Earth Day Sunday

Fox News has a story on how protestant and evangelical churches are increasingly emphasizing environmental stewardship. 

Earth Day Sunday is just one part of a faith-based green movement gathering steam in Maryland and churches nationwide, where Protestant churches try to dispel the idea that environmental protection is a leftist activity antithetical to Christian ideology.

The environment has historically taken a back seat to common faith initiatives like the fight against poverty or hunger, local church leaders and experts said. But now, congregations increasingly see a connection between care for God's creation and social issues.
. . .
Environmentalism remains in the background at many Protestant churches, but the concepts are beginning to take hold, said George Fisher, a professor emeritus of geology at Johns Hopkins University.

"Somewhat to my surprise, it's happening in the evangelical churches as well," he said. "I think it's an absolutely wonderful thing."

Evangelical churches — defined as Protestant churches focused on expressing the gospels and being "born again" in faith — are generally viewed as more conservative-minded and less likely to advocate environmental issues. It is Presbyterian or Episcopal churches like the one in Towson that are leading the way, Fisher said.

(Posted by Trask)

Ninth Circuit Refuses to Protect Right of Student to Wear Anti-Homosexuality Shirt

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just decided the case Tyler Chase Harper v. Poway Unified School District. The court rejected the argument of a student that the refusal of his school to allow him to wear an anti-homosexual shirt was unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

Judge Reinhardt authored the majority opinion:

May a public high school prohibit students from wearing T-shirts with messages that condemn and denigrate other students on the basis of their sexual orientation? Appellant in this action is a sophomore at Poway High School who was ordered not to wear a T-shirt to school that read, "BE ASHAMED, OUR SCHOOL EMBRACED WHAT GOD HAS CONDEMNED" handwritten on the front, and "HOMOSEXUALITY IS SHAMEFUL" handwritten on the back. He appeals the district court's order denying his motion for a preliminary injunction. Because he is not likely to succeed on the merits, we affirm the district court's order.

. . .

We hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the preliminary injunction. Harper failed to demonstrate that he will likely prevail on the merits of his free speech, free exercise of religion, or establishment of religion claims. In fact, such future success on Harper's part is highly unlikely, given the legal principles discussed in this opinion. The Free Speech Clause permits public schools to restrict student speech that intrudes upon the rights of other students. Injurious speech that may be so limited is not immune from regulation simply because it reflects the speaker's religious views. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's denial of Harper's motion for a preliminary injunction. AFFIRMED; REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Judge Kozinski Dissented:

While I find this a difficult and troubling case, I can agree with neither the majority's rationale nor its conclusion. On the record to date, the school authorities have offered no lawful justification for banning Harper's t-shirt and the district court should therefore have enjoined them from doing so pending the outcome of this case. Harper, moreover, raised a valid facial challenge to the school's harassment policy, and the district court should have enjoined the policy as well.

Professor Volokh at Volokh Conspiracy disagrees with the ruling of the court:

This is a very bad ruling, I think. It's a dangerous retreat from our tradition that the First Amendment is viewpoint-neutral. It's an opening to a First Amendment limited by rights to be free from offensive viewpoints. It's a tool for suppression of one side of public debates (about same-sex marriage, about Islam, quite likely about illegal immigration, and more) while the other side remains constitutionally protected and even encouraged by the government.

Maybe the government needs more flexibility in controlling student speech than Tinker provides. As the close of Judge Kozinski's opinion, he suggests that, "Perhaps school authorities should have greater latitude to control student speech than allowed them by Justice Fortas’s Vietnam-era opinion in Tinker. Perhaps Justice Black’s concerns, expressed in his Tinker dissent, should have been given more weight. . . . Perhaps the narrow exceptions of Tinker should be broadened and multiplied. Perhaps Tinker should be overruled." But even if this is so, whatever rule is adopted should be a rule that the First Amendment applies — or doesn't apply — to all viewpoints equally, not that views that the court system finds "derogatory and injurious" are specially stripped of constitutional protection.

Update 6/24/06: 

Professor Volokh has just commented on some additional inconsistencies of Judge Reinhardt at Volokh Conspiracy.

(Posted by Trask)

Humility Must Precede True Religion

Blaise Pascal discussed the importance of humility in Pensees.

"Had I seen a miracle," say men, "I should become converted." How can they be sure they would do a thing of the nature of which they are ignorant? They imagine that this conversion consists in a worship of God which is like commerce, and in a communion such as they picture to themselves. True religion consists in annihilating self before that Universal Being, whom we have so often provoked, and who can justly destroy us at any time; in recognising that we can do nothing without Him, and have deserved nothing from Him but His displeasure. It consists in knowing that there is an unconquerable opposition between us and God, and that without a mediator there can be no communion with Him.

(Posted by Trask)

An Agape Solution: Zero Emission Vehicles

Froma Harrop argues persuasively about the need to end oil dependence at Real Clear Politics.

Not all problems facing America are caused by oil — only about 96 percent of them. National security, the economy, the environment and even the weather are tied to our reliance on oil. So when the leadership in Washington fails to take serious action on cutting oil use, it fails big-time. Everyone seems to get this but the Bush administration. 

. . .

To this end, a group of defense experts, evangelicals, environmentalists, neo-cons and liberals has formed the aptly named Set America Free Coalition to push for oil conservation and develop alternative energy sources. That sounds like just about everyone in America — except, unfortunately, the politicians running the show in Washington. 

By spearheading a global effort to cut oil use, "the United States can deny its adversaries the wherewithal they use to harm us," the coalition says on its website (www.setamericafree.org). In the event that some visitors do not make the connection, the group puts a picture of a jet slamming into the World Trade Center on its upper-left-hand corner.

. . .

The Bush administration has spent six years doing close to zip about reducing Americans' dependence on oil and, therefore, their exposure to rising prices — though the president made a nice reference to our "oil addiction" in his recent State of the Union Address. Characteristic of his approach, the president promised that future Americans would develop the technology to deal with the problem. Present Americans, meanwhile, need not worry their pretty heads over it.

Ending oil dependence could not be a more critical issue for the United States. There are two major problems created by dependence on foreign oil. (1) Oil dependence creates environmental problems in both the process of drilling for the oil and in the process of burning the oil. Even if you are skeptical about global warming, everybody can recognize the benefit of solving air pollution problems like smog, which are created by burning oil. (2) Oil dependence creates national security problems because it gives the most unstable regions of the world control over our economy. It increases the risk that a major oil shock could devastate the U.S. economy, and it increases the risk of military interventions by the U.S. in order to deal with the threats to our economic interest in oil.

If the United States required auto manufacturers to make a massive transition to zero emission vehicles over the next twenty years, the U.S. could with one policy substantially reduce the risks of major problems including: economic shock from OPEC, economic shock from depleted oil supplies, price inflation from increasing oil prices, military conflicts over oil, terrorism funded by oil profits, global warming, air pollution, and drilling in environmentally sensitive areas of the world.

The best solution is to just set a goal for technological change like 50% of cars must be zero emission vehicles. Setting a broad goal is better than requiring specific technologies or having the U.S. government invest in specific technologies since it offers maximum flexibility to auto manufacturers to find the most economical means of achieving the government established goal. The U.S. must also establish deadlines by which the auto industry must meet the emissions requirements, and the federal government should establish both incentives and penalties based on how quickly the auto manufacturers accomplish the goal. This is an Agape Solution because it solves important social problems by directing the energy of the free market toward solving those social problems. The best solutions use logic to increase love.

For a previous Agape Solution, see An Agape Solution: Market-Based Universal Health Care.

Can Senator Santorum Win?

Dr. Madonna and Dr. Young argue on Real Clear Politics that he can win.

So to the question, can he under any circumstances win? Or is it time for the full figured lady to start her song? Certainly a lot of knowledgeable national analysts, including more than a few of Santorum's own party, think that the race is over.

But this belief ignores Pennsylvania political history, and grossly misreads the nature of contemporary state politics. In fact, there is no doubt that Santorum could win reelection. How he might do that is another question we get to momentarily. But first here are four compelling reasons that support the conclusion that Santorum could still win:

1. Incumbency–He is the incumbent, and incumbents win in Pennsylvania–not sometimes or mostly, but virtually all of the time. Only one incumbent U.S. senator, governor or, for that matter, any other state constitutional officer has lost a re-election bid in modern times, and he lost to Rick Santorum.

2. Resilience–Santorum may have seemed like a politically inept politician the last year or so, and his public statements on some controversial social issues have appeared needlessly provocative. But much of the "Rick is toast mentality" is based on the untenable assumption that he will continue the same klutzy politics through the campaign. He won't. Santorum is a smart, resourceful, and crafty politician, who finds a way to win.

3. Resources–He has never lost an election before. Moreover, he has access to virtually unlimited resources, both money and surrogates to run his campaign. Santorum's story has so far been mainly mediated through a wary, if not critical press. Advertising can change that and it will.

4. History–Finally, and most fundamentally, he can yet win because Pennsylvania is still a very competitive two party state in which candidates of both parties win big elections, in which voters notoriously split their tickets, and in which many elections are close contests–often undecided until late on election night. There's a reason Pennsylvania politicians seldom have fingernails; they bite them off.

(Posted by Trask)

School Choice and Racial Equality

Richard John Neuhaus has some excellent commentary at First Things on the need for school choice. He correctly argues that the current public school system is racist because of the way that it entraps minorities in bad schools.

But what is the right word for the studied indifference to the plight of black, Hispanic, and other non-white children who are consigned to a school system that systematically excludes the majority of them from educational opportunity, and thus from the opportunities and responsibilities of full participation in our common life?

(Posted by Trask)

Liberty University Debate Team Wins Three National Rankings Championships

Christianity Today is reporting on the success of the Liberty University Debate Team. 

No stranger to debate, Liberty University has ended any discussion that they might not field the best team in the country.

Liberty finished first in the rankings of three national policy debate groups—a feat that no college has accomplished before—after flirting with the distinction for several years.

"That's a big accomplishment. I'm actually surprised they haven't done it before," said John Katsulas director of forensics at Boston College and president of the American Debate Association. "It demonstrates overall excellence in their program."

For the last three years, Liberty has finished in the top three in the ADA, National Debate Tournament, and Cross Examination Debate Association.

For other articles on the success of the debate team, see Liberty University Debate Team.

(Posted by Trask)

Christian Humanism

Glenn Stanton has an article in Christianity Today about Christian humanism. 

The pro-family movement is a critical subset of the pro-human movement. But our work needs the context provided by realizing that we have just left the most technologically advanced, but still humanly impoverished, century in history. We must weep at the human death, pain, and alienation caused by genocide, war, global poverty, substance abuse, fatherlessness, aids, and cancer, as well as pornography, human trafficking, child abandonment, commercialization, and radical individualism. Perhaps most of all, we must confront the fact that our knowledge of how to stop many of these scourges has never been greater. We just lack the wisdom and the will.

We must become students of humanity. We must become humanists: people who are unreservedly committed to human life at its fullest, and people deeply pained by human life at its worst. Yes, someone from the Religious Right said we must become humanists.

I don't primarily mean that the suffering of the modern era should drive us to humanism. As Christ said, the poor will always be among us. Human suffering in all its forms is a tragic reminder of the reality of the Fall. We will only be free when Christ's redemption is complete. However, we must become serious students of humanity because just as the Fall is real, so too is the Incarnation. The Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity—the Son of God leaving his eternal and divine communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit to become flesh and dwell among us—this is what should draw us to the question of what it means to be human in these inhumane times.

In his essay The Grand Miracle, C. S. Lewis wrote that if the Incarnation happened, "It was the central event in the history of the earth—the very thing that the whole story has been about." The Incarnation is the center of the Christian story, summed up by Jacob Handl in the 16th century:

God has become human. He remained what he was, and what he was not, he became, suffering neither confusion nor division.

The Incarnation is a heavenly declaration that humanity—both flesh and spirit—matters. Humanity matters because what God creates, becomes, and is seeking to redeem cannot escape our fascination.

It's not just that Christ became human. He lingered in humanity for 33 full years. I sometimes tease my colleagues by saying that if Jesus had been a good evangelical, he would have stayed in a human body for only a day or so, just enough time to get to the important "spiritual" work of saving humanity. If we verge on Gnosticism in our passion for "spiritual things," our Lord does not. It took him 30 years to get around to what we call his "public ministry." Christ, always obedient to the Father, was content to linger in daily human life. Perhaps the reason we have little record of his first 30 years is that they were largely unremarkable. Simple humanity was enough for God in the flesh.

The Incarnation means there are no small lives. All of human experience is meaningful. And while the Incarnation may be a distinctly Christian doctrine, it is also the doctrine that commits us most completely to seeking the common good of our non-Christian neighbors. We serve a God who created our humanity, weeps at the fall of our humanity, became our humanity, and is redeeming our humanity.

Rediscovering One Another True humanism will demolish our gnostic tendencies to believe in a small God who is only interested in our eternal destiny and our moral behavior. If the Incarnation is true, God is intensely interested in every part of human experience, every corner of creation. We, too, should be intensely interested in it, dedicated to showing others the fingerprints of God everywhere, in everything.

(Posted by Trask)