the most murderous regimes in modern times were secular – Nazism and communism.
Yet, it is the atheists who dominate in most Western nations other than the US. That is why it is a fallacy to suggest that atheists such as Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are bold, challenging thinkers. They’re not. The "God is dead" school is rather old hat.
Yet, it is the atheists who dominate in most Western nations other than the US. That is why it is a fallacy to suggest that atheists such as Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are bold, challenging thinkers. They’re not. The "God is dead" school is rather old hat.
Well the place of Christianity in Nazism is not as clear cut as our lacking in self-doubt prattling Polonius would suggest, but clearly precision in matters of history is not something that overmuch concerns him. You can get a better insight into the peculiar interactions between Nazism and organised religion in Germany in the nineteen thirties in wikipedia here.
And if it's the atheists who dominate most western nations, how the fuck did we end up with Chairman Rudd and where is gay marriage on the agenda?
It is of course a nonsense, and one of the greatest causes of secular suffering is the way we have to listen to Christian and Islamic fools continually jostling across the aisles and disturbing the peace on loon pond.
Meantime, Henderson does set one new record - only one fleeting in passing mention of John Howard's name, and nothing about the good old days of the Howard regime. Suddenly it's all Abbott this, and Abbott that.
As atheism rules the world, can religion stage a comeback and will the mad monk be the one to don the gloves, take out the vorpal sword and go snicker snak? With the prattling pious Polonius whispering wise words, lacking in any self-doubt, in his ear?
Only a follower of Henderson would care, because when he gets on to religion he reveals an alarming ignorance. Couple that with the notion that Sarah Palin is just the kind of person to invite to a conference as a way of getting some challenging ideas on the table and you begin to understand that for Henderson dumbness constitutes a new and valid kind of theological thinking ...
Yeaay, creationism and dominionism. So fresh and modern and challenging.
Okaly dokay do, didaly on, okely dokely, spine tingly dingly, and let's put the shaz in shazam,
(Below: hey, and Pontius Pilate also retired and returned to Rome to meet up with the new Emperor Caligula. Eerie, the way history repeats itself).
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