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Thermal Thursday: Chasing the Devil [1]
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Date: 2023-03-23
Today’s Topic: Just reviewed this week at National Catholic Reporter is Shaun Casey's new book, Chasing the Devil at Foggy Bottom: The Future of Religion in American Diplomacy. Shaun Casey was hired by John Kerry — as Secretary of State under Barack Obama — to create and direct an Office of Religion and Global Affairs within the US State Department to analyse “the role of religion in American foreign policy”:
The "aspiration" of the office was that "each US embassy and post would have a curated landscape of lived religion that allowed them to develop a deep knowledge of the religious communities and actors in their host country and to build a working relationship with as many of them as possible…. Religion embedded in national, local, or regional contexts is diabolically hard to understand.
This strikes me as a really bad idea! I prefer that all governments be secular and deal with each other on a secular humanist basis, with religion being moot.
However, Dr. Casey (he has a Doctor of Theology from Harvard Divinity School) states that some of the impetus for the office was due to difficulties had by Madeleine Albright (Ambassador to the UN and then Secretary of State under Bill Clinton):
Albright acknowledged the central role religion played in many of the issues she faced, from the Balkans to the Mideast, from Vietnam to Uganda, but had no group of experts upon whom she could draw for advice.
Furthermore, he writes a full chapter on climate change (please check the book-review link above or the book for much more detail!):
"As a teacher of ethics, I came to see that there were moral, theological, policy and scientific aspects to the problem, and very few people had the tools or energy to see all these dimensions at once” .… Casey identified "three relevant sets of actors in the space at the intersection of religion and climate change." These were "the religiously affiliated or adjacent organizations," the "secular environmental groups … large, well-funded, politically savvy Washington players," and finally "the climate policy shops dispersed across the executive branch of government."
He was hoping that the Pope coming out in support of combating climate change would help to get all groups working together. As it turned out instead, there were Catholic climate deniers amongst others. Sigh.
Dr. Casey seems to hope that involving religious groups may help persuade some governments to do the right thing. I am more skeptical.
A big complication to all this, as I see it, is that there are clearly many leaders who only pretend to be religious, as a way to enhance their power. Religion is not guiding them, then, but rather they are picking and choosing any religious beliefs that will support positions they would hold in any event.
Sometimes this is obvious — like $Rump’s upside-down Bible and his favourite chapter, “Two Corinthians”. Sometimes it is a bit more subtle — Nixon, for example, had a Quaker upbringing and held church services at the White House, yet twisted teachings to support his policies and was often called out for being hypocritical.
Others, of course, may be sincere in their religious beliefs. Probably to the shock of any drive-by conservative readers, I would list these as likely Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. And of course Jimmy Carter.
Now try to figure all this out in another country whose actors and nonverbal signals may be unfamiliar. And compound that in countries whose religions are unfamiliar. Good luck trying to figure out who is sincere, who is not, and whose religions might help or hinder whatever cause the US wants to promote!
But it is what it is, so this sounds like an important book for those who are concerned about US foreign policy. Of note, these attempts to inform foreign policy with religious “expertise” are happening under Democratic administrations, but would probably work quite differently under GOP administrations.
Your thoughts?
Not all religion is as straightforward as woozle religion (h/t Ice Blue)
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https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/3/23/2159832/-Thermal-Thursday-Chasing-the-Devil
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