Sightings

5/30/2011

*Humanism, Newt Gingrich and Sightings*

— Martin E. Marty

*Sightings* just entered its thirteenth year of keeping an eye on public
representations of religion. Let ¢â‚¬â„¢s see, that ¢â‚¬â„¢s 13 times almost 52 weeks (my
half of this bi-weekly publication.) By now, faithful readers can have drawn
some conclusions about our conventional choices of topics. For instance, we
do not  ¢â‚¬Å“do ¢â‚¬  U. S. Presidents in office, for a variety of bipartisan reasons.
*Sightings *also doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t write often about sex, though one could find myriad
topics on the religion-and-sex news scene weekly. Some might say that we
also under-do  ¢â‚¬Å“humanisms, ¢â‚¬  though whether we do or do not depends in part
upon definitions of terms. We certainly do on occasion treat capital-H
Humanisms, which often assume the shapes of religion when attacking
religion. Lower-case humanism is a natural and less newsworthy subject.

As for the issue of nonpartisanship or bipartisanship, that is also a safe
restraint, since  ¢â‚¬Å“they ¢â‚¬  and  ¢â‚¬Å“we ¢â‚¬  both have unpleasant stories. (The picture
of the late  ¢â‚¬Å“Pogo ¢â‚¬  and an epigrammatic caption in my study is a reminder:
 ¢â‚¬Å“We have faults which we have hardly used yet. ¢â‚¬  All of that dance-and-song
is a lead-in to an apparent column-length violation of the lines of our
self-restraint. It will mention would-be president Newt Gingrich, now
credibly, because he is not going to be president. Second, if one mentions
Gingrich, it is inevitable that the topic of sex comes up. Thirdly, this
week we can include Humanism, via an article in, yes, *The Humanist.* The
luxury of using this story, is that little narrative detailing is necessary
here. Like all stories of this sort the Gingrich tale is engrossing to
twenty-first century communicators and their audience and readerships.

To the current point, the headline of the *Humanist* article summarizes the
plot:  ¢â‚¬Å“Why I Am an Amoral, Family-Hating Monster. . . and Newt Gingrich
Isn ¢â‚¬â„¢t. ¢â‚¬  Author PZ Myers begins with reference to his 31 years of marriage
 ¢â‚¬Å“without ever straying, ¢â‚¬  while still being seen as a monster for his
humanist commitments. Newt Gingrich, Myers notes, has been married three
times, divorced one wife while she was recovering from surgery, and had
extramarital affairs. He asks who is considered the defender of traditional
sexual morality even as he represents a  ¢â‚¬Å“political party with more ex-wives
than candidates and defends a disturbingly amoral network of fundamentalist
operators ¢â‚¬  while remaining regarded as the protector of the sanctity of the
family. ¢â‚¬ 

This candidate got by because he is needed by certain political factions and
because he often says he confesses and repents and asks us to move on with
him. Since his confessions are public, we can picture the evangelical
pastors of his past and his Catholic priests in the present gulping as he
goes his way attracting (by now, too few) patient supporters. (For those who
want parity, we bring up former Senator and presidential candidate John
Edwards, whom we shall now also drop as a topic).

What matters here is that on the marital- and sexual-morality front, while
humanists like Myers ¢â‚¬”and there are plenty of them ¢â‚¬”don ¢â‚¬â„¢t get an even break,
they can still fulfill a useful function for the rest of us. They want the
newsworthy  ¢â‚¬Å“traditional ¢â‚¬  moralists called to account. If Christian moralists
don ¢â‚¬â„¢t do the accounting, humanists most credibly will. They often point out
that they have trouble making their identity and culture and mission clear
on the present scene. Here ¢â‚¬â„¢s a break for them.

*References*

PZ Myers,  ¢â‚¬Å“Why I Am an Amoral, Family-Hating Monster ¢â‚¬ ¦ and Newt Gingrich
Isn ¢â‚¬â„¢t<http://thehumanist.org/2011/05/02/why-i-am-an-amoral-family-hating-monster%E2%80%A6-and-newt-gingrich-isn%E2%80%99t/>, ¢â‚¬ 
*The* *Humanist*, May-June 2011.

* *

* *

*Martin E. Marty’s* biography, publications, and contact information can be
found at www.memarty.com<https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/www.memarty.com>
.

———-

Can American Muslims be both loyal to their tradition and full participants
in American civil society? In this month ¢â‚¬â„¢s Religion & Culture Web
Forum<http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/>,
Vincent J. Cornell argues that an embrace of the tenets of Shari ¢â‚¬Ëœa
fundamentalism has led even would-be moderate Muslim leaders to reject the
principles of American constitutional democracy. Consequently, they advocate
(often unintentionally) a retreat from full participation in American civil
society into sectarianism and  ¢â‚¬Å“millet multiculturalism. ¢â‚¬  Against this tend,
says Cornell, it is necessary for Muslim thinkers to find an  ¢â‚¬Å“overlapping
consensus ¢â‚¬  between Shari ¢â‚¬Ëœa and constitutionalism ¢â‚¬”one that gives warrant for
the exercise of  ¢â‚¬Å“unsupervised reason. ¢â‚¬ 

———-

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Center<http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/>at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.

Submissions policy

*Sightings* welcomes submissions of 500 to 750 words in length that seek to
illuminate and interpret the intersections of religion and politics, art,
science, business and education. Previous
columns<http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/>give
a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays.
The editor also encourages new approaches to current issues and events.

Attribution

Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author
of the column, *Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.