Last week Pope Benedict XVI brought delightful news for the Jews. In his new book the pope personally exonerated Jews for being responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, denying that Jews shared collective guilt for the death of Their Lord. In this, he reiterated the repudiation of collective guilt by the Vatican, nearly fifty years ago, in 1965. On this matter, at least, there is to be no retreat.
Those of us who can remember the earlier repudiation will also remember the brilliant conniptions of Lenny Bruce. As Bruce admitted, “Alright, I’ll clear the air once and for all, and confess. Yes, we did it. I did it, my family. I found a note in my basement. It said: “We killed him, signed, Morty.” Tonight Morty can rest serenely.
The debate over Jewish complicity in the death of Christ, in contrast to the complicity of certain Jews, is a matter of no small significance, even if, as Bruce slyly commented the statute of limitations should be running out. Ultimately the issue is not about Jews and Jesus, but about the assignment of blame for creating a climate of violence.
When I teach freshmen, I begin my seminar on Scandal and Reputation by explaining to these students that sociology is the most dangerous of disciplines. We are the academic subject that through its very birthright trades in stereotypes. Our lineage demands that we discuss race, class, and gender. We do not – or do not only – talk about one black barber, a wealthy stockbroker, a woman of ill-repute, or some malevolent rebbe. Our call is to talk about people, and not persons. Social psychologists push the discipline to gather data from persons, but we analyze what we gathered as if it came from people.
This means that when Jared Lee Loughner went on a shooting rampage, we asked how he got that way. And when Jesus was nailed, we ask who is responsible for a climate of crucifixion. As a sociologist, I believe that our task is noble. It might have been Lenny’s Uncle Morty who was responsible, but the broader question is which social forces contributed to the climate in which the crucifixion was conducted, just as we asked about the shooting in Tucson.
Let me be clear, these questions should not lead to a drama of rebuke, punishment, and attack. But surely it is fair to consider how we should understand responsibility. Let us leave Jerusalem for the streets of Memphis. Forty-three years ago next month an assassin, James Earl Ray (surely admired with grim satisfaction by too many) murdered the Reverend Martin Luther King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. If the Jews are washed of responsibility for Jesus, are white Southerners as well? Do they, too, receive a pass? Did the climate of racism and hatred in the former Confederacy contribute to the assassination of Dr. King or does the blame adhere to James Earl alone? Is there any responsibility to be shared for creating a climate in which violence occurs?
Collective guilt is a strange concept. It can’t be passed along like some genetic mutation. Surely no guilt adheres to unborn generations, but should a climate of hostility be forgotten or forgiven? Collective guilt is not the right term, but the beliefs and attitudes in Memphis 43 years ago deserve our consideration.
This week a committee of the House of Representative is considering the radicalization of Muslims in the United States. Not all, but some. The attacks on the World Trade Center are not the responsibility of Muslims in the United States and abroad, but we can ask whether the beliefs within radical Islam permitted these men to operate within a community, even while, like James Earl Ray, keeping their plans to themselves.
Individuals must be held responsible for their freely chosen behaviors, but they operate within communities that hold beliefs and provide the infrastructure for action. The man who pulls the trigger or who hammers the nail deserves blame. And no community deserves blame for the act itself. However, when we realize that acts depend on social climate, assigning responsibility to groups is both necessary and proper.
As Pope Benedict asserts, the “temple aristocracy” – a small coterie of elite Jews – was at fault for Jesus’ torment. But if we focus too tightly on any small coterie, we ignore those who listened with rapt attention and whose consent gave these elites their moral authority. Jerusalem, Memphis, Jiddah, Tucson: communities shape the action of individuals in ways that they may not even recognize. If we focus on the deed of the man, too often we miss the voice of the crowd.
Do Jews (and Moslems) have to forgive the Church for the Crusades? What about the Inquisition? Not sure I’m ready for that yet. Well, I guess we can think it over for a thousand years.
When asking what led to the attacks on 911, when considering what forces that may be involved, and hence who is responsible, US foreign policy towards the Middle-East is one of the most palpable factors. One may just as easily ask, “What led to the radicalization of US foreign policy?” Those directly responsible for these policies obviously are a minority in American society. But yet if we ask what “beliefs” operated in this “community” which “permitted” such radicalization, and then start looking for these in the broader American society, all the while seeking out the culpable, if a finger is pointed at thee, I’m not so sure one would find it “necessary and proper” that this should be so.
Of course, no such tribunal will occur in America. You would be “anti-American” for suggesting that blame for US foreign policy, concoted by a minority of misguided, if not somewhat wicked, elites should fall upon us all. As if being an American means supporting US militarism which for some reason finds it necessary to “defend America overseas.” Yet that such a climate exists might certainly extend the circle of blame. Who really are the enablers? Are they not anyone who has not spoken out vehemently against jingoism? Or perhaps it is anyone who has paid taxes that fund military adventures abroad? I suppose I am guilty then. But then, by the same logic, those that purchase gas are responsible for funding radical Islamists.
But when speaking of the committee in question, I don’t think we are really looking at anything so rational as considering blame based on a community of beliefs. We are looking at an attitude similar to what a friend of mine encountered while studying abroad in Spain. Because he was American, he was responsible for the Iraq invasion, among other evils of the US government. He protested the Iraq war, yet simply because he was American, someone spit in his face. No questions asked. The expectorator didn’t have the rational bearings to differentiate among Americans: If you were an American, you were George Bush. The fact that my friend didn’t support the war, and even protested against it, didn’t mean a thing. My case in point is of course not an isolated incident. Anti-Americanism is a broad phenomena which often cannot tell the difference between George Bush and an Anarchist vehemently against US militarism, which my friend was.
I don’t think we should indulge such stereotyping that may equate Muslims with with radical Muslims. For one thing, you never know when you might be on the wrong end of the stereotype. But the stereotyping in question is fueled by paranoid delusions of “creeping Shariah” but tries to justify itself rationally by asking moderate Muslisms, “What are you doing about radical Muslims?” As if the over one billion Muslisms around the world comprise one giant community, and that each member of that community is responsible for the acts of all the others. No such community exists. Muslims are in fact very diverse, as are Americans. This is obvious, but for some reason not as obvious as it should be.
Gary’s comments brought to mind the debate that was taking place about the sociological perspective when I was introduced to sociology in the 1960s. At the time at The New School, there was a deep suspicion of pure empiricism and Parson’s approach to grand theory. In 1959, C. Wright Mills published “The Sociological Imagination”; and in 1963 Maurice Stein and Arthur Vidich published their edited volume, “Sociology on Trial”; and Peter Berger offered his views Invitation to Sociology.
“The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise p. 6 … No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and their interconnections within society has completed its intellectual journey” p. 6 … C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959).
“Sociology has as its task the analysis and understanding of the organized structure and operations of society and the basis in values and attitudes on which individual participation in social life rests. The carrying out of this task presupposes sociologists capable of doing the work and a society capable of tolerating their results … To the extent that society even notices the critical sociologist, it can be expected to make a negative judgment on his work … The critical sociologist requires at least two qualities (a) an ability to get outside the world of his own experience and to project himself into the centers of life and institutions which he does not in the ordinary course of events have direct experience, and (b) an ability to detach himself from the prevailing values and attitudes of the organized groups in society in order thereby to gain a level of understanding that goes beyond conventional perspectives …” p. 1. Maurice Stein and Arthur Vidich, editors. “Sociology on Trial (1963).
“The fascination of sociology lies in the fact that its perspective makes us see in a new light the very world in which we have lived all our lives. This also constitutes a transformation of consciousness. Moreover, this transformation is more relevant existentially than that of many other intellectual disciplines, because it is more difficult to segregate in some special compartment of the mind … p. 21 … Unlike puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step towards freedom. And in this act we find the conclusive justification of sociology as a humanistic discipline … ” p. 176 Peter L. Berger. Invitation to Sociology (1963).