Oxford University Press's Blog, page 526

An absence of fairness: the Trade Union Bill

According to Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Trade Union Bill currently before Parliament is “not a ban on strike action. This is about ensuring that our rules are modern and right and fit for today’s workplace”. As the Bill progresses through the House of Lords, Mr Javid’s rosy view has been challenged by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the UN supervisory body responsible for scrutiny of compliance with international labour standards.

The Bill is introduced against the background of the labyrinthine procedures which unions must already follow before taking strike action, including requirements of a full postal ballot in which a majority vote in favour of a strike. Its key provisions include:

new ballot thresholds – a minimum 50% turnout in all strikes and, in important public services, a requirement that at least 40% of the members eligible to vote are in favour of the strike (clauses 2-3),
detailed notice requirements about strikes (clause 4),
a shorter period during which strikes can be held (clause 8),
additional constraints on picketing, requiring a supervisor at every picket (clause 9),
new rules restricting members’ contribution to union political funds (clauses 10 and 11),
restrictions on unions’ facility time – the time union officials spend on union duties – in the public sector (clauses 12 and 13),
a prohibition on the deduction of union subscriptions direct from wages, known as check-off, in the public sector (clause 14) and
linked changes, in separate regulations, allowing employers to employ agency workers to replace striking workers.

Despite opposition to the Bill from Conservative backbenchers as well as Labour Party MPs, so far only minor amendments have been made to the Bill. The provisions dealing with strikes, facility time and check-off were recently strongly criticised by the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, a body of twenty renowned experts responsible for monitoring national governments’ compliance with ILO Conventions. The Committee concluded the Bill would breach various international treaties ratified by the UK Government. Their report was made available in February 2016.

Regarding the new ballot rules, the ILO Committee accepted that a quorum may be fixed at an acceptable level, but criticised ‘the heightened conditions in important public services of support by 40% of all workers… which effectively means a requirement of 80 per cent support where only the 50 per cent participation quorum has been met’. This would, according to the Committee, ‘constitute an obstacle to the right of workers’ organizations to carry out their activities without interference’. Such a rule might be permissible for strikes in essential services where the health and safety of the population would be at risk or with respect to ‘public servants exercising authority in the name of the State’.

But the Committee expressed concern that the 40% requirement goes far beyond this, extending to primary and secondary education as well as all transport sectors, where it is ‘likely to severely impede’ the right of workers and unions to act in defence of their occupational interests. The Committee noted that these changes ‘come within a cumulated context of heavy procedural requirements for balloting, including the fact that balloting must be by postal balloting only’ and recommended the Government review the balloting method ‘with a view to its possible modernization’. It went on to criticise the proposal to allow employers to use agency workers to replace strikers, saying this too should be limited to strikes in ‘essential services’.

The Committee also emphasized the value of facility time and check-off for ‘the development of harmonious industrial relations’, especially in larger workplaces, such as the public sector. If there is to be any withdrawal of these entitlements, according to the Committee, this should not be by unilateral imposition, as contemplated in the Bill, but through genuine dialogue with the social partners including trade unions.

The findings of the ILO Committee give further support to the view that the provisions of the Bill will harm rather than promote harmonious industrial relations. They also beg the question: if the current Conservative Government wants truly to ‘modernise’ balloting rules, then why not consider forms of electronic voting, as hinted at by the ILO Committee? If such a mechanism is appropriate for selection of a Conservative mayoral candidate, why not here? While conceding it is not opposed to electronic voting ‘in principle’, the Government continues to resist its use for strike ballots, relying on unspecified security concerns.

Writing to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (which raised concerns about compliance with international labour standards), Sajid Javid said there were no grounds for reconsidering the Bill. An Annex briefly reviewed compliance with ILO Conventions and reiterated the Government’s belief that ballot thresholds were being set at a ‘reasonable level’ and that ‘facilities should not impair the efficient operation of the employer’. If he has read the ILO Committee’s report, Mr Javid might want to think again.

Featured image credit: ‘Houses of Parliament’. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Zubik v. Burwell: The HSA/HRA alternative

Last Tuesday, the US Supreme Court issued an unusual order in Zubik v. Burwell. In Zubik, religious employers, including the Little Sisters of the Poor, East Texas Baptist University and Southern Nazarene University, object to the federal regulations governing birth control coverage for their employees. These regulations permit these religious employers to elect against providing such coverage. However, the employers argue that the election form they must file unacceptably implicates them in the provision of the birth control to which they object.

The federal government will use information from those election forms to require the religious employers’ medical insurance companies to furnish the contraceptive coverage the employers oppose. This, the employers contend, violates their legal rights of religious freedom by involving them in birth control services of which they disapprove.

After oral argument in Zubik, the Supreme Court ordered the parties to submit additional briefs. Such additional briefing is not unprecedented. What is usual is the Court’s detailed elaboration of the issues it wants the parties to address in these supplemental briefs.

In its order, the Court asked the parties to “address whether and how contraceptive coverage may be obtained by the petitioners’ employees through petitioners’ insurance companies, but in a way that does not require any involvement of petitioners beyond their own decision to provide health insurance without contraceptive coverage to their employees.”

The conventional wisdom is that this order reflects a determination by some (perhaps all) justices to avoid another 4-4 decision in the wake of Justice Scalia’s death. The Court appears to be seeking a method by which religious employers can themselves not finance or be implicated in the provision of birth control while, at the same time, such contraception is provided through the insurance companies the employers engage to furnish health care coverage to their employees.

As I recently observed in the Rutgers Law Record, there is such an approach: Any religious employer objecting to contraception should have the right to instead fund an independently-administered health savings account (HSA) or health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) for each of its employees.

Employees can use their employer-provided HSA or HRA funds to purchase any medical service or device they want – just as such employees can use their cash wages as they please. An employer has no control over an employee’s decisions to spend his wages as he chooses. Similarly, an employer has no control over an employee’s expenditures of his independently-administered HSA or HRA funds. HSA/HRA funds are wages controlled by the employees except that HSA/HRA funds are not included in employees’ gross incomes and must be spent on medical outlays.

Under this approach, an employee of a religious employer who desires extra prescription eyeglasses could use her HRA or HSA for that purpose – while her co-worker could use that account to obtain birth control. In neither case would the religious employer participate in the employee’s decision how to expend her health care account dollars.

Many Americans are today troubled by the debased quality of our national discourse. In this often shrill environment, the Supreme Court is thoughtfully searching for a solution to an important conundrum. The HSA/HRA alternative is such a solution. The religious employer who puts money into an HSA or HRA thereby pays wages which the employee spends on the medical care he chooses without the employer participating in those choices.

Featured image: Contemplation of Justice. CC0 via Pixabay.

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President William Henry Harrison’s fatal “pneumonia”

William Henry Harrison was 68 years old when he became the ninth president of the United States and the oldest US president until Ronald Reagan was elected nearly a century and a half later. He was sworn into office on 4 March 1841. Exactly one month later, he was dead. Since his death on this day 175 years ago, it has been taken for granted by even the most eminent presidential historians that an overly long inaugural address delivered in freezing weather without a hat, overcoat, or gloves led to a fatal case of pneumonia. Fatal pneumonia, however, is a diagnosis in several respects at odds with the detailed description of Harrison’s final illness left by his personal physician, Dr. Thomas Miller.

Although Harrison developed symptoms of pneumonia during the course of his final illness (i.e., fever, difficulty breathing, and cough productive of small amounts of blood-tinged sputum), they were intermittent rather than progressive and didn’t begin until 2 days after the onset of gastrointestinal complaints, which proved to be both relentless and progressive. Harrison’s initial complaints were constipation and abdominal distension, which persisted for 5 days in spite of repeated laxatives and enemas administered by Dr. Miller. On the sixth day of illness, Harrison’s bowels finally opened, producing a flood of “foetid,” watery diarrhea, a sinking pulse, cold blue extremities, and, ultimately, death. The character and course of the illness, including the pulmonary complaints, are typical of typhoid fever. Moreover, given the dominance of Harrison’s gastrointestinal complaints during the course of his fatal illness, it is more likely that he died of a gastrointestinal infection–specifically typhoid fever–with secondary involvement of his lungs than of a pulmonary infection (i.e., pneumonia) with secondary involvement of the intestine.

Portrait of President William Henry Harrison by Albert Sands Southworth (1811–1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808–1901). Edited by: Fallschirmjäger – The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession number: 37.14.44. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In fact, there is ample reason to conclude that Harrison’s move into the White House placed him at considerable risk of contracting a gastrointestinal infection such as typhoid fever. In 1841 the nation’s capital had no sewer system (nor, for that matter, did any other American city). Until 1850, sewage from nearby buildings simply flowed onto public grounds a short distance from the White House, where it stagnated and formed a marsh. Even more ominous, the White House water supply, which came from springs in the square bordered by 13th, 14th, I, and K streets NW, would have been prone to contamination during heavy rain by pathogenic bacteria contained within Washington DC’s night soil depository situated just seven blocks above the springs. This might explain why three antebellum presidents – Harrison, James Polk, and Zachary Taylor – each developed severe gastroenteritis while residing in the White House. Polk recovered only to die of presumed cholera three months after leaving office. Taylor, like Harrison, succumbed to his episode of gastroenteritis while president.

If Harrison had survived long enough to serve out his term as president, the course of US history would have been different. How different will never be known, because he was unfortunate enough to have moved into the White House before the advent in Washington DC of modern sanitation.

Featured image credit: Death of Harrison, April 4, 1841 by N.Y. : Lith. & pub. by N. Currier – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a06021. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Reflections on religion and the Civil Rights Movement

Americans, black and white, love to commemorate the civil rights struggle.  School programs, public events, popular culture, and historic markers all recount the heroic battle black Americans waged for their full humanity.  Yet, racial inequality continues to plague the United States, and most popular civil rights history mythologizes it in ways that hinder the full realization of the movement’s goals.  Many tellings of the Civil Rights Movement story omit how ferociously white individuals and institutions resisted the change that black activists demanded. Among these institutions, American religion served as one of the most important, if often unnoticed, sources of ideologies that thwarted the civil rights struggle.

Indeed, religion served as a key thread in the fabric of racial inequality. American faith institutions reflected the racially distinct worlds blacks and whites inhabited. Methodists and Presbyterians segregated their black communicants into racially defined administrative units so that no pastor would serve a congregation of the opposite race and spiritual fellowship never crossed racial boundaries.  Until 1950, black Presbyterians ate in the kitchen, rather than in the dining hall with their white counterparts, at annual denominational meetings. No black members belonged to the communion that by the 1960s claimed the allegiance of the largest numbers of American Protestants, making “Southern Baptist” a racial as well as a religious descriptor. Black Methodists and Presbyterians repeatedly demanded an end to these segregated arrangements, but made little headway in these white-dominated institutions.

Perhaps more significantly than denominational and congregational segregation, American evangelicals espoused an individualistic Gospel that focused almost exclusively on personal salvation, utterly stripping the Christian faith of any social implications.  Many depicted civil rights initiatives as utterly un-Christian endeavors, endorsed only by those who had forsaken the true Gospel of salvation.  Improved race relations would come, they maintained, “One heart at a time,” as individuals came to an experience of the new birth that purged their hearts of sin.  Never mind the fact that racial inequalities prevailed most savagely in precisely those places—like the heavily evangelical South—where nearly everyone claimed just such a conversion experience.  The salvation of every American would not have alleviated the inequities perpetuated by institutionalized inequality in employment, education, and political power.

‘African-American Baptist Church, Silver Hill Plantation, Friendfield Estate, Georgetown vicinity, Georgetown County, South Carolina’ by Frederick D. Nichols. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

By and large, America’s religious institutions and leaders failed to sit at the vanguard of racial change in America, though some thoughtful leaders within every communion urged their denominations and communicants to embrace racial change.  Many of the most vociferous voices arguing against racial transformations used the “one heart at a time” logic.  They insisted on a version of the Christian faith and of American identity that urged individual change while leaving intact the systems that served the interests of white supremacy. Tellingly, those white religious groups and individuals who did join black Americans in their struggle rarely came from the ranks of conservative evangelical religion; they came rather from a quite different theological orientation, one that believed systems could wreak evil just as much as individuals could.

Does it really matter if we understand the role that religion has played in our racial past?  Mere condemnation of traditions that remain profoundly meaningful to so many Americans misses the point entirely.  Yet grasping the issues in our racial present depends to some degree on understanding how these arrangements arose; thus we need a steely commitment to civil rights histories that enlighten rather than mythologize.  And here questions about how we justify—even sanctify—the structure of our society remain deeply relevant.  Religion, for all the many different ways it satisfies human cravings, plays important roles in our social ordering.  It helps us identify who belongs to our community and who remains outside it.  It helps us decide who deserves the fruits of our best collective efforts and who does not, who can claim our protection and who merits our wrath.  As religion continues to play an important role in our public conversations, 2016 is an important time to ask how faith has shaped the most significant struggles in our past.

Featured image: ‘Abernathy Children on front line leading the Selma to Montgomery March for the Right to Vote’ by the Abernathy family. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

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3 things you might not know about Nones

Nones are a name for people who answer “none” when asked with what religious group they most identify or to which they belong. Nones are a growing segment of the US religious landscape but there are some misconceptions about how they practice and what might count as “spirituality” or “religion.” Here are three challenges to typical misconceptions about Nones:

1. They’re not Unbelievers – at least not most of them.

The most recent Pew study of the US religious landscape shows a near doubling in the percentage of Americans who identify as Atheists. That’s a big jump, but it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s from a scant 1.6% in 2007 to a slight 3.1% in 2014. Nearly 80% of Nones were raised in a home with at least nominal religious identification and affiliation, and a majority—more than 65%—say that religion remains important to them. Yes, Nones are less likely to profess a belief in God, but more than 70% of the participants on Pew’s 2012 “Nones on the Rise” survey did report some level of belief in God or a Universal Spirit.

But my research and conversations with Nones showed that questions about religious identification and disidentification tied to traditional research categories of believing and belonging miss what are perhaps more important markers across the religious landscape in the United States. Many Nones who talked with me—those who believed in a supernatural being or power as well as those who did not—were often frustrated with what they saw as a fixation on religious belief as an essential component of religiosity or spirituality. Many resisted religious labeling and, with it, the idea that, once set, religious beliefs, identities, and affiliations remain fixed over the course of a lifetime. Indeed, attention to the evolution of spiritual and religious identity, practice, and belief throughout life was a defining feature of Nones.

Dorit Brauer, a Spiritual None from Pittsburgh, put it this way: “I would say I am ‘spiritual,’” she said, “but I am interested in religion, too. I don’t worry so much about the labels. You know, a long time ago, I couldn’t go into a church and feel comfortable. But that has changed for me over time. Now I can go to a Catholic mass with my mother and it’s a very spiritual experience—and a religious experience, I guess. But that is not the core of my spirituality, of course.”

2. Many are looking for spiritual community – just not necessarily a religious community.

Image credit: Harmony Relax Rock by Devanath. Public domain via Pixabay.

It’s by now a commonplace to call out the religiously unaffiliated for individualistic, private, and, as they are very often characterized, narcissistic spiritualities. The idea of spiritual self-absorption and isolationism among Nones was reinforced by the Pew “Nones on the Rise” study. Researchers asked “Are you looking for a religion that would be right for you?” A commanding majority—88%—said, “not so much.”

This was true of many of the Nones who shared their spiritual stories with me. Most were not looking for a community to which they would belong for the rest of their lives. But many were also involved in multiple forms of gathering with different degrees of formality and regularity, some continuing for years, some popping up for a time, then fading away. Nones experienced yoga classes, monthly gatherings of musician friends and their families, gatherings of neighbors for weekly dinners, outings with coworkers to explore the culture of their city, community gardens, and online networks as richly spiritual. What tended to distinguish Nones in this regard was a cosmopolitan outlook rather than a communitarian one—the idea that regular and periodic encounters with others known well, only casually, or not really at all could be occasions of spiritual connection and significance.

This spiritual cosmopolitanism hardly ruled out all engagement with traditional religious communities. “I guess I still have a lot of religion in me, you could say. It just comes out differently now,” said Dan Li, a None from Waimea, Hawaii, who takes as a spiritual practice regularly visiting a diversity of religious sites. “I feel comfortable in a church for the most part, or in a Buddhist temple, or whatever, even if I don’t exactly believe what they believe. All religions have something good in them,” he acknowledged, “even the most small-minded of them. I like that. I like to be open to all of it.”

Such viewpoints mark Nones as very different from the Baby Boomer “generation of seekers” profiled by Wade Clark Roof (1993) in that they are not on an ongoing quest in hopes of finding one, lasting spiritual home. Rather, they enjoy the array of spiritual experiences available to them, and which they can create, in a more open and diverse spiritual environment. This reinforced the idea that traditional categories of believing and belonging are not significant markers of religiosity for Nones, but it challenged the idea that Nones have no interest in spiritual connection with others. Rather, being and becoming spiritual, as that unfolded organically in the course of everyday life and its diverse networks of relationships, were far more important.

3. They’re not inarticulate about religion and spirituality—They’re creating new languages.

Especially in research involving teens and young adults, an assertion has been made by some scholars that religious affiliation is fueled at least in part by Nones’ lack of familiarity and fluency with the languages of the religious traditions in which most of them were raised (Smith and Lindquist, 2005; Dean, 2010). They don’t, that is, learn how to talk about faith in ways that make institutional religious practice a part of their personal religious story.

That may be true in terms of the doctrinal teachings and dogma of traditional religions. But I’m not convinced that a deeper appreciation of Christian atonement theology or the twelve-linked chain of causation in Buddhist teaching would make much of a difference in terms of durable, institutional religious affiliation. The Nones I talked with were remarkably articulate about their own spiritual experience and its significance in their lives once they felt comfortable that their perspectives would be heard without impatience or judgment. I found, in particular, that what is often seen as a dismissive, throwaway phrase, “or whatever,” was in fact often an indication that the person speaking had not yet found language to fully express the particularity of their spiritual experience.

This was especially the case precisely because their experience didn’t map directly to conventional religious belief and practice. Nones often felt that the readily available language was freighted with religious connotations that were problematic, especially for nontheistic Nones. Further, because of the range of stereotypes about Nones as spiritually superficial and narcissistic, many Nones don’t have opportunities to discuss their spiritual lives in great breadth or depth. I found that in their descriptions and explanations of what was spiritually significant in their lives, Nones were often in the process of developing—perhaps for the first time—language that seemed true to their experience.

For example, when I asked Kimberly Arthur, a Secular Humanist from Phoenix, what she meant by “spiritual, or whatever,” she said, “I guess maybe it’s the experiences that people call ‘spiritual’ that I’m talking about. You know, when I say, ‘or whatever,” it’s because ‘spirituality’ isn’t exactly what I’m experiencing, but I don’t know what else you would call it. I mean, it’s just hard to explain when all the words are so loaded. I’ve never really thought about it a whole lot, I guess, what would be a better word. I don’t even know if there is one.”

Processes of spiritual and religious being and becoming trump the classic religious categories of believing, belonging, and behaving for Nones. New modes of networked, cosmopolitan affiliation tend to characterize the way Nones gather through their spiritual lives. And, from this, new stories of spiritual and religious experience that both draw upon and move beyond traditional religious language are beginning to emerge.

Featured image credit: Ceiling Norwich Cathedral by MemoryCatcher. Public domain via Pixabay.

The post 3 things you might not know about Nones appeared first on OUPblog.

3 things you might not know about Religious Nones

Religious Nones are a name for people who answer “none” when asked with what religious group they most identify or to which they belong. Nones are a growing segment of the US religious landscape but there are some misconceptions about how they practice and what might count as “spirituality” or “religion.” Here are three challenges to typical misconceptions about Nones:

1. They’re not Unbelievers – at least not most of them.

The most recent Pew study of the US religious landscape shows a near doubling in the percentage of Americans who identify as Atheists. That’s a big jump, but it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s from a scant 1.6% in 2007 to a slight 3.1% in 2014. Nearly 80% of Nones were raised in a home with at least nominal religious identification and affiliation, and a majority—more than 65%—say that religion remains important to them. Yes, Nones are less likely to profess a belief in God, but more than 70% of the participants on Pew’s 2012 “Nones on the Rise” survey did report some level of belief in God or a Universal Spirit.

But my research and conversations with Nones showed that questions about religious identification and disidentification tied to traditional research categories of believing and belonging miss what are perhaps more important markers across the religious landscape in the United States. Many Nones who talked with me—those who believed in a supernatural being or power as well as those who did not—were often frustrated with what they saw as a fixation on religious belief as an essential component of religiosity or spirituality. Many resisted religious labeling and, with it, the idea that, once set, religious beliefs, identities, and affiliations remain fixed over the course of a lifetime. Indeed, attention to the evolution of spiritual and religious identity, practice, and belief throughout life was a defining feature of Nones.

Dorit Brauer, a Spiritual None from Pittsburgh, put it this way: “I would say I am ‘spiritual,’” she said, “but I am interested in religion, too. I don’t worry so much about the labels. You know, a long time ago, I couldn’t go into a church and feel comfortable. But that has changed for me over time. Now I can go to a Catholic mass with my mother and it’s a very spiritual experience—and a religious experience, I guess. But that is not the core of my spirituality, of course.”

2. Many are looking for spiritual community – just not necessarily a religious community.

Image credit: Harmony Relax Rock by Devanath. Public domain via Pixabay.

It’s by now a commonplace to call out the religiously unaffiliated for individualistic, private, and, as they are very often characterized, narcissistic spiritualities. The idea of spiritual self-absorption and isolationism among Nones was reinforced by the Pew “Nones on the Rise” study. Researchers asked “Are you looking for a religion that would be right for you?” A commanding majority—88%—said, “not so much.”

This was true of many of the Nones who shared their spiritual stories with me. Most were not looking for a community to which they would belong for the rest of their lives. But many were also involved in multiple forms of gathering with different degrees of formality and regularity, some continuing for years, some popping up for a time, then fading away. Nones experienced yoga classes, monthly gatherings of musician friends and their families, gatherings of neighbors for weekly dinners, outings with coworkers to explore the culture of their city, community gardens, and online networks as richly spiritual. What tended to distinguish Nones in this regard was a cosmopolitan outlook rather than a communitarian one—the idea that regular and periodic encounters with others known well, only casually, or not really at all could be occasions of spiritual connection and significance.

This spiritual cosmopolitanism hardly ruled out all engagement with traditional religious communities. “I guess I still have a lot of religion in me, you could say. It just comes out differently now,” said Dan Li, a None from Waimea, Hawaii, who takes as a spiritual practice regularly visiting a diversity of religious sites. “I feel comfortable in a church for the most part, or in a Buddhist temple, or whatever, even if I don’t exactly believe what they believe. All religions have something good in them,” he acknowledged, “even the most small-minded of them. I like that. I like to be open to all of it.”

Such viewpoints mark Nones as very different from the Baby Boomer “generation of seekers” profiled by Wade Clark Roof (1993) in that they are not on an ongoing quest in hopes of finding one, lasting spiritual home. Rather, they enjoy the array of spiritual experiences available to them, and which they can create, in a more open and diverse spiritual environment. This reinforced the idea that traditional categories of believing and belonging are not significant markers of religiosity for Nones, but it challenged the idea that Nones have no interest in spiritual connection with others. Rather, being and becoming spiritual, as that unfolded organically in the course of everyday life and its diverse networks of relationships, were far more important.

3. They’re not inarticulate about religion and spirituality—They’re creating new languages.

Especially in research involving teens and young adults, an assertion has been made by some scholars that religious affiliation is fueled at least in part by Nones’ lack of familiarity and fluency with the languages of the religious traditions in which most of them were raised (Smith and Lindquist, 2005; Dean, 2010). They don’t, that is, learn how to talk about faith in ways that make institutional religious practice a part of their personal religious story.

That may be true in terms of the doctrinal teachings and dogma of traditional religions. But I’m not convinced that a deeper appreciation of Christian atonement theology or the twelve-linked chain of causation in Buddhist teaching would make much of a difference in terms of durable, institutional religious affiliation. The Nones I talked with were remarkably articulate about their own spiritual experience and its significance in their lives once they felt comfortable that their perspectives would be heard without impatience or judgment. I found, in particular, that what is often seen as a dismissive, throwaway phrase, “or whatever,” was in fact often an indication that the person speaking had not yet found language to fully express the particularity of their spiritual experience.

This was especially the case precisely because their experience didn’t map directly to conventional religious belief and practice. Nones often felt that the readily available language was freighted with religious connotations that were problematic, especially for nontheistic Nones. Further, because of the range of stereotypes about Nones as spiritually superficial and narcissistic, many Nones don’t have opportunities to discuss their spiritual lives in great breadth or depth. I found that in their descriptions and explanations of what was spiritually significant in their lives, Nones were often in the process of developing—perhaps for the first time—language that seemed true to their experience.

For example, when I asked Kimberly Arthur, a Secular Humanist from Phoenix, what she meant by “spiritual, or whatever,” she said, “I guess maybe it’s the experiences that people call ‘spiritual’ that I’m talking about. You know, when I say, ‘or whatever,” it’s because ‘spirituality’ isn’t exactly what I’m experiencing, but I don’t know what else you would call it. I mean, it’s just hard to explain when all the words are so loaded. I’ve never really thought about it a whole lot, I guess, what would be a better word. I don’t even know if there is one.”

Processes of spiritual and religious being and becoming trump the classic religious categories of believing, belonging, and behaving for Nones. New modes of networked, cosmopolitan affiliation tend to characterize the way Nones gather through their spiritual lives. And, from this, new stories of spiritual and religious experience that both draw upon and move beyond traditional religious language are beginning to emerge.

Featured image credit: Ceiling Norwich Cathedral by MemoryCatcher. Public domain via Pixabay.

The post 3 things you might not know about Religious Nones appeared first on OUPblog.

Teaching human rights in schools: ‘Who am I to say that democracy is the right way?’

“What could very easily happen with teaching about human rights is indoctrination…so let’s say someone says that racism isn’t wrong. Okay, so what would happen is that ‘racism is wrong. You have to learn it’. That’s the way it would be taught… Actually, I think a debate around that is needed, because I don’t think you can say that intrinsically racism is wrong. You can say that as a society, we’ve formed a set of values that have concluded that racism is wrong.”

When a primary school teacher says something like this to you as a researcher, it makes you sit up and take notice. Whilst it would be comforting to think that this is simply the isolated perspective of one wayward teacher, my research into teachers’ perceptions of educating primary school children about human rights was punctuated by similarly troubling viewpoints. One teacher found it difficult to talk about the atrocities that happened at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp without telling the children in her classroom that “this is the most heinous crime ever imagined”, following this up with “and you can’t do that, so it’s very difficult.” Another was loathe to teach that democracy was “the right way,” because she didn’t want to influence, but rather to simply “open children’s eyes.” Her final comment on this issue being “who am I to say that democracy is the right way?”

These deeply concerning viewpoints were revealed in the context of discussions about teaching on one particular issue: human rights. Whilst some saw the topic as simply too dry, legal or complex for children at the stage of formal primary schooling, others identified its inherently controversial nature as the fundamental problem.

Image provided by Alison Struthers, used with permission.

Empirical findings such as these are perhaps unsurprising in light of widespread misconception and sensationalism surrounding human rights. Human rights journalism has shifted from being the almost exclusive remit of specialist sections of the UK press to donning the front pages of mainstream, largely tabloid, newspapers. When human rights issues make the headlines, these are bold, attention grabbing and, more often than not, bear only an ounce of resemblance to the truth.

Some of these tabloid stories in particular have become so notorious that it would be difficult to find a person in the UK unaware of them: the human right to a family life enabling an illegal immigrant to remain in the UK because he owned a pet cat is one such tale; a convicted serial killer drawing upon human rights as justification for obtaining access to hardcore pornography whilst incarcerated is another. These stories are frequently drawn upon to support the proposition that human rights protection has gone too far in the UK; that the human rights framework is abused by those who are unworthy, such as prisoners or those claiming on tenuous grounds that they have a right to a family life in this country

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that teachers reveal perceptions of human rights-related issues as too controversial for classroom teaching. When great swathes of the public are influenced and affected by hyperbolized or erroneous media portrayals of human rights, it’s simply unrealistic to expect teachers to be immune to them. Teachers view human rights as: too scary; too political; liable to antagonise parents with particular viewpoints; or largely irrelevant to children in this country who “already have their rights.” For many teachers, therefore, it’s “just not worth it” or “safer not to teach it.”

Something of a vicious circle is the inevitable result, however: teachers are reluctant to teach about human rights in a cultural landscape that remains sceptical of them; learners then emerge from formal education with little understanding and acceptance of human rights; negative perceptions of human rights persist and affect the next generation of teachers; and so on.

Education on human rights and their underlying values is arguably of fundamental importance for enabling children to recognise that human rights are not just applicable to those suffering in distant war-ravaged or hunger ridden countries but are equal and inalienable standards that belong to everyone simply by virtue of their common humanity.

Teachers, therefore, need to become more comfortable and confident about teaching on human rights values and principles, even in the face of perceived parental objection. Only by breaking the cyclical problem identified above will change be possible, through equipping the next generation with the knowledge, values, and skills necessary to contribute to the building of a broader culture that is respectful of human rights.

Featured image credit: classroom-student-students-lesson by hdornak. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Trump that: the failure and farce of American politics

There is something very odd and bizarrely impressive about Donald Trump’s approach to democratic politics: it is quite obviously undemocratic. Indeed, if anything, his campaign is fueled by anti-political sentiment and populist slogans. It’s strong stuff. So strong that it deserves to be recognized in the form of a new political ideology: “Trump-ism” Eponymous…and yet also synonymous with the failure and farce of American politics. I’ve tried so hard not to write a piece about “you know who” Trump. I really have! It’s just too obvious and to some extent just too easy but as his apparent popularity in the United States grows so does my concern about who might actually hold the most powerful political office on the planet.

But in many ways my concern has nothing to do with partisanship, less to do with politics and everything to do with democracy.

I don’t care what party Mr Trump belongs to, I know that politics is a worldly art, but it strikes me that Donald is not democratic.

Indeed, so far Trump appears distinctly undemocratic and strangely anti-political (in his approach to securing the very highest elected political office in the world). You might respond with the common refrain ‘only in America’ but the rise of anti-political populist politicians and parties seems a far more widespread phenomenon. And yet there is something stunningly brutish about “Trump-ism” (every good politician wants to be associated with an eponymous ideology so let’s just make him happy).

Let us compare the concept of democracy with the ideology of Trump-ism.

Democracy is an institutionalized form of conflict resolution and risk reduction: nothing more, nothing less. We all agree to have limits placed on some freedoms and to contribute some of our money to common pot in return for the freedom to live in a society in which certain basic standards and expectations are upheld. Put slightly differently, democratic politics is about the art of compromise. We all give a bit and we all benefit (from public education, healthcare, social protection, policing, etc.). The system is not perfect and forms of inequality persist but overall the great beauty of democracy is that it provides a way for increasingly diverse and inter-dependent societies to live together. What is also important is that failure and disappointment are to some extent inevitable because no system can please all of the people all of the time.

Trump-ism, as far as I can understand it, appears almost the opposite of democracy. It seems to deny the existence of basic limits, it seems set on antagonism rather than resolution, it seems to philosophize with the subtly of a sledgehammer. More worryingly it seems to rejoice in the identification of “others” who are to blame for the ills of modern America, it promotes a politics of fear and a politics of pessimism, and it promises simple and pain-free solutions to complex problems (when there are no simple solutions). Deal-making and compromise is the grease and the oil that allows democratic politics to work and yet Trump-ism seems to reject such mechanisms as signs of weakness.

And yet the politician who refuses to compromise is not a democrat. He or she is an authoritarian, the anti-thesis of a democrat. (Question of the Week to the Reader “Trump-ism is little more than authoritarianism dressed in a thin veneer of democratic politics?” Discuss at leisure.)

But as David Brooks suggested recently in the New York Times (“The Governing Cancer of Our Time,” 26 February 2016), there is something deeper, possibly more dangerous at play. In recent week’s the Trump campaign has in several cities promoted a strong public response, especially by sections of society that feel potentially isolated or threatened by Trump-ism. The response of  Trump when a protestor interrupted him mid-speech in Nevada – “I’d like to punch him in the face”– suggests a bludgeoning approach to politics or a heady mix of hubris syndrome and schoolboy bully that combines to create Trump-ism.

The real problem with Trump-ism as a model of democracy rests not with the man but with the public that cannot see the dangerous game they are unwittingly playing. Psychologists have for several decades revealed the manner in which normally calm and rational individuals can be caught up in the emotions of a crowd or a mob to the extent that they lose their sense of perspective. In Nevada the crowd roared in approval and so – never one to disappoint – Trump told them, “You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”

Punching and violence is exactly what democracy is intended to avoid but Trump-ism seems bound to a masculine and testosterone-fuelled politics that appeals to a very specific type of individual. In this regard the research of the political scientist Matthew MacWilliams possibly tells us more about the principles and values of Trump-ism than Trump himself – the only single statistically significant variable that predicts whether a voter supports Trump  is not race, income or education but authoritarianism. “That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations,” MacWilliams concludes, “and because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible that Trump’s fan base will continue to grow.”

This really is the failure and farce of American politics. Trump that!

Featured image: “White House” by Tom Lohdan, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Commemorating Shakespeare in 1916

As we approach the quadricentenary of Shakespeare’s death, we find ourselves in the midst of a technology explosion, an environment of increasing political tension, and a time of deep concern for the future of the planet. So what does the tercentenary reveal? It’s time to cast back to the previous celebration in the midst of the First World War. The following is an extract from A Book of Homage to Shakespeare by Gordon McMullan.

Easter was late in 1916, falling on 23 April, St George’s Day. This coincidence of faith and patriotism was inevitably both heightened and tempered by the ongoing struggles of the First World War. April 1916 came amidst the protracted fighting of the Battle of Verdun, a long and bloody conflict yet one which was only a foretaste of the horrors to come at the Somme the summer following. For the many Australian and New Zealand troops in London, meanwhile, April 1916 saw the first anniversary of the débacle at Gallipoli, the first ANZAC Day, a moment that saw the emergence of a key myth of origin in the transformation of both former colonies into nations in their own right and which was marked by ANZAC troops marching through central London and attending a matinée variety performance. Easter 1916 also saw a very different, very direct response to colonial experience: the Easter Rising in Dublin, the date chosen for its resonances of rebirth and renewal and remembered with the most complex of emotions by W. B. Yeats in his poem ‘Easter 1916’: ‘All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.’ That Easter was in so many ways, then, a time of conflict, of tension, of change.

Easter 1916 happened also to mark the Tercentenary of the death of William Shakespeare. It had been agreed long before war broke out, however, that national commemorations of England’s National Poet would be postponed until the May Day weekend (with the solemn explanation that the change of calendar from Julian to Gregorian in the late sixteenth century meant that 1 May 1916 was in fact four hundred years to the day from 23 April 1616) in order to avoid any unintended conflation of Shakespeare with Christ—a decision that underlines, even as it seeks to elide, the quasireligious reverence in which Shakespeare and his writings were held at this time. This tendency is most apparent in the brief publication Shakespeare Tercentenary Observance in the Schools and other Institutions issued by the Tercentenary Committee for ‘Shakespeare Day’, 3 May 1916, which set out, in effect, a liturgy for the occasion: a Bible reading (‘Let us now praise famous men’ from Ecclesiasticus), three Shakespeare songs (eight are provided in an appendix), a ‘Discourse on Shakespeare’, some ‘Scenes or passages from Shakespeare’ and, finally, the National Anthem. It is perhaps not surprising, in context, that the authorities were obliged to explain a week or two beforehand that, no, Westminster Abbey would not be holding a service in memory of Shakespeare on Easter Day itself.

The Teachers College’s representation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1916). Image by East Carolina Teachers College. No known copyright restrictions via Wikimedia Commons.

On 2 May, The Times reported the Shakespeare Tercentenary celebrations that had taken place the day before at London’s Mansion House, noting the reading-out of messages from the King and Queen and from US President Woodrow Wilson and the presence of a wide range of dignitaries from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the US and Spanish ambassadors (the neutrality of the United States and of Spain was, as Richard Foulkes has noted, ‘an obvious subtext to the occasion’), the High Commissioners of Australia and South Africa, representatives of the governments of China, Belgium, Switzerland, and Greece, and a roll call of academics (including Israel Gollancz, editor of the Book of Homage), theatre practitioners, writers, and other intellectual, cultural, and creative celebrities.

The Lord Mayor opened proceedings, noting that whatever the attitude of his early modern predecessors to the business of acting, he could now, ‘in the name of the City of London, heartily and reverently join in that universal tribute of homage which this great anniversary was eliciting throughout the civilized world’. The event continued with tributes from the various dignitaries, including the US ambassador (who reported that ‘the people of that great English-speaking world beyond the sea were expressing their gratitude for their great inheritance—that they were born into the language of Shakespeare and into the development of that civilization and into that racial trick of thought of which he gave the very highest expression’), the Australian High Commissioner (‘if we could clear away the mist that surrounded our decision and indecision at this time and speak the language and the thoughts of Shakespeare’s days we should make all well-meaning men and women happy and make tyrants afraid’), and the South African High Commissioner (‘it was a splendid fact that in the throes of a convulsion which was causing the whole world to reel and totter the nation of Shakespeare stood firm and smiling’). As the Liverpool Courier put it, ‘[t]he Mansion House th[at] afternoon presented a scene of tranquility and intellectual refreshment, the very antithesis of the war and the Dublin rebellion’. The occasion thus detached Shakespeare from global events which might, in another light, have suggested that the historical stability celebrated by so many Tercentenary celebrants was distinctly and uncomfortably illusory.

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Philosopher of the month: Immanuel Kant

This April, the OUP Philosophy team honours Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) as their Philosopher of the Month. A teacher and professor of logic and metaphysics, this Enlightenment philosopher is today considered one of the most significant thinkers of all time. His influence is so great, European philosophy is generally divided into pre-Kantian and post-Kantian schools of thought.

Born in Königsberg, then the capital of Prussia, Kant never traveled more than 100 miles from his hometown. He studied literature, philosophy and natural science at the University of Königsberg, where he spent most of his professional life as an academic. At first Kant did not complete his degree, and after three years working as a private tutor he was able to return to the university and complete his studies and commence work as a lecturer.

Kant’s philosophical career is conventionally divided into three periods. The first, or ‘pre-critical period’, runs from 1747, the year of his first publication, ‘On the True Estimate of Living Forces’, to 1770, when he published his inaugural dissertation, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible Worlds, and received a salaried academic position. In spite of significant shifting of views, the writings of this period are unified by Kant’s abiding concerns with foundational questions in science and the search for the proper method in metaphysics.

The middle period (1771–80) is often called the ‘silent decade’, because Kant published virtually nothing, devoting himself instead to the reflections that led eventually to the Critique of Pure Reason. The third, or ‘critical period’, dates from the publication of the first edition of the Critique in 1781. This groundbreaking work soon established Kant as one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Kant himself said the work brought about a philosophical equivalent of the so-called Copernican Revolution, because it reversed the usual assumption that the apprehension of empirical sense-data necessarily precedes the production of the concepts we assign to them.

In Critique of Pure Reason Kant sought to overcome what he viewed as the problem of the empiricist David Hume’s skepticism concerning causation. He agreed with Hume that it is impossible to prove that every event has a cause by power of experience, but disagreed with him that one should thereby abandon the general principle that every event has a cause. Kant’s solution is to divide the psychical apparatus in two: on the one side there are ‘intuitions’, the perceptions of given sense data, and on the other side there are categories and concepts (such as space and time), the universal laws of the mind. His rationale is that we could not describe the world in a variety of different ways if we did not have concepts that enable us to see it differently too. But even more importantly, Kant argued that even when a specific cause is not perceptible we nonetheless know that it must exist and that necessity is sufficient to found knowledge.

Kant describes the process of attaining knowledge as judgment and identifies three stages in its composition: first there is the apprehension of something that affects the mind, then the imagination reproduces it in the mind, and thirdly it is recognized by the mind which assigns it a concept. Judgment is the application of the rules of understanding to intuitions. These rules are said to be ‘transcendental’ by Kant because they function as conditions of possibility for knowledge. In the subsequent Second and Third Critiques, Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and The Critique of Judgement (1790), Kant turned his attention to aesthetic, moral, and political questions. The power of these later works is so great that Kant is regarded by many readers as fundamentally a moral philosopher.

As a moral philosopher, Kant is austere and uncompromising: the only act that is unconditionally good in his view is one that is done selflessly out of a sense of duty and for the sake of duty. Acting out of duty deprives the will of an object of desire, meaning that the act is carried out in accordance with universal law rather than for personal gain. His ethics are developed on the principle that they must not presuppose a specific object or will, but must always reflect universal laws, or what Kant called the ‘categorical imperative’, which is a law that any rational being would recognize as valid without exception in all imaginable situations.

Kant’s later works include Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793) which got Kant into trouble with the repressive religious censorship of Frederick William II of Prussia; Perpetual Peace (1795); and Die Metaphysik der Sitten in 1797 (translated as The Metaphysics of Morals, but often in two different parts, The Metaphysical Principles of Right, and The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue.)

In his last years Kant devoted himself to a major revision of some of his basic views on metaphysics and the foundations of science. The work remained uncompleted at his death, but has been edited and published under the title Opus Postumum. Kant died in Königsberg in 1804; his place as the greatest Western philosopher of the last three hundred years is well assured.

Featured image credit: University and Royal Garden, Konigsberg, East Prussia, Germany. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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