The relationship between sacred and secular, church and state, is a dynamic and tension in American politics that seems to have a permanant fixture. Recently, in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, George W. Bush executed a brilliant strategy of targeting literalist Christians and utilizing existing organizational and social networks through churches to mobilize voters.
Religion now, perhaps more than ever, defines America politically. The Republican Party in recent years has maintained power through a voting base which, to one degree or another, wishes to see what they percieve as Christian values codyfied into law. Christian principles are at the foundation of our nations creation, they argue, and vital to the future existance of it.
Secularists tend to view this attitude as an arbitrary imposition of values forced upon them by religious zealots. Some go as far as to argue that religion in and of itself is corrosive, oppressive and antiquated.
While certainly divergent, both viewpoints reside on polar opposite ends of the same paradigm. That paradigm is that religion can only interact with societies behavior through interplay with the policy making process. Christians feel that in order for the nation to have stability, their values must be codified into law. Secularists feel that Christianity impedes personal liberty.
Both are right, and both are wrong.
Might I suggest a third way of viewing religion, particularly Christianity in American politics and culture. Religion in and of itself is like fire. Fire is neither good nor bad, but is a powerful tool that can have extraordinary consequences. Much good and much bad has been executed in the name of Jesus Christ.
Let us first distinguish the characteristic differences between religious doctrine and secular law. Religion invites proactive behavior, while secular law (should) limit harms to and preserve the liberties of the individual.
Secular laws represent a base set of rules which secure liberty and stability for the individual. They protect against harms, destruction and theft of property and life. They are protectively restrictive.
Religious principles in contrast, provide happiness and quality of life for the individual and those around him. Where secular laws gaurd against humans harming each other, religious principles invite humans to do good to one another. And while it would be wonderful if everyone loved each other in our society, to make someone behave in this way violates the very principles of our secular laws. Furthermore, it contradicts the religious principles themselves.
We need religious principles to survive as a society. They provide an ethic much higher than that established by our secular laws alone. The question and debate comes in how we choose to promote religious principles.
Some, in their zeal, would have those religious values promoted through bypassing agency and choice. These are the people who advocate prayer in schools, scriptures as curriculum, and the ten commandments in courtrooms. These are they who justify policies through religious lens’.
Unfortunately, many of those who package their policy proposals in religious terms are wolves in sheeps clothing, whose true motives are not religious, nor virtuous. Through religious packaging, they obtain a dogmatic bypass, fiating the kind of scrutiny essential in a democracy.
Even for those whose religious motives are pure, implementing policy reliant upon religious arguments in an of itself is problematic. Religion, by it’s very nature, is pluralistic. Whose religious arguments and doctrine are we to use? There are Mormons, Catholics, literalist Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews and Unitarians. Inevitably, when religion is used to justify policy that encourages proactive virtuous behavior, divergent opinions will emerge. Infact, it is unlikely that there will be unanimity on what is and is not virtuous.
For example, 19th century Mormons viewed polygamy as not only virtuous, but divinely sanctioned. Other American Christians, in the majority, viewed the practice as evil, and unholy. As a result, Mormons endured a half century of persecution and disenfranchisement from the federal government.
And this is the problem with enacting religious principles into law- abuse of minority groups. Now, some of you will say that this couldn’t happen again, that such abuse ended in 1890 with the Manifesto.
Ironically, many Latter-day Saints align themselves formally or idealogically with literalist Christian political movements who are on the same page Election Tuesday, but on Sunday denounce Mormonism as a non-Christian cult.
Controversial literalist political/Christian leader Ted Haggard, who headed the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals until just a couple of days ago and was named by Time as one of the top 25 most influential evangelicals, reveals the narrow view and intolerance for Mormons.
From the Los Angeles Times on October 10, 2006:
This laugh line, and his reluctance to delve deeper into his beliefs, only add to the mystery of a faith that many Americans associate with polygamy — although that practice has long been outlawed by the church — and with customs such as marrying people after they have died and converting the dead.
“Evangelicals are appalled by all that,” said Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Colo. “We evangelicals view Mormons as a Christian cult group. A cult group is a group that claims exclusive revelation. And typically, it’s hard to get out of these cult groups. And so Mormonism qualifies as that.”
In addition, Haggard said, evangelicals do not accept Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith as a prophet. “And we do not believe that the Book of Mormon has the same level of authority as the Bible,” he said.
The question that any Mormon who, because of religion, aligns him/herself politically with literalist Christians is this, “As a member of a minority who constitutes less than 2% of the population, do you trust someone like Ted Haggard as the steward of your religious and civil rights?”
Think that sounds absurd? Haggard and the 30 million literalist Christians he represented are “appalled” by LDS temple worship. Given Haggard’s emphatic (an possibly now hypocritical) denunciation of homosexuality and gay marriage, who is to say that his flock wouldn’t take the steps, if given the opportunity, to eliminate private marriage ceremonies that go beyond the state definitions and his own concept of what “traditional” marriage is?
The irony of the state and the Church is this- while both are needed for our democracy and society to survive and thrive, mixing the two corrupts both. If we are to preserve both, we need to fight to keep them seperate. If we wish to promote religion, it should be privately, on an individual level through invitation with respect for rejection and agency and those with whom we don’t see eye to eye on (take note, literalist Christians). Religion is needed. We need to protect it from being tainted by political power, which is inherently selfish and the antithesis of what Jesus taught.
We preserve the state by keeping religion out of public policy discussions. Religion has faith, fiat and dogma, where we skip analytical reasoning. In a democracy, we must scrutinize every action, and cannot afford to simply accept something because another mortal insists the policy is God’s will. To do such is to open the door to ulterior motives and abuse by minorities.
Tonight on KVNU’s For the People:
In addition, and most importantly, I hate what EnergyProblems is doing to our state. They’ve run a slick PR campaign recently extolling the virtues of nuclear energy in comparison to evil fossil fuels. Given that Utahns don’t use nuclear energy, but only recieve it’s waste, I fail to see the upside for Utah of what EnergyProbelms “does”. If other communities and states choose nuclear energy, that is fine, but they need to store it, not Utah. And perhaps the biggest slap in the face is not only do they store their waste here, the arena of our beloved NBA team is named after the institution that is the conduit of the malfeasance.
