Ramblings

Allan C. Brownfeld

Allan C. Brownfeld covers Washington, D.C.

Religion and Nationalism: A Dangerous Mix Throughout the World's History

The conflicts that are seemingly impossible to resolve-those between India and Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinians, Croatians, and Serbians and Bosnians-involve the dangerous combination of religion and nationalism.

When religion becomes an arm of the state-any state-it becomes not an advocate of universal moral values which come from God but, instead, an arm of state power, promoting the interests and policies of the state, however objectionable they may be in moral terms.

We have seen established churches become corrupted by their association with state power throughout history. The horrors undertaken by various states in the name of an established religion-from the Crusades to the Inquisition of today's Islamic innovation to Jihad-are well known.

The respected 19th century Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt has written extensively about the negative impact upon Christianity, which its association with state power has produced.

In Reflections on History, Burkhardt writes:

Christianity, even at the time of the persecutions, was a kind of standardized imperial religion, and when the change came with Constantine, the community suddenly became so powerful that it could almost have absorbed the state into itself. In any case, it now became an overnight state church. Throughout the Volkerwandering, from the Byzantine epoch, and in the West, throughout the Middle Ages, religion was dominant. . . . Every contact with the secular, however, reacts strongly upon religion. An inward decay is inevitably associated with the rise of its secular power, if only because quite other men come to the fore than at the time of the ecclesia pressa (persecuted church). . . . The church became itself a state of acquiring a political constitution . . . instead of being a moral force in the lives of the people. . . . It was power and possessions with which the Western church filled the sanctuary with those who had no call to be there. But power is of his very nature evil.

In Germany, writes William L. Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,

The majority of Protestants . . . landed in the arms of Hitler, accepting his authority to intervene in church affairs and obeying his commands without open protest. . . . Martin Luther . . . the great founder of Protestantism . . . was a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. . . . In what was perhaps the only popular revolt in German history, the peasant uprising of 1525, Luther advised the princes to adopt the most ruthless measures against the "mad dogs," as he called the desperate, downtrodden peasants. . . . Here, as in his utterances about the Jews, Luther employed a coarseness and brutality of language unequaled in German history until the Nazi time. The influence of its towering figure extended down the generations in Germany.

Shirer points out that,

Among other results was the ease with which German Protestantism became the instrument of royal and princely absolutism from the 16th century until the Kings and princes were overthrown in 1918. The hereditary monarchs and petty rulers became the supreme bishops of the Protestant Church in their lands. Thus, in Prussia, the Hohenzollern King was the head of the church. In no country with the exception of Czarist Russia did the clergy become by tradition so completely servile to the political authority of the state. Its members . . . dutifully opposed the rising liberal and democratic movements. . . . During the Reichstag elections one could not help but notice that the Protestant clergy . . . openly supported the Nationalist and even the Nazi enemies of the Weimar Republic . . . most of the pastors welcomed the advent of Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship in 1933.

By the end of 1937 the respected Bishop Marahans of Hanover made a public declaration:

The National Socialist conception of life is the national and political teaching that determines and characterizes German manhood. As such it is obligatory upon German Christians also.

In the spring of 1938 Bishop Marahans took the final step of ordering all pastors in his diocese to swear a personal oath of allegiance to the Füehrer. In a short time, the vast majority of Protestant clergymen took the oath, thus binding themselves legally and morally to obey the commands of the dictator.

More recently, we see that since the late 1970s the regime in Saudi Arabia has forged a social compact with Wahhabi Islamic clerics and co-opted them into government by giving them extensive responsibilities in areas important to them, including the judiciary, religious education and the spread of Islam overseas.

Saudi Arabia is the largest funder of madaris, radicalizing Islamic schools in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Yemen. It is the biggest supporter of the North American Islamic trusts, which builds the mosques and appoints imams in the U.S. In a recent book, The Secret Archives of al Qaida, Ronald Jacquared, who runs the Paris-based Observatory of International Terrorism and is an adviser on terrorism to the UN Security Council, has compiled documents found in the rubble of Osama bin Laden's Afghan offices and in al Qaida terrorist training campus. He points out that there is a Saudi religious dimension to al Qaida that publishes documents such as fatwas issued by Saudi and other Gulf religious leaders, including the late firebrand Hamoud Shusidi who, according to the author, issued the first religious ruling condoning the World Trade Center bombing.

Recently, The Washington Post reported on Islamic schools in the Washington area, sponsored by the Saudi Regime, that teach Muslim children:

. . . the day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.

There are 200 to 300 such schools throughout the U.S., with at least 30,000 students. Thousands of other students attend Islamic weekend schools.

One of the schools profiled by the Post is the Islamic Saudi Academy, located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. An 11th grade textbook at the school says one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh Servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me, Come here and kill him."

In Israel, as well, religion and the state are closely tied together. Orthodox Judaism is a state monopoly and other branches of Judaism are not recognized. And many in Israel hold the view that god gave all of the biblical Land of Israel-including the West Bank and Gaza-to the Jews and that no compromise with the Palestinians is possible. Some Israelis believe that the state has replaced God, as the object of worship, a kind of idolatry.

Thus, in his book Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State, Hebrew University Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz argues that Judaism is a religion dedicated to God not to any particular geographical area:

As for the "religious" arguments for the annexation of the territories-these are only an expression, subconsciously or perhaps even overtly hypocritical, of the transformation of the Jewish religion into a camouflage for Israeli nationalism. Counterfeit religion identifies national interests with the service of God and imputes to the state-which is only an instrument serving human needs-supreme value for a religious standpoint. . . . The idea that a specific country or location has an intrinsic "holiness" is an indubitably idolatrous idea.

The history of the negative effects of associating religion with state power is a long one. In the United States, of course, a different philosophy took hold, one which rejected the idea of a connection between church and state and which provided religious freedom for all citizens. It should be a model for the world.

In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson, discussing the early days of colonial Virginia, shows how making any religion "official," tends to corrupt religion and its spiritual role in society:

As soon as the state of the colony was admitted, it was divided into parishes, in each of which was established a minister of the Anglican Church, endowed with a fixed salary, in tobacco, a glebe house and land with other necessary appendages. To meet these expenses, all the inhabitants of the parishes were assessed, whether they were or were not members of the established church. Towards Quakers who came here, they were most cruelly intolerant, driving them from the colony by the gravest penalties. In the process of time, however, other sectarisms were introduced, chiefly of the Presbyterian family; and the established clergy, secure for life in their glebes and salaries, added to these, generally, the emoluments of a classical school, found employment enough, in their farms and schoolrooms, for the rest of the week, and devoted Sunday only to the edification of their flock, by service, and a sermon at their parish church. Their other pastoral functions were little attended to.

Jefferson reports that,

Against this inactivity, the zeal and industry of sectarian preachers had an open and undisputed field; and by the time of the revolution, a majority of the inhabitants had become dissenters from the established church, but were still obliged to pay contributions to support the pastors of the minority. This unrighteous compulsion, to maintain teachers of what they deemed religious errors, was grievously felt during the regal government, and without a hope of relief. But the first republican legislature, which met in 1776, was crowded with petitions to abolish this spiritual tyranny.

It was Jefferson's belief that religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, that "the care of every man's soul belongs to himself," and that no man should be abused because his "hair is not of the right cut," or because he follows "a guide crowned with a mitre and clothed in white."

Speaking in behalf of the Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Jefferson declared:

Almighty God hath created the mind free. . . . To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. . . . Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions of physics or geometry. . . . The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction. . . . Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. . . . She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

In America, because religion was a matter of individual free choice, religious institutions of all kinds sought to serve the spiritual needs of their members. One result has been the fact that America is now considered the most religious country in the Western world.

The impact of religious freedom upon the growth of religious institutions was observed by Alexis de Tocqueville when he visited the U.S. in the 1830s. In his classic work, Democracy in America, he writes:

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America, I found that they were intimately united, and that reigned in common over the same country.

De Tocqueville explains:

Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but nevertheless it must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the U.S. themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizen or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society.

Our American experience of religious freedom and separation of church and state should be instructive, hopefully to Israelis and Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis and others. Whenever religion and the interests of a sovereign state are mingled and confused, religion is the loser. And by placing a religious imprint upon policies that may be unjust and counterproductive, the state involved may be the loser as well.

Corporate Greed: Capitalism with Contempt for Genuine Free Enterprise

Recent business scandals-from Enron to Arthur Andersen to WorldCom and beyond-make it clear that too many men and women in the highest reaches of American business are motivated not by fulfilling the demands of the marketplace but by enriching themselves through fraud, lies and theft.

We have seen once respected firms such as Merrill Lynch exposed for publicly promoting virtually worthless Internet stocks that its own analysts were disparaging in private. In the case of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, it is clear that Andersen knew that Enron's accounting was questionable, but it didn't want to lose the client and the $52 million in annual fees that it paid. Andersen cut corners, destroyed documents, and participated in fraud. The cable company Adelphia guaranteed over $2.3 billion in debt to firms owned by the founding family, who used the money to buy company stock and pursue personal ventures. The earnings of once stellar companies like Xerox have had to be drastically restated.

It is difficult to understand exactly what is being taught in our business schools. A recent Aspen Institute study of about 2,000 graduates of the top 13 business schools found that business school education not only fails to improve the moral character of the students, it actually weakens it.

The study examined student attitudes three times while they were working toward their MBAs: on entering, at the end of the first year and on graduating. Those who believed that maximizing shareholder values was the prime responsibility to the corporation increased from 68 percent upon entrance to 82 percent by the end of the year. In another study, students were asked if, given a 1 percent chance of being caught and sent to prison for one year, they would attempt an illegal act that would net them (or their company) a profit of more than $100,000. More than one-third responded "yes."

Those who have promoted capitalism and the free market as the answer to almost all of society's problems would do well to rethink their position.

Capitalism, of course, is the best possible way to organize economic life. Those societies that have embraced free enterprise have thrived, and those that have followed various forms of socialism have impoverished themselves. That so many intellectuals in the West failed to see the virtues of the free market and the false promises of Marxism is a continuing scandal.

How do we explain individuals such as John Kenneth Galbraith, who wrote in a 1984 New Yorker article that people in the Soviet Union were enjoying "great material progress?" Incredibly, Mr. Galbraith declared that the secret of Communist economic success was that ". . . the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial model, it makes full use of its manpower."

Students at American universities have studied economics from textbooks written by authors who failed to see the reality of economic success and failure around them. In the 10th edition of his textbook Economics, Paul Samuelson wrote: "It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable." Looking at Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania at the present time, we can see how foolish this assessment was.

Capitalism, however, is not an end in itself. Understanding that free enterprise is the most efficient form of economic organization, and recognizing that the free market is the only economic system that is consistent with other freedoms, we have tended to overestimate its place in the lives of men and nations.

The purpose of life is not simply the amassing of material goods, and the purpose of a society is not only to provide the atmosphere in which greed is given full sway. Our own society has provided its citizens with the most advanced standard of living in the world, yet the state of our morals and character is more difficult to assess. Scandals in business, government, and even our religious institutions, shows that this is the case.

Conservatives, in particular, have often betrayed their own larger calling by embracing a crass materialism that, in the end, is not radically different from that which Marxists embrace. To the extent that one believes that man is simply a material being and his purpose in this world is to increase his material wealth, the twin philosophies of Marxism and, say, the libertarianism of the followers of Ayn Rand, tend to merge.

Discussing similar trends in England, where a crass materialism accompanied the Thatcherite revolution, Peregrine Worsthorne, when he was editor of the Sunday Telegraph, wrote that

. . . a healthy society needs both custodians and innovators. It needs custodians-oh dear, does one really have to explain to a Tory audience why a society needs custodians. It needs them because without people who feel an obligation to pass things on to the next generation, society falls apart, loses all its savor, all its beauty, all its charm, all its virtue.

Simply because we believe that economic freedom is the best way to organize our economy does not mean that the amassing of wealth is the appropriate goal for individual lives. In The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton provides this assessment of the materialist view of history:

The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life; that is quite a different thing. It is like saying that because a man can only walk about on two legs, therefore he never walks about except to buy shoes and stockings.

Chesterton points out that:

. . . cows may be purely economic, in the sense that we cannot see that they do much beyond grazing and seeking better grazing grounds; and that is why a history of cows in twelve volumes would not be very lively reading. Sheep and goats may be pure economists in their external actions at least; but that is why the sheep has hardly been a hero of epic wars and empires thought worthy of detailed narration: and even the more active quadruped has not inspired a book for boys called Golden Deeds of Gallant Goats or any similar title. But so far from the movements that make up the story of man being economic, we may say that the story only begins where the motive of the cows and sheep leaves off. . . . It will be hard to maintain that the Arctic explorers went north with the same material motive that made the swallows go south. And if you leave things like the religious wars and all the merely adventurous explorations out of the human story, it will not only cease to be human at all but cease to be a story at all. The outline of history is made of these decisive curves and angles determined by the will of men. Economic history would not even be history.

To believe that society's most important purpose is to minister to man's material needs-rather than his more complex spiritual requirements-is to misread man's nature. Dante, writing in the 14th century in "De Vulgari Eloquentia," describes man in these terms:

That as man has been endowed with a threefold life, namely vegetable, animal, and rational, he journeys along a threefold road; for in so far as he is vegetable he seeks for what is useful, wherein he is like nature with the plants; in so far as he is animal he seeks for that which is pleasurable, wherein he is like nature with the brutes; in so far as he is rational he seeks for what is right-and in this he stands alone, or is a partaker of the nature of the angels.

We have learned how to conduct an efficient and productive economy, but we seem to have forgotten how to build strong families and communities and how to provide men and women with purpose in life beyond the acquisition of riches.

The behavior of some many of our business leaders, now revealed for all to see, holds up a mirror to the serious problems we face. It is particularly important for advocates of free market economics to make clear that this behavior is a challenge to capitalism itself. The first principle of free markets-transparency and trust-have been challenged.

Sadly, free markets are genuinely embraced more often by intellectuals than businessmen. All too often, businesses seek government subsidy, bailout and intervention to keep competitors out of the market. When Congress acted to eliminate the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Interstate Commerce Commission and open up the airline and trucking industries to real competition, it was the industries themselves that opposed deregulation, for they had found a way to control the government agencies involved in their own behalf.

How many more financial restatements will we be seeing? How many more CEOs whose companies are falling into bankruptcy will be receiving multi-million dollar packages when they leave?

Those who have worshiped at the altar of business have, it seems clear, been following a false god. Too many politicians in both parties, having received large sums from business, have been reluctant to make certain that the market is working in a way to assure investors and others that our economy is something more than a shell game. Unless all of this changes, we are in for serious problems-moral as well as economic-in the future. ?

We would like to thank the following people for their generous contributions to this publication: Lee R. Ashmun, Harry S. Barrows, Dean A. Benjamin, James B. Black, Frances G. Campbell, Irma I. Clark, Gary W. Croudis, Richard A. Edstrom, Jerome C. Fritz, Paul V. Gadola, Nancy W. Hearding, William J. Hempel, Jaren E. Hiller, Ray Hodges, Mr. & Mrs. David Ihle, Robert W. Johnson, Mary A. Kelley, Frank G. Kenski, William M. Keogh, Edward B. Kiolbasa, Karen Kuhn, Gerald W. La Marsh, Benjamin H. Lane, Michael Lemiszko, Herbert London, Delbert H. Meyer, Rena Jean Middough, James S. O'Brien, Thad Perry, Gary J. Pressley, Frances S. Richardson, Howard J. Romanek, Philip E. Rosine, George M. Sayre, H. Richard Schumacher, Julian Tonning, Don Coin Walrod, Rodney G. Weiler, George M. Wheatly