I mentioned in this blog's inaugural post that the creation of the blog was inspired by an event which "really pissed me off." This is the story of that event, and why I think it matters.
Those of you who know me personally will probably know that I recently ended my four-year-long membership in Northwestern University's Model United Nations club (NUMUN). NUMUN was an incredible experience for me and contributed more to my enjoyment of my four years at Northwestern than just about anything else; I met most of my best friends at NU through NUMUN. I served as a member of the staff for our annual high school conference my first two years in the club and on the club's Secretariat, in roles primarily pertaining to the quality of simulation at the high school conference, in my final two years. I also represented NU as a delegate at quite a number of collegiate conferences. (Lest you misunderstand my motives, I left the club not because I didn't like it anymore--quite the contrary, in fact--but simply because I won't be back next year.)
What will probably end up being my last NUMUN meeting was on Wednesday night, when we selected the committees the club will simulate at next year's conference. Even though I won't be back for next year's conference, and despite the fact that I still consider everyone who was in the room a good friend, the meeting left a sour taste in my mouth.
The basic format of the committee selection meetings is essentially that of a free-for-all: a bunch of people (mostly members or ex-members of Secretariat, plus a few highly interested members of the previous year's conference staff) sit around and simply toss out ideas for committees that sound interesting, fun, ripe for simulation, etc., and one person writes all of the ideas on a white board. At the end, contingent upon the size of the rooms we have available, committees are essentially picked by consensus, with the goal being to have a diverse mix of committees to appeal to all types of delegate.
About halfway through the meeting, at a point when our Secretary General was not in the room, I floated an idea that I've had for more than two years: a simulation of the Council of Nicaea. If you're not familiar with the Council of Nicaea, the Wikipedia article is a good overview, but the basic idea is that in 325 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine invited bishops from all over Christendom to meet at Nicaea (present day Iznik, Turkey) and determine, once and for all, the Christian Church's official position on a variety of issues, most notably the calculation for the date of Easter and whether Jesus was human, divine, or some mixture of the two. (On this latter point, the assembled bishops decided that the Savior was 100% human and 100% divine. Apparently, "making any semblance of mathematical sense" was not high on the Council's priority list.) When I offered my proposal and explained a bit about the Council of Nicaea, I must have counted half a dozen people whose eyes lit up or who made comments of approbation; it seemed a highly popular idea.
Until later in the meeting, that is, when the Secretary General returned and asked us for a rundown of all the ideas that had been scribbled on our whiteboard. Before I could even finish explaining the nature of the Council of Nicaea, he immediately said "No, we're not doing that" and quickly attempted to move on. When I protested, he was quite emphatic in his insistence that "we will not do anything relating to religion." Several of the participants in the meeting--some of whom had seemed intrigued by the idea earlier--joined in, talking about how religion is an "extremely personal matter" and that "we don't want to offend anyone." One member of the incoming Secretariat, who had originally remarked that the idea was "awesome," said "I've been the only Christian in a room full of atheists and it was incredibly uncomfortable"--as if I had never experienced the reverse, which is at least as unsettling, or as if that had anything to do with a Model United Nations simulation of a somewhat esoteric meeting of bishops that took place 1,700 years ago. (At one point, in the midst of making my case, the Secretary General cut me off and said, with a bit of a smirk, "Yeah, but you're an atheist.")
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is largely rooted in religion, is deeply personal for many, and carries the potential for grievous offense--but we've simulated it at NUMUN before. The same goes for the India-Pakistan conflict--which we've simulated at NUMUN before. During my junior year, one of our committees was the Politburo of the People's Republic of China, an explicitly atheist country which routinely imprisons and tortures Christian missionaries and activists. At Wednesday night's meeting--the very same meeting--one potential idea for next year was a simulation of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (We rejected it because we just had a committee that simulated the United States in the early '60s two years ago. That committee featured a guest appearance by a NUMUN staff member portraying staunch segregationist George Wallace, so clearly we're not all that concerned with not offending people if we might be offending them about something other than religion.) Other conferences I know of have simulated the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Crusades, and the government of the Philippines against an Islamist insurgency--all religious conflicts.
But the Council of Nicaea is apparently different, and I know precisely why. It is because the Council of Nicaea might, in some oblique way, constitute a critique of the institution of Christianity itself. That, of course, is verboten, at least in the United States.
I find this totally abhorrent. For one thing, I think we gave high school students and their advisors too little credit; everyone at a Model United Nations conference understands that it is a simulation which does not necessarily reflect reality, but even if it did, if a person were both deeply religious (say, Catholic) and intellectually honest, wouldn't he or she want a frank discussion of the nature of his or her faith (and if they aren't intellectually honest, one wonders what they're doing at a MUN conference)?
The bigger problem, though, is that this timidity to discuss Christianity--even issues about Christianity that, in real life, have been settled for centuries--is indicative of a larger societal trend. In this country (and, sadly, in just about every country I can think of) there are things we are all told that you just can't say, for fear it might upset somebody. That deprives us all of an opportunity for intellectual growth, and it lets entire sets of ideas--entire creeds, entire philosophies, entire religions--occupy prominent places in our collective consciousness without being subjected to reason. Telling people they can't talk about something is an extremely effective means of getting them not to think about it, and that's the surest sign that that idea can't stand up to scrutiny.
Political correctness is just a, well, politically correct term for intellectual cowardice. I reject it with every fiber of my being.
I am--and, prior to Wednesday, was--well aware that we will probably never simulate the Council of Nicaea or anything like it at NUMUN. Truth be told, it probably is a poor business idea. But that isn't why people said we couldn't do it. The argument against the Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with whether it would be intellectually stimulating or profitable for NUMUN; instead, it was about the fact that we might step on somebody's toes. I cannot, and will not, abide such a cop-out.
About halfway through the meeting, at a point when our Secretary General was not in the room, I floated an idea that I've had for more than two years: a simulation of the Council of Nicaea. If you're not familiar with the Council of Nicaea, the Wikipedia article is a good overview, but the basic idea is that in 325 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine invited bishops from all over Christendom to meet at Nicaea (present day Iznik, Turkey) and determine, once and for all, the Christian Church's official position on a variety of issues, most notably the calculation for the date of Easter and whether Jesus was human, divine, or some mixture of the two. (On this latter point, the assembled bishops decided that the Savior was 100% human and 100% divine. Apparently, "making any semblance of mathematical sense" was not high on the Council's priority list.) When I offered my proposal and explained a bit about the Council of Nicaea, I must have counted half a dozen people whose eyes lit up or who made comments of approbation; it seemed a highly popular idea.
Until later in the meeting, that is, when the Secretary General returned and asked us for a rundown of all the ideas that had been scribbled on our whiteboard. Before I could even finish explaining the nature of the Council of Nicaea, he immediately said "No, we're not doing that" and quickly attempted to move on. When I protested, he was quite emphatic in his insistence that "we will not do anything relating to religion." Several of the participants in the meeting--some of whom had seemed intrigued by the idea earlier--joined in, talking about how religion is an "extremely personal matter" and that "we don't want to offend anyone." One member of the incoming Secretariat, who had originally remarked that the idea was "awesome," said "I've been the only Christian in a room full of atheists and it was incredibly uncomfortable"--as if I had never experienced the reverse, which is at least as unsettling, or as if that had anything to do with a Model United Nations simulation of a somewhat esoteric meeting of bishops that took place 1,700 years ago. (At one point, in the midst of making my case, the Secretary General cut me off and said, with a bit of a smirk, "Yeah, but you're an atheist.")
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is largely rooted in religion, is deeply personal for many, and carries the potential for grievous offense--but we've simulated it at NUMUN before. The same goes for the India-Pakistan conflict--which we've simulated at NUMUN before. During my junior year, one of our committees was the Politburo of the People's Republic of China, an explicitly atheist country which routinely imprisons and tortures Christian missionaries and activists. At Wednesday night's meeting--the very same meeting--one potential idea for next year was a simulation of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (We rejected it because we just had a committee that simulated the United States in the early '60s two years ago. That committee featured a guest appearance by a NUMUN staff member portraying staunch segregationist George Wallace, so clearly we're not all that concerned with not offending people if we might be offending them about something other than religion.) Other conferences I know of have simulated the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Crusades, and the government of the Philippines against an Islamist insurgency--all religious conflicts.
But the Council of Nicaea is apparently different, and I know precisely why. It is because the Council of Nicaea might, in some oblique way, constitute a critique of the institution of Christianity itself. That, of course, is verboten, at least in the United States.
I find this totally abhorrent. For one thing, I think we gave high school students and their advisors too little credit; everyone at a Model United Nations conference understands that it is a simulation which does not necessarily reflect reality, but even if it did, if a person were both deeply religious (say, Catholic) and intellectually honest, wouldn't he or she want a frank discussion of the nature of his or her faith (and if they aren't intellectually honest, one wonders what they're doing at a MUN conference)?
The bigger problem, though, is that this timidity to discuss Christianity--even issues about Christianity that, in real life, have been settled for centuries--is indicative of a larger societal trend. In this country (and, sadly, in just about every country I can think of) there are things we are all told that you just can't say, for fear it might upset somebody. That deprives us all of an opportunity for intellectual growth, and it lets entire sets of ideas--entire creeds, entire philosophies, entire religions--occupy prominent places in our collective consciousness without being subjected to reason. Telling people they can't talk about something is an extremely effective means of getting them not to think about it, and that's the surest sign that that idea can't stand up to scrutiny.
Political correctness is just a, well, politically correct term for intellectual cowardice. I reject it with every fiber of my being.
I am--and, prior to Wednesday, was--well aware that we will probably never simulate the Council of Nicaea or anything like it at NUMUN. Truth be told, it probably is a poor business idea. But that isn't why people said we couldn't do it. The argument against the Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with whether it would be intellectually stimulating or profitable for NUMUN; instead, it was about the fact that we might step on somebody's toes. I cannot, and will not, abide such a cop-out.
I think perhaps one of the reasons they fought against it is that they believe that students would think the council was A) trying to establish that Jesus was not the son of god and B)rewriting "the word of God". Wasn't the Council of Nicaea the thing that created the Bible too?
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying it was right, and I think it would be an amazing council to participate in, I'm just trying to understand their reasoning. And besides, if delegates are offended by that committee, they don't have to be on it. Problem solved.
Until very recently, I thought that the Council of Nicaea decided which books would and would not be in the Bible, too, but that is apparently nothing more than a (very common) misconception; according to Wiki, "there is no record of any discussion of the Biblical Canon at the council at all" and "[the development of the Biblical Canon] was nearly complete...perhaps as early as 150 years before the council." Every person in attendance at the Council of Nicaea was a Christian and believed that Jesus was the Son of God. Nicaea was, frankly, as much a political conference as an ecclesiastical one, just trying to get the Church's story straight, as it were.
ReplyDelete"if delegates are offended by that committee, they don't have to be on it. Problem solved."
Exactly, this was my reasoning as well. It was, shall we say, not particularly popular.