by My friend Paul Horwitz has a review up, at the Concurring Opinions blog, of David A. J. Richards’s book, “Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law: Obama’s Challenge to Patriarchy’s Threat to Democracy.” (Interesting title.) Paul opens with this:
When you read the words “This is a provocative book” in a review, you know you’re in the presence of a mixed compliment. On the one hand, the critic will praise the book for saying something new, interesting, and potentially valuable about an important topic. On the other, it signals that the critic thinks there is something deeply flawed, wrong, or misguided about the book, and has reached for polite language to damn it with faint praise.
With that said, let me be clear: In Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law: Obama’s Challenge to Patriarchy’s Threat to Democracy, David A.J. Richards has written a provocative book. . . .
Like everything Paul writes, the review is well worth a read. (Judging by the review, though, I’d have to say it’s not clear the same can be said for book.) Paul writes:
[T]here is much to admire and chew over in this book. But there is something deeply sad about it as well. The last three decades or so have seen ever more sympathetic and thoughtful attempts to engage with both religious fundamentalism and constitutional originalism. In the first area, blunt invocations of “public reason” have become rarer, as we have come to appreciate the difficulty of separating public reason from religious and other priors. In the second, originalism itself has evolved, and so have the responses to it. In some cases, liberals have framed more thoughtful critiques of originalism, and in others they have absorbed some of its precepts into their own way of thinking.To all of this, Richards responds mostly with incredulity and accusations of false consciousness. In a recent review of a life of another writer of jeremiads, Christopher Lasch, Alan Wolfe writes that “Lasch loved to attack, but he always seemed surprised that the objects of his attack fought back. In his own mind, he was the courageous teller of truths that no one wanted to hear; and so his critics must have been engaged in a prolonged attempt at denial.” Perhaps this reaction is fundamental to the jeremiad form, because it describes Richards’s book equally well. If his critics resist his conclusions, well, that proves he is right. If they quarrel with his conclusion that they are just suffering from Mommy problems, their very denial only confirms his diagnosis.
“Sad” is right, I think.
A few quick reactions:
The last three decades or so have seen ever more sympathetic and thoughtful attempts to engage with both religious fundamentalism and constitutional originalism.
Query whether there have been more sympathetic and thoughtful attempts by religious fundamentalists and constitutional originalists to engage their critics? Are there more sympathetic and thoughtful accounts of, say, political liberalism and living constitutionalism. How come the sympathy and thoughtfulness only seems to flow here in one direction?
In the first area, blunt invocations of “public reason” have become rarer, as we have come to appreciate the difficulty of separating public reason from religious and other priors.
This strikes me as a little triumphalist, and also false as both an philosophical and legal matter. As an philosophical matter, the last ten years have seen the development of plenty of quite sympathetic and thoughtful treatments of public reason, which are sensitive to the problem of demarcating what are public reasons and what are not. As a legal matter, public reason has been frequently invoked over the last decade. Numerous state courts have relied on it explicitly in gay marriage cases. More generally, President Obama has openly defended something like the idea of public reason in his statements about religion in the public sphere. In any event, the claim in the text above sounds to me a little like Jefferson’s prediction of religion withering — a little bit of wishful thinking.
If they quarrel with his conclusion that they are just suffering from Mommy problems, their very denial only confirms his diagnosis.
Perhaps — but Richards’ book does raise an interesting question: Why are religious fundamentalists drawn to originalism (biblical and constitutional)? Psychological reductionism might not be a plausible answer, but it’s still an interesting question.