I put the following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
The religious are up in arms. Right-wing pundits quote exit polls (despite considering them deeply flawed) pointing to the ambiguous "values issue" as proof that Americans want more religion in politics, or at least more religious politicians. The media screech monkeys amplify the call, accusing the political left of wanting to ban Bibles and close churches in a secular zeal to abolish morality. So we see that those who protested starting an unjustified war were morally unmoored bleeding-heart liberals, while those who appose gay marriage are the ones with real moral values. Go figure.
Religious interests also make up one sector of the Democrat's post-election circular firing squad, also complaining of how they are marginalized by progressives with a "knee-jerk hostility" to religion. Voting to support faith-based initiatives is not enough, fielding candidates that wear their faith on their sleeves is not enough, pandering to churches and religious groups is not enough, never enough to erase the stigma of tolerating those who would dissent from religion. The people have spoken: it's a Christian nation and the separation of church and state is as quaint as the Geneva Convention. Besides, the right wing gives public money to churches and distributes campaign literature to congregations -- we on the left must close the gap!
When I talk about the "faith-based community," I am not implicitly talking about those who practice religion or are personally committed to a religious faith. Not everyone who goes to church on Sunday has a faith-based world view. This term refers to fundamentalism, which can be political, social, economic or religious. Most religious people are not fundamentalists -- they belong to what we call "liberal" religious traditions.
The demonization of the term "liberal" makes it hard to talk about liberal religion, but it is one of the most modern and sophisticated developments in theology. The great problem with old-time religion is its inflexibility. The Bible or other sutras are holy texts, written by God and which must be followed explicitly. If interpretations vary, which they always do, then there is no wiggle room. Disputes may be settled by power struggles in the halls of the high priesthood, or by internecine warfare, but in all cases there is little opportunity for compromise. As religions became more democratized and popular, the possibility of violent flareups became more and more acute. A millennium of European history is written in the blood of believers, the direct antecedent of our own deliberately secular republic.
Liberal religion to the rescue. Holy texts, however divinely inspired, are texts to be interpreted, it says. Freed from rigid inflexibility, the individual believer is required, indeed empowered, to find their own meaning in the scriptures. The faithful can incorporate their own experience into their beliefs, and even the latest scientific knowledge. Differing interpretations can be a source of inspiration instead of friction, and alternate sects are admitted as members of the larger family of Bible-interpreters, or, if the generic higher power allows for multiple texts as well as multiple interpretations, an all-inclusive family of worshipers. Liberal religion allows spirituality without requiring armed conflict.
But fundamentalist religions remain. Nurtured as part of the rise of the faith-based community, they have gained a new political flexibility and strike out with renewed intolerance at the usual suspects. But the apparent inclusiveness of the new fundamentalists -- Protestants & Catholics, Baptists & Orthodox Jews, working together to restore traditional morality -- is an illusion. First they target the secularists, but if those are defeated they'll next turn on the liberal religions, finally savaging each other to restore the "true" faith.
As they gain more power their old inflexibility will rise to the fore and they will turn on each other. Nonetheless, we must not allow them to have the level of power they seek. Secular politics and liberal religion have kept the peace for centuries. The rise of fundamentalism -- in all its forms -- threatens to return us to less enlightened times. Nor must we drape ourselves in the trappings of religion in order to curry political favor. As founding father Tomas Paine said in the above quoted essay:
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?
- jack*
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