Obama and God

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal contributes his thoughts on religion and Obama's first year in office.

As President Obama completes his first year in office, little attention has been given to a question that sparked raucous argument during the campaign. How would Barack Obama's religious beliefs affect his performance as president?

During the campaign, the question of Obama's long relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright loomed large. In some quarters, so did Senator Obama's middle name. The Obama candidacy was widely and deeply opposed by religiously inspired groups against abortion rights and gay marriage. There was similar strong opposition from those arguing for "moral clarity" on the war on terror, calling into question Obama's credentials to fight Islamic religious extremism.

Despite these voices, the Obama campaign managed to attract some faith-based allies of its own. These were newly energized groups with progressive views on poverty, health care, and climate change as well as their own views on "just war." Themes of social justice resonated through the candidate's platform. An astute listener could hear echoes of connection to the religious roots of the civil rights movement.

Against this noisy background, President Obama entered office without a religious identity as distinct as that of George W. Bush. The impression of Obama's ambiguous religious identity was reinforced by the life story he inherited as well as his deliberate choices. His Muslim-Christian parentage, peripatetic biography, and lack of life-long association with any single church made it unsurprising that he did not have a default place to worship when he and his family moved to Washington, DC.

Obama's best-expressed affinity to a theological tradition places him in the arc of Reinhold Niebuhr, a favorite of those whose Christian faith emphasizes pluralism and social justice over any allegiance to a particular doctrine or sect. Niebuhr's ecumenism is noteworthy for its combination of spirituality and openness. At its height in the 1940s and 50s, Niebuhr's sermons, speeches, and writings helped propel inter-faith dialogues that included not only Protestants, Catholics and Jews, but secularists and non-believers too.

As he took office, it appeared that Obama's religious profile would remain very different from that of his predecessor. The new president would be more Reinhold Niebuhr than Billy Graham. Niebuhr's model is faith-based, for sure. But it steers away from doctrinal proclamations and it is highly sensitive to the dangers of self-righteousness. Rick Warren, the conservative and therefore controversial choice to deliver the Invocation at the inaugural ceremonies, seemed to nod to the president's preferences in his attempt at ecumenism and humility in his remarks.

With all of this as prelude, I was startled by a Politico article published last summer—six months into the president's term—titled "Obama Invokes Jesus More than Bush." In his first high-profile speeches of his presidency—including widely cited lectures at Cairo, Notre Dame, and Georgetown—President Obama spoke of the Christian faith in language more explicit than expected. This choice of language may have been a strategic decision meant to counteract those who have questioned his faith. Or it may have been a deliberate effort to rally his progressive faith-based constituency. Whatever the explanation, it is important to note Obama's language in describing faiths other than Christianity is also highly detailed. In his opening remarks in Cairo, the president brought "the good will of the American people and a greeting of peace from the Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum." He concluded the speech with direct quotes from the Koran, the Talmud, and the Bible.

Obama's engagement with religious language signifies a commitment to moral dialogue after a period of high moral assertion. His goal seems to be rescuing "moral clarity" from those who confuse it with "moral certainty." Moral clarity asserts that while we can agree on what is irretrievably wrong (killing of innocents, enslavement of peoples, destruction of our planet) we also understand that there are multiple conceptions of the good. Let's not proclaim that we have the ultimate answer to what is good for everybody; and in our pursuit of our vision of the good life, let's not forget that we often make uneasy compromises.

President Obama used his moment of maximum worldwide attention in his Nobel lecture to explain his view of the proper relation between religion and politics. His argument respects the transcendent powers of religion as an essential element of human flourishing. Yet it emphasizes limits. As the president said, "evil exists in the world" and it must be confronted. Yet "no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint—no need to spare the pregnant mother or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith." In the tradition of Lincoln, Obama seeks commitment without excess, fidelity to principle without fanaticism.

It would be a mistake to oversimplify Obama's first year in office as essentially a story of the rise of a new technocratic regime. There is more going on here; there is the return of a new moral clarity that is genuinely humble, fact-based, and pluralistic. Pluralism can be defined as empathy for diversity while emphasizing what is common in humanity. This is a deeply American ethic. And it appears to be a priority of the president in both word and deed.

[PHOTO CREDIT: The U.S. Army (CC).]

Earth Institute Searches for Science-Religion Common Ground

I am participating in Columbia University Earth Institute's Fetzer Institute symposium "Common Ground: Science and Religion in Dialogue for a Sustainable Future."

Yesterday, Earth Institute Director Jeff Sachs opened up the conference with the observation that human activity is having a greater impact on the Earth's environment than ever before, becoming a factor shaping the Earth's natural cycles and systems. Sachs calls this new age the Anthropocene; here is Sachs talking about this idea on BBC in 2007:

I called my lecture today 'The Anthropocene'—a term that is spectacularly vivid, a term invented by one of the great scientists of our age, Paul Crutzen, to signify the fact that human beings for the first time have taken hold not only of the economy and of population dynamics, but of the planet's physical systems, Anthropocene meaning human created era of Earth's history. The geologists call our time the holocene—the period of the last thirteen thousand years or so since the last Ice Age—but Crutzen wisely and perhaps shockingly noted that the last two hundred years are really a unique era, not only in human history but in the Earth's physical history as well. The Anthropocene is the period when human activity has overtaken vast parts of the natural cycles on the planet, and has done so in ways that disrupt those cycles and fundamentally threaten us in the years ahead.

Sachs therefore calls for a new ethic of sustainability (one of the missions of this symposium through curriculum development) in a world of strangers. Historical ethical systems had been created to suit smaller human communities in which people generally knew one another. How do we develop a global ethical system in which human activity has global impact but it is difficult to hold all these strangers to account?

James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies then gave the keynote address. Hansen explained why he decided to start speaking publicly after for many years bunting speaking invitations to his colleagues such as Michael Oppenheimer. On the main conference screen, Hansen showed photographs of his grandchildren and said that he felt a responsibility to do whatever he could to address the climate change crisis for the benefit of future generations. He mentioned that despite the remark Larry King made to him that "nobody cares about 50 years from now," perhaps from a media perspective, Hansen sees inter-generational justice as fundamental to many moral systems. The past eight years of the Bush Administration trying to stamp out the climate change truth has delivered a bleak message to future generations: "You are on your own, baby," Hansen said.

As for solutions, Hansen was critical of cap and trade schemes, saying they often leave too many loopholes, and that the clean development mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol has allowed some countries to increase their carbon emissions, by planting trees elsewhere for example. Instead, Hansen prefers a carbon price through a tax that would be significant enough to change behavior and amass a public fund for investment.

The panel I moderated was titled "Creating a vision for Sustainable Business," featuring Kevin Knobloch of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Rev. Fletcher Harper of GreenFaith, and George Pohle of Suasoria and formerly at IBM. I opened up the panel by linking Jeff Sachs's remarks about the need for an ethic in a world of strangers to a book I am now reading, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, by Kwame Appiah.

In his book, Appiah makes the case that what we believe (based on observation) and what we desire are linked and closely related. Moreover, the facts we believe to be true can change while beliefs can be difficult to disprove. Appiah famously uses the case of witchcraft in Ghana. He asks, isn't it true that people get sick without a clear explanation and isn't it true that some people wish ill on others? What fact can you point to that disproves that witchcraft doesn't exists? And what fact can you point to the universal truths exist? Appiah tries to bridge moral relativism and positivism; his "challenge" is cosmopolitanism, which says:

1. we have obligations to others
2. we should take seriously the specific lives and beliefs of others

Appiah's cosmopolitanism is about keeping a sincere conversation going. As my Unitarian church, while I was growing up, implored, "peace through understanding." Perhaps the "uni" in Unitarian should refer to "one world" instead of a single God.

Carrying on a sincere conversation is a good ongoing process, but can't we agree on some fundamental ethical foundations as well? My study of religions, as a religious studies minor in college for example, taught me that most of the major religions do actually make the case for the Golden Rule or its flip side a variation of "do no harm." Isn't truly good business sustainable business and truly sustainable business good business? I said I hoped this conference would not only advance a conversation but also help find common ground for an ethic of sustainability.

One of the most interesting discussions among the panelists was sparked by a comment about spiritual experiences. Harper has developed an adult education program that asks people to describe spiritual experiences they have had in the natural world. Many people have had profound experiences in the natural world but nobody talks about it (one of the participants later in the evening guessed it might be because Judeo-Christian societies have a fear of Paganism or reverence toward nature). The panelists agreed that introducing nature's power to inspire should be a part of child development as well as curricula development. Some suggested that this spiritual engagement, as well as green jobs, conservation, energy efficiency, smart regulations, and green investment, might comprise an ethical business venture in the post-crisis economy.

Those are my initial thoughts. Time to get back to the second day of the symposium.

Street Stories in Beijing Today

Josh Eisenman and I are in China this week, visiting Beijing, Qingdao, Shandong, and Shanghai. This trip is a nice follow up to our Beijing delegation in September, which was right after the Olympics and right during the explosion of the global financial crisis in the news. At that time, Chinese experts were pleading with us, as Americans, to make sure the U.S. economy stayed on course. Now, there is a mixture of wariness about U.S. assets and triumphalism about Chinese economic policies.

We landed in Beijing this morning at 5am and already we have seen some interesting stuff. After some baozi (steamed buns) and coffee, we took a walk around the district of Haidian. I don't want to draw too many conclusions from this but we asked a man bounding down the street for directions. He was clutching a black book. We asked him about the book and was very proud to tell us it was a Holy Bible. "Hallelujah," he said to us. That he was so open about his religiosity seems to track with a more open view toward religion here.

Another quick story: A migrant couple selling street food were harassed by police. The police, who filmed the interaction, demanded that the couple move their cart. They confiscated the cart despite their pleading that they needed to sell the food to feed their children. Possibly pointing to a big question of whether migrants in the cities have the rights they deserve, in my opinion.

"Whose Ethics?"

It is said that blogs emerged out of email conversations that were worth posting for a larger audience. When we talk about ethics in international affairs, as we do at the Carnegie Council, we are often asked: whose ethics? Whose ethics should we use when we apply them to foreign policy? Here is one such email conversation between a former Carnegie Council intern Sacha Tessier-Stall and me. Sacha had emailed to say hello, give me a nice comment about one of my recent articles, and drop a bomb: Is international ethics an oxymoron?

Devin Stewart: This is a complicated topic but in a nutshell, true ethics should be global; otherwise it is just parochial moralizing. Nevertheless, we should acknowledge that there are many ethical systems and ethical “minds” (toward loyalty, purity, fairness, the group, the individual, etc.) in the world. What we try to do at the Carnegie Council is start with the most pluralistic approach to include as many voices for ethics as possible and highlight universal values of human rights and fairness.

Sacha Tessier-Stall: I see your point, but while pretty much everyone seems to agree on broad principles, definitions of what constitutes a crime can be incompatible. Everyone agrees that murder is wrong, but in some countries killing a woman because she's sitting alone in a car with a man doesn't count as murder. Whose ethics should we globalize?

DS: Crime (the law) and ethics are not the same. Although laws try to draw upon societal ethics, what is legal in not necessarily ethical and vice versa. And the same goes for morals. I think of ethics as the globalizing of morals or the universalizing of right action. When people ask, "Whose ethics?" The best answer is "our ethics," as in humanity's ethics for humanity's sake or on humanity’s behalf. That is what separates what is ethical from what is moral, in my mind. The example you mentioned is a case in which an unethical law is drawn from a parochial understanding of morals.

STS: I agree that ethics and the law are not the same. But in essence, the law has two functions: to preserve the stability of the societies in which they are adopted, and to represent those societies' ethics (however imperfectly). In the example I gave, the law in question is considered both moral and ethical by those who take it upon themselves to have it respected.

While I personally agree with you on the idea of globalizing "humanity's ethics for humanity's sake", many people—perhaps a majority in the world—would disagree. You and I take our ethics from humanism, broadly defined; however, billions take theirs not from anything temporal or terrestrial, but from religious sources—many (though by no means all) of which oppose the idea of any global ethics but their own. To them, there is no distinction between ethics and morality, because they take their ethics from static and unalterable sources—anything that is not in line with the Bible, the Quran or the Torah cannot be moral.

So when we speak of globalizing "humanity's ethics," what we're really talking about is humanist ethics, which I subscribe to, but which I have to admit is but one of the many paradigms that are out there.

DS: Law is supposed to represent a society's ethics, true. But again they are different and often contradict. In some sense, peace is forward looking and justice is backward looking. They are difficult to balance. The law may administer justice but that is certainly not necessarily ethical.

On religion, sure. Those who understand religion as advocating for right action, compassion, and ethics (which is in most traditions), they are correct. I have no problem with people drawing on religious tradition for their ethical system. The problem with basing ethical codes on religion, however, is that it also has a cosmological and mythological component, which just plain makes other angry (which is both Dalai Lama's and Ignatieff's point). In any case, yes, people do have other ethical codes. And I am taking a stand here by saying a global sense of ethics (enlightened self-interest, "wholesomeness,") is an ethical system that I would like to encourage. Others may say that oppressing women is ethical, but I would simply argue that they are wrong. I am willing to take that position. When a group harms the rights of individuals, that individual needs a path to recourse.

I recently hosted a Chinese delegation who tried to convince me that ethics should come from emotion and intuition. I got their point, but more importantly, humanity has a lot of work to do to come together.

STS: On the oppression of women being wrong: of course, I agree with you—but that's because you and I are starting from the same moral bases: 1) "all humans are equal and should be treated as such"; and 2) "equal treatment implies similar or identical treatment." I remember hearing Ahmadinejad say that Iran actually treats its women better than the West because it allows them to be "exempt from many responsibilities"—elevation through discrimination.

As long as people don't take their ethics from the same sources (e.g. a belief in the value of individual human lives vs. a determination to follow the precepts contained in one's scripture), we'll all agree that murder is bad without ever managing to agree on what murder actually is. This actually is quite reminiscent of current debates at the UN on the definition of terrorism. Everyone agrees on the equation "terrorism = bad," but for many, blowing up a kindergarten doesn't count as terrorism if it's done as part of a struggle for "national liberation."

So even with those religions that advocate for "right action, compassion, and ethics" (and which religion doesn't?), there's no guarantee that the ethical conclusions reached by their adherents will always be compatible with those of humanists, simply because the very logic of their moral thinking is different. After all, even adherents of the same religion can come to blows over different interpretations of the same texts or events - witness the Protestant-Catholic clashes in Northern Ireland and the Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq (though of course religion is by no means the only reason for these problems).

Editor’s Postscript: Sacha and I acknowledged that this conversation could probably continue forever, but I suggested taking a look at Michael Ignatieff’s essay “Human Rights as Idolatry,” in which he argues that the best way to advance human rights is to empower the individual. Counter-intuitively, Ignatieff also shows how protecting the rights of individuals and empowering individuals to act prevents groups from abusing individual rights, making it less likely that human rights are advanced as a sort of cultural imperialism.