Faith, Race, and Religion

The term faith has many meanings, and one purpose of this blog is to explore them. One expression of faith is a belief that the principles of our nation’s founding are still sound. For more than two hundred years we, as a nation, have put our faith in democracy as it was articulated by our eighteenth-century founders—people such as Washington, Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson. Their vision of democracy has had staying power but only, it might be argued, because we have enlarged upon the realization of their vision.

For example, when the founders wrote the first words of the Constitution, “We the People…,” the de facto definition of “the People” was white male property owners. They were the demos of our democracy; they could vote. But they comprised only ten to sixteen percent of the population of our fledgling union.

As our “experiment” in democracy, as Jefferson called it, has evolved, it has been understood that through the office of time “the People” would come to encompass the entire citizenry of the nation. We are still working toward that realization in many areas of civic life—all rights are still not equal—but we have largely succeeded at minimun in enfranchising all citizens. The property-ownership requirement was eliminated by 1850, the 15th Amendment extended the vote to nonwhites in 1870, and the 19th Amendment in 1920 finally enfranchised women. These were major advances.

Other inclusive actions, often overlooked, include the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, which granted Native Americans citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections; and the 23rd Amendment, which granted District of Columbia citizens the right to participate in presidential elections.

The evolving nature of enfranchisement also is illustrated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was passed to protect minority rights that had been compromised by some states’ erection of barriers to voting, such as literacy tests.

Remnants of old prejudices, however, linger in today’s politics, often intersecting with religion. A strident—and at the moment, increasingly visible—racist faction is rattling on the radical right. This has meant that some candidates, such as Rick Santorum, have played pander and deny, first aligning themselves with the radicals and then backpedaling to assure the moderates. Santorum, for example, was widely reported talking about “black people” and welfare this winter, something he later tried to deny, despite video evidence.

The most egregious example of racism at work in the current presidential election campaign is “Don’t Renig in 2012.” Despite fancy linguistic footwork by some defenders, the phrase is short for “Don’t Reelect a Nigger in 2012,” and when that slogan is paired with an echo of the Obama logo, the meaning is clear.

Faith in our democratic experiment remains thin among a significant portion of the population, not a majority but a substantial, often strident, sometimes influential minority. This minority fears and opposes anyone who is not them: not white, not their brand of “Christian,” and so forth. In this respect, the remarks of Dennis Terry, a pastor whose introduction of Rick Santorum recently went viral on the Internet, are illustrative:

“There is only one God, and his name is Jesus,” Terry said. “I'm tired of people telling me that I can't say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or that we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me: if you don’t love America, if you don’t like the way we do things I got one thing to say—GET OUT. We don’t worship Buddha. We don't worship Mohammad. We don't worship Allah. We worship God. We worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”

In a nation as diverse as ours, this is a narrowly defined demos indeed.

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.