The Less Than Helpful Student Evaluation

Every semester I receive my four manila envelopes containing student evaluations including the computerized numerical assessments by which instructors are compared to each other within departments, colleges and university wide. Unlike the Secret Agent Man of the 1960s, this is a process of takin’ away one’s name and givin’ you a number. In addition to the official university evaluations and the additional honors college evaluations, there are various online sites where anyone can come and leave comments about instructors. They range from the obscene (myprofessorsucks.com) to the perfunctory (rateyourprofessor.com).

I tend to stay away from these sites for a number of reasons. While my scores are in the good range on all of them, (much like my official evaluations on which I am among the highest rated instructors in the department and in the College of Arts and Humanities) the information is ultimately not terribly useful. One doesn’t necessarily have to be a student in the class they evaluate online nor do they have to actually complete the classes if actually enrolled. And, much like the official evaluations used by the university, these comments occur in a complete contextual vacuum. One has no idea of the student’s major in General Education courses. One has no idea whether the student took the class merely for convenience of schedule or other reasons unrelated to academic concerns. One has no idea what the students’ work schedule might be. One has no idea what expectations the student brought to the course ranging from grade expectations to workload.

Finally, one has no idea what kind of student the evaluators actually are. The fundamental attribution error is alive and well in the minds of most undergraduates: “I earned an A,” “S/he gave me a C,” “I made my A through hard work,” “They didn’t make a good grade because they are lazy.”

Jesse Jackson once observed that “A text without a context is a pretext.” And, of course, that is particularly true of the online evaluation sites. Those who come to the sites are inevitably self-selected and motivated generally by one of three concerns:

1. To take out anger at instructors who did not meet the expectations the reviewer brought to the course, no matter how reasonable, discernable by the instructor or possible to achieve;

2. To serve as loyalists defending instructors targeted by the first group; and

3. To create a consumerist rating for an instructor designed for other student who see themselves in consumer terms and who choose classes based on such ratings without regard for reliability.

It’s precisely the consumerist premise that is problematic here. Education is not a good or service consumed by those with enough money to purchase them, as the example of our soon to be ex-president readily demonstrates. Higher education is an opportunity and a means for human beings to become educated. Paying one’s fees, which actually covers a relatively small portion of the total cost of the production of higher education, does not guarantee a grade, an understanding of the material such courses cover or even a perfunctory grasp of the data presented. Payment of fees does not make one an educated human being or even a minimally trained potential employee. To put it into strictly consumerist terms, it’s a bit like buying a computer and expecting it to run itself. If one wants email, one must get an account, become familiar with its operation, check the mail and follow the rules of the ISP as well as the rules of netiquette in its use. Similarly, one must engage the educational process if one wants to benefit from it.

The comments I get from my students are predictable and consistent. Two consecutive entries from students in my completely online Humanistic Traditions II summer courses registering their comments at MyProfessorSucks.com well illustrate that pattern:

• 
  Yes, he requires a lot of work and effort by the student, but I thought it was well worth it. He is exceptionally learned and often has insightful things to say about humanities and current events. Not an easy A, but you can actually learn. Alot (sic) of critical thinking and self reflection, if that make you uneasy then this class is not for you.

I admit to being a demanding teacher. I operate under the premise that the average college class requires two hours outside the classroom (or class activity for online courses) for any hope of successful mastery of the course. I calculate the amount of time required for reading using a low ball average reading speed multiplied by the number of total pages assigned. I calculate the high ball time students tell me they spend on assignments and exams. I account for group presentation preparation and evaluation time. I total all that time and subtract it from the total number of class hours per semester times two. The result? None of my classes come close to requiring the average time necessary for successful mastery of the average college course.

I also admit to being challenging if not provocative. I readily confess my belief and consistent observation that cognitive dissonance is a helpful element in creating the learnable moment. That’s not comfortable for some students as the next comment will observe. But if one leaves college thinking the same things they thought when they entered, it really has been a waste of everyone’s time, money and energy.

The only aspects missing here from the historical pattern of my evaluations is the comment I often get about the instructor’s concern for the student and his/her learning. I am fairly religious about office hours and trying to work with students when problems arise. I spend hours listening to students talk about class concerns, career plans, personal life melt downs, even spiritual life existential crises both in person and online. Sometimes that is not enough but most of my students agree that I make an effort to put a human face on what can otherwise be a highly impersonal, factory model process.

So that’s the good news. Here’s the bad:

• 
  A ridiculous amount of work with very vague explanations if any explanations at all. Too much work for a Gordon Rule class but if you devote your life to the class like I did and pretend to be a flaming liberal, you should get an A

Too much work? Perhaps. Of course, that presumes a comparative standard that is not here articulated. How much is enough? Enough for whom? Enough for what? How much work should an intensive writing Gordon Rule course demand? And, perhaps more importantly, who should decide that based upon what criteria and experience? Much like the rejoinder “That’s just your opinion” I get from students whose understandings have been challenged, pedagogical decisions are neither matters of opinion nor merely (just) anything.

My pedagogy is decidedly different in many ways from when I began teaching college students 17 years ago. In some cases, I have learned new approaches to teaching that I employ while retaining many tried and true methods. In other cases, like content quizzes to insure the material is actually read, my students have taught me well through their attitudes about learning and their behaviors. I use a wide variety of educational approaches ranging from lecture/discussion to film reviews to observation/analysis. I am conscious of learning styles and seek to accomodate them. But, ultimately, my decisions about coursework are based upon my education, experience and a consistency with an articulable educational philosophy. Student opinions about pedagogy are based largely in comparison between classes and an often unconscious confusion of appropriate work load with the amount of work students want to do. So even if it were a mere clash of opinions, student opinions on pedagogy would generally not be much of a match.

I don’t mind being described as a demanding instructor. Indeed, I see sites like MyProfessorSucks.com as doing me a major favor if it prevents those who don’t want to work hard from enrolling. And I’m not particularly willing to allow students with no instructional experience, limited education and a tendency to confuse the amount of work they want to complete with the amount needed to effectively learn a given course’s material to be the final judge on appropriate workload. Lawyers who allow their clients to tell them how to practice are often headed for disbarment. Doctors who allow their patients to tell them how to conduct their surgery are headed for malpractice court. While both can benefit from the feedback of those who employ them, ultimately the professional decisions remain the province of the professional. Professional educators are no different.

As for this poor soul’s sense that s/he needed to pretend to be a flaming liberal to survive the course, she has my sympathy. Sadly, intellectual cowardice is the mark of many students who come with rigid, often authoritarian perspectives, particularly about politics and religion. Accusations of political bias generally mean that one has challenged the thinking the student brought with him or her to the course and thus drawn into question the authority figures from whom they inherited those ideas generally with little critical reflection. Where this becomes obvious is in observing that those who agree with an instructor’s perspective never complain about it. Interestingly, another student at this site noted that while s/he did not agree with some of my positions articulated in responses to discussion posts, it did not affect his/her grade and that students should not be afraid to state their opinion in this class. Let’s hear it for intellectual confidence!

Besides work load and bias, the other complaint that I get on my observations is about group work. Requiring students to work together for a common cause really does fly in the face of a hyperindividualist culture and a consumerist, vocational skills approach to higher education. The reality is that most students who complain about this simply don’t want to do the work required to be a responsible member of a group, both in preparation of materials for presentation and in working with classmates. And yet, as I often ask my students, in which job will you never have to work with other human beings?

Perhaps the worst element of this entire “evaluation” process is that it is a squandered opportunity for providing instructors with valuable feedback. In all honesty, I do care what my students think, not only about the course materials but also about the pedagogy. Asking questions to establish context about a student’s expectations, relevant life circumstances (such as working) and educational experience can go a long way toward creating a matrix for valuable feedback. A self-conscious eschewal of the consumerist “how did you like it?” premise with its nearly inescapable concomitant confusion of engaged education with passive entertainment would be vital for useful feedback. While I don’t expect that critically considered evaluations will become a regular part of academia anytime soon, we can always hope. And in the meantime, please pardon me and many, many other instructors if we don’t take the current consumerist “evaluations” seriously. I never totally ignore them, but as my students often preface nasty remarks, I am more than willing to give them “all due respect.”

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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Celebration at the Education Factory

From today’s paper comes the story of a 32 year old woman who “decided to pursue her dream of becoming a marriage and family counselor by earning a bachelor's degree in psychology. She did it entirely online, because her home is too far to commute to [campus]. Monday's graduation ceremony was only her second visit to campus. For the past four years, she has held down a full-time job, doing most of her studying nights and weekends.”

I find it troubling that a marriage and family counselor would be able to earn a degree certifying her competency to help human beings deal with some of their most difficult and intimate life issues through a program which did not require her to ever have to engage another human being directly. I would guess that the department helped the student arrange for some kind of practical applications of the information she was able to access online in the form of internships or observations where she lived. And I would guess that truncated “discussions” online were used to replace classroom discussions with real live human beings whose body language and vocal inflections are needed to fully communicate words that otherwise appear as mere letters on a screen in the online format.

But who are these people whose words simply appear on our screens? Who are the instructors? What do they look like? What background do they bring to this process? What makes them laugh? What causes them concern? How much can anyone ever know about another human being in the first place and how much less once one is relieved of the obligation of ever actually physically encountering them? And how can such a limited engagement of other human beings provide an adequate means of counseling them?

What is telling in this description is the priority that education held in this woman’s life. She said she couldn’t attend classes on campus because it was “too far.” While a regular two hour commute to the university through city traffic would probably not have been feasible, there is a fine state university a mere 45 minutes by interstate north of the city where the student lives with an excellent psychology program and ample parking garages. No doubt, it provides part of its curriculum online as well. But the proximity of the campus would allow for class attendance as well. Clearly, distance was not the issue.

Perhaps more telling is the revelation about school and work. This is a woman who worked full-time and took full-time course loads. If we assume that online courses replicate classroom experience and that for every hour of class one should spend an average of two hours outside class to prepare, that would mean that this woman was spending 36 hours per week in class-related work in addition to a 40 hour work week. Clearly, that can be done, particularly for the short haul, but the idea that this pattern could become the norm raises no small amount of concerns for higher education.

First, the approach to online courses is, by the self-description of at least one university’s course development staff, a “delivery of services.” It sees the educational process in consumerist terms – the provision of goods and services to consumers willing to buy them. Lost in that understanding is any notion that human beings are involved, that educational institutions represent an opportunity to develop oneself into an educated – and thus more fully human - being and that this is the ultimate end for a university education. College degrees in consumerist terms are reduced to working papers (a truncated vision of life which reduces the “real world” to business) and the means of a rather shallow self-affirmation for the nervous middle class with its fear of falling.

Also lost is the notion that education is a process that requires engagement. Online courses, in my experience of four years now as instructor, easily lend themselves to reductionism and minimization. While online courses were originally designed to be “distance learning,” an evolution out of independent studies conducted by correspondence for students with special circumstances in years gone by, they have long since come to be used for much more immediate and much less noble concerns.

For universities which admit more students than they can house in classrooms, it’s a means of dealing with managerial imperatives. By cutting the cost of cooling, lighting and cleaning classrooms and through the inexorable trend toward farming out online classes to adjuncts who don’t have to be paid benefits as a condition of their employment, colleges are able to reduce their costs and continue to enroll more students than they have infrastructure to handle, at least until the online web services crash because they have been stretched beyond their capacities.

What results is a slippery slope for student engagement. Many of my online section students have admitted that they enroll in online classes because these sections do not require them to actually have to show up in person in class. No need for preparation of materials, no need to have anything intelligent to say, no worries that one might be too hung over to leave one’s frat house or dorm room.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that this logic is quickly extended to content. If there are no demands to attend class and participate, there must be no real demands in terms of what the course will require. Besides, it’s online, the computer does much of the work for you - which is precisely why many students end up crashing and burning in online classes, the exception of our heroine of the day duly noted.

Online classes also have a major impact on instructors. They represent the perfect storm of management, whose primary concern is to spend as little money as is necessary, and computer programmers and technicians whose primary concern is the quickest way to get things done, regardless of their impact on human users (who almost inevitably get blamed for technological failures). The results are programs which are rarely self-evident (read: “user friendly”) to non-computer technician users.

This requires increasing amounts of instructor time in dealing with technical problems, time stolen from development of content or grading and communicating with students. Instructors become the bureaucratic middle man between the nameless and faceless “they” who create and maintain course technology and the consumer students who complain when the programs dump them off in the middle of quizzes, don’t allow them to upload their various word processing programs or prevent images from showing up in their presentations.

Of course, all this works in the favor of minimization, or “dumbing down” as a friend at another local college describes it. At my own training for online teaching, held in a two week summer course which required instructors attend in person (obviously NOT modeling the very behaviors online courses foster), the mantra of the week was the 12 Steps favorite KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid! Of course, in almost every invocation of that mantra in our culture today, the word “I’m” should probably be inserted between Simple and Stupid. But, at a very basic level, keeping it simple in online classes is increasingly not just an option.

If one is expected to handle the ongoing deluge of problems with technology, particularly when trying to incorporate art or music files into class materials (and what humanities class wouldn’t?), and answer the flood of student emails complaining of the same, the less one has to keep track of and maintain, the better. Indeed, after four years of teaching online, I have concluded that truncating course materials – and thus course requirements - to the point of being simplistic may be the only real means of surviving online instruction, particularly if one has a full-time teaching load.

Where does this trajectory point? I see an increasing use of online courses which demand less and less from students in a collegiate factory assembly line which will provide them with a certificate at the end of that process (providing they’ve paid all their fees and fines) that says they are now sufficiently trained to go get a job in the “real world.” Less engagement with other human beings. Less demands on students to think, write, discuss. More instructional time spent playing technical tinker toys and serving as a 24 hour on-call help desk than in pedagogical preparation. All of the credit, none of the demands. College lite.

Today, we raise our glasses to higher education’s version of the first test-tube baby, a college diploma achieved entirely in the artificial gravity of cyberspace. We toast the triumph of consumerism and the minimization of higher education and the trivialization of our humanity that it fosters. We celebrate the triumph of managerial and technocratic imperatives over the needs of a democratic society for an educated citizenry.

Finally we note with no small amount of irony that the student of the hour who found the distance too far to drive to campus to actually attend classes did find a way to get there yesterday to participate in commencement, receive her diploma in person from another human being and claim her 15 minutes of fame in her interview with the newspaper reporter. Apparently the download function for attachments to her email wasn't working.

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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Happy Holidays! No, really!

Today’s Orlando Sentinel –cum-National Inquirer features yet another earth shattering unscientific “poll” about current events. Just below the question asking whether UF Quarterback Tim Tebow “got robbed” when he did not win the Heisman Trophy (good to see my answer of “Who cares?” got 10% of the vote) one finds this burning question: “Are you offended when someone wishes you the generic “happy holidays”? (Is it any wonder the Sentinel’s parent Tribune Company is in Chapter 11 proceedings?)

While I had promised myself I would withdraw from active interaction with the world for Advent season, I broke my promise and posted this response:

Who is anyone to be offended? Upon what basis? Happy holidays is not only polite and thoughtful, it's also accurate. Holidays, plural, is what is being celebrated. It's an ancient holiday season dating back to the Stone Age observance of the winter solstice and the return of light to the world.

The placement of the Christmas season in that context was not accidental though clearly Christmas is a latecomer to the seasonal observances. The chances Jesus was actually born on Dec. 25 are precisely 1/365 given that we have no idea what day his birth occurred. The recently converted Roman Empire set the date on Dec. 25 to Christianize a pre-existing Saturnalia observance in the 5th CE. But it makes symbolic sense in that the solstice celebrates the return of light to a darkened world. Jesus is not *the* reason for the season itself, to quote the hackneyed claim, he's simply one of the reasons albeit a major reason in western culture.

To those presume a right to be offended, perhaps you could hold onto your righteous indignation until after the holidays are over? The holiday season is a particularly insensitive time to wage the culture wars. How about a little peace on earth, goodwill to humanity this year?

Of course, this was the restrained version of my response to the question. I feel about this non-issue much the way I feel about the prospect of fundamentalist physicians seeking governmental exemptions from treating patients their moral code suggests are impure. So long as such persons work in private practice where they may pick and choose their patients, while I may disagree with their brittle worldviews based in their personal prejudices and their resulting questionable professionalism, I would argue that they have the right to make such choices. But when any professional health care provider leaves the private sphere to work in public hospitals or clinics, they no longer have that right. Public health facilities treat the public, all of it. And in a diverse, multi-cultural (and thus multiple moral code) society, there is no room for privately held religiously legitimated prejudices becoming obstacles to needed health care.

Of course it’s perfectly appropriate to wish your parishioners a “Merry Christmas!” at the conclusion of midnight mass. That’s what they’re there to celebrate. And when I know a person is Christian, it is my practice to wish them a Merry Christmas, even prematurely during Advent. But Orlando has mercifully become a diverse urban center with many religious traditions represented. While Christianity in its various forms (the largest single expression being Roman Catholic) remains the dominant religious tradition here as in the rest of the country, it is not the only holiday celebrated at this time of year. Our country has made Christmas a national holiday so everyone gets the time off work whether they are Christian or not.

We all celebrate this holiday season – perhaps with the exceptions of our resident Ebenezer Scrooges - even if we are not adherents of any particular religion. This is the time for gratitude for another year’s passing, for the many blessings of our lives, not the least of which are our families of birth (recognizing that for some people, family histories may not be the stuff of celebrations) and our families of choice. It is NOT the time for righteous indignation or culture wars arising out of insecurities about one’s religious understandings. I am secure enough in my own Christian identity to wish others a happy holiday season even if they will not be celebrating my tradition’s observance of it. And I pray that the 40% who say they are offended by Happy Holidays greetings can learn to live with a bit more ease in this increasingly diverse culture in which they find themselves.

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

More Things That Make You Go Hmmm..…
Advent 2008

OK, so I am reveling in having all my finals actually given with only three (!) sets of papers yet to grade. And I actually had time for my walk around Lake Underhill with the wading birds and the ducks this morning. I even had time for my morning meditation and reflection for the first time in a week.

For my Advent discipline, I am actually reading the Morning Prayer Daily Office as my Franciscan Rule provides. I should hasten to note that this is NOT because I consent to seeing the office as a form of obedience even for one second. Forcing people to pray – regardless of the format – as a condition of membership in a religious order is tyrannical and unsupportable, particularly in an order devoted to someone as spontaneous and free spirited as Francis of Assisi. People either are called to pray this way or they aren’t. That they pray might be a legitimate Order concern. How it happens is ultimately not the Order’s business.

Nevertheless, because Advent has a bit of a penitential sense about it, I chose to do the daily office. Though I obediently and somewhat mindlessly did the Office for years when I first became a Franciscan, I am finding many things in the readings for Morning Prayer that I had not noticed before. I find myself being troubled by the solipsism of the Psalms with their continual self-focused themes of rescue. And then there's all the smiting of the others. It’s tribal religion at its best, however good that might. It speaks of a god I no longer recognize.

But it also provides occasional moments of joy and inspiration. From today’s Morning Prayer:

Psalm 31

1 In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me.
2 Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me.
3 You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead me and guide me,
4 take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge.
5 Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God....
9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.
10 For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away....
14 But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.”

Today’s Psalm speaks of G-d as the rock. Clearly the writer of this verse saw himself as endangered and pleads for divine deliverance. Perhaps all human beings have had times in their lives where such an understanding made sense. As a spiritual, religiously educated man, I can relate to the notion of the divine being one’s rock, one’s foundation, one’s most basic reality. As a man who lost his home to a hurricane, his beloved mother, his cousin and two uncles within a four year stretch, I can relate to G-d as a refuge, a trusted dimension of life to whose hands I can commit my spirit.

But most importantly, amidst a sea of pious people who focus on believing - buying into a set of ideas and conventional morals confused with divine imperative - rather than belonging to community or even a more existential focus on being, the psalmist has hit a nerve. “I trust you.” Not I believe. Not even I belong. Rather, I trust – I place my existential being in your hands. That kind of assertion speaks of a G-d worth worshipping.

And then from today’s Hebrew Scripture, Isaiah 7:10-25, this interesting statement:

Behold a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (God with us). He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose kinds you are in dread shall be deserted.

In this time of guilt driven consumerist orgy in which one is subjected to six weeks of non-stop Christmas "music" during Advent before Christmas season even arrives, snippets of Handel’s Messiah will mercifully be heard more than once if one is lucky. Given that much of The Messiah is based in the presumption that the prophetic writings of the various Isaiahs (at least three that scholars can identify) somehow pointed toward the birth of Jesus, it’s interesting to see the reference above.

Immanuel means God with us. In Isaiah's understanding, the divine presence would be experienced in a human being who sprang from the house of David’s lineage to redeem the people, i.e., restore Israel. According to this passage, his mother would be a young woman, parthenos in the Greek text, which rarely refers to a virgin. Indeed, young women bearing children would have been totally expectable to Isaiah’s post-exilic readers. Virgins bearing divinely conceived children would have been incomprehensible. But to a 1st CE resident of the Roman Empire, gods begetting children with virgin human women were fairly common. And by the time of Handel, the words of Isaiah, the appropriation of Isaiah by the imperial resident Gospel writers and the understanding of Jesus constructed as the Christ (the Messiah) and the figure of Immanuel in Isaiah had become conflated, if not self-evident.

What is most interesting in the text, however, is the reference to a child who “knows how to refuse evil and choose the good.” Clearly Isaiah had never read Augustine, the 5th CE African patriarch of the Christian west whose construct of original sin would come to dominate western thought complete with its dysfunctional teachings about the body and sex. And if John Calvin, whose religious heritage has played a commanding role in constructing the American cultural self-understanding, had written this story, the child would be seen as born in original sin and thus unable to “refuse the evil and choose the good.” Depraved human beings are inclined toward evil and even when they choose the good, that choice is tainted with sin, per Calvin.

It never ceases to amaze me that people ever bought into the teachings of Augustine and Calvin and that they have been willing to jump through increasing numbers of hoops ever since to justify original sin/depravity constructs. Mary will have to become immaculately conceived, free will will need to be justified despite depravity, predestination will have to be sold to the damned by the self-appointed elect. What nonsense. What pessimistic ways of seeing humanity and the divine. And what a waste of energy defending deterministic constructions of human nature, much of it in a poorly disguised bid to control human behaviors.

Why not take Isaiah at his word instead? God is with us, all around us, all the time. If we are paying attention we can even recognize that divine presence in the world around us. Young women do bear children. Indeed, it is for a child we Christians wait and watch this Advent season. New born babies do bring hope, hope of new life, of the return of light to a darkened world. God is with us.

Children are not born sinful or depraved. They are born children. And they grow and mature into adults capable of recognizing evil and refusing thereby choosing good. God is with us in our growing and maturing. God is with us in our agonizing moral choices. God is with us in the presence of those who bore us and all who played a role in bringing us into fully human existence. God is with us in our daily lives. In our loving of our families, our toiling at our jobs, our celebrations of life passages, even in the harming of our relationships to ourselves, our bodies, others and the created world which is God’s very body, harm we Christians have called sin. And God is with us in our recognition of that harm, our remorse, our rethinking of our lives and our efforts to reconcile with those we harm.

Why must we retroject a construction called the Christ back onto a human Jesus and back even further to a child of exilic era Judea in order to see God with us? Why must we construct systems of control driven by notions like original sin as a condition of recognizing God’s presence with us? Why make Mary into the love object of a Greco-Roman divinity in order to tell the story of Jesus, the child we await this Advent season?

Perhaps my resumption of the Daily Office wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Hmmmm.



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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm….Advent 2008

As a part of my Advent devotionals this day, the following reading prompted reflection:

From Lama Surya Das, The Big Questions, How to Find Your Own Answers To Life’s Essential Mysteries (NY: Rodale Publishers, 2007), the following consideration:

A Tibetan lama once told me that the main problem with worldly people is that they are constantly seeking happiness and fulfillment outside themselves, where it cannot be found. Epicurus thought that a beautiful righteous and wise life was both the cause and the product of happiness. Plato famously said that the happiest man was the one who had no malice in his soul. Buddha himself further outlined what he called the five kinds of happiness:

• The happiness of the sense of pleasure
• The happiness from giving and sharing, including both external virtuous acts and mental states and attitudes
• The happiness, inner peace and bliss arising from intensely concentrated states of meditative consciousness concomitant with purity of mind
• The happiness and fulfillment coming from insightful wisdom and profound understanding.
  Nirvanic happiness, everlasting bliss and contentment, serenity, beatitude, and oneness
  

What I find interesting in this list of five kinds of happiness is how reductionist our American consumer culture’s approach to happiness is. We focus heavily on the first – seeking pleasure, avoiding pain. We tell ourselves that our possessions make us happy and we are willing to work ourselves into poor states of health to have the money to buy those possessions. We overeat, overmedicate ourselves and overextend our budgets seeking happiness. And only once a year do we even seriously consider a second source of happiness – giving and sharing, but rarely due to internal mental states that are happy. We give because our consumer advertising industry conditionalizes our sense of ourselves and prompts us to give out of fear of loss of face and guilt when we fail to live into conventional imperatives. Where the Buddha is pointing toward five kinds of happiness, we settle for one, two at most.

Ironically, it’s precisely the focus on the surface – the superficiality of consumerism – and the constant state of distraction that our consumer goods provide us that prevents us from meditating, intentionally engaging reflection out of which insightful wisdom arises. And it’s our attachment to the perception of happiness that our consumer goods can provide us that prevent true Nirvanic happiness and a sense of interconnected oneness that Buddha taught was the ultimate good of the Noble Path.

I often ask my students, “If our lives of privilege really make us happy, why do we spend so much time, money and effort distracting ourselves from them? Why do we numb ourselves to our supposedly happy lives? “ Lama Surya Das provides an insight on this: “[H]appiness is part of our natural state, obscured only by attachments that veil our radiant, innate nature and limit our potential. The Hevajra Tantra teaches, ‘We are all Buddhas by nature; it is only adventitious observations which veil that fact.’ What we seek, we are. It is all within. This is the Buddha’s secret.”

Hmmmm.

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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Luddites

I have a friend who likes to call me a Luddite from time to time. That’s usually prompted by my latest round of criticism of the less-than-dependable web course technology that increasingly all college instructors are required to use or of the increasingly solipsistic – even anti-social - use of technology by individuals in public places. It’s not a description that particularly fits someone who uses as much technology as I do in any given day – albeit not without complaining –but it does draw into focus a difference in understanding of technology among human users.

That difference is readily identified in the questions one asks about technology. Most people, who sense a perceived need for the latest greatest technological innovations our consumerist society convinces us we cannot live without, simply ask the question “What is this? What will it do? How much does it cost?” Clearly, there is no small amount of gratification in mastering a new technology. It provides a sense of mastery if not superiority that allows one to look down on the rest of the population whose skills or access to technologies don’t measure up in comparison. Just ask any undergraduate computer science major. And undoubtedly some technologies have the capacity to make our lives easier if not more pleasant. Think answering services that relieve us of the task of talking with the many telemarketers who feel no compunction about invading the privacy of our homes each night. Think Google which provides much of the world’s information – though rarely any understanding of it – at our fingertips.

But technology has a dark side, perhaps unavoidably so given its human creators and users. To fail to recognize that reality is to approach technology uncritically and, I think, superficially. I believe that a realistic approach to any technology, new or old, must include these inquiries: “How does this tool impact human users? Does it serve us or does it reverse that means/end relationship? At what point do human beings become the tools of our tools?”

Neil Postman writes in his work Technopoly, the Surrender of Culture to Technology, that societies that become idolatrously dominated by the work of their own hands often reverse the means/end relationship of human beings to their tools. He notes that in our own society, which he calls a technopoly, technology is seen as inherently good, innovations are seen as absolutely necessary and the inevitable use of such innovations in technology is presumed. To paraphrase The Field of Dreams, if you create it, they must use it. Think end of WWII, Japan trying to negotiate the terms of its surrender and the choice of two non-military civilian sites for the detonation of the new American nuclear innovation.

As a part of my daily meditation and prayer, I am reading daily selections from The Intellectual Devotional, Modern Culture. [i] Today’s reading was about the Luddites. According to the authors, Luddism, which has come to be associated generally - and rather uncritically – with a hatred of technology, takes its name from an 18th CE English textile workers’ movement who accurately saw the new technology as a threat to their livelihoods. While it is not clear whether the Ned Ludd, whose name came to be associated with the movement ever actually existed, what is clear is that when the Luddite Revolts erupted in 1811, it took 2500 troops to put down the revolt. And shortly thereafter, machine breaking became a capital crime in England.

What’s striking in this account is the reality that mechanization did mean the end of many worker’s livelihoods, something that was hardly lost on them. While the machinery clearly served as an end to the profit making of factory owners, that profit ultimately came at the cost of the livelihoods of many workers. That kind of loss of income for minimally educated and narrowly trained workers meant in real terms the loss of their source of housing, feeding and clothing their families, i.e, Maslow’s bottom level on the hierarchy of human needs. The technology of the 19th CE - much like the technological innovation of today - was clearly good for someone. But cui bono? Good for whom? And at whose expense?

It’s telling that the response to the Luddite revolt was the passage of laws making it a capital crime to break machines. Clearly, to those in power, the machines were more valuable than human lives. Killing a human being for damaging or destroying a means of profit suggests a rather perverse moral calculus in which human life is secondary to things. And it would not be long after this nascent rising of organized labor that the force of the law would be brought against labor unions with the formation of police forces in most industrialized cities whose primary job was to prevent labor organizing and disrupting strikes.

When technological innovation and implementation is recognized as creating a power and thus a privilege differential between those who benefit from such implementations and those at whose expense those benefits derive, it is not hard to see why the heathen rage, or, in the present case, why the Luddites responded with vandalism. And it should not be hard to recognize why college instructors like myself criticize the increasing amount of time required to learn the unending parade of “new and improved” technologies designed to serve managerial imperatives (unpacks classrooms, guarantees students can be processed through the university factory in four years, allows students to avoid classroom time so they can work full time jobs to pay increasing tuition and costs).

For myself, I see the onslaught of technologies and the perceived imperatives to have the newest toys as inevitable in a consumerist society where we define ourselves and our value by what we use. I am resigned to the reality that increasingly my time will be spent on tasks that have absolutely nothing to do with education. My response to that reality is to use only those technologies that bear a clearly beneficial relationship to my teaching, to resist the use of technologies where they are not absolutely necessary and to minimize the time spent dealing with them where it is not avoidable. That does not make me a Luddite, at least not in the teasing sense my friend uses it to describe me. It makes me a human being intent upon using human created tools to serve human ends and resistant to becoming a means to non-human ends such as profit or bureaucratic imperatives.

That includes being the scapegoat for technological failures. The Devotional article noted that while it is unclear whether Ned Ludd ever actually existed, the phrase “Ludd must have been here” became a common refrain in English factories whenever a machine was found damaged or malfunctioning. The webcourse technologies I must use daily are undependable, failing during peak usage periods, limited in their applications for teaching of humanities and evidencing frequent “bugs” or restrictions in usage known to their creators alone. The common explanation for such problems is “user error.” It should not be surprising that the same people who were oblivious to and unconcerned for the effects of technology on human users in the first place would prove unwilling to take responsibility for the deleterious effects their technology has on others once implemented.

The Devotional entry ends with the note that while the original Luddite Revolt has faded away, the term Luddite has entered the political lexicon as a way of describing opponents of the relentless onslaught of technology. So let me end this on a political note: To the degree that technologies are imposed upon the public without consultation or consent, requiring their ongoing adaptation to ever changing systems of technology just to carry out their daily life skills, I am a Luddite. To the degree that the presumption of technopoly prevails that every new technology must be used without consideration of its potential effects on human beings, count me in the Luddite camp. To the degree that human beings become the means to the ends of technology, pawns in the struggle for power and privilege, I am a Luddite.

I am not anti-technology. I simply insist that human inventions actually serve – and not enslave - human beings. Much like Immanuel Kant, I insist that human beings always be ends in themselves and never means to non-human ends. That doesn't seem too much to ask.




[i] David Kidder, Noah Oppenheim, The Intellectual Devotional, Modern Culture (NY: Rodale Publishers, 2008)

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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Apples and Rotten Oranges: Comparing Carter and Bush the Unready

I first encountered this line of argument in class. My student is a midlife empty nest returning student. Her husband is ex-military and now makes his living working for one of the many defense contractors lining the perimeter of our campus to whom my university, like most others today, have sold their very souls. Her comment came out of the blue and caught me completely off guard: “If we can survive four years of Jimmy Carter, we can survive four years of Obama.” My surprise must’ve been obvious because she immediately followed up that comment with the observation that Jimmy Carter was responsible for the current economic meltdown the country is experiencing. At the time, all I could think of in response was “Huh?”

What I didn’t know was that this was one of the many creative fabrications brought to us by those wonderful folks at Fox “News.” My partner had heard the same thing from his parents in darkest Augusta, Georgia and my own father parroted the same tune at a family dinner. (As my saintly mother used to say, "I don't know why your father has to watch all that stuff.") Given the inability of Fox to deal with the fact that their corporate sponsors, those same wonderful people who brought us Herbert Hoover, had now brought us George “the Unready” Bush with much the same results, it’s not surprising that its talking heads would stretch to find a scapegoat for the abject failures of its current regime. Jimmy Carter will do in a pinch, I suppose. G-d forbid we should ever have to examine closely the disasters wreaked upon the world through the Reaganomics and the clueless Bush the Elder who couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag in a grocery store with a scanner who followed candid Jimmy.

This week, a young evangelical Protestant man in Korea began interacting with one of the few remaining listservs on which I still write. (I do try to live into my own maxim which used to be physically taped to the top of my monitor: “Life is too short to argue with stupid people.”) I suppose he is driven by the evangelical compulsion to testify regardless of whether the content of one's message is worth purveying to anyone other than true believers. His contention was that George Bush and Jimmy Carter were both failures as presidents but also good Christians, whatever that means. I guess there was just something about muttering Carter and Bush’s name in the same sentence that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I provide my response below:

In my opinion, George Bush failed as President of the United States.

You don’t have to go too far out on a limb to make this observation. He inherited a budget in surplus and now it’s in the largest debt in US history. The economy is in the worst shape since the Great Depression under his regime which allowed the industry representatives to deregulate every aspect of the economy they could with predictable results. We’re in two wars in two places in the world with little to show for it but ongoing enmity and death and destruction. Mr. Bush should never have been president and in fact was not really elected. History will judge him harshly.

However, he is a good Christian too.

Well, I don’t know that. And you don’t either, actually. George says he’s a Christian and I think we have to take him at his word on that. Whether that’s a good thing or not is a different question. I see very little about George’s life and policies that even hint at Jesus. I do hear a lot of rhetoric that sounds like evangelical Protestantism. Those things may or may not be related.

Same applies to Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Carter had at least twice the IQ of George Bush and half the ego. He dealt with very trying conditions and had the nerve to actually tell the American people the truth about our situation: “We are addicted to foreign oil, it’s going to destroy our economy and our environment. We need to deal with our addiction.” The American people rewarded his candor by electing a washed up B actor named Reagan who promptly ran up the second highest deficits in history, armed most of Central America for a series of catastrophic civil wars and dumped millions of mentally ill people onto our streets while cheerfully declaring “It’s morning in America.”

Sometimes we get the leadership we deserve. Carter was probably too bright and too honest to be president. Reagan reflected our superficiality and our greed. Bush reflects our mediocrity of character and our denial about the end of our privileged empire.

I really think of George Bush and Jimmy Carter as family.

When I meditate on loving my neighbor as myself, I often find it helpful to visualize the people I have most difficulty loving. The two who almost always come to mind for me are George Bush and Osama bin Laden. And for many of the same reasons.

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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Relief, Joy, Hope, Tears

It’s been two weeks now since Barack Obama made history by becoming the first African-American to be elected US President. In the weeks before the election, I found it difficult to sleep. I spent hours checking the pollster sites, particularly those predicting the vote in Florida. The day of the election, after spending no more than 10 minutes at my polling place to vote, I was too full of nervous energy to concentrate on much of anything. So I went down to Obama headquarters, got a sign and went to the corner of Bumby and Colonial, near several shopping centers, and waved my sign shouting “Obama! Obama! Time for change, America!” punctuated by honking horns, a lot of thumbs up and a few birds. By 11:30 that night, we knew Obama had won and by midnight we knew Florida’s votes for the Democratic candidate would count this time.

I was surprised by my response to Obama’s victory speech, a speech marked by generosity of spirit, a realistic assessment of the enormous job he faces of cleaning up eight years of damage from the Bush team, and the sudden realization for many Americans captured by the cameras scanning the audience at Grant Park in Chicago that we had actually elected a black president. That realization was marked by tears on the faces of Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey in the crowd that night. And suddenly, I felt my own heart erupting in a flood of tears as I watched Obama’s family and his new vice-president and wife come to the stage to congratulate the next president of the United States.

In the days since the election, the news and photos have poured in from all around the world. My lawyer buddy from New York sent a series of photos from around the world documenting the reaction of people hearing the news of Obama’s victory. In almost every photo I saw my own reactions: elation, shock, and tears. And even now, two weeks after the election results were announced and the hangovers of Wednesday, Nov. 6 had subsided, seeing the photos of that night's events can still bring a lump to my throat and a tightness in my chest.

I have asked myself what in this election has so deeply touched human beings around the world, what has produced the nearly universal response of tears. I know in part it is a sense of my countrymen and women finally realizing a milestone in – though hardly a conclusion to - our long, long fight against racism. My students cannot completely comprehend how astounding this is for a man who spent the first six years of his life in segregated schools, lived through desegregation and riots that left whole sections of America’s cities empty lots, taught in formerly all-black schools in ghettos and spent much of his career as a lawyer working with poor people, many of them people of color whose understanding of the justice system was that the burden of the laws applied to “just us.” Seeing a black man standing on that victory podium after growing up in a South of segregated water fountains, restrooms and dining rooms, in a Florida with miscegenation statutes on the books and a common sense that said “It will always be this way, just as G-d intended it” – well, that’s enough to bring a grown man to tears. Apparently, I was not alone.

But it took the comments of one of my students in a response to a film we saw in class yesterday to put it all into focus for me. As I read her paper, I felt my chest tighten, the tears welling in my eyes once again. Here’s what she said:

“I cried when Obama was elected as our next president, not only because it was such a relief from the debacle of Bush’s terms, but also because of the symbolic element. The US, a country that fought a civil war and spent many years steeped in bitter prejudice, had managed to elect a black man. I thought people had really grown desensitized and apathetic beneath Bush and I help out little hope that anyone would care enough to try to make a difference with this election. But the outcome really makes me optimistic about the future…”

Indeed. Relief in a president who can construct a sentence in proper English that makes sense. Relief that I am not embarrassed anymore when I go overseas to reveal that I am an American, a citizen of a country no longer led by a privileged frat boy cum cowboy who never grew up and nearly destroyed my country and a good chunk of the world in the process. Relief that the values I have always held dear as an American – justice, equality, opportunity for all – might yet replace the values of the last eight years – cynicism, privilege and fear mongering - values that my young student so eloquently noted seemed almost a foregone conclusion as recently as a year ago.

Along with relief, like my student, I am also daring ever so cautiously to hope once again. And what makes me most hopeful is the fact that this assessment came from a member of Gen Y, the Millenials, the students who stood in line up to 5 hours on election day with an 80% turnout at our campus precinct, who voted 60/40 for Obama and 60/40 against the Yes-on-Hate Amendment 2. It is these young women and men who may well end up spending their lives saving the world from the mess we’ve made of it. And they will have their work cut out for them. The people of California, Arizona, Arkansas and Florida gave notice in this same election that the next round of the culture war will be fought over whether people like my gentle spirited partner of 34 years and myself will be treated equally under the law.

But, for tonight I am hopeful. I am encouraged by the daringly optimistic insights of my college sophomore, whose voice unabashedly proclaims the hopes of an entire generation of young Americans in a mundane classroom writing assignment. Most of all, I am grateful for the privilege of being one of their teachers.


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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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Things that make you go Hmmmm…….

All stories from today’s paper:

http://OrlandoSentinel.com

Cards pile up, tears fall for slain Dillard High School student
By Macollvie Jean-Francois, Kathy Bushouse and Robert Nolin
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
November 14, 2008

It's an all too familiar coming-of-age ritual: An outpouring of grief from high schoolers mourning the loss of one of their own, confused hurt manifested in flowers, teddy bears, and awkward messages scrawled on walls.Thursday, the scene played out once again, this time in memory of Amanda Collette, a 15-year-old Dillard High School student who police say was shot and killed by a single bullet fired by a childhood friend.

Student may have told Dillard High officials about gun
District looking into whether Dillard shooting was avoidable
By Kathy Bushouse, Tonya Alanez and Mike Clary
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
November 14, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE

Broward School District officials are investigating whether a student told a Dillard High School teacher or staff member that Teah Wimberly had a handgun before she used it to fatally shoot a friend and classmate in a school hallway, Superintendent James Notter said Thursday.


Editorial: Metal detectors at school entrances?
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
5:59 PM EST, November 13, 2008

In the wake of Wednesday's tragedy at Dillard High School, it is the question of the day — and it's the wrong question: "Why aren't there metal detectors to stop guns from getting into schools?"Metal detectors at school entrances aren't the answer, and they aren't happening. Not when the Broward School District has to cut another $34.2 million from the budget, and Palm Beach County schools are cutting $23.4 million. Even if money was available, turning schools into fortresses is not the answer.So it is time to ask the better question: "How can we be more vigilant in recognizing problems before they escalate into violence?" It's a similar question asked after every campus homicide.

Gun sales up after Obama openly supports banning assault weapons
Henry Pierson Curtis
Sentinel Staff Writer
November 14, 2008

Gun sales are up across Central Florida, dealers say, part of a nationwide pattern after President-elect Barack Obama's open support of permanently banning assault weapons.The buying spree reminds local sellers of a 1994 surge that preceded the 10-year ban on semiautomatic military-style rifles. The trend began last summer when anti-Obama posters became marketing tools at Florida gun shows.

All fired up: Gun owners rush to buy guns for fear Obama, Democrats will curb gun rights
By DENA POTTER
3:59 AM EST, November 8, 2008

MIDLOTHIAN, Va. (AP) _ When 10-year-old Austin Smith heard Barack Obama had been elected president, he had one question: Does this mean I won't get a new gun for Christmas?That brought his mother, the camouflage-clad Rachel Smith, to Bob Moates Sports Shop on Thursday, where she was picking out that special 20-gauge shotgun — one of at least five weapons she plans to buy before Obama takes office in January.Like Smith, gun enthusiasts nationwide are stocking up on firearms out of fears that the combination of an Obama administration and a Democrat-dominated Congress will result in tough new gun laws.

Obama: Your guns are safe
—James Oliphant
September 6, 2008

DURYEA, Pa. — Barack Obama got a chance to go back to Scranton on Friday and talk about guns. And he made the most of it.This week, Obama was on the receiving end of a blast from Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, who accused him of talking "one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco," a reference to Obama's now-infamous comment about how some people in America "cling to guns or religion."Obama toured a glass factory in Duryea, a small town outside Scranton, and took questions afterward."There are rumors going around that ... you're going to take away our guns," said Joan O'Neil. Obama said: "I believe in the 2nd Amendment, and if you are a law-abiding gun owner you have nothing to fear from an Obama administration."

But are your children?

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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Things that make you go Hmmm… (Election 2008 13 days away)

From today’s daily quote service:

October 23, 2008 Quote of the Day

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do." – Freya Stark

About Freya Stark
French-Anglo travel writer Freya Stark was one of the first Western women to see the deserts of the Middle East. She was born in 1893 in Paris and spent her childhood split between her father's family home in England and her mother's in Italy. Her first book, Valley of the Assassins, brought her grants to continue her travels. She focused on remote areas of Turkey and the Middle East, seeking cultures that the modern world had not yet altered. She died in 1993 at age 100.

THINGS WE SAY WE BELIEVE

AS AMERICANS WE SAY WE BELIEVE:

“…One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all…”

“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

AS FLORIDIANS WE SAY WE BELIEVE:

“Florida Constitution, SECTION 2. Basic rights.--All natural persons, female and male alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty, to pursue happiness, to be rewarded for industry, and to acquire, possess and protect property…”

SECTION 23. Right of privacy.--Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person's private life except as otherwise provided herein….

Fla. Stat. 877.19 Hate Crimes Reporting Act.-- (2) ACQUISITION AND PUBLICATION OF DATA.--The Governor, through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, shall collect and disseminate data on incidents of criminal acts that evidence prejudice based on race, religion, ethnicity, color, ancestry, sexual orientation, or national origin.

AS CHRISTIANS WE SAY WE BELIEVE:

"So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets." Matthew 7:12 RSV

"And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them." Luke 6:31 RSV

Mat 22:35 (NRSV)... and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.36. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"37. He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38. This is the greatest and first commandment.39. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Mark 12:28 [NRSV] One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" 29. Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30. you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' 31. The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." 32. Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; 33. and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,'--this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34. When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." After that no one dared to ask him any question.

AS JEWS WE SAY WE BELIEVE:

What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. - Talmud, Shabbat 3id

WHAT WE PROPOSE TO DO IN FLORIDA

Florida Marriage Protection Amendment (2)

"Inasmuch as a marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."

What effect will it have is passed?

If passed, the amendment will ban all recognition and benefits for unmarried couples, straight and gay. It will block civil unions, domestic partnership and repeal existing protections and family benefits relied upon by millions of Floridians.

The amendment would have an especially harsh impact on Florida''s large senior population, many of whom form domestic partnerships rather than remarry after they are widowed in order not to risk losing essential benefits.

Same-sex couples, who are already denied the right to marry by law, would now be denied the right to any kind of meaningful legal protection. The vague language in the amendment, "the substantial equivalent thereof", will plunge Florida into lawsuits, much as has happened in other states. In every instance around the country, those behind these amendments immediately seek to have it interpreted in the most restrictive way possible for all unmarried people.

(SOURCE: No on Amendment 2 Website)

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I noted in a previous blog the following:

Einstein often argued that “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” He recognized the impossibility of pursuing mutually exclusive goals. In the same vein, one cannot simultaneously support legislation that discriminates against a designated group of people and insist that one is not a bigot. The actions speak louder than the words.

Perhaps Freya Stark says it more concisely and pointedly this day:

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Letting Other People Be Other People

There is an excellent interview with former priest turned writer and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll in today’s Buzzflash. The interview focuses on the making of his book Constantine’s Sword into a documentary soon to be released. But along the way, he makes several pointed comments I’d like to consider.

His first comments concern his role as what he calls “a critical Catholic,” a description with which I strongly resonate:

Christianity, including Catholicism, is ambiguous and ambivalent - working for peace and justice on the one hand (The Catholic Church is the largest NGO in the world, doing good without strings attached all over the world), and reinforcing chauvinistic and imperialist attitudes on the other (Christians have sponsored some of the most violent wars in history, and the Church did too little to oppose Hitler). But this ambivalence is true of every religion - and every human institution for that matter. (America is a militarist empire and a source of liberal democracy both.) Indeed, such ambivalence characterizes every person. None of us is pure. I value my religious tradition most for the way it includes principles of its own self-criticism. If I am a critical Catholic, it is because the Church has taught me to be that way.

Christians who are not critical of their own faith traditions merit the less than charitable description some of my more cynical undergrads use to describe them: sheep. This is hardly to suggest that we should denigrate people of faith who are fervent in their beliefs and devout in their practice. It’s simply to suggest that an uncritical faith is also a blind faith. And blindness in regards to institutions with enormous power and influence historically is dangerous.

The line that struck me in this segment, however, is the reminder that “[n]one of us is pure...this ambivalence is true of every religion – and every human institution….Indeed, such ambivalence characterizes every person.” This is an understanding I have come to share with Carroll but only in mid-life. I would assess much of my earlier life as focused on eros as opposed to thanatos, to quote Fromm. I have been willing to see the optimistic half-full glass of human potential while ignoring the shadow that Jung warns of. I have assessed those Hobbesian and Machiavellian spirits I have encountered as deluded and unwilling to see the whole picture even as I have repressed the evidence of human ambiguity of spirit.

Where I find myself today is coming to grips with my own shadow. One of the things I learned from my juvenile clients is that all of us – including myself – are capable of any of the things they had done, up to and including murder. I found myself declaring this truth aloud one day – “If someone harmed my sweet mother, I’d hunt them down and kill them myself.” I was shocked by the anger and hatred this statement evidenced. It came at a point when my mother was beginning her decline which culminated in her death from cancer two years ago. So, the protectiveness was understandable. But it also forced me to see what the Hobbesians have long preached – that all human beings have a shadow side that must be taken seriously. We're all mixed bags on a good day and thus our institutions will reflect that.

Carroll’s interview also included this line in comments about the fundamentalist Protestant takeover of the US Air Force Academy during the 1990s: “Christian fundamentalists have their rights, too - but not to exert the power of the state to advance their agenda.” This is an important point. It brings into juxtaposition the First Amendment civil liberties both to freely exercise one’s religion as well as to be free from its imposition through state power. That is an essential concern in contexts like the military service which begins with a restricted if not coercive paradigm.

But it’s also important in a broader sense when considering issues like the currently proposed Amendment 2 to the Florida state constitution. Amendment 2 would not only prohibit gay marriages in Florida or the recognition of other states’ gay marriages, it would also prevent any kind of civil unions or recognition of domestic partner benefits. Ironically, while supposedly designed to protect heterosexual privilege in the form of an exclusive definition of marriage, it also would prohibit heterosexual cohabitation rights, most of them involving elderly people who don’t get married because of loss of pension rights, from being recognized.

This is the place where the line is crossed – the imposition of the fundamentalist vision on the populace at large through the aegis of state power. DeTocqueville would have called it the tyranny of the majority. Islamic fundamentalists would simply call it an expectable application of sharia law. Carroll is right here: Christian fundamentalists must have their rights respected but such rights do not extend to the shaping of the whole of society to their narrow visions.

Finally, Carroll observes the following about the perceived need to proselytize:

Believers feel an urge to convert others - and call it God's will - because they are uncertain in what they believe. That is clear in relation to the old Christian impulse to convert Jews - because Jewish rejection of Christian claims is profoundly threatening to Christians. This was an ancient Catholic impulse, and reached a climax with the Crusades. Protestants continued it, with a kind of climax in the missionizing of European colonialism. But in the contemporary world more and more believers recognize that tolerance and mutual respect for others requires an abandonment of assertive convert-making. Let other people be other people.

Here I would take a slight exception to his understanding. It's probably not that easy.

It is my observation that the impulse to evangelize is often the strongest among those whose religious claims are the most extreme and thus the most untenable. The cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger would readily explain that phenomenon: the more one invests themselves publicly in beliefs which run counter to the reality one experiences, the more cognitive dissonance is generated and thus the greater the need to shore up one's belief system.

So, on the one hand, I might question whether this urge to convert others is generically applicable to believers generally or whether it might be more readily applicable to believers whose faith systems lend themselves to insecurity in the face of widespread rejection of their tenets. In other words, the more incredible the belief system, the greater the need to convert others given that the more one can find to affirm one’s beliefs, the easier the beliefs are to maintain.

On the other hand, I wonder if the "believers of the contemporary world" really have the luxury of being as cavalier as Carroll suggests here. Do not misunderstand me: I strongly agree that “tolerance and mutual respect for others requires an abandonment of assertive convert-making.” I am more than happy to share my views and to argue for their acceptance and listen to the views of others. And I am willing to reconsider my views in light of what others offer. But I do not feel the need for others to agree with me to hold the beliefs I find compelling. I do not pretend to have all the answers and readily reject the assertions of those who say they do. And one tenet of my own minimal, informal creed is well represented by Carroll’s restatement of the Golden Rule here: “Let other people be other people.”

But I wonder if it is that easy. It is my observation that many human beings come to religions, particularly conservative versions of them, precisely because they do NOT want to “Let other people be other people.” Such a vision is too airy and roomy for the fundamentalists such as those at the USAF Academy. It doesn’t have enough sharply defined boundaries and corners for folks like my brother and sister-in-law. In short, it simply cannot provide enough security for those who have come to religion for precisely that reason.

The work of Ken Wilber is informative here. Human beings function at various stages of spiritual, ethical and moral development. There is an inclination for people whose primary functioning level is post-conventional to show little patience for those functioning at tribal conventional levels such as fundamentalists. There is a tendency to say to them, “Oh, come on, grow up. I did, you can, too, if you just try.” At some level, I have been guilty of such thinking myself.

But, of course, that’s not how it works. And developmentalists from Kohlberg to Wilber all remind us that lower stages of functioning are absolutely necessary – without growing through them, no one develops to higher stages. And many will come to rest in conventional stages for their primary functioning paradigm.

This is where Carroll’s second point above - “Christian fundamentalists have their rights, too - but not to exert the power of the state to advance their agenda” – is critical. A society which permits its tribal conventional contingent to set the agenda for the entire society is by definition headed for tyranny. While conservative religious leaders should never be forced to perform same-sex marriages if they object on religious grounds, conversely they should not be permitted to enforce their personal objections on an entire state through the power of the state constitution.

If we are to truly “Let other people be other people” we must neither err on the side of leaving conservative religious people no boxes with sharply defined corners and walls in which to find security nor expand their boxes to encompass all of a society. It’s a tough balancing act on a good day.

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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The Protestations of Would-Be Martyrs

An interesting article today in the New York Times, “Using Biology, Not Religion, to Argue Against Same-Sex Marriage”

Patricia and Wesley Galloway could not have children of their own. Yet for them, the essence of marriage is rooted in procreation. “It takes a man and a woman to create children and thus create a family,” Mrs. Galloway, 60, told a legislative panel in Connecticut last year as it was considering a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. …

The Galloways represent one side of a debate that is often charged by undercurrents of bigotry and religious belief. The court’s ruling on Friday went on at length about the history of discrimination against gay people. While they are Christians, the Galloways say they refuse to use religion to defend their view of marriage because it just muddies things. And they insist they are accepting of everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.

By protecting heterosexual marriage, what “we’re trying to do is protect the foundation of society,” Mrs. Galloway, a volunteer worker from Trumbull, Conn., said in a telephone interview on Saturday. Everyone who disagrees is automatically labeled a right-wing bigot,” she said. Her husband added, “How can you be a bigot when you’re looking out for society as a whole?”

Surely it is not surprising that a heterosexual couple with a strong sense of failure to meet what they see as an obligation to reproduce based in both religious as well as cultural pressures would see procreation as the critical element of marriage. The article’s writers did a nice job of recognizing that in their description: “Yet for them, the essence of marriage is rooted in procreation.”

That’s the key to understanding this argument: “for them.” But the Galloways are making a rather common error in logic at that point. They are presuming that their own understandings driven by the needs they perceive to exist arising out of their personal circumstances are somehow normative for everyone. Because they cannot have children and feel a particular sense of loss in that regard, somehow this lacuna in their lives becomes the defining aspect of marriage and, in turn, the “foundation of society” generally.

It’s an error in logic I note constantly in the arguments of my undergraduates who sense that somehow their own limited life experience defines reality for everyone. That is particularly true of white middle class students who often fail to recognize the role their numerical prevalence in society and their unrecognized white privilege play in constructing their understandings of reality.

To their credit, the Galloways have refused the easy route to legitimizing their would-be normative vision by placing it in the mind of G-d. Would that so many who share their position were as thoughtful. No doubt, the Galloways may well believe that G-d shares their heterosexist understandings. It’s particularly edifying to believe that G-d shares one’s prejudices. But they refuse to play that trump card and opt for the next best option – nature. The only other option left to them would have been an uncritical deference to tradition.

Of course, the problem is, many marriages don’t produce children for all kinds of reasons. If we take the Galloway’s argument that marriage and families exist primarily if not exclusively for the purpose of procreation of children, the obvious implication for their own marriage would be divorce given its inability to meet the definition they have set for it. If it cannot produce children it has no reason to exist, right?

Obviously such a draconian application would be destructive not only to the individuals involved but to society generally. Many heterosexual marriages produce no children, particularly the marriages of elderly people past child producing years. Clearly, society has an interest in the existence of those marriages. Moreover, some heterosexuals are not called to be parents and responsibly reject the subtle pressures of no doubt well-intentioned but insensitive people like the Galloways to produce and raise children anyway. Society has an interest in the existence of their marriages as well. And the foster homes and police blotters are full of lists of children whose married parents should have listened to their own lives telling them that they were not parental material.

So, the first problem with the Galloway’s argument is that of a rather common but uncritical projection: Our understanding of the world is normative for our society. Everyone either thinks like we do or ought to. And if they don’t we’ll pass laws to force them to abide by our understandings anyway. When the limitations of myopia find enough support to become the tyranny of the majority, discrimination is a predictable result.

The other aspect of the Galloways’ thoughts worth noting is their sensitivity toward being labeled bigots. I find it very interesting that almost to the person, those who advocate heterosexist positions do not want to be responsible for the implications of those understandings. Of course, everyone wants to see themselves in a positive light. Recognizing one’s own prejudices is rarely pain free. And few people know that better than we Southerners who have had to come to grips with our own racism over a lifetime of self-confrontation. But what the Galloways want is essentially to have their heterosexist privilege cake and eat it, too.

Einstein often argued that “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” He recognized the impossibility of pursuing mutually exclusive goals. In the same vein, one cannot simultaneously support legislation that discriminates against a designated group of people and insist that one is not a bigot. The actions speak louder than the words. And assertions that one is “accepting of everyone, regardless of sexual orientation” are revealed as false and self-serving by those actions. Discriminatory acts and accepting attitudes are mutually exclusive.

I do not doubt that the Galloways are decent human beings. I also suspect that they are sincere in their arguments. At some level they honestly believe what they say they do. But sincerity is not the final word in assessing arguments. Credibility is. And when one looks at their arguments in context here – an aging couple sensitive to the perceived duties of child-bearing who see their understandings as normative while refusing to recognize the discriminatory aspects of those understandings – their arguments simply come up less than compelling. Thus, it is not surprising that people like the Galloways who recognize the implicit lack of legitimacy of their position inevitably attempt to shore it up with an uncritical appeal to authority like G-d, nature or tradition.

What the Galloways are attempting to protect here is not marriage itself, it is heterosexual privilege. A social institution that needs protection is an institution based in questionable premises. Laws and amendments to constitutions to protect this privilege will not make heterosexual unions any more stable, it will simply discriminate against non-heterosexuals. And people who discriminate against other people have historically been seen as bigots.

People who testify at public hearings always have a responsibility for the content of their words. And people who would impose their understandings on the public in the form of law always have a responsibility for the impact such laws have on others. While the Galloways and many who share their views may not want that responsibility, they cannot avoid it by painting themselves as martyrs.

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
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