Two variations of truth

This morning I was in North Carolina and while I am not a big fan of NPR was listening to two programs while I was going to and from some family business. The first was the Diane Rehm program. Rehm is a long time Washingtonian who seems to reflect the city pretty well. This morning she interviewed a retired professor of religion from New York University. James Carse has written a new book (The Religious Case Against Belief) attempting to harangue about the parts of religion that he does not like. It was hard to listen to this guy. He began by saying he became a professor of religion because he did not want to join a family business. He said he did not grow up in a particularly religious household. There was little evidence that he has done much serious involvement with religion - although I am sure he has read lots of books. Carse made some absurd points. For example, he argued that the Nicene Creed, which is a fundamental affirmation of Christian belief, is really an attempt to stamp out false beliefs among Christians. I grew up with the creed and have seen it vary slightly in a lot of places, but the fundamental truths of Christian belief are summarized quite neatly in the creed.

Academics when they are trying to sound erudite often revert to Latin. And Carse made the point that religious expression can fall into two modes - Comunitas - which is a bottom up version of social organization and Civitas which the professor described as a top down imposition of order. The bottom up kind of religious expression is OK but the top down - which he described in mostly political terms is not. As one who spent part of his doctoral work on the formation of civic organization in both economics and political theory, it is not clear that the professor has spent much time understanding these two concepts. From the interview I found most of his definitions tautological. He was trying to prove a point that the interaction of religious or perhaps even ethical belief in the political system was somehow always oppressive. I wondered how he could be a professor of religion for so long without seeming to understand much about what motivates religious belief or practice. From my own experience he used fairly sloppily a definition of both forces and then tried to wrap them around his beliefs - which were probably formed before he began his book. Admittedly, he may have a much more thoughtful view of religious expression in his book, I have not read it. But from the interview, I doubt it.

In the afternoon I listened to another NPR program with a young Captain from the Marines named Seth Milton. He has seen four tours in Iraq, the last one working directly for General Petreaus. What struck me about Captain MIlton was his honesty and introspection. His questioner asked some telling questions about our presence in Iraq and unlike Professor Carse, he seemed to grapple with more than just stylized responses. One might expect that a person who had worked directly with the General would have a uniform and un-nuanced perspective. Yet, he gave something which is very rare in the discussions of Iraq, an interesting perspective which suggested both the positive and negative aspects of our policy. In this case he argued that the political solutions in Iraq are much more complex than the military. We've done pretty well with the latter but not the former. I was struck with how this young man, who is only a few years out of college, and who has committed the first five to six years of his career to a very unpopular war, could think carefully and intelligently about what we could do in that area of the world to positively affect people's lives. Again, I only caught a glimpse of his thinking (He has not written a book) but unlike professor Carse I found myself thinking I would love to spend some more time hearing his thoughts about the appropriate set of policies we should pursue in the Middle East. One of his key points was that as our presence in Iraq has worked itself in that it has by its nature become more bureaucratic and that ultimately reduces our effectiveness in counterinsurgency.

The contrasts between Carse and Milton were stunning.