{"id":17227,"date":"2018-03-22T20:46:52","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T03:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17227"},"modified":"2018-03-22T20:48:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T03:48:05","slug":"but-still-may-the-cup-of-crisis-pass-from-us-and-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/but-still-may-the-cup-of-crisis-pass-from-us-and-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBut still \u2014 may the cup of crisis pass from us, and soon.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ross Douthat, a Catholic convert at 17, writes the compelling text <em>Bad Religion, How We Became a Nation of Heretics <\/em>(heretics defined as a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted) in which he challenges the reader to feel safe and empowered to be political without being partisan.\u00a0 Much like author James Hunter, Douthat decries Christians who are so stuck in their morality and partisanship that they are unwilling to question or stand up for a belief that is contrary to their chosen political party.\u00a0 As an example, he points to a democrat like John F. Kennedy who was prolife (which was acceptable at the time but would now be considered blasphemous.)\u00a0 \u201cHis comfort with complexity, and with those who disagree with him\u2014along with his somewhat unconventional upbringing, his unorthodox ideas on abortion law, and his embrace of both popular culture and highbrow literature\u2014make him a surprising conservative writer. More surprising than most of his\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>readers would ever know, and compelling in ways his fellow conservatives may not like to admit.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> \u00a0While Hunter encouraged Christians to completely step away from politics, and move into faithful presence, Douthat encourages involvement, as long as Christians find moments where there are sides of contradiction \u2013 \u201chere is an issue in which it\u2019s clear that my highest loyalty is to the New Testament rather than the Republican Party platform.\u201d Douthat sees political polarization as detrimental to our culture and faith. \u201cThe party system has split along racial, cultural, and religious lines, creating a kind of tribal system where each party\u2019s supports regard the other side with incomprehension and loathing.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even with his conservative positioning, I appreciate and value Douthat\u2019s commonsense (and biblical) approach to discernment.\u00a0 He is willing to step aside from the Republican agenda if it makes sense \u2013 and is biblical.\u00a0 He speaks eloquently regarding the conservative stance on homosexuality and abortion as he states Christians should \u201cbe more wholistic with moral outrage\u201d and include wealth, prosperity preaching, pornography, divorce, etc. as \u201cequally\u201d sinful.\u00a0 If they are not regarded as equal, conservatives should step away from the debate.\u00a0 Regarding politics, and as a perfect lead-in to Douthat\u2019s views on refugees resettling in the United States, he makes the following brilliant assertions in his Breakpoint podcast:<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cPolitics is downstream from culture.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIt should be ok to\u00a0contradict belief and politics.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat is my own side getting wrong and what can I do about it?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThere&#8217;s an awful lot of ways to fall down.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cChristianity has always depended on unexpected resurrection.\u201d and<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe most important battle has already been won.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>According to Douthat, There are \u201ctwo ways to think about the potential dangers involved in\u00a0admitting large numbers of refugees from the Middle East\u2019s present chaos\u201d into Western countries, and both of them have rather\u00a0different implications\u00a0for Europe than for the United States. \u201cBut cultural change is a complicated thing, built on narratives and symbols and intuitive leaps.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\"><sup>[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Douthat points out that European countries are more at risk when accepting refugees because of their proximity to the Middle East and the Schengen Area. \u201cDangers\u00a0are much more clear and present for\u00a0Europe than for the United States.\u00a0The first problem, of easy terrorist movement, is worse on the continent not only because of Europe\u2019s sheer proximity to the Middle East, but also because of the way the continent\u2019s\u00a0Schengen Area\u00a0works: If your passport (forged or real) gets you into one\u00a0Schengen country, then you can enter all the rest (well, or at least until recently you could) without facing any kind of border check at all. That effectively means that Greece and Italy and Spain are doing the work of border control and refugee screening for France and Germany and Sweden, which is\u00a0rather like if New Mexico, Mississippi and Alabama bore the primary responsibility for screening refugees to the reset of the U.S.A., with only\u00a0ad hoc support\u00a0from the federal government.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But Duthout profoundly acknowledges (even as a conservative) that border security operates differently here in the U.S. It\u2019s centralized and federalized,\u00a0as is refugee resettlement, and \u201cwhile it\u2019s obviously subject to\u00a0various forms of incompetence it\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0in the hands of local officials\u00a0whose incentives (and cultures and languages and bureaucratic effectiveness) differ radically from the governments of their wealthier neighbors, as it presently is in Europe.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a> The United States also has the advantage of the Atlantic Ocean &#8211; almost all our refugees arrive by plane.\u00a0 The Atlantic Ocean is a mechanism of \u201cpre-screening for us; boats full of Syrian (or \u201cSyrian\u201d) migrants are not regularly washing up on the Outer Banks or Nantucket.\u201d So, essentially, we are far ahead of our European counterparts with our systems and processes in resettling refugees.<\/p>\n<p>Believe it or not, the U.S. has a far better track record than Europe when it comes to\u00a0assimilating Muslim immigrants\u00a0and preventing extremism from taking root.<a href=\"#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a> \u00a0So aside from the question of moral responsibility \u2014 \u201cwhere I think you can make a case that the U.S. bears more responsibility for the miserable fate of people in the broad zone of our Iraq intervention than do the nations of \u201cOld Europe\u201d that opposed that intervention in the first place\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn9\" name=\"_ftnref9\">[9]<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 it appears that the American\u00a0governors trying to keep refugees out of their states, and the \u201cRepublican politicians making hay over the issue\u201d, are not accurately understanding and assessing the actual risk of refugee resettlement.<\/p>\n<p>Douthat believes that questioning\u00a0<em>how<\/em>\u00a0we\u2019re handling refugee policy is reasonable\u2026but unless the United States is planning to never take asylum seekers from the Middle East again \u201cit\u2019s hard to see a good case for a sustained moratorium on admitting any refugees from\u00a0a regional nightmare that our own policies, across two administrations, have helped create and worsen.\u201d\u00a0 If the U.S. thinks we shouldn\u2019t take any refugees because we can\u2019t feel one hundred percent secure about the vetting process, then we should probably stop issuing student visas and tourist visas to Middle Easterners (and not only them) as well.\u00a0\u201cBut if we think, as we should think, that perfect security is a fantasy, then the differences between our position and Europe\u2019s seem sufficient to make a moral and prudential case for going ahead with the refugee numbers that the Obama White House had in mind, or even the higher numbers (50,000? 60,000?) floated by the Democrats; the likely risks are simply not high enough to justify a halt.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn10\" name=\"_ftnref10\">[10]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to Douthat, what we\u2019re debating right now is really more about American feelings (our sense of security versus our sense of righteousness) than it is about macro-level solutions to the refugee crisis. \u201cWhat that macro-level solution might be I don\u2019t pretend to know.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn11\" name=\"_ftnref11\">[11]<\/a> It probably needs to involve helping refugees where they are at the moment (in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey), rather than encouraging the idea that the only truly moral solution\u00a0involves assimilating them all into Europe. For the concerned citizens in the U.S. we need to do our part to aid humanitarian efforts; and our government needs to determine what they can do both home and abroad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor reasons of prudence, millions of Syrians (and Iraqis, and Libyans, and \u2026) shouldn\u2019t end up in\u00a0Greece and Hungary and Germany. For reasons of prudence and logistics\u00a0<em>and<\/em>\u00a0democratic politics, they won\u2019t end up in America. So they need to be helped, and soon, close to where they are right now.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn12\" name=\"_ftnref12\">[12]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut still \u2014 may the cup of crisis pass from us, and soon.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn13\" name=\"_ftnref13\"><sup>[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2010\/01\/ross-douthat-new-york-times-conservatism\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/21\/fear-and-loathing-in-american-politics\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> https:\/\/player.fm\/series\/the-breakpoint-podcast\/ross-douthat-bad-religion<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> https:\/\/player.fm\/series\/the-breakpoint-podcast\/ross-douthat-bad-religion<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/24\/opinion\/sunday\/douthat-the-obama-era-brought-to-you-by-the-iraq-war.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/18\/europes-refugee-problem-and-ours\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/18\/europes-refugee-problem-and-ours\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/18\/europes-refugee-problem-and-ours\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref9\" name=\"_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/18\/europes-refugee-problem-and-ours\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref10\" name=\"_ftn10\">[10]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/18\/europes-refugee-problem-and-ours\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref11\" name=\"_ftn11\">[11]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/18\/europes-refugee-problem-and-ours\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref12\" name=\"_ftn12\">[12]<\/a> https:\/\/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/18\/europes-refugee-problem-and-ours\/<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref13\" name=\"_ftn13\">[13]<\/a> https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/07\/10\/opinion\/sunday\/are-we-unraveling.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ross Douthat, a Catholic convert at 17, writes the compelling text Bad Religion, How We Became a Nation of Heretics (heretics defined as a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted) in which he challenges the reader to feel safe and empowered to be political without being partisan.\u00a0 Much like author [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-17227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-douthat","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17229,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17227\/revisions\/17229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}