By Rudy Barnes, Jr.
If
politics are about how we conduct public affairs and religion is about our beliefs,
the two cannot be kept separate. The relationship
between politics and religion has always been muddled, but today politics seem
more like a religion, and there is more religion in politics.
Politics
take on the sanctity of a religion when a political cause becomes sacrosanct to
its advocates and immune to reason and compromise. Unbelievers are condemned as sinners, and political
zealots seek to banish their heretical political beliefs from the public
square.
In
1967 Robert Bellah characterized Dr. M. L. King’s opposition to the Vietnam war
as a moral imperative of the American
civil religion, a secular belief system with standards of legitimacy that
transcend those of traditional religions. Ending the war became a sacrosanct political
cause that divided Americans even more than conflicting religious beliefs.
Racism
is another example. In The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas,
Joseph Bottum described the leftist trope of racism as a form of sin endemic in
all white people; and Mark Hemingway affirmed Bottum by asserting that
“ethnicity has become a matter of original sin.”
Andrew
Sullivan has described intersectionality as
a “neo-Marxist theory…of social oppression” that applies to race, gender,
sexual orientation, class…in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power that
prohibits the expression of objectionable ideas. Like a communist manifesto condemning freedom
and democracy, it sounds like a description of religious heresy.
George
Will has observed that competing versions of truth in the fact-free zones
created by intersectionality in academia and by Trump’s alternative facts have
gone mainstream in the social media and allowed everyone with a smartphone to
create their own “custom-made reality.”
Politics
as a religion is found at both extremes of the political spectrum. On the left it is preached by secular intellectuals
promoting fact-free zones and on the right by Christian preachers promoting
alternative facts. It is about politics as
a religion and religion in politics.
Politics
as a religion is a form of secular fundamentalism similar to that of religious
fundamentalism. Both are based on exclusivist
beliefs that advocate sacrosanct standards of legitimacy (what is right). Reason is rejected and compromise condemned
to protect true believers from apostates and blasphemers. The result is political and religious
polarization.
In
1834 Alexis DeTocqueville saw America’s diversity as a strength rather than a
weakness. He did not foresee the coming
apocalypse of civil war, which remains a vivid and terrible example of what political
and religious polarization can do to a libertarian democracy.
Can
there be a politics of reconciliation in a nation of polarized political and
religious beliefs? Since most Americans
are Christians, it is unlikely that secular intellectuals will have more
political influence than charismatic preachers who offer salvation from eternal
damnation.
But
thoughtful Christians who reject the plastic Jesus and cheap grace of exclusivist
Christianity and others who want to restore compromise and reason to their
politics can make a difference. Many are
now motivated to rectify the damage done by so-called evangelical Christians
who elected Donald Trump as their president.
The
remedy is simple in a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values. The
greatest commandment is a common word
of faith and politics for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. It requires that we love God and our
neighbors—including those of other races and religions—as we love ourselves. In today’s divided America that love command may
require a revolution.
There
is hope for a politics of reconciliation that can counter the polarization that
plagues America’s politics and religion.
It requires that Americans rediscover the moral common ground of loving God
and our neighbors as we love ourselves.
That will require major changes in what Americans believe, and how they practice
their politics as a religion and their religion in politics.
Notes
and Related Commentary:
On how Robert Bellah helped Martin Luther King oppose the Vietnam war.
see https://religionnews.com/2017/04/04/how-robert-bellah-helped-martin-luther-king-oppose-the-vietnam-war/.
On Joseph Bottum’s The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas
at http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-spiritual-shape-of-political-ideas/article/819707#%21.
On Mark Heminway’s, How the Left Is Transforming into a
Religion, Maybe a Bit too Literally, asserting a “smelly little orthodoxy” that
defines the sinful by their identity groups (e.g. being white or being male), see
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-left-is-transforming-into-a-religion-maybe-a-bit-too-literally/article/2007416.
On Andrew Sullivan’s concept of intersectionality as a fundamentalist
secular religion in academia that seeks to purge dissenting views by shouting
them down, see http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/is-intersectionality-a-religion.html. For a recent example at Claremont McKenna
College, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/07/heather-mac-donald-speech-on-war-on-cops-shut-down-at-claremont-partly-shouted-down-at-ucla/?wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1.
On George Will’s observation that
Trump’s alternative facts and the fact-free zones of academia have gone
mainstream, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-alternative-facts-epidemic-goes-way-beyond-politics/2017/04/05/01a75ee0-1966-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_story.html.
On the muddled relationship
between religion and polarized partisan politics, see a Virginia Democrat visits a mosque at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-virginia-democrat-visits-a-mosque-and-the-state-gop-puffs-up-with-phony-indignation/2017/03/28/acddb7a0-0e80-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1; and on Trump’s church politics idea to repeal
the prohibition of tax-exempt religious organizations to engage in partisan
political activities, see http://www.thestate.com/living/religion/article131448699.html.
On religion and reason, see http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2014/12/religion-and-reason.html.
On the greatest commandment as a
common word of faith, see http://www.jesusmeetsmuhammad.com/2015/01/the-greatest-commandment-common-word-of.html.
On racism in politics and
religion, see http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2015/06/confronting-evil-among-us.html; also http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2015/07/reconciliation-as-remedy-for-racism-and.html; and http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2015/07/reconciliation-in-race-and-religion.html.
On how religious fundamentalism and secularism shape politics and human
rights, see http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2015/08/how-religious-fundamentalism-and.html.
On standards of legitimacy in morality, manners and political correctness,
see
On the relevance of religion to politics, see http://www.jesusmeetsmuhammad.com/2016/04/the-relevance-of-religion-to-politics.html.
On religious fundamentalism and a politics of reconciliation, see http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2016/05/religious-fundamentalism-and-politics.html.
On religion and a politics of reconciliation, see http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2016/12/e-pluribus-unum-religion-and-politics.html.
On the need for a revolution in religion and politics, see http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/02/the-need-for-revolution-in-religion-and.html.
On ignorance and reason in religion and politics, see http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/03/ignorance-and-reason-in-religion-and.html.
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