that god shaped hole, again

Music: Burial: Untrue (2007); this is in the top running for my best albums of the year! Today Mitt Romney delivered a speech in College Station to address his Mormonism, which seemed only to address the true believer (and by that, the evangelical sort). Because I was raised as an evangelical, I understand the challenge he chose to address. I remember in my youth watching a video with the Rockbridge Baptist Church congregation that argued Mormonism was a "cult" (in fact, all I distinctly remember is a comic-book like illustration of Jesus and Satan---brothers---trying to persuade God to give or not give human beings freewill, respectively). The speech Romney gave was most directly aimed at this widespread belief among certain protestants, the same protestants that the Left Behind series demonstrated existed in very large numbers. When Romney said that he "will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law," I'm sure this put a lot of evangelicals at ease. On the other hand, he did not say that he supported the separation of church and state doctrine, something his much-referenced predecessor (JFK) made a point to underscore.

Although I do not think that one can separate religion and politics (and in this respect, Schmitt's "political theology" is on the money), I must admit my commitment to the separation between church and state is righteous. Along with Rev. Barry W. Lynn, I worry about the erosion of the first amendment and the Jeffersonian spirit in which it was written: there needs to be a wall between the church and the state in order to protect both. Romney's statements about the "religion of secularism" were particularly icky insofar as this wall, for him, is apparently permeable.

I am always uneasy when I talk politics because I do not follow it closely, but the decidedly theological tone of the current presidency has certainly got me paying more attention. After Bush, I long for either someone truly religious---that is, resolutely hospitable and Other-oriented---or resolutely agonistic. After thinking about religion for a number of years, I'm confident I do not want an atheist as my president, or at least a righteous atheist. Atheism is a fundamentalism, and I'm so tired of that un-deliberative kind of certainty. I mean, this week President Bush is stumping about the nuclear threat of Iran two days after it was revealed they killed their nukes program four years ago. With the catastrophe of Iraq all up in our grill, how can anyone take Bush seriously? The righteous do. The righteous on either side of God.

Many months ago I was having drinks with a friend, and I mentioned that my fascination with religion had to do with righteousness: on the one hand, righteousness was the passion necessary for some forms of social change (I'm thinking of Stonewall, the civil rights movement, and so on). On the other hand, righteousness is a kind of violence that often leads to real violence. So I explained to her that part of what I'm doing in my own work is trying to work through righteousness, trying to discern where my wall is, where I would stave off the ecstasy of violence. In general that wall is the law, broadly construed (and that wall, like the side of the pool for thrusting, is needed for righteousness). We should worry when the law/wall between church and state is said to be permeable because violence can go either way in a total collapse.

Yesterday we finished the graduate seminar on subjectivity, and we ended with Levinas. Romney's speech couldn't have landed at a better time. In class we discussed the general turn toward religion in theory: Derrida's last ten years; Badiou and Zizek's turning to the figure of Saint Paul; the English discovery of Levinas. Obviously having read so little of Levinas I won't even begin to gloss what we discussed yesterday (it would probably provoke laughter among the in-the-know Levinasians out there). But there are two things I can say: (1) Badiou grossly misreads what Levinas seems to be about; and (2) Levinas (like Walter Benjamin) gives us a vocabulary for talking about religion that is nuanced, interesting, thought provoking, and above all not stupid. Levinas' conception of deity reminds me, very much, of the Sufi stuff I read in my coursework on Islam as an undergraduate (I studied Islam for a year with Nasr at GWU): there is a humility and responsibility to the exterior. Levinas' claims (I think we would be in error to call them arguments) about the Other are compelling, and demand a certain orientation to other people based on a collapse of the is/ought distinction that has an affective force. What we discussed in class is the problem of judgment, the role of rhetoric in this problem, and (tacitly) the necessity of violence.

I'm sure Levinas has wrote about violence, and I look forward to discovering that material. In fact, I found his writing so impenetrable I'm sort of anxious to read more. Nevertheless, what comes across in the tone of his writing is a kind of postitionality toward Deity that is the opposite of Romney's today. I'm not suggesting that Levinas is down with the separation of church and state---although he may well be, I dunno---rather, I'm suggesting that by speaking against Jefferson, the sort of respect of the Other, the recognition of responsibility, is not there in Romney. I'm not suggesting it's there with the other candidates, either.

Well, I'm just saying that if Romney is truly a man of God, then we're damned if he becomes president. The problem of all fundamentalisms (as opposed to speculative or mystical traditions) is that they are closed off to disturbances, that which cannot be accounted for, the inevitable void or rupture at the center of things, which is precisely that which Levinas argues must be central to any ethical relation to others. Just because Levinas says it does not make it so, but I'm sympathetic, I’m leaning, I find the recognition of substitution in the event compelling.

Fuck y'all, thinking about the political is a downer. The more I think about it, the more I come back to a discussion Brooke and I once had last year: one honors deity---whether it exists or not---by being good to each other. It is not easy to be good to each other. But if you can do that, beyond inevitable selfishness, then you are religious in orientation. In this respect, perhaps the worst case scenario is that somebody like Donald Trump becomes president: at least Romney, if he has any doubt about his God, ain't that.

I worry Romney's speech sealed the deal. I worry. I wish Obama would talk about deity.