religion – Hank Kalet

Private hospitals are public facilities

The federal ruling that religious schools and health institutions are required to provide coverage for contraception does not violate the religious freedom of religious institutions.

While Catholic bishops throughout the country are taking to their pulpits to denounce the ruling, the reality is that the church’s decision to offer a public service to the larger public places the question in a very different context.

Catholic hospitals, like St. Peter’s in New Brunswick, serve more than just a Roman Catholic population. They serve the entire community.

In many communities, those hospitals are the only health-care facilities.

In almost all cases, the facilities get tax breaks and generally get federal money for services (Medicare, Medicaid, other health-care money).

These facilities benefit greatly from their roles as community facilities.

Given this, it is difficult to see how we can consider them private and allow religious exemptions.

What do you think? Check out the poll on New Brunswick Patch and weigh in.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

The conservatives’ religious test

When Texas Pastor Robert Jeffress called Mormonism a cult during the recent Values Voters Summit, the media went crazy. The political classes went to town and Mormonism and evangelical Christians were under the microscope.

But the narrow focus on the cult comment meant that the media missed the larger issue — which is that Jeffress (and by extension, the larger conservative evangelical movement) believes that only Christians should be elected to the presidency.

“In a few months, when the smoke has cleared, those of us who are evangelical Christians are going to have a choice to make,” Jeffress said. “Do we want a candidate who is skilled in rhetoric, or one who is skilled in leadership? Do we want a candidate who is a conservative out of convenience, or one who is conservative out of deep conviction? Do we want a candidate who is a good moral person, or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?”

Perry, arriving on stage after Jeffress’ introduction, said the pastor had “hit it out of the park.”

In remarks to reporters after Perry’s speech, Jeffress called the Mormon church “a cult,” according to another reporter who was present.

Jeffress has made similar comments in the past.

“I believe we should always support a Christian over a non-Christian,” Jeffress said in 2008. “The value of electing a Christian goes beyond public policies. … Christians are uniquely favored by God, [while] Mormons, Hindus and Muslims worship a false god. The eternal consequences outweigh political ones. It is worse to legitimize a faith that would lead people to a separation from God.”

The Perry campaign responded by saying Mormonism was not a cult and other major Republican candidates — Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman — have refused to weigh in on the question.

Mormonism, as I said, is not the issue here. What is the issue is Jeffress’ assertion that non-Christians should not be considered for public office — a point none of the candidates has been asked to comment on. As far as Jeffress is concerned,

Such a belief should be anathema in a nation that protects the rights of its citizens to worship — or not — as they like that has explicitly avoided any religious test or oath for office-holders. Every candidate should be asked where they stand on this.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Rambling notes on Islam, America and cultural synthesis

This MSNBC story implies an interesting question: Are we pushing American Muslims toward the very behaviors that we accuse them of engaging in?

The gist here is that Muslims are starting to ask what it will take to be accepted as full partners in the American project. How much effort must be expended by a religious, cultural or ethnic minority for that acceptance to be had?

The answer is complicated and a bit disheartening. The process of Americanization takes time — too much time, unfortunately — and it is a two-way street. Minority/immigrant groups identify the best parts of their heritage and incorporate them into their new identities, while taking on the best and worst of America’s cultural identity. At the same time, the larger society must make its own transition, which is where problems arise. The society as a whole resists these new elements, push them to the margins. Over time, hopefully, this changes and the outsiders are brought inside, or at least are no longer looked upon with suspicion.

At the same time minorities of all stripes tend to remain outsiders to some degree forever. My Jewishness no longer prevents my participation in the larger society, for instance, but it does create some degree of separation in some people’s minds. There remains a far more significant portion of the population than we would like to admit who carries with them the harsh stereotype of the Jew as cheap or obnoxious or what have you.

You can hear it when people speak in what they believe are closed settings. Sometimes you’ll hear someone use the phrase “jewing him down” or make some other ugly remark. Or, and this maybe more common, you will hear someone praise a member of a minority group for being unlike the stereotype — I was told, once, that I was a “good Jew” (meaning I’m not cheap or bossy or something like that, I guess). Joe Biden, during the 2008 campaign, remarked that Obama was the first black candidate to be a legitimate candidate, because he was eloquent and clean-cut. The implication was that most blacks are otherwise, a kind of soft racism that continues to plague this country.

It is ugly, but not overt — though, it carries with it the potential for a fuller, nastier racism — which we have been seeing directed at the president since it became clear he would be the nominee. (Not all critics of the president are racist, as I’ve discussed with my students, but there are criticsw who are racist and it would be naive to think otherwise.)

For Muslims — and many in the Asian community — the racism remains overt and dangerous and the “good Muslim” trope has yet to become common. It is evident in the controversy over the Islamic cultural center proposed for downtown New York (Muslims, as a group, can only honor 9/11 by staying as far away from the site as possible), in the attacks on mosques around the country and the easy way in which some take the actions of a small handful of Muslims and make those actions stand for an entire world community.

Islam is no different than any of the other major religions in its diversity or its insistence that it is the only path to truth. It is no more dangerous than Christianity, for instance, which has its own warrior history (the Crusades) and a dangerous subset of militant groups that attack abortion providers and have recast Jesus as a warrior king).

Does anyone think that the “Christian nation” nonsense pushed not just by the extreme right but by mainstream conservatives is benign? Having been at the butt-end of prejudice and bigotry as a Jew, I can tell you that you’re fooling yourself if you believe that.

Marginalizing and demonizing American Muslims is morally and ethically wrong — and also foolish. Sartre, in his biographical sketch of the French novelist and playwright Jean Genet explained Genet’s criminality by saying that he lived out the lifeplan others had written for him; Genet became a criminal because it was the path created for him and one of the few options he was given.

Are we doing the same to American Muslims?

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

On the side of religious freedom

President Obama offers a powerful quotation that we all need to take to heart:

“This country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights,” Mr. Obama said. “And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.”

There is no excuse for the violence breaking out in Muslim countries over the bigoted Koran-burning threat. Resorting to violence as a response to a slight or an insult. And there is no excuse for the blanket-blame thrown over all Muslims by critics of the downtown mosque and others.

The president, in this speech today, reaffirmed the nation’s commitment to religious freedom and diversity.

Bravo., Mr. President.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Extremism posing as reason

I was catching up on some podcasts today, including this interesting interview on Radio Times with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born critic of Islam now affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute.

Ali makes some interesting points but shows a remarkably blind eye to other cultures, her anger at Islam being so great. Her basic argument is that Islam contains within it the seeds of its own fanaticism — an argument that applies not just to Islam but to all religions.

Her argument offers a subtle conflation of culture and religion, attributing cultures practices from nations in which Islam is practiced to Islam itself and not acknowledging — except when questioned — that the practices are not necessarily Islamic in nature (I am thinking of female genital mutilation, which she admits is not contained in the Koran).

In general, her arguments are rather half-baked for someone so prominent, built on a mix of inuendo and rumor and lacking statistical backing. She talks about honor killings as if they are common, alludes to a few, and uses them to show that the progress being made by Muslim women in the United States is a mirage.

The inconsistencies are maddening, the biggest one being her contention that Christian groups should seek to convert Muslims — especially Muslim women — because Christianity is far more supportive of women’s rights. Forget that Ali is an avowed atheist. Her view of Christianity not only exhibits a dangerously ahistorical view of religion, but a naivete about the kind of Christian fundamentalism that has left doctors and nurses dead in the United States. The recent incidents of Christian terrorism in the United States have been well documented, as has Jewish extremism and violence in the Middle East and Muslim fanaticism.

The Christian Right is far from sympathetic to the plight of women and it is no more accepting of reason or even of other religions than fundamentalist Muslims.

All of this leads Ali to traffic in the false assumption that only Muslims can be terrorists, that only Muslims can be extremists and that only Islam poses a threat to the values of the Enlightenment.

The enemy, however, is not Islam but a kind of certainty that shuts the mind to differences and disagreement and that transforms these disagreements into existential threats that require response. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists and the other major and minor world faiths are not going to agree on everything or even many things. But that does not become a problem until someone attempts to erase the disagreement by force.

Targeting Islam, as she does, without making these distinctions is foolish, dangerous and makes her little better than the people she condemns.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.