I had hoped to make another post, but other matters intervened and my time expired before I could get back. I was impressed by the level of discourse, and learned a lot. Thanks for the exchanges.

Fred

1. Danithew is right that 90 days/$5,000 does not begin to approximate the costs of adultery. . .

I think the adultery hypo is a good in the abortion context because one can plausibly argue that the costs of adultery, in terms of harm to others, may well be more than the costs of an abortion, (at least given my premise that an unborn child has a diminished, albeit still weighty, ontological status). The social cost of punishing adultery at a level that approximates the harm it causes would be very high–would it serve the children and the wronged spouse better to be hiring private investigators to collect photographs and videos that will be introduced into the public record to prove adulterous behavior? Should we reinstitute fault-divorce, complete with divorce court? If the better parent is the adulterous spouse, should we leave him or her financially destitute? Deny him or her custody of the children? No-fault divorce has had its own unintended consequences, but I’m not sure the old system was better. But whatever the outcome of that calculus, it seems extremely unlikely to me that church teachings and policies *require* a conscientious Mormon to support serious criminal punishment of adultery–hence the question about abortion.

2. I’m not an ethicist, but my limited knowledge of ethics suggests that if one starts from the premise that a fetus (incidentally I try to alternate between “fetus” and “unborn child,” because there’s really no good word that suggests neutrality/balance on this issue) has the same ontological status as an already born person, it is extremely difficult to defend the Church’s policy on utilitarian grounds, and impossible to defend it on Kantian grounds (violating the categorical imperative (life) to preserve a noncategorical imperative (health, however serious the threat) seems the ultimate in anti-Kantian ethics). I will look forward to reading Nate’s paper after I finish my deck.

3. Yes, killing is justified in some circumstances, but these are usually cases in which the victim bears some degree of culpability (self-defense, law enforcement), or the killing is excused because of background assumptions about the relationship between individuals and the state (war, cf. AF 11). Unborn children are quintessentially innocent, and the background assumption approach actually leads in a fairly direct line to the right to privacy the currently undergirds the pro-choice position. I agree with Pete that it’s a perilous enterprise to draw too strong a conclusion from silence in any context, and there remains the risk that at the judgment bar those who are liberal on access to abortion may find that they miscalculated the moral seriousness of their positions. Still, it is difficult for me to believe that, if unborn children have the same ontological status as already born persons, thus making abortion murder, God would have remained silent on so important a matter, while allowing the Church to maintain practices and policies in considerable tension with that view.

4. As to Matt Evans’s nonfeasance/malfeasance distinction, it seems unhelpful to me. The law generally holds that people have no duty to help a person in distress when they bear no responsibility for the distress. Thus, for Mormons who take the the Church’s teachings on sexuality seriously, the violin hypo fails on its premises (though it is persuasive to those who believe that sexual activity, marriage, and children are either unrelated or less closely related than Mormons believe them to be).

5. I find extraordinary the suggestion that the Church’s policy requires bishops to counsel members against abortion even when their situation falls within an exception. To me this is a misunderstanding of the role of the bishop, which is to be a judge in Israel, guided by the Spirit. There is no “common law of abortion counseling,” and, indeed, in this as in other areas the brethren affirmatively discourage the development of rules or guidelines beyond those set forth in the Church Handbook. The abortion policy requires that a person contemplating (assisting in) abortion counsel with (his) her bishop because this is a morally serious action, for all the reasons we have been discussing. The bishop’s role would seem to be (1) to make a judgment that the member’s situation does indeed fall within the situations in which the policy permits abortion to be considered (because if it isn’t, the member is subject to discipline), and (2) help the member make the “right” decision. As we all know, the “right” decision carries heavy doses of situational context; once (1) is established, (2) may vary considerably from member to member, depending on the circumstances. (And, if we’re going to be over-reading the policy, note that the bishop does not exercise veto power; the member is only required to counsel with the bishop, but the decision is ultimately (his) hers, so long as the bishop agrees that it falls within the exceptions.)

6. I heartily agree with Ethesis that a middle ground is badly needed in abortion discussions. I confess that my working assumption is that prolifers do not link their position with social legislation that ameliorates the disproportionate burdens on women that such a position entails (can anyone think of a national politician–governor, senator, member of Congress–who takes this position?), and was glad to hear of him and others like Russell who do make that link.

Fred

1. Clinton was one of the most gifted politicians of our time, and moved the national Democratic Party towards the center–think intervention in Bosnia & Kosovo, welfare reform, NAFTA & free trade–where it needs to be if it is to escape longterm structural minority status. Had Gore been able to run on Clinton’s record, Election 2000 would have been no contest . . .

(Though Lyle, please, let’s not argue about this. :) ) Had Gore run on Clinton’s record, he risked appearing to endorse Clinton’s conduct, but the only way to run away from his record was to move left, which is what Gore ultimately did. That undid the moderation of the Dems that Clinton had started, and contributed to increased polarization of the two parties which, I think, does not serve the country well. So for moderate Dems, Lewinsky-gate was a true Greek tragedy.

2. John Knowles made several insightful points in his thoughtful post.

a. On exemptions, I think the dominant view in the Republican Party on religion is a Wil Herbergian/this-is-a-Protestant/Catholic/Jewish-nation, so our government and laws ought properly to reflect this cultural majority (weak Establishment Clause), and exemptions are rarely necessary since this preferred/presumed religio-cultural understanding predominates in every state (weak Free Exercise Clause). The dominant Democratic view until recently has been civil libertarian, with particular solicitude for minority religions and minorities generally (strong Free Exercise Clause), but with strong suspicion for the P/C/J cultural understanding (strong Establishment). (The LDS church, incidentially, has skillfully played off both positions, suggesting that we are “just like the Protestants” at times, and at other times appealing to our minority status and history of persecution.) My own view on exemptions is that, however normatively appealing they might seem, they’re no longer plausible in a morally pluralistic society in which there are large numbers of ethically serious agnostics and atheists–e.g., how come religious people get exemptions, but secular folks with comparably serious moral concerns don’t? I actually think the Dems are moving in this direction, which means that within a decade, perhaps less, there’ll be no constituency for exemptions.

b. I also think John is right that the LDS church will not participate in faith-based funding. This illustrates the double-edged sword of Establishment Clause neutrality. Participation in the social welfare state is necessary to compete in the early 21st century when everything–including religion–is becoming consumerized. Those who choose not to participate, like the LDS church, are at a disadvantage, and may lose mass appeal as a result.

c. As to the Nixon-Clinton comparison, my experiences are similar to John’s (though admittedly not a scientific sample)–LDS Republicans tend to downplay Watergate, which involved quite extensive perjury and subversion of the justice system, while expressing outrage at Clinton’s dissembling to the grand jury which, though clearly wrong, was isolated. Perhaps we’re all more partisan than we like to admit, and that partisanship affects our judgments more than we like to admit.

3. As to Lyle’s lament for a good sexual-harassment plaintiff’s lawyer, first you need a plaintiff. Sexual harassment is *unwelcome* sexual attention, and whatever else one might say about the situation, it does not appear that Ms. Lewinsky found Clinton’s sexual attention unwelcome.

Fred

However, to say that an unborn child has a lesser status than a born child is not to say that it has no status, or only the status of an animal. It is perfectly coherent to maintain that abortion is not murder, but that it is a grievous moral wrong, because while the fetus is not a fully human being, it nevertheless is a being with an extremely weighty ontological status. Even if one is pro-choice, one is not necessarily committed to the position that an abortion is like euthanizing a pet.

Nevertheless, if an unborn child has a lesser ontological status than a born human being, then it is logically possible for there to be situations in which the interests of the latter properly outweigh the former. (Indeed, the Church’s policy lists four or five such situations.)

These are the premises which I assumed in posing the adultery and social welfare points. Those who reject these premises are, of course, free to reject them, but it hardly makes sense for us to talk about these points unless we proceed from these premises. Obviously, if a fetus is a fully human being with the same status as all of us, then adultery can be distinguished because it does not involve murder, and the social welfare point is ridiculous because it would allow murder in case the state does not provide certain social welfare benefits to the murderer.

Second, my questions were designed to explore whether, as a Latter-day Saint, one must choose between gender equity and the prolife position, given that women disproportionately bear most of the costs associated with unwanted/out-of-wedlock pregnancies. It is not a sufficient response, in my view, to say, “Too bad, we live in a fallen world,” any more than one can excuse violations of the law of chastity because, “gee, it’s really hard when sexual images are everywhere.” I also did not accuse anyone of not caring about the poor, though whether particular social welfare programs really work seems to be a very curious response anyway. Subsidized/on-site child care clearly makes life easier for single mothers. Many states do not require health insurance companies to cover birth control prescriptions. The rate of child support collection for custodial parents (overwhelmingly female) hovers around 50%; that figure could be improved dramatically with the investment of law enforcement resources. And so on.

But finally, at the conceptual level, what seems important to me is whether one may justify imposing the unequal burdens of immorality on women by a prolife position without also being committed to alleviating these burdens to the maximum extent possible. Liberal Catholics notwithstanding, we’re Mormons: How many Mormons are committed to both (besides Russell, whose terrific post went to the heart of the matter). (And, again notwithstanding liberal Catholics, I’m on firm ground with the observation that most prolifers do not link their anti-abortion views with support of social welfare programs or other means of alleviating the burdens of unwanted pregnancy.) The question remains, how can one coherently justify not alleviating those burdens while remaining committed to gender equity?

As to adultery, kudos to the posts who take it seriously. In the many discussions I’ve had with people over this point, until now no one has really argued for enforcing it. There would, of course be serious problems with it, starting with the right to privacy, but maybe 90 days in jail and a $5,000 fine would make people take their marriage vows more seriously.

Or not. :)

Fred

Second, while it takes two sinners to conceive a baby out of wedlock, one of the sinners–the woman, of course–suffers disproportionate costs. Is this just “too bad,” or does gender equality count as a reason justifying a pro-choice position? Note that many of the disproportionate costs borne by women re unwanted pregnancy could be mitigated or eliminated entirely by social welfare legislation (which is usually vociferously opposed by the same interest groups that support restrictive abortion laws). Shouldn’t restrictive abortion laws be ethically linked with social welfare and other legislation that minimizes, to the extent biologically possible, the difference in the costs borne by men and women when their immoral behavior results in conception of a child? While Elder Oaks’s Ensign essay is a powerful and cogent statement of the ethical necessity of linking the Church’s moral statement on abortion with one’s personal view of the availability of abortion as a matter of public policy, the problem of disproportionate costs is not something he addresses.

If these arguments have been made and addressed before, then of course someone should simply say so and we can move on to other things.

Fred

As to trying to sneak something by anyone–as if that would actually be possible with this group!–I meant only to suggest that one possibility for the almost uniform dislike of President Clinton by Mormon Republicans might be that Mormons consider marital fidelity an indispensable quality of their public servants, because of the Church’s teachings. . . .

(Yes, “eclipse” was a bad choice of terms, but it looked so cool when I typed it.) Let me be clear: As a Democrat who voted for Clinton twice, I nevertheless found his personal behavior appalling, did not believe that it was an outrage for him to have been impeached, and further did not think that it would have been an injustice for him to have been convicted and removed from office. Lying and obstruction of justice strike at the heart of our system of justice, and should not be tolerated in anyone (regardless of one’s definition of “is”), especially the chief executive of our country.

But President Clinton did not lie in the course of abusing public power like, say, President Nixon did in the Watergate scandal. Whose conduct was worse? I believe that in a public servant, abuse of power is far worse than infidelity, even though as moral sins infidelity might be worse than abuse of political power (plus, think of all the figures in American History who have failed the fidelity test–Hamilton, Jefferson, FDR, Eisenhower, LBJ, off-hand). Yet one can still find many Saints who minimize President’s Nixon’s lying while villifying Clinton. Closer to home, I find it fascinating that the dissembling, lack of preparedness, and general hubris of the current administration re the Iraq War is easily overlooked by my neighbors–could it be that it’s because President Bush has the moral commitment and discipline that Clinton lacked when it comes to groupies?

As to Lyle’s comments, I respectfully disagree. Clinton spent political capital to get both bills passed, especially RLUIPA, when he dissed his base (which generally opposed it) and cut deals to get the bill through only six weeks before the 2000 Election. A commitment to religious liberty was something he cared very much about about which he was very well informed–he thought Smith was wrong, and that religious groups are constitutionally entitled to exemptions–and this commitment permeated his administration, notwithstanding the political realities that sometimes overrode it. By contrast, the Republican base has always been ambivalent about religious exemptions. The secular/business base generally opposes federal interference with state prerogatives, like RFRA and RLUIPA, and the religious base–overwhelmingly conservative Christian–has never been very excited about enhancing the religious liberty of nonChristians (other than Jews). It is impossible to imagine the current President spending political capital with Putin to get the Russian authorities to stop harassing Mormon missionaries–it’s simply not an issue he or his base cares very deeply about. (Faith-based funding, however, now that’s a different story.)

Fred

1. On balance, Republican positions more closely approximate LDS teachings than Democratic positions, and Clinton’s pro-free-exercise policies did not break through or otherwise counterbalance that perception.

1a. The foregoing is not merely a perception, but derives from the fact that Republican policies do more closely approximate LDS teachings than Democratic ones.

2. Latter-day Saints see politics as moral rather than pragmatic. It is more important to vote for persons whose private morality approximates LDS morality (even if their policies are unsympathetic to the Church), rather than persons whose policies might be best for the Church, but whose private morality is antithetic to LDS morality.

3. Sexual morality has eclipsed economic justice, environmentalism, and civil rights as the most important moral teaching of the contemporary Church, and thus the most important consideration when one considers how to vote.

Fred

I enjoyed the comments. Some thematic responses.

1. The time line for the “spirituality” research is from about mid-1980. At that point, most scholarship began to abandon the “secularization hypothesis,” which posited that as scientific rationalism progressed in its ability to explain more and more, and religious belief would wither away. I think DaveB is right that a better way to think about spirituality is as a restatement of the secularization hypo, rather than a successor, which is how I had thought of it. I would add that while spirituality rubric may apply to other countries–mostly developed, Christian ones–it is largely confined to observations about the US.

2. I apologize to the “false-dichotomy” folks for not posing the spirituality-fundamentalism opposition in a more nuanced way. A better way to have put the question would have been, “How is spirituality manifesting itself within the Church (if at all), and how is fundamentalism manifesting itself ( if at all). On the other hand, there is considerable insight to be gained from disciplined examination of a subject through the lens of a dialectic. My experience with those who cry “false dichotomy” is that they often opt out of the examination because they are not comfortable with the apparent consequences of either prong, though Dan, Lyle, John, and others no doubt have different motivations for rejecting the premises of the question. Still, I’d be interested in how they think the Church responding to these influences, or why they think the Church is insulated from them, or why they think they don’t exist.

3. It seems to me that both spirituality and fundamentalism are evident in the contemporary church. The manner in which (acceptable) roles for women have evolved in the Church is an excellent example of a spirituality orientation, as danithew observed. Church teachings about the role of women during the last 30 or 40 years have roughly paralleled the move towards gender equality in American society. Although the initial Church reaction to the “women’s movement” was fundamentalist–e.g., the anti-ERA initiatives–it is now acceptable for LDS women to go to graduate school and to have careers (though this seems to go down easier with more traditional members if the career is also traditional, like public school teaching or nursing, as opposed to law or business). There has also been a rise in gender equality rhetoric within the Church–e.g., spouses are to support each other as equal partners. It’s possible that this is the result of revelation simpliciter, but it seems more likely to me that it came as the result of tacit recognitions by members and leaders alike that the 1950s single career/stay-at-home mom no longer works for substantial numbers of faithful members–e.g., can a working class family on a single income really buy a home in a decent school district with a decent commute in, say, LA or NYC–imposes substantial personal costs on the wife, and at some level is simply not fair.

On the fundamentalist side, I would say first that the question is whether the Church is fundamentalist now. While it is true that a fundamentalist church in 1890 would never have abandoned polygamy, that says little about our attitudes towards theological change in the church in 2004. I also agree with the suggestion that we have fundamentalized the principle of hierarchical obedience in the Church. Whereas members of many fundamentalist religions prooftext the Bible, we prooftext conference talks and BYU firesides. My experience–as both participant and observer–is that, whatever their substantive origin, member-leader conflicts in the church morph almost immediately away from the substantive origin of the conflict into questions about the member’s willingness to observe the law of obedience by submitting to the leader’s judgment. Even when a leader’s orders are rather off-the-wall, such as the many beard and colored shirt examples that seem always to be with us, there is enormous pressure to conform, and failure to do so is often not excused by lack of substantive merit in the leader’s underlying command.

4. I think I disagree with the suggestion that spirituality is the easy way out; it’s no more accurate than saying that people stay in the LDS Church because it relieves them of the need to think for themselves, since our leaders tell us everything we need to do and know. No doubt there are those who are attracted to spirituality because it lets them have their sins and commit them, too, like there are undoubtedly Mormons who like the fact that they don’t have to think about right and wrong if they don’t want to, but both of these characterizations ignore the complexity of the experience in both instances. Having to decide what is morally right in the absence of authority can be as difficult and complex and undertaking as deciding whether to obey the counsel of a church leader. I have several close friends who are atheists, and I know that they simply do not experience moral or ethical questions as simply adjusting their views of ethics and morality to whatever they find convenient and easy to live by.

5. I use “immanence” to signify the conventional meaning of “internal” or “within the person or mind,” rather than the (also common) “immersion” or “all around us.” The shift from transcendence to immanence would thus be a move from objectively true or real principles, to principles that work or individuals. Many religious people, especially Latter-day Saints, recoil from the idea that our own attitudes can have anything to do with what is true or real. But if one has any sense that hermeneutics captures how we make sense of the past and the present, or accepts that construction plays some part in how we understand reality, then the move from transcendence to immanence is seems to me unavoidable.

Fred

To get started, let me summarize some recent research I’ve done on current trends in the sociology of religion, and then pose some questions.

(The complete write-up is part of an essay, “Religious Experience in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” a link to which appears at my BYU faculty profile page at http://www.law2.byu.edu/Law_School/faculty_profiles/fp_frameset.htm.)

One trend in the character of religious belief in the United States is a move from transcendence to immanence, a search for spirituality and religious meaning that is much more focused on one’s own personal needs than it is on whether religion reveals “reality.” This trend has manifested itself in (at least) three ways. First, a significant number of people now describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious”–that is, they care about God and spiritual matters but are a- and sometimes anti-denominational. A second manifestation, closely related to the first, is the growing phenomenon of “grocery cart religion”–that is, people who construct their own, idiosyncratic faith by assembling diverse and even inconsistent doctrines by which they live their lives. “Christian Buddhists” might be an example

A third manifestation is “cafeteria” religion–that is, believers who consider themselves active members in good standing of a denomination, but who reject one or more central doctrines or tenets of the denominations. Many Roman Catholics, for example, consider their affiliation with the Church important in their lives, and are active in their parish, but reject the Church’s teachings on birth control and abortion, or on the ordination of women to the priesthood.

A reaction to the trend towards spirituality, a-denominationalism, grocery cart and cafeteria religion, and immanence generally–or perhaps better, an opposition to them, since it predates them–is fundamentalism, understood as a religion guided by scriptural literalism and unchanging, uncompromising doctrines that reveal truth and reality, understood as “objective” in the Cartesian sense.

Some questions:

1. Is the trend towards spirituality evident among the membership of the LDS church? Can one discern a growing tendency among members to evaluate the church and its teachings and practices according to how they serve one’s perception of his or her personal needs, rather than whether those teachings and practices are true in the classical Cartesian sense? Or, instead, do members relate to the church pretty much as they have for the last half century?

2. Is the LDS church spiritual or fundamentalist? Does an answer depend on whether one focuses on culture, theology, membership, or leadership?

3. Can a fundamentalist church, one that insists on unchanging and uncompromising truths, and scriptural literalism, retain mass appeal in contemporary US society? Is belonging to a spiritual church worth the trouble? To what extent is the truth of the LDS church linked with what was, until recently, remarkable growth in the US and internationally?

Thanks, Fred