Category: General

My friend Richard Hyde with some reflections on architecture and American freedom:

Architecture is embodied values.  From the humblest temporary dwelling to the grandest monument, buildings reveal what a society values.  As Kenneth Clark put it at the beginning of Civilisation, his famous television series of some forty years ago: “If I had to say which was telling the truth about society:  a speech by the minister of housing or the actual buildings put up in his time – I should believe the buildings.

I have spent much of the past two decades studying the buildings of the nation’s capital as a way of understanding this vast nation, now doubled in population since I was born in 1951.  The waves of building up and tearing down in Washington indeed parallel what has happened in the rest of the nation:  enormous growth and confidence in the 1950s and early 60s; vast upheavals and disruptions in the late 60s and 70s, the era of the downtown street demonstration, the growth of the suburbs and interstate system, and the withering of the inner city.  More recently we are observing in Washington and elsewhere a resurgence of the inner city as the population continues to increase and suburbs outgrow the ability of railroads and highways to get people back into the city to work and to recreate.

As a scholar of religion, what I study in particular are the memorials in this city whose task it is to put up monuments that proclaim our common values, evaluate our history and pass on to future generations the lessons that the living have so painstakingly learned.

In this regard, despite the growth and turmoil, Washington has changed remarkably little.  It is still a city iconically defined by five classical buildings that mark out east, west, north, south and center, making the city itself an enormous compass:  Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, White House, Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument.  Each one is sedulously classical, or traditional, if you prefer, especially the Capitol, with domes, pillars, pilasters, porticos, pediments, architraves, the works.  You might say that the Washington Monument is even older than classical, being an obelisk, of Egyptian origin.  These buildings have not changed significantly in over sixty years, nor are they likely to, and their fundamental message remains the same:  what Americans value over everything else is freedom.

A lot of water has come down the Potomac and a lot world-shattering events taken place since this configuration reached its completion in the still-dark days of World War II.  At the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial on April 13, 1943, Jefferson’s birthday, President Roosevelt said, “Today, in the midst of a great war for freedom, we dedicate a shrine to freedom.”  At no time in world history before or since had freedom been so threatened and the need for united action against its enemies been so great. Fortunately this nation and its allies mustered the necessary unity and a greater percentage of people on earth now enjoy some measure of any number of freedoms than ever.

Nonetheless, many threats to freedom remain and we Americans argue amongst ourselves, as we must, about how to face these threats and how to balance freedom with unity.  How the other classical memorials and the many recent ones reflect this argument will be the subject of subsequent postings.

Richard Allen Hyde is interested in the religious background of contemporary politics and policy.  The roots of this interest are various, but perhaps the deepest is simply a suggestion made by mathematician Freeman Dyson in Disturbing the Universe: “We shall not understand the dynamics of science and technology just as we shall not understand the dynamics of political ideology if we ignore the dominating influence of myths and symbols.”  There is no better place to investigate this interaction than the nation’s capital, he says.

The Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR) celebrates the founding of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.  We are honored to be one of the several centers and institutes who will help to constitute the school.  Already, the school’s vision is congenial to CCHR’s mission, especially its emphases on global justice, human rights, integral human development, civil society, and religion.  Likewise, CCHR has much to offer the school, including a long track record in human rights education, extensive ties in the Latin American system of human rights, a commitment to Catholic teaching, and its recently expanded vision of human rights research, especially in the area of religious freedom.  We eagerly anticipate working with Dean Scott Appleby to make the school a success and to bring glory to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission.  Equally so, we look forward to strengthening ever more our partnership of four decades with Notre Dame Law School and to continuing to build our LL.M. program in human rights law.

In keeping with Arc of the Universe’s theme of religious freedom, Reg Reimer blogs on Christians in Vietnam.  Reimer is part of the team of scholars who make up the Center for Civil and Human Rights’ project, “Under Caesar’s Sword: How Christian Communities Respond to Repression.”  He first went to Vietnam as a missionary in 1966 and served there throughout the Vietnam War. He has travelled to the country numerous times since, connecting with Christians churches, researching the repression of Christians and advocating for them. He is an acknowledged authority on Christianity in Vietnam, particularly of the Evangelical tradition, whose followers have increased more than tenfold since the communist takeover in 1975. His book on the Evangelical movement, Vietnam’s Christians: A Century of Growth in Adversity, was published in 2011.  Here is what he writes:

Christian believers in the remaining communist countries, even those that have made some progress toward religious freedom, continue to experience local or widespread reversions to discrimination and harsh treatment.  An ugly campaign to remove crosses from hundreds of church buildings in eastern China is underway. From Laos and Cuba come periodic but regular reports of brutal persecution in local areas. In Vietnam, certain remote areas have never experienced the relaxation of persecution promised by changing regulations and experienced in urban areas.

A clear case in point is Dien Bien province in northern Vietnam. A rare and lengthy testimony of a Christian leader in the province was obtained by advocates. It details 25 years of repression against Christians of the Hmong ethnic minority. The leader himself spent 8 harsh years in various prisons, often in a “small dark cell”. He and fellow Christian villagers were often raided by officials, and forced to feed them – after which the villagers were thanked by beatings and attempts to pressure them to recant. This was done by forcing them to drink the blood of chickens freshly sacrificed to spirit or ancestors. Officials helped themselves to the Christians’ property, fields and crops and encouraged their animist neighbors to do likewise.

Many other abuses are listed, and the latest are very current. Earlier in 2014 groups of officials and animist Hmong they recruited raided Christians’ homes, abused the occupants, then tore their houses down, also destroying their gardens and taking their crops.

Authorities, whose goal is containment of the growing Christian movement, go to great lengths to prevent Christians from receiving teaching from qualified leaders. They confiscate Bibles and Bibles and Christian literature, and forbid meetings larger than the nuclear family. These enforced restrictions, all against Vietnam’s own religion regulations, have led directly to some Hmong Christians being led into cultic beliefs for which they suffered a brutal military crackdown in May 2011.

The Christian leader begs for the “the world” and the United Nations to come to see if Vietnam is living up to its promises on religious freedom. He also gives names and addresses of offending officials and Christian victims.

That such still happens in some places in Vietnam puts all religious believers under a cloud.  There are no extenuating circumstances for abusing people for their religious beliefs and peaceful practices. As long as some people remain subject to regular abuse because of their religious beliefs, the whole fragile religious freedom project in any country is jeopardized.

 

All too little attention in the West is paid to the world’s second most populous state and most populous democracy, India.  Just over three months ago, Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister.  Former Chief Minister of Gujarat State, Modi was demonstrated to have turned a blind eye towards and condoned massacres of Muslims in riots of 2002.  More generally, he is associated with an aggressive Hindu nationalism that runs roughshod over religious minorities like Muslims and Christians.  Now the Ghadar Alliance, a U.S.-based watchdog group, has published “Fast Track to Troubling Times: 100 Days of Narendra Modi – A Counter Report.”  The conclusion is that little has changed about Modi now that he is in India’s highest office.

Tomorrow look for the announcement of a letter signed by 100 Muslim scholars and leaders denouncing the injustices of ISIS.  Significantly, the letter is to be issued in Arabic as well as publicized in English.  Though it will be important to see who the signers are and where they are from, the letter will likely create a strong Muslim voice for shared norms of justice.  If religious beliefs matter in forming ISIS, then public theological arguments are needed to counter ISIS — and discourage would-be joiners across the Middle East and the West.

Christianity is finished in northern Iraq, argues Daniel Williams in an op-ed in the Washington Post today.  Williams is not writing for a church or a Christian advocacy outfit; rather he is a correspondent for the Post and a former research at Human Rights Watch.  The decimation of the Christian community that began when Saddam Hussein fell in 2003 has now accelerated.  The iciest part of his analysis: They are not going back.

He writes:

Indeed, the exodus of Christians is ongoing. Has anyone noticed that the Christian population of Iraq has shrunk from more than 1 million in 2003 to maybe 300,000 today? Now, there are virtually no Christians left in either Mosul or on the plain.

So when I ask refugees their plans, it is unanimously to leave Iraq altogether. Enough is enough. This runs counter to the desire, expressed mostly outside Iraq, that a Christian presence be preserved in a land that has known Christianity for 2,000 years. It’s sad but true: Christianity in Iraq is finished. As one refugee told me, “We wanted Iraq. Iraq doesn’t want us.”

And:

Western countries ought to come together and offer refuge to the tens of thousands who want to leave Iraq.  Yes, this would mean the end of Christianity in this part of the world, where its presence has often served as a bulwark against fanaticism. But it’s over anyway, whatever happens to the Islamic State. It’s time to face that fact and save the Christians themselves.

Resonant with the themes of Arc of the Universe is a conversation worth reading over at Open Global Rights on religion and human rights.  Today’s human rights advocates — activists, academics — commonly believe that religion is an impediment to human rights.  They  believe that human rights were a modern, Enlightenment-era invention that replaced religion, which was hierarchical, feudal, and irrational.

The series, edited by James Ron, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, challenges this view — and does not.  It begins with a post by Larry Cox, who makes the case that religion, though some times in tension with human rights, also bolsters human rights.  Others come back and defend the conventional contemporary view — that religion is in tension with human rights, leading to exclusion and even persecution.

My own post argues that it is difficult to make a strong defense of human rights without God.  Human rights activists may be perfectly committed to their cause even without believing in God.  If you want to know why there are human rights, though, you can’t get far without God.

It is true, though, that secular and religious people often offer different accounts for why there are human rights, which human rights are valid or deserve priority, and who is entitled to human rights.  Rather than religion vs. human rights, I think it would be better to speak of “clashing visions of human rights” or “competing orthodoxies.”  A more accurate and honest debate would ensue.