DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Oh vote, all ye
faithful By Ira Chernus
It's a presidential campaign like no
other. The candidates have been falling all over
each other in their rush to declare the depth and
sincerity of their religious faith. The pundits
have been just as eager to raise questions that
seem obvious and important: Should we let
religious beliefs influence the making of law and
public policy? If so, in what way and to what
extent? Those questions, however, assume that
candidates bring the subject of faith into the
political arena largely to justify - or turn up
the heat under - their policy positions. In fact,
faith talk often has little to do
with
candidates' stands on the issues.
There's something else going on here.
Look
at the TV ad that brought Mike Huckabee out of
obscurity in Iowa, the one that identified him as
a "Christian Leader" who proclaims: "Faith doesn't
just influence me. It really defines me." That ad
did indeed mention a couple of actual political
issues - the usual suspects, abortion and gay
marriage - but only in passing. Then Huckabee
followed up with a red sweater-themed Christmas ad
that actively encouraged voters to ignore the
issues. We're all tired of politics, the kindly
pastor indicated. Let's just drop all the policy
stuff and talk about Christmas and Christ.
Ads like his aren't meant to argue policy.
They aim to create an image - in this case, of a
good Christian with a steady moral compass who
sticks to his principles. At a deeper level,
faith-talk ads work hard to turn the candidate -
whatever candidate - into a bulwark of solidity, a
symbol of certainty; their goal is to offer
assurance that the basic rules for living remain
fixed, objective truths, as true as religion.
In a time when the world seems like a
shaky place - whether you have a child in Iraq, a
mortgage you may not be able to meet, a pension
threatening to head south, a job evaporating under
you, a loved one battling drug or alcohol
addiction, an ex who just came out as gay or
born-again, or a president you just can't trust -
you may begin to wonder whether there is any moral
order in the universe. Are the very foundations of
society so shaky that they might not hold up for
long? Words about faith - nearly any words - speak
reassuringly to such fears, which haunt millions
of Americans.
These fears and the
religious responses to them have been a key to the
political success of the religious right in recent
decades. Randall Balmer, a leading scholar of
evangelical Christianity, points out that it's
offered not so much "issues" to mobilize around as
"an unambiguous morality in an age of moral and
ethical uncertainty".
Mormon Mitt Romney
was courting the
evangelical-swinging-toward-Huckabee vote when he,
too, went out of his way to link religion with
moral absolutes in his big Iowa speech on faith.
Our "common creed of moral convictions ... the
firm ground on which Americans of different faiths
meet" turned out, utterly unsurprisingly, to be
none other than religious soil: "We believe that
every single human being is a child of God ...
liberty is a gift of God." No doubts allowed here.
American politicians have regularly
wielded religious language and symbolism in their
moments of need, and such faith talk has always
helped provide a sense of moral certainty in a
shape-shifting world. But in the better years of
the previous century, candidates used religion
mostly as an adjunct to the real meat of the
political process, a tool to whip up support for
policies.
How times have changed. Think of
it, perhaps, as a way to measure the powerful
sense of unsettledness that has taken a firm hold
on American society. Candidates increasingly keep
their talk about religion separate from specific
campaign issues. They promote faith as something
important and valuable in and of itself in the
election process. They invariably avow the deep
roots of their religious faith and link it not
with issues, but with certitude itself.
Sometimes it seems that Democrats do this
with even more grim regularity than Republicans.
John Edwards, for example, reassured the nation
that "the hand of God today is in every step of
what happens with me and every human being that
exists on this planet." In the same forum, Hillary
Clinton proclaimed that she "had a grounding in
faith that gave me the courage and the strength to
do what I thought was right, regardless of what
the world thought. And that's all one can expect
or hope for."
When religious language
enters the political arena in this way, as an end
in itself, it always sends the same symbolic
message: Yes, Virginia (or Iowa or New Hampshire
or South Carolina) there are absolute values,
universal truths that can never change. You are
not adrift in a sea of moral chaos. Elect me and
you're sure to have a fixed mooring to hold you
and your community fast forever.
That
message does its work in cultural depths that
arguments about the separation of church and state
can never touch. Even if the candidates themselves
don't always understand what their words are
doing, this is the biggest, most overlooked piece
in today's faith and politics puzzle - and once
you start looking for it, you find it nearly
everywhere on the political landscape.
The
threat to democracy So, when it comes
to religion and politics, here's the most critical
question: Should we turn the political arena into
a stage to dramatize our quest for moral
certainty? The simple answer is no - for lots of
reasons.
For starters, it's a direct
threat to democracy. The essence of our system is
that we, the people, get to choose our values. We
don't discover them inscribed in the cosmos. So
everything must be open to question, to debate,
and therefore to change. In a democracy, there
should be no fixed truth except that everyone has
the right to offer a new view - and to change his
or her mind. It's a process whose outcome should
never be predictable, a process without end. A
claim to absolute truth - any absolute truth -
stops that process.
For those of us who
see the political arena as the place where the
whole community gathers to work for a better
world, it's even more important to insist that
politics must be about large-scale change. The
politics of moral absolutes sends just the
opposite message: Don't worry, whatever small
changes are necessary, it's only in order to
resist the fundamental crumbling that frightens so
many. Nothing really important can ever change.
Many liberals and progressives hear that
profoundly conservative message even when it's
hidden beneath all the reasonable arguments about
church and state. That's one big reason they are
often so quick to sound a shrill alarm at every
sign of faith-based politics.
They also
know how easy it is to go from "there is a fixed
truth" to "I have that fixed truth." And they've
seen that the fixed truth in question is all too
often about personal behaviors that ought to be
matters of free choice in a democracy.
Which brings us to the next danger: Words
alone are rarely enough to reassure the uncertain.
In fact, the more people rely on faith talk to
pursue certainty, the more they may actually
reinforce both anxiety and uncertainty. It's a
small step indeed to move beyond the issue of
individual self-control to controlling others
through the passage of laws.
Campaigns to
put the government's hands on our bodies are not
usually missionary efforts meant to make us accept
someone else's religion. They are much more often
campaigns to stage symbolic dramas about
self-control and moral reassurance.
Controlling the passions
American culture has always put a
spotlight on the question: Can you control your
impulses and desires - especially sexual desires -
enough to live up to the moral rules? As historian
of religion John F Wilson tells us, the quest for
surety has typically focused on a "control of
self" that "through discipline" finally becomes
self-control. In the 2008 presidential campaign,
this still remains true. Listen, for example, to
Barack Obama: "My Bible tells me that if we train
a child in the way he should go, when he is old he
will not turn from it. So I think faith and
guidance can help fortify ... a sense of reverence
that all young people should have for the act of
sexual intimacy."
Mitt Romney fit snugly
into the same mold. He started his widely-heralded
statement on religion by talking about a time when
"our nation faced its greatest peril", a threat to
"the survival of a free land". Was he talking
about terrorism? No. He immediately went on to
warn that the real danger comes from "human
passions unbridled". Only morality and religion
can do the necessary bridling, he argued, quoting
John Adams to make his case: "Our constitution was
made for a moral and religious people" - in other
words, people who can control themselves. That's
why "freedom requires religion".
All too
often, though, the faith-talk view of freedom ends
up taking away freedom. When Romney said he'd be
"delighted" to sign "a federal ban on all
abortions", only a minority of Americans approved
of that position (if we can believe the polls),
but it was a sizeable minority. For them, fear of
unbridled passion is stronger than any commitment
to personal freedom.
In the end, it may be
mostly their own passions that they fear. But
since the effort to control oneself is
frustrating, it can easily turn into a quest for
"control over other selves", to quote historian
Wilson again, "with essentially bipolar frameworks
for conceiving of the world: good versus bad, us
versus them" - "them" being liberals, secular
humanists, wild kids, or whatever label the moment
calls for.
The upholders of virtue want to
convince each other that their values are
absolutely true. So they stick together and stand
firm against those who walk in error. As Romney
put it, "Any person who has knelt in prayer to the
Almighty has a friend and ally in me."
That's the main dynamic driving the
movements to ban abortion and gay marriage. But
they're just the latest in a long line of such
movements, including those aimed at prohibiting or
restricting alcohol, drugs, gambling, birth
control, crime, and other behaviors that are, in a
given period, styled as immoral.
Since
it's always about getting "them" to control their
passions, the target is usually personal behavior.
But it doesn't have to be. Just about any law or
policy can become a symbol of eternal moral truth
- even foreign policy, one area where liberals,
embarked on their own faith-talk campaigns, are
more likely to join conservatives.
The
bipartisan "war on terror" has, for instance, been
a symbolic drama of "us versus them", acting out a
tale of moral truth. Rudolph Giuliani made the
connection clear shortly after the September 11,
2001, attack when he went to the United Nations to
whip up support for that "war". "The era of moral
relativism ... must end," he demanded. "Moral
relativism does not have a place in this
discussion and debate."
Nor does it have a
place in the current campaign debate about foreign
policy. Huckabee, for example, has no hesitation
about linking war abroad to the state of morality
here at home. He wants to continue fighting in
Iraq, he says, because "our way of life, our
economic and moral strength, our civilization is
at stake ... I am determined to look this evil in
the eye, confront it, defeat it." As his anti-gay
marriage statement asks, "What's the point of
keeping the terrorists at bay in the Middle East,
if we can't keep decline and decadence at bay here
at home?"
On the liberal side, the theme
is more muted but still there. Obama, for
instance, has affirmed that the US must "lead the
world in battling immediate evils and promoting
the ultimate good. I still believe that America is
the last, best hope of Earth." Apparently that's
why we need to keep tens of thousands of troops in
Iraq indefinitely. Clinton calls for "a bipartisan
consensus to ensure our interests, increase our
security and advance our values", acting out "our
deeply-held desire to remake the world as it ought
to be". Apparently that's why, in her words, "we
cannot take any option off the table in sending a
clear message to the current leadership of Iran".
When words and policies become symbols of
moral absolutes, they are usually about preventing
some "evil" deed or turning things back to the way
they (supposedly) used to be. So they are likely
to have a conservative impact, even when they come
from liberals.
The future of faith talk
In itself, faith in politics poses no
great danger to democracy as long as the debates
are really about policies - and religious values
are translated into political values, articulated
in ways that can be rationally debated by people
who don't share them. The challenge is not to get
religion out of politics. It's to get the quest
for certitude out of politics.
The first
step is to ask why that quest seems increasingly
central to our politics today. It's not simply
because a right-wing cabal wants to impose its
religion on us. The cabal exists, but it's not
powerful enough to shape the political scene on
its own. That power lies with millions of voters
across the political spectrum. Candidates talk
about faith because they want to win votes.
Voters reward faith talk because they want
candidates to offer them symbols of immutable
moral order. The root of the problem lies in the
underlying insecurities of voters, in a sense of
powerlessness that makes change seem so
frightening, and control - especially of others -
so necessary.
The only way to alter that
condition is to transform our society so that
voters will feel empowered enough to take the
risks, and tolerate the freedom that democracy
requires. That would be genuine change. It's a
political problem with a political solution. Until
that solution begins to emerge, there is no way to
take the conservative symbolic message of faith
talk out of American politics.
Ira
Chernus is professor of Religious Studies
at the University of Colorado at Boulder and
author of Monsters To Destroy: The
Neo-conservative War on Terror and Sin.
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