Picking and Choosing in Religion

In a post late in 2007 I wrote:

...So, we Baha'is do pick and choose which rules or teachings we accept literally and which we take metaphorically, and without any authorized interpreter left on this mortal plane, we really don't have any persons with authority to tell us when we are correct or incorrect in our interpretations and understandings of the many metaphorical teachings. So often the scriptures are abstract, and rarely are they concrete or specific. So, we're left to be mature and thoughtful and rational, and take things as best we may. So, this is a religion where we do some picking and choosing. ...

A very thoughtful reader, Mavaddat Javid thought about this and decided he didn’t agree. On February 18th of 2008 he posted on his livejournal a careful explanation of why he didn’t agree, titled “Vanquishing Dissonance and Baha’i Cherry Pickers.” He returned to the subject on February 20th of 2008 with a post on freethinking and the Baha'i Faith. I think I owe him a response here on my blog, and he’s given me some good solid points for consideration.

First of all, I’m not sure I was saying that Baha’is are supposed to cherry pick (as opposed to “picking and choosing”). For me, the term “cherry picking” has connotations of willfully ignoring some evidence and only selectively taking evidence that supports one’s view. But "cherry picking" can also simply mean "choosing the best," and in that case, by definition, I was advocating that, as Baha'is should pick the best evidence and authoritative sources as reference materials with which to inform their ethical decision-making. As to selectively taking evidence to support what one believes, it may be human nature to approach almost all questions this way, with a bias that favors evidence that confirms what one already values or believes. We do seem to easily ignore ignore evidence that would create dissonance in our belief systems. Yet, I think I was merely saying that if one looks at the entirety of Baha’i scriptures, the reported words of the Central Figures (the Bab, Baha’u’llah, and ‘Abdu’l-Baha, and Shoghi Effendi would not have wanted himself included as a fourth figure, so neither do I), and various other historical acts of these Central Figures, one finds it possible to conclude that some laws are subordinate to other laws, and some principles are of greater significance than others. Likewise, sometimes the laws are written in language that, it appears to me, is hyperbolical, exaggerated, metaphorical, or limited to contexts and situations that don’t universally apply. Given these two perceptions, many Baha’is (including myself), will need to use discretion and wisdom in considering how to behave and how to best follow the Baha’i teachings regarding ideal human behavior. We will need to make decisions about applying Baha’i religious teachings or law in our lives where we must pick and choose which laws to emphasize, which principles or teachings to prioritize, and how to apply general teachings in specific cases. Yes, in doing this, some of us will engage in intellectually dishonest cherry-picking. I think that’s unavoidable, given human nature. But, I think the Baha’i Faith, taken as a whole, seems to encourage flexible and independent thought when it comes to application of religious law and religious teachings.

I think this idea that in ethics and religious law there are no absolutes is fairly mainstream, or has been since Aristotle wrote the Nichomachean Ethics with its emphasis on goal-directed ethics. It seems to me that a thoughtful follower of the Baha’i religion can embrace this mainstream stance. Codes of behavior are not like laws of physics or axioms of mathematics that apply absolutely in the same way in all situations (if that’s even true of laws of physics and mathematical axioms). Saying so and living according to this insight isn’t intellectually dishonest.

This seems obvious to me, yet when I hear people say, “you can’t pick and choose” and imply that you must take everything in a religion, I usually interpret them to be saying, “in this situation your choice of emphasis and the passages from our holy texts you are considering are leading you toward faulty conclusions. If you consider other passages from our holy texts you will reach a better conclusion, one that I agree with.” I don’t think people really mean “you can’t selectively consider the laws and teachings of the religion, because they all apply in every situation, and they always apply literally, and they are all of equal weight and equal significance in whatever particular situation you are facing.” People might mean that, but if they do, I don’t think they are thinking very carefully about what they are saying.

I’ll offer some real examples I’ve known about in my life to help illustrate. In a large city in Taiwan a Baha’i died. He was a member of the local spiritual assembly (a sort of elected council of deacons who have some administrative and spiritual responsibilities in a local community), and he was a very devout and dedicated believer. His family, including his wife, his children, and his extended family did not identify as Baha’is. They mostly followed the Buddhist and Taoist teachings that are popular in Taiwan. It was the family’s wish that this person’s body be cremated. The Baha’i Faith’s teachings on how to treat the bodies of the deceased are:
The Lord hath decreed that the dead should be interred in coffins made of crystal, of hard, resistant stone, or of wood that is both fine and durable, and that graven rings should be placed upon their fingers…. …The Lord hath decreed, moreover, that the deceased should be enfolded in five sheets of silk or cotton. For those whose means are limited a single sheet of either fabric will suffice…. It is forbidden you to transport the body of the deceased a greater distance than one hour’s journey from the city; rather should it be interred, with radiance and serenity, in a nearby place….
And so, with this sort of law, Baha’is generally do not have corpses cremated. Rather, we typically bury our dead. The remaining members of the local spiritual wanted their dead co-religionist to be buried according to Baha’i religious law. This was, to them, important. It was so important that they opposed the dead man’s family, who wanted him to be cremated. In fact, they very actively tried to prevent the family from cremating their dead co-religionist. Their well-meaning (but misguided) desire to adhere to an approach to religious law in which each law must be taken literally and applied in all situations brought them into a situation where they deeply distressed the man’s family and totally alienated his family from the Baha’i religion, which had been so important to him.

A Hand-of-the-Cause (a sort of appointed “saint” in Baha’i society—there are none left alive today) visited Taiwan and heard of this incident. She was disgusted, and said something to the effect that this was a stupid application of Baha’i teachings. She said something to the effect of, “They have inflicted damage on the faith and transgressed our core teachings about love, kindness, and teaching-by-example in order to follow a trivial law about burial.” Faced with a non-Baha’i family that wanted to cremate their dead Baha’i husband-and-father, the Baha’is of this city had to pick and choose whether to stand firm on the importance of following Baha’i burial law or let that law be violated in order to follow teachings and principles about respecting families, showing kindness, and using wisdom. The Baha’is of this city did pick a literal application of the legal letter-of-the law, and fought the family, but in doing this they had decided not to choose other principles that would have told them not to make a big issue about it, and instead let the family have their way. The Hand-of-the-Cause thought they should have picked and chosen differently.

I’ll give other examples, these about the consumption of substances that damage the intellect. When intoxicated by alcohol our intellects are impaired, and therefore Baha’is do not drink much alcohol (some of us do drink small amounts of alcohol, because physicians have recommend medications that contain some alcohol or have recommended one serving per day based on scientific evidence that this is helpful to persons who are not susceptible to alcoholism).

The relevant laws and teachings concerning alcohol consumption include, from the Kitab-i-Aqdas (a book that is something like a Baha’i foundation for religious law):
It is inadmissible that man, who hath been endowed with reason, should consume that which stealeth it away...
Also, from a passage revealed by Baha’u’llah, we have: “Beware lest ye exchange the Wine of God for your own wine, for it will stupefy your minds, and turn your faces away from the Countenance of God, the All-Glorious, the Peerless, the Inaccessible. Approach it not, for it hath been forbidden unto you by the behest of God, the Exalted, the Almighty.”
Now, that second passage comes from “a tablet revealed by Baha’u’llah” but I don’t know to whom the tablet was addressed. Some early Babis and Baha’is had problems with alcohol dependence or abuse. If the tablet was revealed in a personal letter to one of these earlier believers, or to a community where a few of the believers were notoriously suffering from alcoholism, that might put the meaning in a different context than if the source tablet was one generally revealed to humanity, or used by Baha’u’llah in works He ordered to have widely disseminated.

[Right here I'm showing my disagreement with literalist interpretations. Some who ridicule scientifically-minded and free-thinking Baha'is tell us that the Baha'i Faith has all sorts of hidden anti-intellectual and nasty stuff that must be given equal weight to all the liberal stuff, and one only finds it after one has studied carefully everything in Baha'i source documents. Those of us who aren't burdened with the idea that we must ignore context and instead use literalist interpretations of everything we encounter shrug our shoulders in amazement. For us it seems obvious that some material should be given greater weight than other material. For example, a central thesis of a major work revealed by Baha'u'llah, and indeed almost anything revealed by Baha'u'llah and then used by Him in the materials He ordered to be widely copied or published, should have more significant weight than letters written to individuals by Shoghi Effendi's secretary, or more obscure personal tablets written by Baha'u'llah to individuals, and then never referred to again or used by Him, but later discovered by reseearchers combing through all the letters He ever wrote or revealed. That is, if you assume that there is some sort of hierarchy of importance and significance, you don't let relatively trivial sources overrule the fundamental sources.]

Here are two examples of picking and choosing related to this law against alcohol consumption. In one case, I joined a small group of Baha’is from Nairobi, including one who was an administrator at a high level (A continental counselor for Africa) and another who served as an elected member of the national spiritual assembly. We went to some villages to visit newly elected local spiritual assemblies. At one small town the local spiritual assembly was inebriated. It was the habit in that region to make a mildly alcoholic home-brewed beer and drink copious amounts of it, and most of the local believers celebrated our visit by getting drunk. Our group did not sternly rebuke the local spiritual assembly members or point out that they were breaking Baha’i law. Rather, we joined them in some joyful singing of songs of praise, and visited some of their homes with them to discuss some of the Baha’i teachings. One of the Nairobi group gently discussed the laws about alcohol with one of the sober local spiritual assembly members, saying something to the effect that as the community grew and learned more about the faith they would drink less, and eventually as Baha’is they would stop drinking, as it was forbidden in the religion, but it was important not to embarrass or blame anyone for the situation that day, as the community was full of newly declared Baha’is who were unfamiliar with all the laws and teachings.

This advice was a matter of picking and choosing. The continental counselor or national spiritual assembly member could have addressed the problem of alcohol consumption and drunkenness, and could have urged the local community to immediately give up the practice and start following the Baha’i laws about refraining from beer. But no, the importance of tact and wisdom (also Baha’i principles) seemed more important in this context, and so there was no “enforcement” or emphasis on the laws about alcohol, only a gentle reminder. The emphasis was instead on principles about love and unity. That seemed like a wise application of “picking and choosing” to me.

In another example, in California there was an appointed administrator who cared very much about the law against alcohol consumption (I think this person was an assistant to an auxiliary board member, a person who is supposed to advise local communities and encourage local communities to follow guidance from the Baha’i World Center in Haifa, and generally help protect and propagate the faith). This woman was concerned that an individual believer in one Bay Area town in California might be drinking beer or wine. So, she came to visit him, pretending to be there on a social call. When this Baha’i had allowed this administrative zealot into his home she went to his refrigerator to inspect it for wine or beer. In fact, there was some beer in the refrigerator, but it belonged to this person's housemates, who rented bedrooms in his house, and not him. The administrator had duties to help Baha’is live according to the Baha’i teachings. So, from her point of view, she was helping this Baha’i obey laws about alcohol consumption. She had decided that her duties to help Baha’is conform to Baha’i law and the specific Baha’i law about alcohol consumption were extremely important. She had, in doing this, devalued principles and laws about honesty (she had come into the Baha’i home on false pretenses, pretending to intend a friendly visit when in fact she was conducting an inspection). She had also chosen to subordinate Baha’i teachings about kindness, tact, mutual respect, and the importance of the privacy of one’s home to the teachings about duties of Baha’i administrators and the law about alcohol consumption. I think her choice was bad. It would have been better if, in her picking and choosing which laws and responsibilities to emphasize, she had given greater weight to honesty, kindness, and civility, and de-emphasized the law against alcohol consumption.

So, I’ve now illustrated my proposition that Baha’is must pick and choose with a few specific real examples of Baha’is picking and choosing. I think that we do this picking and choosing all the time. In every decision we make about how to spend our time we are deciding whether to follow Baha’i teachings that emphasize family, or emphasize service to humanity, or emphasize the importance of prayer, or emphasize the importance of self-cultivation and self-improvement. In essence, we are stewards of our lives, and our lives belong to God. When we decide to allocate our time among various activities there are many pursuits that our religion advocates. Can we do something that will build family unity? Should we do some service to people in our community, our neighbors, persons who are suffering in grief or poverty? Should we participate with our Baha’i community in events that will improve our community life? Should we read a book to become better informed about events of the world? Should we study some Baha’i scriptures or histories, or should we perhaps pray? Every hour we have choices about what we do with our time, and in essence these are ethical decisions, related to the various Baha’i principles that tell us what we ought to be emphasizing in our lives. If we took all the Baha’i principles literally we would always be neglecting some duty that the Baha’i religion enjoins us to satisfy.

I think we’re safe in refusing to take all Baha'i principles literally. Even ‘Abdu’l-Baha, our perfect example, sometimes enjoyed visiting a garden to enjoy the beauty of the flowers and trees and fountains, when he could instead have been out teaching the faith, praying, helping the poor, or attending to the psychological needs of his wife and daughters. It's not literally true that we must spend every waking moment "in service to the Cause of God" (whatever that means).

I’ll get on with my response to Mavaddat Javid now by quoting some of his propositions and explaining why I disagree with him.

Mavaddat wrote:

...if cherry picking is acceptable in the Bahá'í Faith (or any religion, really), then there's fundamentally no way to hold the religion accountable for its teachings: The believer can always shift the debate by feigning the excuse that they personally don't adhere to the more reprehensible parts of the religion, as if that was relevant....

The idea here is that a belief system that demands faith and obedience (such as a religion) should be held accountable for its teachings. What does it mean to be held accountable for its teachings? I suppose it means that when a religion makes claims we should be able to test those claims, and the results of such tests give us a way to determine the validity of a religion. Likewise, when a religion demands certain behaviors, or advocates certain behaviors, we should be be able to evaluate the morality of those behaviors and use our evaluations as a way of determining whether the religion is worthy of our belief. For example, if a religion asks us to wage religious war against the infidel, and if we personally think that waging religious war is repugnant, then we can know that those religions that advocate religious war have among their teachings at least one teaching that we find incompatible with our sense of what a true religion or good religion should teach. This will presumably make it possible for us to decide to avoid belonging to a religion that has such teachings. (Incidentally, the first law Baha'u'llah revealed when He declared His station was the abrogation of religious war).

I am suggesting that literal interpretations of every passage and fragment of revealed writings or authoritative communication from Baha’i Central Figures are inadequate methods for understanding Baha’i religious law. I claim that my opinion is based on fundamental core teachings of our Baha’i religion (as found in the Kitab-i-Iqan, the Book of Certitude). That is, our religion teaches us to not use blind imitation. Our religion teaches us to expect metaphorical meaning or figurative meaning in some types of religious texts. Our religion teaches us to be pragmatic, and to some degree goal-oriented in our ethics. Our religion also emphasizes taking the whole religion as a system rather than taking little passages from specific tablets out of context and trying to use them to build systems of belief or religious law that contradict the core teachings of the religion. The Baha’i religion also depends on people using their intellects, their rational faculties, and their common sense. We haven’t any clergy to tell us what to do, so we are told to study the religion for ourselves and use the independent search for truth, the discipline of Baha’i consultation, and so forth. Thus, I see Baha’i Law as being similar to nearly all other systems of law, where the written text of constitutions or legal codes is only the visible manifestation of a wider invisible system of assumptions, propositions, values, and contexts. (We have the Universal House of Justice to legislate, but it seems so far they hardly legislate much at all, and instead focus mainly on their administrative duties.)  I suggest that a religion must be held accountable to the whole system of what is there in the literal text and the wider context of that text. Both the words in the Kitab-i-Aqdas (the Baha’i book of laws) and the religion that surrounds that book must be considered. It seems to me that if we take the Kitab-i-Aqdas literally and apply it without thinking about its context we may very well be “turning away from the precepts laid down by God” in other sources, including the invisible and latent meanings and assumptions embedded within the literal text of the Kitab-i-Aqdas.

With this point of view, I don’t take the Kitab-i-Aqdas as a list of things we must do and things we must not do. It’s not that simple, and it’s not that straight-forward. Also, it’s more than that. A simple list of laws is not on the sublime level of spirituality one expects from the Kitab-i-Aqdas: “Think not that We have revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the choice Wine with the fingers of might and power…” (fifth paragraph of the Kitab-i-Aqdas).

So, this is a disagreement I have with Mavaddat. I think you can hold a religion accountable without taking every passage and law or precept as it is literally written in a holy text. The religious teachings must be taken in the context of the whole religion, and not torn apart in a reductionist exercise of taking the parts in isolation from the whole. Also, religion includes various forms of human language and communication beyond the sort of writing that one finds in instruction manuals and cookbooks. Religion includes forms of literature and expression related to poetry, folk tales, dreams, music, visual arts, and body language. It’s futile to try to reduce all this non-literal meaning and aesthetic beauty to a religion that works like blueprints for the construction of a building. If you take religious texts and study them as if they were mere blueprints (and sure, many Baha’is do this with our holy texts), I think you lose something profound and significant, and any evaluations you make of the religion based on such a nuts-and-bolts approach is going to lack validity.

Mavaddat also wrote that, “I felt it intellectually irresponsible to pick and choose.” I don’t see things the way he does. I think religions demand that we pick and choose, and so if we have intellectually integrity we must face this responsibility and do our picking and choosing carefully, and stop denying that picking and choosing will be part of our religious life.
Mavaddat quotes “Shoghi Effendi” (actually, he is mistaken, as he is quoting Shoghi Effendi’s secretary), who wrote:
"To follow Bahá’u'lláh does not mean accepting some of His teachings and rejecting the rest. Allegiance to His Cause must be uncompromising and whole-hearted."

Mavaddat doesn’t give the context of the passage, but I think the context is important. This was a letter written by Shoghi Effendi’s secretary to a local spiritual assembly on the topic of whether Baha’is should remain full members of other churches. And, if we continue where Mavaddat left off, we find that the rest of the paragraph written by Shoghi Effendi’s secretary confirms my point that Baha’is pick and choose. Here is the rest of the paragraph:

...During the days of the Master the Cause was still in a stage that made such an open and sharp disassociation between it and other religious organizations, and particularly the Muslim Faith not only inadvisable but practically impossible to establish. But since His passing, events throughout the Bahá’í World and particularly in Egypt where the Muslim religious courts have formally testified to the independent character of the Faith, have developed to a point that have made such an assertion of the independence of the Cause not only highly desirable but absolutely essential....

So, when you see the whole paragraph and understand the context, you see that the “law” of uncompromising and whole-hearted allegiance was itself a rule that only became “highly desirable” and “absolutely essential” when times and the context were ready for it to be applied. Further, it’s clear that this passage has something to do with with self-identifying as a Baha’i. I doubt it could literally mean that all Baha’is had to hold orthodox beliefs in Baha’i theology as Shoghi Effendi understood it, because around the time Shoghi Effendi’s secretary wrote this passage there was in fact a Hand-of-the-Cause who clearly believed in reincarnation, and didn’t apologize for believing in it. We also have the very famous case of the psychiatrist Auguste Forel, who wrote to ‘Abdu’l-Baha asking if he could, in good conscious, call himself a Baha’i when he didn’t believe in the personal immortality of the soul. ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s letter in reply to Dr. Forel’s question (which is more important as a source of Baha’i law, since it was composed by a Central Figure in our faith, and not written by a secretary to the Guardian), did not tell Dr. Forel that he should stop calling himself a Baha’i because he didn’t believe in each and every teaching in the Baha’i Faith.

In fact, ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s letter to Auguste Forel is an important source here. Dr. Forel was asking exactly this question about whether it was intellectually honest to call oneself a Baha’i when one didn’t actually accept every teaching of the Baha’i Faith, so ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s response is a direct response by a Central Figure to the question of whether it’s okay to pick and choose what we believe and still call ourselves Baha’is.

Mavaddat offers a few other quotations to support his idea that Baha’is must be dogmatic because our faith is dogmatic. He refers to a passage from a letter Shoghi Effendi wrote in 1924 to the American Baha’is, in which he wrote:

Are we to doubt that the ways of God are not necessarily the ways of man? Is not faith but another word for implicit obedience, whole-hearted allegiance, uncompromising adherence to that which we believe is the revealed and express will of God, however perplexing it might first appear, however at variance with the shadowy views, the impotent doctrines, the crude theories, the idle imaginings, the fashionable conceptions of a transient and troublous age? If we are to falter or hesitate, if our love for Him should fail to direct us and keep us within His path, if we desert Divine and emphatic principles, what hope can we any more cherish for healing the ills and sicknesses of this world?

First of all, I think this has to be taken in context. Religions must urge their followers to resist secular teachings that lower ethical standards, and it seems to me this is a passage reminding American Baha’is to keep their minds and hearts focused on religious teachings rather than secular substitutions for religious faith. Further, this was written early in Shoghi Effendi’s guardianship, and this was a time when obedience was very important, because ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s half-brother Mirza Muhammad Ali was challenging the institution of the Guardianship and Shoghi Effendi in particular. Given those contexts, this passage seems to me like a straight-forward reminder to remain loyal and obedient to our religion’s teachings, and not to abandon these for inferior substitutes (non-religious belief systems or anti-Baha’i religions). If it’s clear (as it is to me) from the whole body of Baha’i scripture that “the revealed and express will of God” includes the proposition that we should not use blind imitation, and that we should instead use independent search for truth and wisdom and common sense in discerning what aspects of a religion are metaphorical/figurative and which aspects should be taken literally, then this passage affirms my understanding rather than contradicting it.

There is also this reference to a passage from a ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Last Will and Testament:

To none is given the right to put forth his own opinion or express his particular conviction. All must seek guidance and turn unto the Center of the Cause and the House of Justice. And he that turneth unto whatsoever else is indeed in grievous error....

But again, this isn’t given in context. If you read the entire Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Baha and this particular passage in its context you can reach several fairly obvious conclusions. First, this is hyperbole. ‘Abdu’l-Baha is exaggerating to make a point. Second, this is a specific rule for the time immediately following ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s death, when Shoghi Effendi was young and the Guardianship was a new institution without precedent in Baha’i scripture or history. Baha’u’llah’s Will had said that ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s half-brother Muhammad Ali should become the leader of the Baha’is after ‘Abdu’l-Baha died, and ‘Abdu’l-Baha was claiming that things had changed and Muhammad Ali was no longer fit to be the leader of the Baha’is. ‘Abdu’l-Baha correctly anticipated that young Shoghi Effendi would encounter significant and serious opposition from Muhammad Ali and some other senior Baha’is, and this sort of exaggeration was useful and helpful in this situation, to get people who might doubt whether they should follow the guidance from ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament or Baha’u’llah’s to decide in favor of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s. Also, if you look in part two of the Last Will and Testament, you find this passage:

O dearly beloved friends! I am now in very great danger and the hope of even an hour’s life is lost to me. I am thus constrained to write these lines for the protection of the Cause of God, the preservation of His Law, the safeguarding of His Word and the safety of His Teachings.

Again, I think this implies that the Will and Testament needs to be considered in the context of its times and the situation in which is was written. I don’t think the hyperbole within it ought to be taken as a new law that supersedes core Baha’i teachings about consultation, the independent search for truth, or freedom of conscience. Rather, those fundamental and core teachings must be understood in a perspective that also values the authority of the Guardian and the House of Justice in their spheres of authority.

Mavaddat refers to a passage from a Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i-Aqdas:
The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other.

Mavaddat suggests that the part about “it behoveth every one... to observe every ordinance of Him...” is to be taken literally. If it is to be taken literally, and without any context, then he’s right, and Baha’is can’t pick and choose. But such a literalistic interpretation of this passage seems ridiculous to me. I don’t understand it literally. I take it to mean that the two duties of humans are: 1) to recognize manifestations of God and have faith in religion, and 2) to behave ethically, following the laws of God. In behaving ethically and following the laws and precepts of religion, we must pick and choose. We cannot follow literally every law and precept in all occasions in exactly the same way. That is why I say we must pick and choose. In fact, I think our religion recognizes this.

Mavaddat wrote that:
In a sense, of course, you can pick-and-choose what laws to follow and which to ignore while calling yourself a Bahá’í. You “can” do whatever you like. But I think that beyond being profoundly dishonest intellectually, it also contradicts the expectation of being a Bahá’í as found in the writings of the Central Figures, UHJ, and Shoghi Effendi.

I disagree with him that picking and choosing is profoundly intellectually dishonest. Rather, I think admitting that we must pick and choose is intellectually honest. I think the source of the disagreement between us is Mavaddat’s understanding that every passage about obedience and Baha’i law must be taken literally, and may be taken out of context of the whole Baha’i Faith. I don’t see things that way, so I see things differently than he does.

In my earlier post I said that it was "bad logic" to say that if you are a Baha'i you must accept everything. I meant that this was a false dilemma, or "black and white thinking" where the two propositions were: "Baha'is must believe in everything in the entire body of Baha'i scripture as being literally true" or "Baha'is can choose to accept just whatever they like or want to accept from their religion." Neither of these propositions is true. Baha'is do not need to take everything in their religion as literally true, and they do not need to make superficial and ill-informed personal interpretations of every little fragment they encounter in their religion's holy texts, particularly when they are encouraged to take literalist understandings of fragments of texts given without the whole context. And, Baha'is aren't free to pick and choose according to personal preferences and tastes. Rather, they must use sincere judgement and an honest search for truth as they decide for themselves what things in the holy writings should be taken literally and what things are given to us in exaggerated poetic language or metaphor.

Mavaddat wrote that the Baha'i faith demands believers take a literalist approach to Baha'i law where everything must be accepted in its entirety, and there is no room to pick and choose. He says there is no false dilemma in this proposition, as it's simply a fact of Baha'i doctrine enshrined in authoritative Baha'i texts. I've explained why I don't accept this is as a matter of Baha'i doctrine, explained how I understand the texts that Mavaddat cites, and explained the propositions I think are there in the false dilemma (bad logic) in the statement that Baha'is must accept everything or else they aren't really Baha'is. Study 'Abdu'l-Baha's letter to Auguste Forel and the letter Dr. Forel wrote to 'Abdu'l-Baha and see what you think.

- Eric

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

I see that there is some continuing furor about remarks said by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., the pastor for Barack Obama. (What does that mean that there is a "furor?" The word gives my imagination images of people red-faced and shouting.)

The minister said "God damn America" for its historical treatment of minorities.

That use of the phrase "God damn" may be a poor word choice, but the sentiment isn't all that wrong. Why, it's the same sentiment that Abraham Lincoln wondered about in his Second Inaugural Address.

...The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." ...

Abraham Lincoln was suggesting that perhaps we deserved our War Against the Rebellion of the Southern Slaveholders, a war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, and involved hundreds of thousands of casualties (my Hadley ancestors fought for the Union and lost brothers, uncles, sons, and friends in the war). "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." This sentiment that Providence was delivering to us something that indicated we were guilty, and both sides would suffer—should suffer, seems to have occurred to Lincoln shortly after visiting the still-bloodied fields of Antietam. That was a battle, fought on a single day, in which 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing. All the death and much of the physical injury we've experienced in five years of war in Iraq was experienced in a matter of minutes in the Bloody Cornfield and the Sunken Road on that horrible September 17th.

If Abraham Lincoln could suggest to us during the last weeks of his life that perhaps we deserved a terrible and awful punishment for the injustice of slavery, I wonder if it is so bad for Rev. Wright to wish for God's terrible wrath ("God Damn America") to revisit us for our arrogance and all the mistreatment of minorities and non-Americans that has continued since 1865.

I think a poem by Kipling is worth considering here.

...Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law -
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

I think another bit of bitter art that Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermon recalls to my mind is that Thanksgiving Prayer that William S. Burroughs recorded in 1986. Here's an excerpt:

...Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK....

I think the point here is that sometimes people look at our history and our culture and the negative tendencies we Americans have, and they despair. That anger and bitterness can be a righteous anger that motivates action for progress and improvement. It can also be something people wallow in to no avail and for no benefit. I think it sounds as if Rev. Wright and Obama have harnessed the indignation at our nation's failures to motivate them toward helping us improve our culture and our country.

Tax fairness and income inequality

Lately I've noticed letters to the editors of newspapers and blog essays where people complain that the tax system in the United States is really set up to soak the rich. People complain that liberals like John Edwards are lying when they say the wealthy take advantage of the tax system. In fact, the conservative say, the wealthiest households in the United States pay most of the taxes, and the lowest half of the population pays very little in the way of taxes.

First of all, if you accept (as I do) the proposition that the free market tends to exaggerate the rewards given to people near the top of reward distributions and tends to undervalue and underpay people near the bottom of reward distributions, then one sees a certain unfairness in the way people earn income. People near the top of the pay scale (the rich) tend to be overpaid. They get more than they need, and they usually get a bit more than they deserve.

Partly as a means to rectifying this injustice, taxes and government policies can take some money from the wealthy and redistribute it to people who are less wealthy. The poorest people, who can afford very little, can pay very low taxes, or even no taxes at all, while the wealthiest people, who can afford to part with some of their money, can pay higher taxes, and give up a greater share of their wealth. This can be done with a progressive income tax, and it can be done through policies that give more to the poor and give less to the wealthy.

If one accepts this, then there is no moral objection to conditions such as having a group of 5% of the taxpayers, who might take a quarter of the national income, pay more than a quarter of the national taxes. And, if the poorest half of the nation's taxpayers take in 5% of the national income, then they may pay less than 5% of the nation's taxes.

One mistake conservatives make when they talk about taxes is to only count certain types of taxes. Most people, even poor people, pay sales taxes. Many pay property taxes. Many pay registration fees and processing fees and court costs and fines and other forms of revenue to the public purse. People tend to pay taxes to local, state, and federal governments. And, along with the income tax, there are also taxes for social security, workers compensation insurance, and these sorts of things that are taxes on earnings that supposedly differ from the federal income tax. When I've read conservative letters or essays about taxes, they never explain exactly what taxes they are describing, and I have yet to see good references to where they find their data.

I thought I should do my part to investigate the matter of the federal income tax, and how much the wealthy actually pay, and how this compares to people at the middle class. In this blog entry I'm giving references to the documents I'm using, and I'm only talking about the federal income tax.

I began my search at the Census Bureau. My first question was, "what share of aggregate income (all income received in the nation) do the wealthy actually take?" I found the answer when I examined table 675 from the Census Bureau's publication, the Share of Aggregate Income Received by Each Fifth and the Top 5 Percent of Households: 1967 to 2005. It’s available at this page.

According to Census Bureau, the top 5% of American households received about 22.1% of aggregate income in 2000, and about 22.2% of aggregate income in 2005. In 1993, the year Clinton was inaugurated, the wealthiest 5% received 21.0% of aggregate income. In 1981, the year Reagan was inaugurated, the wealthiest 5% received 16.5% of aggregate income. So, the wealthiest have seen their incomes rise from 16.5% of our nation's aggregate income to 21% during the Republican era of the 1980s, then rise one percentage point to 22% by the time Bush was given power by the Republican Supreme Court (Constitutionally, we should have waited for the Republican Senate and House to give him power), and since Bush has been in power the top 5% first lost their percentage and more recently have gained their percentage back to about where it was in 2001. That's the story the numbers tell.

What about the working class, the poor, and the lower middle class? The bottom 40% earned 14.2% of income when Reagan became president (in 1981), they earned 12.6% when Clinton became president (in 1993), and they earned 12.2% when Bush became president (in 2001). In 2005, the most recent year for which there is information, the bottom 40% of households earned 12% of aggregate income. The working class and poor are earning a smaller fraction of national aggregate income, but the trend has been slowing down since the 1990s.

So, it appears that the 1980s and early 1990s were a time of growing inequality, while inequality did not grow much in the Clinton era of the 1990s or in the Bush era of the past six years. At least, this is the story one can take from the Census Bureau report, and this is true of you only look at inequality by comparing the top 5% and the bottom 40%. Is that a good way to compare trends and learn about inequality? It's good, but it's also fallible, and it's wise to use multiple fallible indicators to get teh whole picture. This particular indicators is a reasonable type of comparison, and when you use this comparison, the inequality trend is bad, but nothing is changing rapidly or radically in recent years.

Some conservatives, such as a guy from Naperville, Illinois, named Tom Rand (who wrote a letter to the Illinois Times, a newspaper here in Springfield, where I live) claim that the tax burden for the wealthiest Americans (as a percentage of all taxes paid) has increased relative to their (trivial) increase in earnings (“earnings” as a percent of aggregate income). In other words, if you know that the wealthiest top 5% of the nation has been earning 21% to 22% of all income, and this hasn't changed much at all in the past six years, but you know that the same wealthiest 5% has been paying a higher percentage of the total national income tax, then you can make a claim that the wealthy are paying a greater share of national taxes while their share of national income has been stagnant. Their taxes are going up relative to their incomes at a rate that is faster than the increase for everyone who isn't wealthy. If this is true, then it appears that the wealthy aren't getting a great deal with the Bush tax system, and in fact the economy and taxes we have had since the Bush administration tax cuts of 2001 tend to favor people in the bottom 95%.

That's a story based on this one chart from the Census Bureau, but let's consult another fallible indicators of the situation. Let's see what data we may find at the IRS.

If one goes to the www.IRS.gov website it’s fairly easy to find a detailed analysis of the 2005 taxes paid by various income groups. I found most of what I needed in: this pdf Fall 2007 report on the 2005 taxes (collected in 2006). The best page is page 40 (of 64), where you find Table 2. All Returns: Tax Liability, Tax Credits, and Tax Payments by Size of Adjusted Income, Tax Year 2005. It's also important to look at page 16, at Table 1. All Returns: Sources of Income, Adjustments, Deductions, and Exemptions, by Size of Adjusted Gross Income, Tax Year 2005.

Looking at the IRS data I wanted to see where my household fits in the big picture. How are we doing, relative to others in the economy, and how does our income and tax responsibility compare with that of the wealthy? It turns out I'm in the middle of the middle class. My wife and I file jointly, and our gross income before adjustments is usually in the bracket between $40,000 and $50,000, although some years (when I work through the summers or get a nice grant) we have gross incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 (actually, not much over the lower threshold of that bracket). Our incomes are close to the state median income in Illinois for a male full-time year-round worker. Also, with the 2006 median U.S. household income of $48,201, our income clearly represents the middle class. Anyone with an income in the $40 thousands or $50 thousands is middle class (at least in terms of income). My labor effort is also close to the average for American full-time year-round workers, as I work about 1900 hours per year for my paying job and my wife works about 250 hours per year in her paying job (we have two school-aged children, and my wife's work as a mother and homemaker is ignored in all these official statistics, although tax cuts we get for having children considerably reduces our federal income tax responsibility).

There were in fact 26.8 million returns by persons or households earning, like us, between $40 thousand and $75 thousand. That's almost 9% of our total national population, right in the middle of the middle class. In terms of all the tax returns that were filed, that's about 32% that fall between $40K and $75K. Those 26.8 million tax returns filed with the IRS showed a total income of $1.60 trillion, and these middle class filers paid a total of $179 billion in federal income tax. You can sum up and divde the figures to arrive at a picture of an average middle-of-the-middle-class household earning $55,000 per year, and paying about $6,700 in federal income taxes. That's about 12.07% of adjusted gross income paid to the IRS by people in this range.

Let's compare this typical and middle-class group to the wealthy.

Who are the wealthy? I think households with incomes over $200,000 are affluent or wealthy. According to the IRS, 3.9% of all 2005 filed tax returns indicated incomes over $200,000. So, I suppose the top 4% of the households, or population, or the top 4% of families are what I’d call “the affluent” or “wealthy.” (Actually, I’m not clear on how closely a “percent of all tax returns filed” represents percents of individuals or households or families. I assume households would be the closest approximation. The wealthy must certainly have larger household sizes. For one thing, they are more likely to have at least two income-earners. On the other hand, people’s earnings peak in their 50s or 60s, a time when many taxpayers' children are going off to college or have already reached adulthood and independence. But this is a digression, let’s go back to comparing the wealthy to the middle class.)

If you add up all the incomes of the 3.6 million filed tax returns in which individuals or households reported over $200 thousand income, you get a figure of 2.17 trillion, and these tax returns came with payments of a total of $467.8 billion in taxes. By the way, the IRS reported total adjusted gross income for all returns at $7.422 trillion, and total tax returns of $1.084 trillion. That means the people earning over $200,000 earned about 29.2% of all income reported to the IRS and paid about 44.9% of all taxes (much higher than the Census Bureau's report!). That works out to an average of $608 thousand in annual income for an average affluent person in the top 4% of the American income distribution. But what do these 3.6 million taxpayers pay in federal income taxes? In total, they paid a total of $468 billion. That works out to an average of $131 thousand per tax return.

In other words, the average middle class person is getting about 9% of what an average affluent person is getting, but is paying in federal income taxes only about 5% of what an affluent person pays. To put it another way, a typical person in the middle class is paying about 12% of income in federal income tax, while a typical affluent person is paying just under 22%. This affluent top 4% that gets over $200 thousand per year is paying 45% of all federal income taxes paid to our government, while the middle 32% of all taxpayers (those earning between $40 thousand and $75 thousand) are paying only about 17% of all taxes.

I mentioned above that the average affluent person is paying under 22% of income in federal taxes. This is a slightly misleading. The 2.7 million returns showing incomes between $200 thousand and $500 thousand pay on average 19.35%, while the rest of the affluent making over $500 thousand per year tend to pay 22.6% up to 23.7% (the average for persons getting between 2 and 5 million). So, really, the super-rich are paying between a fifth to a quarter of their incomes in federal income tax, while the merely affluent, who earn between $200 thousand and half-a-million are paying, on average, slightly less than a fifth of their incomes in federal income taxes.

Personally, I'm not alarmed by this in either direction. I don't think the rich are getting a raw deal, nor do I think they're getting a grossly unfair advantage. I do think the rich are paying less than their fair share as it is, but not a dramatically unfair share. I wouldn't mind if a household earning over $1 million paid 30% or 35% of their income in federal income taxes (instead of the 23.7% to 22.1% that such wealthy people currently pay). As for the middle class, I think paying about 12% of one's income to the federal government through federal income taxes is about right for the middle third of the income earners in a nation. Really, anywhere between 10% and 15% seems fair to me for the middle group.

If the middle class was paying 10% instead of 12% of their income to the federal government, the federal government would lose about 19 billion in federal income tax revenue (and put that much money into the hands of the 32% of the taxpayers in the middle incomes). To balance the revenue loss from this massive tax cut for the middle class we could increases taxes on the wealthy. If we increased taxes on the wealthiest 4% so they, on average, paid 28% of their incomes in federal income taxes instead of what they pay now (about 22%), it appears to me, from the IRS data, that the federal government would gain about 140 billion from the tax increase. This 140 billion increase makes up for the 19 billion loss from the middle-class tax cut, and would give our government about $121 billion more revenue. I'd like to see such additional revenue used to balance the budget and pay down the national debt. More public money should be spent on medical research, alternative energy research, and pure science research. I think we also need a more generous government program to make higher education generally more affordable. Nationalized health care would be a great thing, and we could scrap Medicaid and Medicare, replacing those with a new National Health Insurance. A gain of $121 billion in government revenue, combined with sharp decreases in military spending (down to 3% or 2% of current GDP, as opposed to the 4% to 4.5% of GDP our nation currently allocates to defense and defense-related expenses), really could make a national health insurance scheme quite feasible, and if the government paid for billions of dollars in medical and energy research, and then let American taxpayers enjoy the resulting benefits without paying royalties to private companies or universities who used the money to do the research, that would also give us a more efficient economy and health care system.

I don't think raising taxes for people earning over $200 thousand per year up to a point where they pay, on average, 28% of their income in federal income taxes rather than 20% or 23.5% (as they do now, on average) is "class warfare" or a "soak the rich" scheme. I also don't buy the conservative argument that this would ruin incentives for good corporate executives and inventors and risk-taking investors. Would the highest paid executives make more stupid decisions or become less creative because 28% of their compensation and reward was going to the federal government rather than 22%? I don't think the wealthiest and most talented people would start goofing off and ruining their companies. Maybe if the federal income taxes were up at 50% or 60% rather than the 27% to 35% that I think fair, then rich people would flee or become demoralized. But an increase to 28% isn't going to encourage wealthy fair-weather-patriots to give up their American citizenship and move to tax havens and take up citizenship in the Cayman Islands.

Fundamentally Inconsistent With Whose Values?

In this post I'm going to explain some strange connections among various conservative views of the university, and especially views of social work education.

Back in November of 2007 I heard about a new think tank being formed at our sister campus (University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign). This is the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund. Odd that "fund" was part of its name, but go to the website and see for yourself what this center does.

Now, I received both my master's degree and my doctorate at Washington University, and I remember there were certain institutes or research centers there where conservative ideologies were strongly supported. There were a variety of think-tanks or centers such as the International Society for New Institutional Economics, the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, the Center for the Study of American Business (now named after Weidenbaum, a great scholar, rather than some wealthy benefactor), and various other places on campus where scholars were researching the free enterprise system. I remember conservative intellectuals like professor Murray Weidenbaum were very available to give talks or meet with students, and there were some fun, friendly debates between social work faculty and people from the Olin Business School or the Economics Department. I'd sometimes use papers, or at least read them, that I could pick up in the various conservative centers, and for the most part the materials were straight-forward scholarship pieces. So, I was surprised to hear that the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government was going to fund studies that set out to prove certain ideological propositions.

Specifically, the Academy was going to fund research into areas such as:

1) The relationship between economic growth and reduced government size.

2) Free market capitalism can become more effective in providing opportunities and prosperity for individual nations.

3) Why communism, socialism, government bureaucracy have failed to bring prosperity, and how capitalism brings material wealth to a broad spectrum of society.

These are all interesting questions, and as propositions they could lead to some very fruitful studies and discussions.

Anent the first point, there are limits to how large the public sector of an economy may be before the economy starts to slow down. At some point, perhaps when taxing and spending approach 50% or 60% of GNP, there tends to be slow-downs in economic growth and wealth creation. Certainly a society in which 80% of economic activity was cycled through public revenue collection and spending would be less economically dynamic than one in which 40% of the economy was in the public sector. On the other hand, a society in which too little of the economy was cycled through the public sector would also have problems. If the public, through public sector taxing and spending, has fewer than 20%, or even 30% of the economy under its control, public goods are likely to be neglected, and the overall public welfare is likely to decline steeply, especially during downturns in business cycles. Studies to find out approximately where the upper and lower bounds of public sector spending are for efficient national economies would be welcome, but where is the intellectual honesty in funding research that only seeks to prove that smaller public sectors enhance economic growth?

The second point seems uncontroversial. Any studies to determine how any technology or system (e.g., free market capitalism) can do a better job of meeting human needs should be encouraged. In what circumstances and under what rules does the free market capitalist system do the best job of satisfying human needs? We might look to the capitalism practiced in Scandinavia for an answer.

The third point is the most controversial. Government bureaucracy and socialism are more about controlling and sharing prosperity, rather than creating it, so I’m not sure I see the point of researching how it’s fair to say they have “failed” to bring prosperity. Actually, I think socialism and bureaucracy have done good job of sharing and stabilizing the prosperity brought by free markets in some situations (Kerela in India, Scandinavia, Western Europe, the United States). Government programs and socialistic policies sometimes do create prosperity. Not often, but often enough to make them viable choices in certain circumstances. I'm thinking here of the G.I. bill, the construction of interstate highways, the Tennessee Valley Authority, many of the New Deal programs of the American government of the 1930s, and so forth. I think our Social Security policies are fairly socialistic, and certainly they are based on government bureaucracy, but they do a fine job of keeping most elderly in America out of poverty and in relatively prosperous circumstances. Certainly this is better (in terms of prosperity) than the system of county poor farms and poor houses we had before Social Security was introduced.

Anyway, I wanted to learn more about the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund, so at their website I looked at the Board of the Directors and Advisory Council. I noticed Anne D. Neal of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, listed on the advisory council. Anne Neal has her name on the rather curious screed called, "How Many Ward Churchills?" In it, she accuses professors of asking their students to think critically about the status quo, and seems horrified that universities tend to urge their students to find problems with the status quo and think of how reforms or changes might improve things. I've taught community organizing, and my courses often have sections on diversity, so I was surprised to see in this report the accusation that,“In classroom after classroom, on campus after campus, courses too often look more like lessons in political advocacy and sensitivity training than objective and balanced presentations of scholarly research.” I had no idea so many of my colleagues were teaching advocacy and organizing skills. Certainly my students have not been demonstrating this. Actually, in my courses I have my students cover the scholarly research on political advocacy and sensitivity training. Surely there is no point in teaching political advocacy skills and techniques unless you can document through empirical studies that what you suggest your students do is likely to effect the results they want.

The person who is listed first of the Board of Directors of the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund is Stephen H. Balch. He is the president of the National Association of Scholars. During the fall semester (of 2007), the home page of the National Association of Scholars had this interesting article, right on the first page of their website:

Collateral Damage in Social Work’s March Toward Ideological Purity

The release of NAS’s report, The Scandal of Social Work Education, has prompted follow-up reporting in the press and some reflection by a former student.

George Will devoted his 14 October 2007 column to the report, noting that, “In the month since the NAS released its study, none of the schools covered by it has contested its findings.”

Bruce Rushton, a reporter for The State Journal-Register (Springfield, Illinois) followed up on a local angle. The NAS report cites what happened to Sandra Fuiten, who dropped out of the social work program at the University of Illinois at Springfield when required by a professor to lobby state legislators on behalf of causes to which she had moral objections. One professor told her that it was impossible for her to be both a social worker and an opponent of abortion. Rushton picked up the story from Will and tracked down Sandra Fuiten, who stood by her account. As Rushton explains, Fuiten is now deep in debt, ill, and living on disability.

You can follow a link from this article to George Will's opinion piece. In it, he writes:

The NAS study also reports that Sandra Fuiten abandoned her pursuit of a social work degree at the University of Illinois, Springfield, after the professor, in a course that required students to lobby the Legislature on behalf of positions prescribed by the professor, told her that it is impossible to be both a social worker and an opponent of abortion.

I was also able to find Brush Rushton's article at the Gatehouse News Service, where he writes:

In the article, Fuiten wrote that she dropped out of UIS in 2001 after a professor told her that she could not be a social worker and also oppose abortion.

The professor could not be reached for comment.

Fuiten said Friday she remembers the conversation distinctly.

“Somehow the topic of abortion got brought up,” Fuiten said. “She looked me in the eye and said ‘You can’t be a social worker.’ I said ‘Why?’ ‘Because you’re against abortion.’

“’I said ‘Have you ever heard of Catholic Charities, lady?’”

Fuiten said she dropped the class rather than lobby the legislature on behalf of the National Association of Social Workers, a target of NAS. The professor is a member of the organization.

“I was not going to lobby for her,” Fuiten said. “It (made me so mad) I dropped my other classes. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be done with my social-work degree.”

I cannot discuss Fuiten's case. She is protected by laws that forbid her professors from discussing her performance at our university, and I was never even her professor, and I’ve never met her. But, I am close friends with her professor. This is the same professor who allegedly told Sandra, “you can't be a social worker. . . because you're against abortion.” This is the same professor who allegedly forced her students to lobby on behalf of the National Association of Social Workers as a class project.

Fuiten demonstrates something of her communication style and approach to life in her writings, posted on the web. She called my friend, her professor, Sandra Mills, "a melay-mouthed LIAR" (I think she meant “mealy-mouthed”) on a blog that has since been taking down. She spells "mealy-mouthed" correctly at the comments section of the Indianapolis Star where Fuiten describes the UIS as "liberalistic pigs who think they can run off their mouths. . . " She wrote a brief article about her experience for campus report online as well.

Well, I don't know what Sandy Mills told Sandra Fuiten back in 2001. I know some things about Sandy Mills, however, that make me wonder how accurate Sandra Fuiten's memories of the events are. Sandy Mills grew up Catholic, worked for Catholic Charities, and adopted her son through a Catholic adoption agency in Milwaukee. She was for a time associated with the Baha'i Faith (as I am), and is now most at home in the Unitarian community here in Springfield. The open-minded and tolerant teachings of Sandy's Baha'i and Unitarian background make me wonder if she is capable of so bluntly forcing students to do assignments that violate their conscience or values. Her background in the Catholic Church also make me wonder how militantly she could support abortion rights. Would she encourage a student to leave the profession because of that student's beliefs about abortion? It seems implausible to me. Sandy routinely places students at Catholic Charities here in Illinois.

George Will, the National Association of Scholars, and various persons associated with the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund have voiced their opposition to the sort of “indoctrination” we use in social work education (I teach some social work courses, and I consider myself a social work educator and researcher). I wonder if they really understand the social work code of ethics.

I can well imagine what Sandy Mills, or any social work educator, might say to a student that could be misinterpreted by the student as meaning, "if you believe that, you can't be a social worker."

The social work code of ethics tells us that, “Social workers treat each person in a caring and respectful fashion, mindful of individual differences and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers promote clients’ socially responsible self-determination. Social workers seek to enhance clients’ capacity and opportunity to change and to address their own needs.” The section of the ethics statement that deals with social workers’ ethical responsibilities to clients, in the “self-determination” sub-section, says, “Social workers respect and promote the right of clients to self-determination and assist clients in their efforts to identify and clarify their goals. Social workers may limit clients’ right to self-determination when, in the social workers’ professional judgment, clients’ actions or potential actions pose a serious, foreseeable, and imminent risk to themselves or others.” In practice, what this means is that social workers must not impose their values or culture on their clients. So, if you oppose abortion, and your client wants an abortion, you’re not supposed to bring up your personal values and try to prevent your client from acting on their values. Certainly it would be good practice to ask a client questions to make certain they understand their own values and have made a conscious choice based on their ethical views, but the aim of this must be to help the client clarify their goals, not as an attempt for the social worker to introduce their values or goals as worthy of the client's consideration.

So, social work educators often tell their students that social workers must not impose their values on their clients. I can well imagine a social work educator telling a student, “if you feel everyone must think as you do, and you feel so strongly that homosexuality is wrong, or abortion is wrong, that you would interfere with your clients to try to make them change their values or decisions to reflect your ethics rather than living according to their own ethics, then you should consider pastoral counseling as your field, rather than social work. In social work, we value the self-determination of our clients, and we don't try to persuade clients to live according to the values that we personally hold.” That would be a fair thing to say. Of course there are some values that social workers will impose on clients. We think it’s wrong to discipline children by striking them with objects to such a degree that marks such as bruises or scars are left, or bones are broken. When we have clients who believe in this sort of discipline, we don’t respect that difference. We also don’t respect client values if the clients believe in the necessity of conducting human sacrifice, or practicing incest, or subjecting ethnic or racial minorities to violent oppression. For some social workers, the fact that clients might choose a homosexual identity or have abortions may be in the same level of ethical wrongness as the examples I’ve given above, of murderous, incestuous, or physically abusive behaviors. For social workers who feel that strongly about these things, it’s worth asking them to consider whether social work is really right for them. Can they still respect client autonomy and self-determination? Can they avoid a particular sort of client?

I personally think it’s okay for a social worker to have one certain type of client they won't work with. Many social workers don’t want to work with wife-beaters, or incest perpetrators. Some want to avoid any clients with borderline personality disorder diagnoses, or anti-social personality diagnoses. I see nothing wrong with a social worker saying that the one sort of client they won’t work with is the homosexual client. In my view, such a person can still be a good social worker. But, other social work faculty disagree with me, and a student would find diverse opinions about this in most schools of social work. It’s a point worth discussing. Would it be okay for a social worker to only work with Christian clients? Only work with African-American clients, European-American clients? Why or why not? Asking questions like this in a social work classroom is hardly indoctrination, is it?

This key value of client autonomy ought to be one that political conservatives such as George Will would appreciate. I think conservatives should laud my friend Sandy Mills for telling her students that they must not impose their values on their clients. Social workers are often working for the government (usually the state government), and as authority figures representing the public, I think conservatives would agree that we don't want them telling clients what is right and wrong based upon their personal religious beliefs.

The most controversial part of social work education and the socal work code of ethics is probably section six, where we have our social and political action statement (section six, sub-section 04). I find the language to be unobjectionable and compatible with most mainstream views of politics. Persons with radical politics would probably feel more comfortable with this section of the code of ethics than those with radically conservative or libertarian views. In fact, in paragraph (d) one could interpret the code of ethics to be opposed to the idea of affirmative action. Here is the code, copied from the NASW website. See what you think:

6.04 Social and Political Action

(a) Social workers should engage in social and political action that seeks to ensure that all people have equal access to the resources, employment, services, and opportunities they require to meet their basic human needs and to develop fully. Social workers should be aware of the impact of the political arena on practice and should advocate for changes in policy and legislation to improve social conditions in order to meet basic human needs and promote social justice.

(b) Social workers should act to expand choice and opportunity for all people, with special regard for vulnerable, disadvantaged, oppressed, and exploited people and groups.

(c) Social workers should promote conditions that encourage respect for cultural and social diversity within the United States and globally. Social workers should promote policies and practices that demonstrate respect for difference, support the expansion of cultural knowledge and resources, advocate for programs and institutions that demonstrate cultural competence, and promote policies that safeguard the rights of and confirm equity and social justice for all people.

(d) Social workers should act to prevent and eliminate domination of, exploitation of, and discrimination against any person, group, or class on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, political belief, religion, or mental or physical disability.

Bush vetos something

I'm not a fan of my president. In fact, ever since he seized power in 2000-2001 I have been unable to hear his voice without feeling sick, and I have turned off the radio or television every time he appears or has his voice broadcast. But, I try to find the good in everyone, and there have been a few (a very few) policies out of the White House that I respect or admire. I liked his statement about protecting Taiwan from China (back in the spring of 2001). I like the general idea of moving from temporary shelters to permanent housing for the homeless (but he ought to fund that idea more than he has). And, believe it or not, I like his veto of the embryonic stem cell research thing.

What? How can this be? Am I against embryonic stem cell research? No, hardly! I support it. I'll donate my own money to medical research that uses frozen human embryos with joy. I have no qualms about this, as I cannot believe, and won't believe, that the sacredness of human life begins at such an early stage in human development. In fact, people who think a frozen blastula's have souls and precious human life seem sort of nutty and weird to me. "Irrational" I'll call them.

But then why do I support the President's veto? I support this because in a democracy we must not have a tyranny of the majority. I'm in the majority on this issue, thinking that frozen blastulas (early stage embryos) aren't human and don't deserve protection from medical researchers trying to find treatments for spinal cord injuries and so forth. But there is a sizable minority in my community who vehemently disagree with the majority. They think those frozen embryos are basically frozen children. To throw them out or perform medical experiments with them would be, in their view, a terrible evil. And the bill, as I understood it, would have allowed government money to fund this sort of thing.

When people feel their most basic beliefs about God and ethics and morality are being violated by some Government program, I think the program ought to be either not funded by the government (let private non-profit corporations and free enterprise do it without direct government subsidy) or else a fund ought to be established for people to pay into what they would otherwise pay in tax.

So, for the strict pacifists, they shouldn't have to pay for military spending beyond the costs of medical care for military personnel. People who oppose abortion or stem cell research shouldn't have to pay for government medical research or or Medicaid-funded abortions. And people who "have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man" shouldn't have to pay for our military or financial aid to despots and dictators. And strict vegetarians shouldn't need to pay for the agricultural policies that support the beef, pork, or chicken industries. With the exception of military spending and funding abortions for poor women, I'd say in most of these cases the government should just stop supporting these sorts of policies that violate some people's most basic sense of right and wrong. It's just easier to not fund stem cell research with the public purse and let others fund such things with private funds or public funds from more local sources (states, counties, cities, whatever).

But when policies can't be abandoned to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority another possibility would be these alternative funds. One could fund only medical care for veterans and government workers (including military personnel). Another might fund some utterly non-controversial government project such as environmental clean-ups, maintaining national parks, paying down the national debt, or subsidizing affordable drugs and quality medical care for sick people in poor countries. When people pay their income tax they should have a chance to testify that they have a strong ethical belief that is violated by some form of government spending (such as military or abortion funding), and so rather than having their funds go into the general revenue of the United States government they demand that their money go only into one or more of these funds.

In the case of stem cell research, I'm not convinced that avenue of research really promises as much as some people claim. The government can fund research on umbilical cord tissue or some sort of artificially-generated stem-cell tissue instead of violating the most profound ethical beliefs of the wackos who think frozen blastulas have sacred human life. In a democracy it's just doesn't do for the 75% of us in a majority to entirely alienate and frustrate a sincere and passionate minority, at least when that minority is as large as the 25% or so of us who oppose stem cell research with embryonic tissue.

Hadley-Ives family update

Hadley-Ives family update

I just sent a letter to my U.S. Rep and Senators about the Israeli-Lebanon conflict:

I feel as I'm sure most Americans do, that the so-called "Hezbollah" (if God does favor a party, certain they aren't it) represents evil and terrorism. I hope Israel is successful in inflicting tremendous casualties upon the so-called "Hezbollah" fighters and leaders, and I wish Israel success in that respect.

However, I'm writing because I think the Israeli Defense Forces are going crazy. Why are they killing Lebanese regular army guys? I thought Israel claimed it wanted the regular Lebanese army to exert more control over the so-called "Hezbollah." Also, I can't understand this bombing of water-drilling trucks in a Christian area of Beruit. And what is going on with bombing whole villages and hamlets, destroying all the homes and houses? Maybe some of these homes are military targets because the so-called "Hezbollah" uses them, but surely other homes are inhabited by innocent civilians.

I fear that Israel is sinking to the same level of evil and wickedness as the so-called "Hezbollah". When the so-called "Hezbollah" shoots unguided missiles at Israeli cities, that is a war crime. When Israeli Defense Forces bomb civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and indiscriminately kill civilians and terrorists together without using surgical strikes, that is also probably a war crime.

I want the U.S. government to make this clear to Israel. I want you to let the Israeli ambassador know how concerned your constituents back in Illinois are about this. How can Israel ever achieve security and peace with its neighbors if it does such bloody work? A strong military response to the so-called "Hezbollah" is understandable, and I'd support it, but what we're seeing instead is total madness. And if America goes on defending this particular Israeli craziness we'll be hated even more.

So I'm pleading with you to support any House resolution that calls on Israel to show restraint and focus its military actions against the so-called "Hezbollah" and refrain from committing war crimes such as bombing civilian areas that are of no military value to the terrorists.