Ferguson: "Blame London" <wink wink nudge nudge>

In yesterday's op/ed for the LA Times, Niall Ferguson falls into the trap of the simple minded by suggesting that somehow, Britain's decline in religious adherence played a role in the recent bombings in London.

Like so many addle minded dolts, he draws the line between the absence of religious practice and the absence of morals. I can't tell you how disappointed I am that a Harvard professor, no less, evidently displays the imagination of a rutabaga. This "no religion = no morals" dichotomy advanced typically by black & white fundamentalists is even more appalling when it falls from the mouth of an educator from one of the finest universities in the country. More on the B side...

He tries to be careful, though, to avoid coming off like a complete ass.

"Why have the British lost their historic faith? Like so many difficult questions, this seems at first sight to have an easy answer. But before you blame it on the '60s, the Beatles, the Pill and the miniskirt, remember that the United States had all these earthly delights too, without ceasing to be a Christian country. To be frank, I have no idea what the answer is. But I do know that it matters."

Matters how you ask?

"Over the last few weeks, Britons have heard a great deal from Tony Blair and others about the threat posed to their "way of life" by Muslim extremists like Muktar Said Ibrahim. But how far has their own loss of religious faith turned Britain into a soft target not so much for the superstition Chesterton feared, but for the fanaticism of others?"

This smacks to me of fundamentalist allegations that to abandon God is to invite catastrophe. Sure, he waters down the sentiment, trying to pass it off as scholarly head-scratching, but the insinuation seems clear to me. It's not enough to simply suggest that London was a target because of Blair's support for the Iraqi invasion, though suspects in the failed bombing attempt have effectively said as much. Instead, he advocates what is regularly advanced as one of the worst "liberal" biases - the "blame the victim" mentality, the "blame America, Britain first" syndrome. I'll be happy to give credit to anyone that ties terrorist aggression to religious grievances, for to ignore the import of the latter in the former is to take an exceptionally myopic view. However, Ferguson and those like him take the concept to the Nth degree and conclude, absurdly, that agnosticism/atheism invites terror. Not only does the reasoning not hold up in the analysis of terror against Americans, given the popularity of Christianity stateside, but it presents little more than a sloppy straw man argument punishing Londoners for something they did not invite or provoke.

I really expected better from a Harvard history professor. My bad, apparently.

•  He's a smart hack

  and I have to listen to him bloviate at my annual meetings next month.  Ugghhh....

  by Knut Wicksell on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 05:54:40 AM PDT

  •  To be honest

    I'd never heard of the man prior to this article, and so I sniffed around to get an idea of who he is & whatnot. I don't doubt that he's an otherwise smart guy and competent professor -- which is why I find his cagey little insinuations truly astounding. My sympathies to you, Knut.

    by Cantankerous Bitch on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 05:59:32 AM PDT

    •  Interesting viewpoints.

      My first encounter with Ferguson was in a TV series he did in the UK, called "Empire", which was very interesting, but he has a real tendancy to view the British Empire through rose-tinted glasses. While I would agree that the British Empire did a lot of good things, and that perhaps viewing it through modern eyes is not entirely fair, to gloss over the gross exploitation that was colonialism is hugely unfair and an abdication of the historian's responsibility to represent all sides of the story IMO. Similarly, his views on America's position as the world's new colonial power are something of a neocon's wet dream, and I think we all feel the same way on that.

      Interesting guy though, and I still intend on picking up some of his books eventually, but it's important to know where he's coming from.

      by Expat Briton on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 07:05:32 AM PDT

  •  KW, can you ask him

    if he is going to talk about the UK and analyse it then why in the most Christian and church going part of it by far , Northern Ireland, has it been plagued and saturated with 30 years of terrorism?
    His argument is lazy, inept and ultimately holds no water.

    by obgynlover on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 06:15:00 AM PDT

•  I agree

  And I'm even more disappointed that the LA Times is going to let Ferguson write a weekly editorial.

  by milofischi on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 05:58:34 AM PDT

•  Harvard's Past. . . .

  from Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard:

  Harvard's foundation in 1636 came in the form of an act of the colony's Great and General Court. By all accounts the chief impetus was to allow the training of home-grown clergy so the Puritan colony would not need to rely on immigrating graduates of England's Oxford and Cambridge universities for well-educated pastors, "dreading," as a 1643 brochure put it, "to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches." In its first year, seven of the original nine students left to fight in the English Civil War.

  Harvard was also founded as a school to educate American Indians in order to train them as ministers among their tribes. Harvard's Charter of 1650 calls for "the education of the English and Indian youth of this Country in knowledge and godliness". Indeed, Harvard and missionaries to the local tribes were intricately connected. The first Bible to be printed in the entire North American continent was printed at Harvard in an Indian language, Massachusett. Termed the Eliot Bible since it was translated by John Eliot, this book was used to facilitate conversion of Indians, ideally by Harvard-educated Indians themselves.

  by Fatherflot on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 06:32:09 AM PDT

•  uh?

  so now its not a war against christianity?

  by jokeysmurf on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 06:57:44 AM PDT

•  Religion.

  While blaming the London attacks on our lack of Christianity is frankly batshit crazy, there are at least some interesting issues at work here.
  Having read about some recent converts to Islam in the UK (the most notable of which was Ronnie O'Sullivan, a snooker player), amongst many converts there does seem to have been a sense of looking for a firm, definite morality. By that, I mean some people are looking for firm sets of moral "rules" that they can follow - check off the list, and you'll be OK. For those who want to be told what to do and what is right, Islam (especially militant Islam, with its absolutism) may well be filling a void left by Christianity's decline. Britain's rate for conversion to Islam is pretty high, and although I don't know proportionally how much of that is to militant Islam or more moderate forms, it is at least possible that this is providing greater cover for terrorists.

  by Expat Briton on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 07:13:54 AM PDT

  •  You didn't follow Catholicism recently

    The Catholic Church appointed a new Pope with very conservative and strict views on pretty much anything. Will this help "Christianity"? I doubt it; to be frank, until the Church maintains its usual double-standard about Mammon (it's ok to be a rich and powerful and undemocratic a$$, as long as you donate to the Church), I don't think  anything will change. Same goes for Islam.

    People looking for hope cyclically turn to (old or new) churches; eventually they find out that the religious establishment is more about power than faith, and they leave. We are only experiencing one of those surges; "keep the faith" ;)

    by toyg on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 07:25:57 AM PDT

    •  We don't have the measure of Benedict yet.

      Yes, I do follow events in the Catholic Church, at least the major ones. I don't think we know for sure where Benedict will take the Church yet - bear in mind his previous job as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had him in a position whose entire purpose was to enforce orthodoxy. To essentially criticise him for doing his job I think is pretty false. Give him another year and see where he steers the Church, that'll give us a far better idea of his intentions (for my money, he's going to stay the course set by JPII, and push hard for a reconciliation between the Orthodox Churches and Rome, and probably try to grab the conservative branches of Anglicanism if that structure disintegrates). But I digress.

      I honestly have no idea as to whether Islam has a problem with corruption by money, but I don't think you can accuse the Roman Catholics of rolling in it, despite there being a few bad apples (as can be said of any large organisation). I have seen precious little deification of money from anyone in any faith tradition, TBH, so I think your criticism is just outright false there.
      Establishment power is another issue, however, and there you may have something. Even then, I think your overemphasis on that aspect is somewhat misleading.

      by Expat Briton on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 08:00:54 AM PDT

      •  Ratzinger *is* the establishment

        I'm sorry, you have no idea what you're talking about. The Church, especially in that little country called Italy where I grew up, has HUGE financial and political interests. Its influence on the italian public life is immense, and the "bad apples" are pretty much everywhere in the hierarchy; scandals like the one involving the archbishop of Naples illegally lending money are commonplace. In Rome, the "separation of temporal and spiritual powers" principle is a complete joke, everyone can tell you that half of the city is owned, in some way or another, by the Church. Even during the worst years of mafia gang wars they never stopped having strict relationships with those "faithful" criminals who were shooting people on the streets and bombing honest magistrates; hell, the Church was one of the main inspirators of the southern rebellion movements that eventually crystallized the mafia power. And I won't even start on Calvi and Banco Ambrosiano, please google something and then get back.

        The truth is, with the election of Benedict, the "progressive" wings of the Church lost big time. JPII provided some sort of cover, making big statements about poverty and social justice, but then the big money always went to people like Communion and Liberation and Opus Dei, the most fanatically conservative and hypocrite ones; with Ratzinger the game is over, and progressive people are so discouraged that they are leaving in droves. Believe me, I know a few. Council Vatican II is dead. What's left is an organization ruthlessly fighting for power and money. In Kossovo, when people were hungry and homeless and NGO had to count their nickels and make real miracles to provide water to refugee camps, Church-sponsored organizations were keeping huge stocks of aid locked down in warehouses, because "if you don't come sunday at mass, I won't give you anything"; the local high representative for the Church went as far as distributing weapons (!) to nuns and priests, because "this is a saint war".

        The Catholic Church is rotten inside, and I'm sorry that there are droves of faithfuls everywhere whose sincere faith is exploited by this gang. They are not different from the constellation of Muslim interests like Wahabists and Muslim Brotherhood: they talk about charity, but they are there for the power and the money.

        by toyg on Thu Aug 04, 2005 at 12:19:38 AM PDT

  •  See, now...

    If his point was to question whether or not there is a relationship between the decline of Christianity and the increase in Islamic conversion, he'd have an interesting point to make. Maybe we should fault his column for brevity?

    During the short time we lived in the U.K., we were in the suburbs of Manchester and didn't see much beyond "lapsed Anglicans". Most of the folks I knew were either politically savvy intellectuals or ambivalent "who cares?" types. That being said, we weren't in an immigrant-rich area either, so I presume that what you describe is more focused in the metropolitan areas (London/Birmingham/Manchester proper etc). Is this the case?

    by Cantankerous Bitch on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 07:52:38 AM PDT

    •  I'm not sure what his point is.

      I figured I should finally read the column before going on, and it's interesting because it makes a lot of coherent points before reaching a conclusion that really isn't clear at all. His points about the decline of religion in Britain are interesting (although I'd argue that there is a visible reason for this, in a nutshell because liberalism values intellect and the person as intellect, a value system which doesn't require a higher power), but then.. it's not even clear what "target for fanaticism" means. I mean, it could mean people want to bomb us because we're heathens (!) or it could mean that people are flooding to Islam (there may be a relatively high conversion rate, but there's definitely no flood), or... Lord knows what.

      Honestly, my knowledge of conversions and a burgeoning immigration rate for Muslims mostly comes from census data and the occasional news story, although where I was from in Glasgow, during the years I lived there (1996 to 2004) there was a visible increase in Muslims on the streets.

      by Expat Briton on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 08:31:43 AM PDT

      •  Valuing intellect

        I was about to digress, in the original diary, regarding my personal suspicion that much of Europe has simply "outgrown" Christianity in favor of intellect and rationality, but knew I'd be wandering into my Tin Hat zone without a net... <grin>

        by Cantankerous Bitch on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 09:48:55 AM PDT

•  In my experience it's the reverse

  ...more often than not.

  So many of the highly religious, "born agains" that I run into use their religion in lieu of morality. They say things like "Of course it's hard, but praise the lord we're alright" when asked about their upcoming court case or why they embezzled money from their place of work, or why so-and-so left their husband/wife of 20 years because Joe/Joanne is really more like them.

  Which is to say, "I don't worry about morality, because the only morality i recognize is god, and He's on my side".

  It's generally the rest of us poor schmoes who don't have God on our side who spend time trying to figure out how to treat one another with respect, dignity and some moral compassion.

  by thingamabob on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 07:34:18 AM PDT

  •  "In lieu of": Same coin, different sides

    I think no religion = no morals is an outgrowth of what you describe; i.e. if religion is substitute for an ethical framework, anyone that disavows religion is then absent any structure upon which to base morality.

    Of course, in discussions with these folks, when I have the audacity to suggest it's a bit more challenging (and thus more admirable) to develop and adhere to ethics/morals in the absence of a "How to Be A Good Human" cheat sheet religious text, I tend to be accused of heresy. What a shocker!

    by Cantankerous Bitch on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 08:15:52 AM PDT

•  Something I figured out as a kid......

  in my primarily Catholic neighborhood, there happened to be several quite unpleasant people who regularly did mean and unpleasant things, but as long as they went to confession every week and did penance, everything was ok in their minds.  This just struck me as WRONG.  My family was not religious (and was somewhat looked down upon as a result), but my parents taught us not to do the bad things in the first place.  In other words, actions have consequences, and just saying you're sorry doesn't make it all better.  We had the morals without the religion; in fact, I'll stack my moral fiber up against theirs any day.

  This early experience has made me somewhat anti-religious, and I have to say the older I get, the more examples I see to reinforce my opinion.  Fundamentalism is the danger, not unchurched-ness.  But does there need to be something to offer the intellectually bereft, so they have that easy behavioral checklist, without being forced to think independently?  Are their little heads like so many vacuums which will suck in some kind of value set, and fundamentalism meets the least resistance?  So how do we address that?

  by Freakinout daily on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 07:54:13 AM PDT