Faith...Maybe

This tumultuous year draws to a close. I am reminded of the old-fashioned cartoon images of Father Time, who at this point in any given year is depicted as ancient and ragged while the fresh-faced babe of the following year waits for his turn. American democracy has come through the year intact but not unscathed, and dangers still lie ahead.

On this Christmas Day, the culmination for many of the Christian faith of the year and certainly of the period of watchful waiting called Advent, I imagine an America with an undergirding philosophy of true Christ-like love—a human love that is found in the deep soul of humanity, regardless of religious expression, be it Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or one of many others—or, indeed, none at all.

Our society has been challenged to understand a number of gun violence incidents in recent weeks. To be sure, our society has too many guns. Period. But their presence is not the real issue. Rather, we must acknowledge that the problem is American reliance on a shoot-first-ask-questions-later, Wild West mythology-driven philosophy that espouses peace through threat instead of love and reason. If this violent philosophy were discarded and the fear-mongers suddenly fell silent, Americans would realize that all the guns are unnecessary, that in fact we are less safe in a gun culture than if there were no guns at all.

Sadly, true Christian love is still overshadowed by the loud Christianist radical right, which wields the Bible like an assault weapon. Though various groups adopt various labels, they hold in common a philosophy that is homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic. They mouth platitudes and deceive those who do not look beyond their rhetoric to see that they are deeply anti-Christian and anti-democratic. Far more than the radical Islamists, who pervert their own religion in the same way, this strident faction, collectively, presents a greater danger to American society and American democracy—and by extension to a peace-loving world—than any other threat now visible on our national horizon.

I would like to envision a United States in which conservatives actually seek to conserve the best values of American democracy, balancing those values against the march of time and tide. But many who today are labeled “conservative” actually conserve nothing, instead espousing an agenda of quasi-religious radicalism and a winner-take-all greed that has already succeeded in increasing the wealth gap between rich and poor in our country. These “conservatives”—the same Christianists who often beat their breasts over the supposed moral woes of our society—are trammeling the least among us, those whom Christ actually embraced and held up.

I would like to envision a future in which these things will change, in which we will narrow the gap between rich and poor, in which we will ensure an intact social safety net with strong public schools and universal health care—because they are the right thing to do from every perspective, whether Christian, democratic, national, or international. But I confess, my faith in the will of the American people to assert an inclusive, truly democratic governance in the face of these strident anti-Christian, anti-democratic elements is challenged.

Falsifying Faith

Galileo Galillei once said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” The Italian physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who shook his head in dismay in the seventeenth century at the Catholic Church’s opposition to heliocentrism—the scientific discovery that placed the sun, rather than the earth, at the center of our solar system—would be equally dismayed and bewildered today by the coopting of Christian faith by persons and parties determined to enshrine their ideologies as “true religion” and thereby to subvert democratic governance.

The discussion that follows here will be as heretical to these interests, which I cluster under the rubric of “Christianist,” as Galileo’s advocacy of heliocentrism was to the dogma of seventeenth-century Catholicism. A definition is necessary. “Christianist” must be understood as distinct from “Christian.” Time magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan (2006) made this distinction: 

Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque.

Christianism falsifies faith through ideological alignment, which is almost universally negative in character—excluding rather than including. Ideological alignment involves a calculated cherry-picking of faith documents, such as the Bible. For example, to justify homophobia and thereby a plethora of antigay civil rights actions, from DOMA to state constitutional amendments that enshrine homophobic prejudice, ideologues often cite the Bible. Leviticus 18:22 is popular; it can be translated, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable” (New International Version). While they adopt this passage (through a willful misreading) as justification for homophobia, these same ideologues completely ignore other literal admonitions in Leviticus, such as:

19:26. “Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it.” 

19:27. “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” 

19:28. “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves.” 

19:31.  “Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them.” 

19:33. “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.”

So, if taken literally, the Bible would admonish true believers to avoid rare steaks, haircuts and shaves, tattoos, and spiritualists (presumably of the ilk routinely consulted by Nancy Reagan during her husband’s presidency). And what about all those anti-immigration laws that ill treat foreigners residing among us? But, of course, these strictures do not accord with Christianist ideology, and so they are ignored—faith falsified to serve political ends.

It is no great leap from falsification of one’s central religious documents to the falsification of other historic documents, such as the Constitution, which, if read honestly, contravenes the secular ideology that accompanies Christianism. The founding documents of American democracy provide numerous examples of ignorant, willfully ignorant, or malignly ignorant reading to suit ideological ends. The furor over Second Amendment rights is an example.

The amendment to the Constitution, as ratified by the states, reads:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The amendment speaks to weapons in the context of an organized defensive military cohort. It was never intended, nor can it be legitimately construed, to provide justification for maintaining a personal arsenal, as indeed rightwing ideologues, including several Supreme Court justices, have averred. Thus faith in the founding documents also has been ideologically falsified to suit political ends.

Neither Christianity nor our American system of governance—if democracy is to be preserved—are well served by ideological falsification of faith, whether religious or secular. The essential understanding that this is the path on which the Radical Right is determined to set the United States is not yet pervasive enough in our society to provoke a necessary counter-movement to prevent the loss of freedom and democracy as we know them.

__________ 

Sullivan, A. (2006, May 7). My problem with Christianity. Time. http://www.time.com/time. Accessed April 8, 2011.

Right Faith, Wrong Religion

With the demise of Rick Santorum’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, the focus has shifted to Mitt Romney. In Romney the Republican faithful are challenged. As is well known, the candidate is Mormon. For the religious rightwing of the party this is almost as bad as being Muslim, something the most ardent radicals accuse Barack Obama of being, despite solid evidence to the contrary.

The Latter Day Saint movement (Mormonism) was founded by an American, Joseph Smith, in the 1820s and has been characterized as a form of Christian primitivism. Bruce McConkie, a general authority of the LDS Church, has said that “Mormonism is indistinguishable from Christianity.” However, it was not a mainstream Protestant movement from the beginning. The magical discovery of new biblical texts, such as the Book of Mormon, and early practice of polygamy set it apart from mainline Christian orthodoxy, whether Catholic or Protestant. In fact, Mormonism usually is seen as a type of cult by Christian traditionalists (such as the fundamentalists who largely populate the Republican right).

Mormons are lumped into a kind of limbo reminiscent of Dante—literally on the edge of Hell. Consequently, the far-right faithful see themselves as damned if they do support Romney—right faith, wrong religion—and damned if they don’t, because that will give the election away to Obama.

If we think of faith as a general belief orientation—one of many possible definitions—and regard religion as a specific expression of faith, then all American presidents have identified with the Christian faith. Even those who haven’t been affiliated with a specific religious denomination have held beliefs that were Christian in orientation. For example, among those without specific affiliation, Thomas Jefferson was raised Anglican but his mature beliefs were closer to Unitarian, though he died shortly before the establishment of institutionalized Unitarianism. Abraham Lincoln likely was a Deist, neither particularly Christian nor non-Christian, though he occasionally attended Presbyterian services and often read the Bible and quoted from it. Barack Obama is currently unaffiliated, following his resignation from Trinity United Church of Christ over the Jeremiah Wright controversy, but he was previously affiliated with the UCC for more than twenty years.

Twelve U.S. presidents have been Episcopalian, the most populous religious category. They’ve ranged from George Washington to George W. Bush (though he converted to Methodism later in life). John F. Kennedy, famously, was the only Catholic. Most have adhered to some form of Protestantism.

Ardent religionists cherry-pick the Bible, selecting and interpreting its passages to suit their personal or political ideologies. Politicians do the same with the Constitution. Those who have read the U.S. Constitution will have noted the passage saying that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” The wisdom of this ideal is self-evident, as is the wisdom of separating church and state so that our democratic governance is not parochialized. But actualization of any ideal is never easy. Too many biases, preconceptions, egos, and ideologies are at stake.

Will we ever have another Catholic president? A Jew? A Muslim? Or perhaps even a Mormon?

Faith and Religion

Let me posit a definitional distinction between faith and religion. The distinction is personal, rather than universal. But it will guide this discourse. In this context, by faith I mean a pervasive, transcendent belief in the common good—in essence, in the divinity of humanness. In contrast, religion is bound by dogma. Religions—multiple—are discrete belief systems, each separate and distinct from all others in certain ways, some slight, some substantial.

The label God crosses both faith and religions, and so it is important to make a distinction between God as faith shorthand for universal divine humanness and God as appropriated by religion, such as the “Christian God” (as if there were only one) or the “Muslim God” (remembering that Allah is merely Arabic for God.)

This distinction is maintained, despite much confusion and argument over the point, in the national use of the phrase “in God we trust,” which can be seen on most currency and coins. This is not the God of a particular religion (despite the desires of those who would make it so). This is a faith expression, not a religious one. Therefore, such use does not violate the Establishment Clause, that phrase in the First Amendment that says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

One has only to look at the most basic of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, to see an initial iteration of this principle in its opening words:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is a faith expression, not to be confounded with a religious declaration. Such expression, in fact, would have had to cross several religious sensibilities, given the numerous religions represented among the signers of the Declaration.

Faith, governance, and democracy intersect in this foundation, as they have done ever since. However, the intrusion of religion into this intersection also has been, since the founding days of our union, a danger. In the current political climate this danger has been heightened. Narrow religious dogma, as espoused by some political candidates, is incompatible with democracy because it resonates with only some of the people, in many cases a very narrow band of the population spectrum.

Democracy relies on compromise, on the participation of all the people in the governance of the nation. When religious dogma descends to rigidity, it is incompatible with democracy because some people are excluded from participation by the beliefs and practices of their religion. Many religions are exclusive; faith and democracy are inclusive. The Founders understood this distinction, and our notions about separating church and state stem from this understanding. It should be further understood that some religions are, at heart, faith-less. One may be faith-full with or without benefit of religion. And it is faith that supports the enterprise of our democratic governance.

On Faith

The term faith is distinct from both religion and morality, with which it shares a connotation. Implicit in virtually all definitions of faith, however, is trust. Thus to be faithful is to trust and to be trustworthy.

One intersection of faith and governance in our democracy is the absolute necessity for those who aspire to or already hold public office to trust in the democratic principles that provide the basis for their election and, in turn, to be worthy of the public trust invested in them as servants of the people.

It may be glib to say that governance is what a government does, but it is precisely correct. Governance comes from the Greek verb κυβερνάω, meaning “to steer.” Plato is credited with the first use of the term. But, then, Plato also wrote, “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors,” which rightly should be understood to admonish all citizens—the “demos” (δῆμος, “people”)—to participate in the processes by which we are all governed, from the vetting of candidates to the supervision of our servant leaders once they are in office.

“Good governance” ought to be a redundant phrase. Governance, by its nature, implies the mutual exercise of trust. We trust those whom we place into leadership positions, and our public servants must keep faith with us and with our democratic system in order to govern properly. We all must have faith in our democratic principles and the structures of government derived from them. And those whom we place in positions of power must keep faith with us—all of us—whether we favored or opposed their election.

In 1996 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declared that “promoting good governance in all its aspects, including by ensuring the rule of law, improving the efficiency and accountability of the public sector, and tackling corruption” are “essential elements of a framework within which economies can prosper.”* While the IMF is focused on “economies” (upholding those, in particular, in the world’s progressive democracies), these “essential elements” apply equally to civil society. All of these elements—rule of law, efficiency and accountability of the public sector, and tackling corruption—are iterations of trust and must be paramount in the actions of those who are charged to keep faith with the people.

The intersection of faith and governance is brought into sharpest focus during periods when public offices are contested, as they are now during the run-up to the presidential election this year. Competition for public favor often brings to light not only a candidate’s beliefs, feigned or genuine, but also his or her faith in the democratic process. An unfortunate reality is that politicians’ stances on issues that sway voters are often guided by polls more than principles. With long media memory in play, it’s no wonder that accusations of flip-flopping on issues abound, as candidates “adjust” their beliefs to accord with the perceived wishes of a seemingly fickle electorate.

Faith again should be the response and the guide when candidates are tempted to alter their beliefs instead of holding true to their principles—faith that the people will discern through the miasma of hype and spin the true nature of their political aims. Sadly, most candidates succumb, to some degree, to the temptation to pander to the public’s wishes that their pollsters tell them will make their contest winnable.

Faith in democracy is an educated faith. In today’s over-legislated, over-tested, and underfunded schools, we are shirking our public responsibility to educate the voters of tomorrow in the discernment necessary for the maintenance of good governance. The most articulate of the American Founders, Thomas Jefferson, has been much quoted on the necessity of education to inform the citizens of a democracy if that democracy is to endure and to thrive. Although his most-quoted admonition refers also to a free press, it applies directly to education, which is vital to ensure that those who rely on the press, as we all must, can judge whether information is accurate or biased. Jefferson wrote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”

Jefferson had faith that an educated citizenry would be able to safeguard our democracy. Thus our faith would be misplaced—indeed it may well be misplaced—if we failed to educate our public, the guarantors of our democracy. Whether we are doing so adequately is an open question.

In answering this question, we cannot rely on blind faith. We must apply what may be termed an “informed faith,” by which we and our elected representatives act on the good governance practices of examining our education system and the various institutions that embody it and holding accountable to the public trust those at all levels whose oversight of education promotes or impedes education for democracy. Only then can we trust in the preservation of our democracy by “the people themselves.”

*The IMF’s Approach to Promoting Good Governance and Combating Corruption—A Guide. Updated June 20, 2005. http://www.imf.org/external/np/gov/guide/eng/index.htm.