God is Dangerous

In his speech earlier this month defending his Mormon faith, Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney made the following preposterous statement: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom".  Later in his speech Romney urged that Americans reject the "religion of secularism", fueling the culture wars between the faithful and non-believers.  This kind of rhetoric disturbs the sociologist Ulrich Beck, who in an essay in Die Zeit (not available online) - Gott ist gefährlich (God is Dangerouss) warns that religion is, at its core, a totalitarian enterprise:

"Religion setzt ein Merkmal absolut - glauben. Alle anderen sozialen Unterschiede und Gegensätze sind daran gemessen unerheblich. Das Neue Testament sagt: 'Vor Gott sind alle gleich.' Diese Gleichheit, diese Aufhebung der Grenzen, die Menschen, Gruppen, Gesellschaften, Kulturen trennen, ist die Gesellschaftsgrundlage der (christlichen) Religionen. Die Folge allerdings ist: Mit derselben Absolutheit, mit der Unterscheidungen des Sozialen und Politischen aufgehoben werden, wird eine neue Fundamentalunterscheidung und Hierarchie in die Welt gesetzt - die zwischen Gläubigen und Ungläubigen." ("Religion is by nature absolute: its core is faith. All other social differences and contradictions are unimportant by comparison. The New Testament says: 'All are equal in the eyes of God.' This equality, this rejection of boundaries that separate people, groups, societies and cultures, is the societal foundation of (Christian) religions. But the result is that the very same absolutism that abolishes social and political differences establishes a new fundamentalism and hierarchy in the world: the one between believers versus non-believers."

in the same speech Mitt Romney contrasted the vibrant religiosity of American life with the churhes and cathedrals of Europe, which stand "so grand, so inspired, so empty."  America, Romney warns, must not embrace the secularism of Europe. (Why Europe is so terrible, he didn't say). Those empty churches in Germany also bother Klaus Motschmann, who, in the radical right-wing weekly Junge Freiheit, proclaims that the "the Church and the Volk"  (I get queasy when I read stuff like this) must return to the core message of Evangelium. The German Volk has been betrayed by the current leaders of the church, who have delivered them to the "magic world" of secular socialism:

Selbst Bischöfe, zahlreiche Pfarrer, Religionslehrer und kirchliche Publizisten bekennen, daß sie nicht mehr an die „Wunderwelt des Neuen Testaments“ glauben können. Sie tragen damit zu immer weiterer diabolischer Verwirrung unseres Volkes bei und damit zur Bestätigung des Glaubens an die „Wunderwelt“ des Sozialismus. (Even bishops, numerous priests, religious instructors and writers confess that they can no longer believe in the "magic world" of the New Testament. They thereby contribute to the diabolical confusion of our Volk and confirm their belief in the "magic world" of socialism.)

Looks like Mitt Romney and Klaus Motschmann have much in common. 

 

Comments

[Scott]

Interesting stuff from Beck.

Re. Romney and religion, we see a calculated appeal to base conservative prejudices, who believe that Europe has gone the way of evil secularism and will soon be overtaken by Muslims who breed at a faster rate. The truth is more complex--European Christianity is not dead yet.