Is Religion a Threat to Democracy?
Faith Talk on the Campaign Trail
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.”
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 9/11 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. Candidate 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. Barack Obama, for instance, has affirmed that the U.S. 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 Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin.
Copyright 2008 Ira Chernus
If religion must be part of politics, would that we had the brains to select a decent one. I think the amount of misery the Abramic Trinity have created in the world disqualifies them. A return to Earth Based (what is now called Paganism) Spirituality would surely be a plus, at least there would be so many factions that the Pat Robertsons of our world would have to find real work. In any case, bringing Religion into our Democracy seems to cheapen both.
Veteran, 66-68
When politicians and clerics say morality they mean sex. They don’t mean torture, war, plunder and lies.
Religion a threat to democracy? Maybe and then again maybe not.Christianists on the other hand are an ABSOLUTE threat to our democracy.
It has become quite apparent that the fundamentalist versions of the big two of monotheism: Christianity & Islam, have become the enemies of free choice and thought. Where once they served to advance mankind, they are now hinderances. Voltaire is more right than ever, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary for man to invent him.”
What most religious people fail to understand is that the practice of democracy is as much an exercise of the human spirit as in the practice of religion.
That is why democracy is meant to rule in the public arena, not a theocracy that becomes the enemy democracy.
Religion is meant is to raise the consciousness of the faithful as an invitation for personal transformation. Thus our churches are meant to make the faithful better citizens in regards to the moral issues of ALL of the Ten Commandments. But of course this makes you wonder sometimes.
The great Franciscan teacher Fr. Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque states: Christianity in America has become more of a belonging system than a transformational system.
Real Christians don’t torture, don’t steal, don’t trash the earth, don’t invade countries that are no threat to us, don’t make war for resources than can be bought, don’t arm other nations so that they can make war on each other.
Too bad the US can’t be like most other developed nations today, where religion is a non-issue in politics. And where religion does rear its head in politics, it is largely ignored or reduced to a meaningless formality.
Its odd how so many people will tolerate religion in political discourse (and no, I don’t mean the government tolerating it, but the citizenry– there’s a huge difference).
~ ~ ~
“If for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.” (Kevin Conrad)
God is Truth, Truth is Knowledge, Knowledge is Light, Light is Power, Power is Existence, Existence is Life, Life is Beauty, Beauty is Love, Love is man the Mental Being, Mental Being is Self Consciosness, Self Consciouness is Self Respect and Self Respect is the way to the life of Truth, Knowledge, Power and Love, because Truth is the Beginning, the Middle and the End.
That said, for a pragmatic point of view I always love to have an athiest in any important discussion for they remove the taint of religious exceptialism in order to achieve linear clarity.
Perhaps an Athiest candidate is what we need at this time.
Just one thing: democrats ARE NOT liberals.
All good comments above.
In my view this is one of the best essays ever published by Professor Chernus. It’s so important to expose the disconnect between religion’s using the term FREEDOM when their actual policies are bent on controling people. And yes. Sex is a huge tool in overall repression. (I posted an explanation for this on another CD site when the topic was abstinency and why it doesn’t work.)
Seems Chernus’s insight into why uncertainty plays into the hand of fundamentalist religions for their (false) claims to certainty is the religious component to Naomi’s SHOCK DOCTRINE. As the religions serve the states that serve the corporations that increasingly make war while breaking down ecosystems (the basis for sustainability into the future) leaving all things in near chaos, FEAR is increased, and then religions rush in to sell the false balm: follow all these rules and your world will be righted. Sure. There were prophecies about false teachers in this interval of global transition… boy have they come out of the woodwork to claim moral authority while pushing the US towards a fascist state under cover of religious fig leafs. 21st century “Dr. feel good” now takes on the mask of pastor.
Religion is a particular threat to democracy within the U.S. Military, where enforced indoctrination in a radical form of fundamentalist Christianity has been going on for years. Check out the Military Religious Freedom Foundation at:
http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/
I wish politicians had the guts to say, when asked about their religious views, “Sorry, but my religion is private. What you and I need from each other is total commitment to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I promise you I will honor those documents, all laws legislated by the Congress, and all international laws and treaties to which we are a part.”
It isn’t just that some religious people are hoping to have their particular views enshrined in law, it’s that they are for the most part fundamentalists with no respect for the right of others to hold different views and beliefs.
God, what a mess we have wrought!
Religion is really just big business and it has nothing or little to do with God or spirituality or reality as far as that goes. However, politicians seem to be under the delusion that they need approval from some block of voters and they say what they think people want to hear. I for one am not the least bit interested in what another person’s relationship to spirit is. I am much more interested in knowing are they open minded and thoughtful and able to think critically. I want to also know if they have a heart and are capable of compassion. The reason I want to know these things is because in the White House now we have closed minded, limited thinkers who were heartless enough to start a war in pursuit of power and greed. The ego as the guiding force must come to an end.
Please tell the candidates for me and many of us to stop parading around their religious ideas and instead talk about how to bring America out of the mess it is in. Much of that mess is from people who think God is guiding them.
Joseph Bernard, Ph.D.
www.ExploreLifeBlog.com
www.peace-together.com
Bernice, your comment is right on the money.
Check out this site to see how they are trying to do it -
http://www.theocracywatch.org/
Religion is a subject unlike any other; that’s why we have Separation of Church & State —
I think we can handle “god”-talk even in the political arena — which is the public arena — IF it is open to the challenging and questioning which it warrants —
Those politicians who introduce “god”-talk do so because they feel they can rely on only one kind of reception for it — a reverential reception!
Yet, organized patriarchal religion should be harshly challenged and questioned at every turn —
First, it’s about patriarchal supremacy –
which has required a long list of enemies, i.e., women,
pagans, Africans, Jews, homosexuals.
It’s an authoritarian system which has conquered thru
suppression, intimidation, torture, violence of every kind — introducing the cross with the sword.
And, every intelligent person understands that there is no way to prove either the existence or the non-existence of a god.
Meanwhile, religious hierarchies and religious middlemen continue to try to use government to secure a cooperation with their religous laws which their own members defy.
Organized religion is a fraud and a ripoff. All this believing in supernaturalism is based on knowledge of human mortality and a fear of illness and death (a reasonable fear to be sure), and the hope that their is some other existence after death. Also, religion from the start has been the way for societies to keep people in line and content with their station in life.
If you want a look at the future as envisioned by Christianists, theocrats, dominionists, Scalia, Roberts and Huckabee, check out the new book “Department of Homeland Decency: Decency Rules and Regulations Manual.” It’s a funny political satire of how our lives would be ordered if — or when — they get the power. The Department’s motto is “Marching proudly backwards to the future and the book is just out from Three Rivers Press.
Religion used to be a private decision and people respected that. It didn’t matter who your God was; since all Gods were good. The idea of keeping religion out of politics showed a lot of wisdom on the part of the founding fathers, or maybe some of them read Thomas Paine. Either way the Constitution makes the separation of religion and government very clear. And if we had some smart thinkers or some Chomsky readers in our government today it would surely see the need to also keep business and government separate. This alliance is much more dangerous than government and religion. Just look at Bush doing business in Saudi Arabia. It reminds me of the line in Apocalypse Now: “He’s an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.”
Hoa binh
The Christian fundamentalists who think that God wants them to relive the crusades, who also think that we shouldn’t take care of our planet, because (in their view) God’s going to come and pick all the christians (who are good enough) up and take them to heaven - are much more than threats to democracy.
They and their extreme ignorance threaten the existence of our whole civilization.
religion was only RECENENTLY a private decision, usually forced upon you by the ruling elite or even your community or family. American mobility allowed a very large number of people to make a choice. A “personal relationship with god” is very new, in the past 150 and mostly starting in america (and came to a more broad appeal only in the last few generations).
And all gods were not good gods, but they all were powerfull. Religion, like war, is politics through other means.
Why I don’t want to live in a religious state: the difference between a Sin and a Law… laws (like the article says) can be changed or debated, the criminal can pay for the crimes…. but a Sin is absolute.
You often hear the most intense young converts speak of feeling an emptiness inside before “finding god”. I think the key’s in that sentiment. And we’ve all got to kind of wonder: how can there there meaning in life if a million people can die for nothing in one stupid war? Is Christianity today really anything more than nihilism incognito? No doubt consumerism’s part of it.
Religion, they say, is to keep people from a religious experience. I am amazed at people afferming their belief in:
Desire for other’s oil
Fear of retribution
Duty to corporate country
In a word the temptations of the Buddah.
Dynamite essey, Chernus is exactly right. Abandoning the quest for certainty, an essentially religious endeavor, in favor of searching for a reliable methods of arriving at concensus, which is the core principle of science, was the stroke of genious on the part of our founding fathers that made democracy viable. Unfortunately, it’s not the faux certainty of traditional religious dogma that’s the biggest threat to democracy today, it’s the faux certainty that ever increasing economic activity equates to societal success. We have an official state religion, it’s not Abrahamic, it economic.
Christianism is a threat to democracy because it was created by a committee under the sponsorship of a Roman emperor who sought to make it a tool of political domination. There is a cornerstone moral value in the world, one proved by Immanuel Kant: the Golden Rule. Unfortunately the Golden Rule that can be logically demonstrated is not the one given in the gospels, but the one given by the Buddha: Do NOT do what you would NOT have others do unto you, i.e., do not victimize others. Even more unfortunately the class system of civilization in all its previous incarnations does precisely that. In its current incarnation, the class system supports capitalism, which must obtain victims in order to produce profits. The fictional character Jesus supports capitalism as given by the Parable of the Ten Talents, and again in the Parable of the Pounds, and not only that he does not bother to condemn the most vicious evil of his day … slavery. The message of cosmic love that is supposed to redeem his teaching was one explicitly rejected by Buddha as a non-sequitir; one cannot show love for all because to give love is to show partiality. Christianism is a philosophical delusion and its attendant notion of moral superiority is what binds the conservative base of its poor, ignorant, and deluded followers to their wealthy, power hungry and bloodthirsty leaders.
One only has to look to the Middle East to see the result of a state mandated religion on the rule of democracy. Many of the most oppresive states are Theocratic- not Democratic.
Any religion that doesn’t teach and follow ‘THE GOLDEN RULE’ is a threat to democracy.
Live and let live! The hell with the soothsayers and charlatans and their latent desire for control and manipulation of the constituents who blindly believe them.
“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.”
I’d suggest to you that Christians usually vote for Christians simply because they want some one like themselves and some one that reflects their values. They are hardly likely to vote for a secularist that espouce’s removing Christianity from government or the Constitution.
the only thing that frightens them is giving control to inept, corrupt and incompetent people whatever their religious or political persuasion.
Hypocracy and Religion have always gone hand in hand. Saying that religion is a threat to democracy is the same as saying that Evil is a threat to Good. They are opposites. Religion has always opposed Deocracy and will always do so. Once someone gets hooked on the religion drug, they immediately try to hook everyone else on it too. Religious people routinely try to tell others how to live and what to do based on their own distorted version of reality and the fantasy land they live in. Religious people care nothing about freedom unless you are part of their own little clique.
Religious people will willingly commit any crime, any atrocity, or violate any civil rights as long as they think it will benifit their church or their diety. This makes them a very serious threat.
A threat to Democracy? Absolutely!
Religion and patriotism, better defined as superstition and jingoism, have been with us since witch doctors, priests and politicians sought to centralize their power and concentrate their wealth by using fear of death and the unknown and promising to assuage our fears if we obey them.
Religion truly is the “opiate of the masses”. It is the supreme distraction from the fact that throughout history, humankind is dominated and exploited by a small cabal of the rich and powerful. We can’t escape our fate until We the People become the deciders by direct democratic means.
“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
In the West, when has religion NOT been a threat to democracy? Most Americans would still be worshipping Odin/Wuodan but for autocrats from about 600-1100 AD in Europe who, seeking to reduce balkanization, homogenize disparate populaces under a monothestic system, etc. forced their subjects to change religions. At the time, many people were little better than slaves. Serfom in some parts of eastern Europe lasted until the mid 1800’s. Of course religion is about control.
Monotheism has served emperors well for a number of theological reasons since at least the time of Pharaoh. The middle-eastern monotheistic mythologies posses an unresolved dilemma known as theodicy, the so-called problem of evil (I prefer to call it the “problem of suffering” instead). All sorts of techniques have been offered by means of explanation: punishment, sin, a master plan, free will, etc.
But the bottom-line is that people are dropped off at a place of cognitive dissonance in which a supremely powerful and kind being/force lets all sorts of bad things happen.
This serves emperors well, something for them to model, since they can — at once — also claim that they are working in everyone’s best interests, etc. despite anything bad that may happen. The people just need to have hope, faith, etc. in their leadership despite anything that outwardly might appear to be neglect, wrath, corruption or outright eating of its own people.
Using terminology like “evil” is an important propaganda piece. If the terrorists are evil, then we are — of course — supremely good. A holy war, good vs. evil, black vs. white, reduced into very simple and digestable terms.
As I grow older, I’m no longer so sure what is good vs. evil. So far as I’ve been able to determine, good is to live and let live. Evil is to exert power or force over people. Therefore, the perfect anarchistic society is supremely utopian/good, and a powerful government/corporate/religious society with tight lines of authority and powerful division of wealth, backed up by force, is evil. This seems to be how Tolkien handled it (Middle Earth was non-Christian good vs. evil). It reduced to power/autocracy vs. self-determination.
I think religion is a subject that we have a right to know about in regards to electing president. I do not want a religious wing nut running things thank you very much. Nor do I want a nihilist.
The larger frame of reference Is key to understanding what kind of metal the President elects are made of. (or anybody for that matter)
I want a spiritual president who has a relationship to the cosmos or whatever.
To say that this is not important is to disregard the very ground we stand on, and to buy into the polarity of political rhetoric.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi’s were christians….
Paul Bramscher,
Excellent points. FREESPEECH TV had a very good documentary on anarchist or ‘co-operative’ business practices last year. Nobody was ‘the boss’ or the ‘ruler’ and they made joint decisions on running their shops and industries. It works.
There are more ’shades of grey’ in the world than just black or white, good or evil, this one or that one.
The key to a society living in harmony with others as well as within the group is finding the proper balance in functioning as an entity.
I think you answered your own question about good and evil, Paul.
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chabuka: They grasped onto the power of whatever symbol was at hand — and that included Christian, as well as pre-Christian, symbology (the swastika, Wagnerian/Teutonic motifs, Aryan mythology, distorted archaeology, etc.).
look at what Jesus REALLY taught and you’ll see a very different picture than that of today’s Christian Church.
Jesus’ number one priority was POVERTY and STEWARDSHIP; not abortion, homosexuality, etc…
the Church has twisted Jesus’ real message….
everyone should read “God’s Politics: Why God is neither a Republican or a Democrat”…
i am a devout Agnostic, but loved this book because it points out what Politicians who say they are for Jesus SHOULD be doing….
Spirit is the world view of 380 million Indigenous people. As the First Peoples of this continent Spirit is also very ancient. American Indians do not seem to have the same problem with Spirit that non-Indians do. Indians believe in community, cooperation, respect, and a reverence for life. The oneness or interconnectedness through Spirit is fundamental.
Non-Indian Americans are guided by science, competition, and individualism. This has led to the centralization of power and wealth. Here, greed is a good and death through war, executions, and abortions are the norm. It’s clear to me that a culture guided by science, competition, individualism, and greed for power and wealth, stands no chance of ever finding peace and harmony in religion or any other pursuit.
Common Dreams rests in the camp of cooperation and community.
Dark Dreams rests in the camp of individualism, competition, and greed.
To me the dreams of Ira Churnus are unrealistic in the Camp of Dark Dreams.
MeYouWeUs: There’s a lot of intellectual and spiritual space between “religious wing nut” and “nilist.” If our political leaders HAVE to demonstrate some “spirituality” to be considered for the job, I’d prefer someone who has a more balanced point of view than either of these extremes. I, for one, couldn’t care less whether a politician believes in god, the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny, as long as he/she is qualified for the job they ask us to give them. The definition of faith is “belief in something for which there is no proof.” That kind of thinking has no place in politics.
INQUISITION II: It’s bigger! It’s better!! It’s TELEVISED!!!
See heretics come to Jesus after they’re baptized on the holy water board. See atheists begging to recite the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ as the flag they’re wrapped in starts to burn. Gasp as lions separate false converts from true believers in the ‘Pit of Passion’. Watch “Don’t Cross Me”, the game show where Muslims compete to see who knows the most biblical passages. See the losers do wonderful imitations of Christ on the cross.
Monty Python was wrong, you can expect the Inquisition: Inquisition II, Tuesdays and Thursdays at Eight.
Eric Barth wrote Organized religion is a fraud and a ripoff. All this believing in supernaturalism is based on knowledge of human mortality and a fear of illness and death…
And hence the US Govt’s institutionalized “fear of terrorism”. The US Govt and religion are handmaidens of control.
What democracy?
Is religon a threat to democracy? Was the Pope a Nazi?
It is a scary thing to admit that your religion is just about as valid as that of the ancient Greeks or the Vikings, and that “No, Virginia, there really is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Odin, Zeus, or any other omniscient diety to watch over us.”
It is more fun, more comforting, and more cheerful to be religious, and to buy into the “pie-in-the-sky” fantasy.
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but if the world is going to move forward in any significant way, if we are going to get through the environmental crisis, if, in fact, we are going to evolve at all, I’m afraid we must give up our security blanket of religion. I always thought that we should respect the beliefs of others, but it becomes harder each day, when we see what those beliefs cause.
When even apparently sane candidates like Obama can say “America is the last, best hope of Earth” there is no hope of a rational world any time soon. I hate to break this to Mr Obama, but (a) a great deal of the damage that has been done to democracies, all round the world, in the last 50 years has been the result of American action to protect its economic interests, and (b) There are many other democracies around the world that function a great deal better than that of America, and in which the values of humanism and the Enlightenment are protected far better than they are in America. This belief that America is somehow the only democracy and has behaved well is a result of a poor education system and a deliberate campaign of disinformation by the American media.
The Romney thing “liberty is a gift of God” is a wonderful example of back to front thinking. Liberty has been hard won in the last 500 years or so, and it has been won by prising the cold dead fingers of religion from around the neck of the people, one by one. The liberty we have in western democracies now was achieved at the expense of religion, and the presidential candidates are all it seems hell bent on reinstating that control, removing liberty from the people. We must keep resisting these nutters (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Religion/), and it would help if those bringing religion to the front with frightening words like those of Huckabee, and even Edwards (what was he thinking?) were soundly defeated in the primaries.
The problem is lack of spiritual infrastructure.
Why else could we treat others so shabbily?
Why else could greed be considers good?
As humans in America we don’t share in spirit we each have our own. That hyper-individualism that characterizes us also erodes us.
paragraph 30 states “in itself faith in politics poses no great danger to democracy as long as the debates are really about policies and religous values are translated into political values, articulated in ways that can be rationally debated by people who dont share them.The challenge is not to get religion out of politics it is to get the quest for certitude out of politics” well written the writer does not want faith eliminated but practiced with maturity on the other hand so many who have responded seem to want to see an end to religion ie belief in God or allowable faith practices etc. Remember remember what other countries anti religion anti faith practices brought the world Stalins russia with 10s of millions killed Maos china with millions killed and persecuted and repercussions continuing Does ones quest to relate to God through faith involve struggle and error? Yes but it seems worth the journey to discover what is true and best A leader forcing his mistaken religious rules is dangerous but just as dangerous is a leader or government that imposes a ban on all forms of faith practices and promotes atheism All in All the writer proposes many good points for discussion
“The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins should be read by everyone on the planet.
doomandgloom said:
“Non-Indian Americans are guided by science, competition, and individualism. This has led to the centralization of power and wealth. Here, greed is a good and death through war, executions, and abortions are the norm.”
Indians were not perfect either. Instead of using birth control to keep the population/resource balance, some used war, infanticide or lacking scientific knowledge, had to let diseases and predation do it for them.
What led to the centralization of power and concentration of wealth is simply the invention of easily hoarded money as a representation of resources.
Competition, individualism AND cooperation are common to most species and is nature’s way. And nature is God’s manifestation. If nature is wrong, then isn’t God wrong?
Religion, at least in 21st century America, is clearly a danger to democracy. Led by the Religious Right, which, in complicity with the Republican Party and buoyed by cringing agreement from most Democrats, has its own definition of morality which it avowedly seeks to impose, either in law or by constitutional amendment, on all the American people — and, if possible, the people of other countries. It clearly states that its kind of morality is more important than protection of democratic freedoms. It seeks a theocratic society, similar to those of extremist Islam and medieval Christianity, from which our progenitors fled. This is blatantly recidivist and plainly anti-democratic. Until Republicans can free their Party from the dictates of the Religious Right they must be opposed vigilantly by all Americans who love democracy and freedom.
Poor chimp Bush actually believes that he is doing God’s work. Religion and politics? Thats America for you!
He doesn’t believe that. Like stupidity, it’s been a ruse.
From Webster:
defn. “conniving”:
1: to pretend ignorance of or fail to take action against something one ought to oppose [the government connived in the rebels’ military buildup]
Religion is a mental illness.
Anything which discourages independent thought is a threat to democracy.
Religion’s real purpose is to turn people into mush-brained zombies who will buy everything (both dodgy products AND dodgy politicians) advertised on TV, no thinking required.
“Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices,under which WEAK minds are servilely crouched.
Fix reason firmly in her seat,and call on her tribunal for every fact and opinion.
Question with boldness EVEN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD;because,if there be one,he must approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”
Thomas Jefferson
I think I’m with Tom on this one. Religion has NO place in government. My mother was a Sunday school teacher and 3 of my first cousins are Christian ministers. So I’ve got a good idea what “religion” is all about.
If I must be put into a group on this matter I’ll choose Pagan.
The naive self-satisfaction at the heart of this piece takes one’s breath away.
First, Philosophy 101 as a quick antidote to progressivist cant. “The essence of our system,” Professor Chernus says, “is that we, the people, get to choose our values. We don’t discover them inscribed in the cosmos.” Now this radically Sartrean thesis about morality is nothing if not contentious–but is presented here as if it were a perfectly neutral observation with which any rational being would unhesitatingly agree. The signers of the Declaration of Independence would certainly have been startled to hear it. And hundreds of millions of Confucians, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Jews (of, at least, minimally orthodox faith) would strongly reject such a claim . . . as a professor of religious studies must know very well. Is he saying, then, that they are incapable of ruling themselves? That democracy is an aristocratic privilege reserved for those few who believe that they can and do pick for themselves whatever “values” they like?
“So,” Chernus continues, “everything must be open to question, to debate, and therefore to change.” Really? *Everything*? How about “the proposition that all men are created equal”? As far as the United States were concerned, Lincoln saw the Civil War as settling any question or debate about its fundamental truth once and for all. Elsewhere, to be sure, there has been a different story: in Germany the National Socialists disputed that dogma with undeniable vigor and effectiveness. Would it betray a deplorable failure to appreciate diversity if I ventured to say anything more than that I just happen personally not to share their particular choices?
Only a robustly religious idiom is able to assert that, because such people first advocated and then committed gross and abominable violations of divine law, they were damnably evil. If nothing less can capture the full truth of the matter, does “democracy” require us to falsify history? Does it rule out the possible thought that we ourselves, even now, may be engaged in things calling for language no less rich in judgment?
What we need is a candidate who will publicly display his faith by thundering like a Hebrew prophet–or in imitation of Christ Himself–against the wanton carnage we continue to be answerable for in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza.
For the author to make such a query it must be assumed that his mind is fogged by more than religion. Clearly, he has no idea what a democracy is. There currently is only one nation in the world which could be described as being a democracy and all of the others are something else, most, especially the richer ones, of which are controlled by nothing more than the same old types of gangs that have controlled nations throughout history.
The reason that the U.S. is such an evil (in this connotation evil losing none of it’s flavor as you would find it in the dictionary) nation is because it has no anthropological cohesion that an indigenous population would have from an evolved culture. The U.S. is a “come one-come all” gang of criminals which attracted and promoted the worst type of people. Such glaring evidence of that reigning criminality is seen in the pinnacle of it’s developmental stage when viewing the condoned and legalized mafia town of Las Vegas and the cesspool of criminality and terrorism which is Miami.
As long as the U.S. has the god of commercialism, which is their jolly red Santa, and every year continue to cut down billions of years of tree life so that they can use it to decorate their homes for a week before throwing it out in the garbage, then they should quit bashing any type of religiosity because that only makes them the worst type of hypocrites.
Unlike many posters here I actually think its impossible for human beings to not have or not believe in religion. By religion I mean any sense of metaphysical beleifs. The more people try to avoid such ‘religious’ statements or groups the more they prove how impossible it is to avoid it.
In the above posts I’ve noticed several here are diametrically opposed to christianity and by judaism as well. To say Hitler was raised a christian would be pretty much true in that he was baptized…to say that he was following christian doctrine would be a lie as he was directly opposed to it. The National Socialists (NAZI for short) imbdued thier society with anti-christian and particularly anti-catholic doctrines. Instread they adopted many Germanic pagan customs, practices and beliefs particularly those that were the most anti-judaic such as its implementation of eugenic, pro-abortion, and anti-marriage policies.
The separation of religion and politics will never happen but it would be good to separate religion and state sponsored policies. While some here recognize pro-abstinence, and pro-life policies as that its far more historical that the majority of pagan beliefs (Pat, Moloch etc.) where they sacrificed children via abortion, infanticide including prostitution at the temples (via standard role of priestesses throughout history). Perhaps America has already adopted the practices of the Aztecs while they sacrifices children and adults for their blood to be used in rituals and food - - americans today which to use the bodies of aborted and human embryos to sprinkle with their medicine. Much differe? Not at all.
Chernus is a thoughtful writer with whom I often agree, sometimes disagree. The typical poster about religion on this and other Inter-Left sites is a wilfully ignorant hater of people unlike themselves, who has no clue what is going on in most churches, and no concept of the history of secular-religious collaboration in the history of the American Left. It’s appalling how much venom comes out of the woodwork over this. It’s disturbing how little you all seem to know about your own history - the US has been a place where all varieties of religious experience, including lack of it, have flourished freely, and continue to do so, and this diversity of cosmology is key to the few good things that have come out of our culture. Your fear of a theocracy is not only misguided, but reveals your lack of empathy with those who live it every day, and your lack of understanding of how much distance separates the US from Afghanistan or Iran.
More prosaically, you are so sadly unaware of the critical role churches are playing in helping people in crisis as a result of capitalism’s depredations in cities and towns all over the country. If you spent more time actually involved in yoru communities rather than simply waiting for the next hateful comment from a prominent wealthy fundie to pounce on and blather about, you might notice the good works and social justice ministry being carried out by boring little bland denominational churches all around you.
The sophomoric, dare I say anti-intellectual, tone of so much of this commentary would apparently bode very poorly for the future of progressive action in the US. Fortunately, the Falwells and the Hitchenses are far less relevant to the pace of social change in the US than the small, unnoticed actions of millions of ordinary, imperfect secularists and Christians who see a problem, can’t sleep because of it, and do something about it.
Peace y’all.
It can’t be denied that there are good religious people in society who are concerned about their neighbors and who do something about it. But their role is one which the criminal corporate government relies on, and manipulates, as a palliative to dampen the misery which they intentionally cause to society. If there were no homeless people, no people without healthcare and no uneducated people and no unemployed people, then how much of a role would religiosity play in society then?
Huckabee didn’t wear a red sweater because it was Christmas, he wore it because it matched his neck. His campaign is like Palm Sunday: all their hopes are riding on an ass.
This nauseating torrent of pseudo-piety isn’t driven by supply, but by demand. Half of all Americans say they wouldn’t vote for an atheist. The rest of the developed world rolls its eyes in wonder at our naive, superstitious ways coupled with our ruthless, violent, exploitative actions. If we define Christianity as based on the teachings of Jesus, the Christians should be voting for Kucinich or Dodd. Abortion and homosexuality were rampant in the Roman world of Jesus’s time, but nowhere is he recorded as saying anything about them. He did have a lot to say about greed, materialism, social justice and nonviolence, however, and he decried public piety and religious posturing. The Christian Right is neither.
We are held in thrall by the Trinity: 1)The promise of Eternal Life (with or without virgins); 2)Our compelling need for pagan rituals, costumes and symbols; and 3) Our need to have our missdeeds forgiven. Religion will never go away and people who want to convey the word of god to us will forever enslave us.
The combination of religion and government has enslaved and tyranized us since we came out of the trees. Our only defense is absolute and eternal separation of religion and government.
surly old man
denver
Not all religions are plagued with the concept of faith, i.e. the necessity to harbor irrational beliefs. Zen and Buddhism come to mind, and this is an era of great spiritual exploration, perhaps even invention.
One might almost imagine a religion of the self-evident. Only nature itself and that subset known as humanity are necessary to explain the cosmos, only kind/generous/compassionate actions matter. No faith or belief needed.
I don’t know whether religion is necessary, but having studied archaeology and other forensic studies, I feel strongly that cultures are to be ultimately judged by the physical artifacts they leave behind, their art, etc. A product of today’s world is the wonderful machine known as a computer. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no faith or unreason inside of these things. Computers are evidence that we are capable of great feats of reason.
On the role Religion is playing in the Political Campaigns:
Ever notice that the language the Christian Conservatives use to trumpet their current crusade against Muslims is almost identical to their crusades in earlier decades against Russia, China, North Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, etc. (except of course for the single word “godless” which isn’t used quite as much). It’s the same ol’ never ending “us versus them” rhetoric.
Yet, they never actually conquered or even much reformed any of those countries. More interesting yet, today (with the exception of Cuba) the same loud mouthed war mongers are happily giving those former (and future) adversaries favored nation status so that they can personally pocket huge profits wheeling and dealing with them. Even as to Cuba, all the Christian Capitalists outside of South Florida seem to eagerly want to open the door.
Say, do you suppose those Evangelists will ever learn that those they hated most tend to make them the most money? Nah, probably not. Any history lesson that contradicts whatever their preachers are saying at the moment doesn’t seem to be noticed.
To those of you who deride those who have faith in higher powers. That is your right. It is my right to belive in my gods and goddesses. I am a practicing Pagan. And proud of it. I wear the symbols of my faith openly, without fear of prejudice.
I will however agree with you that ORGANISED MONOTHEIST religions are, have been and will continue to be a threat to peace, as said monotheisms have a distressing tendency to be exclusivist, militant and very violent. If you don’t belive me, read any history text.
My favorite religious moment in the campaign so far came when (after ignoring him on all other substantive questions) George Stephanopolus asked Dennis Kucinich whether he believed in God, to which DK replied:
“George I have been praying for the last 40 minutes that you would finally call on me to contribute”–which predictably brought the house down.
I doubt faith played much of a role in pagan systems. Traditional societies probably didn’t draw the dualisms between the spiritual/physical, natural/human, or human/god that we do in the West.
Faith is a byproduct of two irreconcilable worlds. The traditional societies, which includes paganism, largely avoided this by seeing gods/nature, etc. as inseparable. Though it might also be read as the anthropomorphism of natural processes. To give them human and animal names, behaviors, etc. (Without science and therefore lacking those vocabularies.)
brontoburger and muggles5
I for 1 grew up in a very nice Christian church in a small town. While I give you no argument as to the fact that they did try and help people when I was young they also ran off a good working class (electritian)/minister both full time jobs.
That man was here for 15 years or more preforming all sorts of civic duty to boot before they gave him the boot over some bullshit rumours.Sneekin Decan type stuff.
They have been searching for a replacement for 25 30 years now.
But the proverbial straw didn’t fall until about 1998 while at an evening bible study one of the “new”preachers wives started into bashing Muslims claiming that they would kill us all if they could.
I said you mean like the Christians killed all the American Indians?
Well that went over like a wet fart in church and ended my delusion that these people that I’ve known all my life were on the proper path to any spiritual journey that I was seeking.
Take a look at this I could help you with your delusions:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331
WOW, to me, Ira Chermus’s article is one of the most engaging articles I have ever read on CommonDreams.. Please note my earlier posting 12:01.
I attribute this vibrant discussion to an increasing hunger for spirituality in our materialistic consumer culture. We have come to be a confused and frustrated society.
Institutional religion confused society when it walked away from spirituality. Institutional religion preferred dogma and religious absolutes over spirituality in order to control the faithful and to perpetuate the system. You can call it job security.
There are many causes to be sited in this era of social turmoil. Ira Chermus brilliantly hits upon ONE very important reason for this confusion when he states: “The challenge is not to get religion out of politics but to get the quest for certitude out of politics”. This is a very profound point that deserves to be elaborated on.
According to the Franciscan teacher Fr. Richard Rohr, spirituality comes in three levels. The first level of spirituality stems from the immense domination of the human ego. This is “I” versus “them”, looking out for number one. Thus society needs authority, order, and control to avoid social chaos, thus government and laws come into being.
The second level of spirituality is in critiquing the system, providing oppositional thought to the authority of government and the established status quo. This is where the spiritual dynamics of democracy come into play, competing ideas for a higher synthesis for truth and justice. But in this spiritual exercise of democracy, there are only competing ideas for truth and justice, there can be found no ultimate truth, no certitude, no formulation of absolute truth.
The third level of spirituality is wisdom. Wisdom is acquired by way of embracing the opposites. The simplest example of embracing the opposites is when the wise tribal elders gathered to settle community disputes. These wise men settled the various disputes by embracing all the conflicting viewpoints and coming to a fair and just settlement. This was the wisdom of the tribal elders, the highest level of spirituality
Today, our political leaders are no longer free to think great thoughts like the wise town elders. Our leaders today cannot embrace wisdom because they are bought and paid for by our nations’ corporate oligarchy. Today, our politicians’ “wisdom” comes in the certitude of a corporate consumer culture and the absolutes of free market capitalism. And to make matters worse, our politicians cater to the false and controlling absolutes of Christian fundamentalism because these particular Christians and others wish to share in the capitalistic plunder of the community to prove their worthiness in the eyes of God.
I often think of the wise words of economist and author William Greider, “There are few problems in the world that cannot be solved by more Democracy.”
This whole discussion is as well most relevant to our nations “War” on terrorism. You cannot have a fair discussion about Islamic terrorism without a discussion of American Empire and its’ militant support of the greed of Western industrial capitalism. This brings up the big question, is it their terrorism, or ours?.
Without having that discussion, you have not embraced the opposites, you cannot attain wisdom, and there is no need to pray for peace when you are not working for justice.
Oh yeah I wanted to say that when I listen to MLK Jrs. speech at Riverside church 1 year before the “Christian Nation “killed him ,I do feel a bit uplifted.But obviously the good Christians didn’t pay much attention to that sermon.That proof lies in the 2000 and 2004 election when they choose a murdering tyrant (twice) to run the country because God talks to him.
Iwhunt330 says:
“Real Christians don’t torture, don’t steal, don’t trash the earth, don’t invade countries that are no threat to us, don’t make war for resources than can be bought, don’t arm other nations so that they can make war on each other”
Since when? Is this a new thing?
Just to add my two cents, religion when involved in politics kills democracy. I’m a great believer in the wisdom of the founding fathers of the once great USA, well, never that great but better than any other form of government in the Western World at the time.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison….all believed in a higher being and except for Paine, they all kept their religious beliefs personal – which is where they belong. Immanuel Kant said that even if we tried, we could force no man to change his belief.
We all have our different faiths and that’s how they should remain. Here in Southeast Asia, nobody gives a damn what religion you follow. 95% of the population is Buddhist and they also practice ancestor worship. Ancestor worship is nothing more than lighting some incense and saying a prayer to your family members who have died. Pretty healthy way to live. Giving thanks to those who brought us into this world and putting flowers by the little temple almost every home has.
These religious fanatics are killing our democracy and unless we get back to the basics and follow our constitution, we could become no different than Saudi Arabia.
As usual, when freedom of religion comes up around here, most people prove they aren’t for it. They want their brand of spirituality or lack thereof to be the rule for everyone because, of course, each thinks himself to be correct about the nature of the universe.
Our forefathers knew what it’s like. People have always been this way. And that’s exactly why the First Amendment is there. Because if people are allowed to use the government to force their philosophy on everyone by act of law, no one is free.
The one thing we should all agree on is that freedom is important, and that we value that. Ours and that of the person standing next to us. Until we do, we’re all in big trouble.
Stephen V Riley
Amen
The real threat to democracy is the threat that remains for any form of government. GREED!!!!!!!!
Your life would be so much simpler if you would just quietly put your money in the basket as it comes around, pay your taxes on time, then go home and relax. God and Government will take of you. So why all the fuss?
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.
Mr. Chernus is right that people should learn to tolerate diversity and uncertainty, tolerances that the church forbids. But a more complete statement of the problem/solution unites the people so they may finally defeat their oppressors. The people should learn to enlighten themselves and take responsibility for themselves, individually and collectively. This enables tolerance of diversity and uncertainty, and more generally defeats oppression.
The enlightenment comes first. The people learn the benefits of unity and responsibility, diversity/uncertainty, and other things, e.g. cooperation, efficiency, humility, frugality. When the people know the hows/whys they will naturally seek out the benefits by building and maintaining the necessary institutions. There is no place for elites. Hierarchies lend efficiency/expedience to limited-time projects such as rebuilding after catastrophes but should be dismantled before they can become corrupted.
If you think religion is a problem in democracy NOW, check out that 23% sales tax thing called the FairTax proposal being pushed by Mike Huckabee to replace the IRS. What’s NOT being said about this is that the evangelicals want it so that churches would no longer be subject to losing a tax-exempt status for overtly preaching politics and candidates from their pulpit.
It’s a big goal they have, and other citizens and especially progressives had better pay attention to why it’s being pushed.
Religion is the anti-thesis of a Democracy. Theocracies are always authoritarian ruled governments.
Actually, our founding fathers disliked Democracy profoundly, thats why they chose for us a Republic form of government, free of religous control. Democracy always leads to anarchy, and then tyranny (sometimes just going direct to tyranny). The rule of majority becomes mob rule. In a Republic, we are a rule of law, and inalienable rights can not be voted out my majority rule. Of course, today they are discarded by Executive Order and legislation by a coerced if not complicit congress.
Our Republic suffered a fatal blow in 1913 (Income tax, Fed, Tax free Foundations). And Democracy may have been extinguished in 1933 (creation of Emergency Powers extended to the homeland and the Executive Order), or maybe it was between 1963-1973, but without a doubt, it’s gone today. We are some form of an oligarchy under authoritarian rule of corporate, financial, political powers, all of whom are globalists, and many not even Americans.
Technology today makes reversing the direction impossible. Whats happening today is a the creation of an Orwellian society. And 1984 is about to happen (25 years late). Orwell was an assumed name of a man who may have been a member of one of the secret societies and died shortly after the publication of his 1984 book. He might have been punished for warning us about the plan, who knows. Too bad we did not listen.
Religion was used by Hitler to gain support of the people. Germany was a Christian nation, and the churches went along with Hitler. Hitler wrote: “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..” And so our churches are playing the same role today, against Islam this time.
While I agree that religion is a threat to democracy, Ira’s article rings just slightly of hypocrisy.
It is an absolute laugh that a Jew, who’s religious home he writes about with much frequency, is - in large part - religious-based.
Are we to think that Ira now condemns the Ultra-Orthodox party as a threat to Israeli democracy? I can’t wait for Ira to tell them that - and watch every support system he has in this country evaporate overnight.
If a Christian wrote about the religious parties in Israel like Ira did about Christians here, they’d be vilified as anti-Semitics.
Does “Jewish State of Israel” sound any more compatible with democracy than “White Christian United States of America” or “Islamic State of Iran”?
The Europeans find it fashionable to bash the US, also, nevermind that they dabbled in fascism/empires of their own, some still have colonial holdings, and their leaders are largely in bed with our leaders — and oil/nuclear/banking interests.
There’s only one legitimate way to criticize global scourges — globally. I don’t think Ira can go deep enough, being too much a patriot. The only critics I listen to are those with no sacred cows. It’s interesting to check the list of blogs he links to from his own site, smirkingchimp. There’s undoubtedly a litmus at work, and I’ve known that CD passes.
The above comments make me ashamed that I have sent even a dime to these politicians.
My guess is the realm covered here is one of the reasons the labors and anarchists looted ,burnt and then used as outhouses the churches of Spain in 1936 .(Orwell writes about it in Homage to Catalonia)
RELIGIONS AND OTHER DEMONIC FANTASIES HAVE NO PLACE IN THE GOVERNANCE OF FREE SOCIETIES.
“Indians were not perfect either. Instead of using birth control to keep the population/resource balance, some used war, infanticide or lacking scientific knowledge, had to let diseases and predation do it for them.”
Ezeflyer, I am not in the habit of using the word perfect. What I was describing is the American Indian world view. It does value the oneness and interconnectedness of all things. It stresses cooperation instead of individualism, respect for all life, the value of reciprocity, balance, harmony, and is described in the word Spirit. Indians were advanced in medicine and used poltices made from natural plants. The milpa garden, corn, beans, and squash provided good health. Cleanliness was common among Indian peoples. When the English Colonists arrived here the Indians couldn’t believe how bad they stunk. The Euro’s were scrawney and unclean, so much so that the Indians used to moon them from the beach whey they sailed back to Europe. lol
MiMiCcS “Democracy always leads to anarchy, and then tyranny”
Please give an example.
The only account of Anarchy I can think of is 1936 Spain .It was certainly not preceded by a democracy. In fact just about any form of government on the planet played a role in handing the Fascist dictator (Franco) a victory over the well organized and productive Anarchists.Including so called democracies,oligarchies,communists,fascists and the like.
See they all had one common goal :Crush Anarchy ,no power to the people .That sir is one thing the ruling elite do not want.
You may want to read :Chomsky on Anarchy or Homage to Catalonia (Orwell)
You see with out religion and central government(same thing by the way) humans would naturally tend to drift towards Anarchy.
“That which governs least governs best”
Thomas Paine
Doom n Gloom,
Very good points. And in many ways they were much more democratic than the Europeans in their societal activities.
workreno,
The anarchists and socialists in pre-1936 Spain set up progressive communities with housing, medical care, food distribution, pensions, and helped one another. The wealthy in other parts of the country saw this as a contagious threat and summoned General Franco to lead the charge against these harmless people.
It has continued to this day all over the world, including the U.S. A certain segment of society believe themselves superior to common working people and keep the latter in limbo.
Christ himself said, “Render unto Caeser the things that are Caeser’s and render unto God the things that are God’s.”.
In other words, he was for separation of religion and government.
Freedom of religion and freedom from religion issues go back to the earliest days of the American colonies. Its why many of our ancestors risked a very short life to come here.
The writers of the constitution referred to God numerous times. They realized that a religious person has a “relationship” with God that is the source of his/her values. They realized that while the perceived way to “salvation” is not always the same, almost all religions share values similar to the “golden rule” and 10 Commandments… So the plan is to share the best values as we write our laws, and not hit each other over the head about specific ways to heaven (or whatever).
The US has done the best job of any country in history building a secular nation with shared values from diverse religious groups (and now diverse religions).
Huckabee is most comfortable wearing his religion on his sleeve, but he is a preacher in the white evangelical ghetto called the bible belt. The others are uncomfortable with it, but they feel a need to express their values spring from the same source as those of the voters.
The military becoming evangelized may be partly caused by so many recruits and officers coming from the bible belt, but it presents an opportunity for abuse. Any religious litmus test being required for advancement has to be unconstitutional and should be investigated and exorcised.
The scariest thing I have seen was the Moyers piece where these kooks were in a church praying, calling for bombing Iran and reading a letter from Bush. I hope the neocon alliance of “christian” kooks, radical American zionists, the wealthy and big business, and neocolonialists is on the way out.
The “democracy leads to anarchy and then tyranny” quote alloys the hell out of me.
Democracy is ALREADY tyranny - it is the tyranny of the majority. It is mob rule, and nothing more: the arrogation of the monopoly ofver violence, to the biggest gang.
If the majority elects a government that decides to provide a subset of its polity with free trips to gas chambers, does that make it OK?
If I was elected as Global Overlord, I might feel like instituting a pogrom against ‘blood-nuts’ (redheads) and short men; if I was elected democratically, would that make my actions defensible?
All this talk of democracy is waffle; Mill’s “On Representative Government” is as good a source as any as to why. And Mill did not live in an age where ‘democracy’ had morphed into the periodic exchange of power between two wings of a party which is incestuously aligned with crony capitalists to the detriment of EVERY voter.
Democracy is similar to Utilitarianism - under a strong form of that argument, net social utility can increase if four skinheads kick an old Jew to death, provided that their enjoyment more than offsets his suffering and nobody else finds out about it.
And Religion and democracy go hand in glove - both have nothing whatsoever to do with actual solutions to societal problems; both seek to force people who do not subscribe (e.g., me - I have never contracted with any State to follow its laws).
Don’t get me started….
Cheers
GT
France
http://marketrant.blogspot.com
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding whats for dinner.
Liberty is a well armed lamb.
Was half asleep ,but I awoke to the “news” on NPR .I heard the end of a segment where two Supreme Court Justices where arguing about illegal searches.I think Scalia was one.The exchange was some thimg like :
Q. So if I’m a Federal employed janinator I can enter my neighbors house if I suspect he’s growing pot and it will a legal act in court.
A. Yes
I agree with Christopher Hitchens.
Religion is evil.
Religion has become a corrupt multi-billion dollar tax free corporation in this country. Whose overpowering greed for more wealth, power and influence is driving their cause. They are no longer interested in saving souls just gaining political points with the current leaders. Just imposing their sick belief’s upon everyone in this country. It is no longer what I remember from my childhood. Where ‘right was right and wrong was wrong’! You didn’t impose your religious belief’s upon anyone around you. That was considered in the worst of taste.
It has become like to many other things in this world corrupted absolutely by to much power. I began noticing it especially the last election in 2004. Where Christian’s flocked to vote the most corrupt man in this country back into office. Supposedly on the issues of morals! George W Bush can be called a lot of things but ‘moral’ isn’t one of them. But, sadly enough these Christian’s don’t seem to know that. They seem to be a very confused group when it comes to morals. They chose to ignore all of his lies, deceit and criminal activities. In favor of his continuing to imposed their sexual belief’s upon American’s in the form of laws. This is the only reason I can really figure most Christian’s get behind Bush. It isn’t because he is actually a Christian, his actions have always spoke louder then any words when it comes to that. He has chosen to push their agenda on this country. So they have chosen to ignore how corrupt he is and support him. I can guarantee you that makes Christianity look even more corrupt in the eyes if a lot of people. When you have a religious community who doesn’t seem to know the difference between right and wrong! Much less willing to enforce it upon themselves. The last time I was in church lying, cheating and stealing were considered morally wrong. But, none of these people seem to know that. They seem to have the misguided notion moral’s begins and ends with sexual behavior. They really need to start taking a critical look at themselves. At all the hypocrisy, greed, human suffering, corruption they are willingly supporting. It’s tainting the whole institution as far as I can see. A growing amount of people no longer have a gram of respect left for religion. They are doing their cause more harm than they are good.
Yeah, I hate religion. It is the source of everything bad. Religion sucks!
A better title for this article would be “Is Religion a Threat to Individual Sovereignty?” Answer: yes.
Someday, all religion will be viewed as a myth. Probably not in my lifetime.
If people believe that some bearded clown in the sky can provide them with extra benefits by pleading with him it’s not only a threat to democracy but a much greater threat to sanity.
Have you ever listened to these frauds on TV. the outlandish things they say and the hypnotised crowd are all nodding in agreement and we expect a group like that to have freedom of choice, they’ll choose the one they’re told to choose, just like in Britain before WW2.
It won’t be a myth if “Someday ” never comes.It would appear that they are doing there best to fulfill there prophecies.
Isn’t there a term for that?
“It isn’t because he is actually a Christian, his actions have always spoke louder then any words when it comes to that.”
Tumbleweed,
Actually, Bush is exactly the type “Christian” some of these people want. Many practioners think of Jesus as compassionate, what with the “Love thy neighbor as thyself” instruction and the way he blessed the meek. That’s not the Jesus the Religious Right worships.
To Dominionists and those eagerly awaiting The Rapture as a solution to a mixed up world they can’t fathom any more, war is spiffy, especially war in the Middle East. Israel must come to power so the temple can be rebuilt and the Biblical prophecies about Armegeddon can be fulfilled. They call themselves “spiritual warriors” and we’re already too familiar with this brand of fundamentalist when they call themselves “mujahadin.” When the spiritual warriors meet the mujahadin in their longed-for fit of jihad, we had all better hold onto our hats because neither side has any compassion at all for anyone they perceive to be an enemy.
I wish it wasn’t true. But there are a lot of Americans in despair and depair breeds crazy.
Here’s another perspective on mixing religion and government, resurrected from a previous article:
____________________________________
I sure do miss that Kurt Vonnegut. I suppose I ought to root through the books boxed in the basement to find the exact discussion, but I’ll make do with an imperfectly-remembered gist.
In a commentary about his books being banned by schools, etc. (IIRC), Vonnegut likened the difference between America and the European monarchies that preceded its founding to a deck of cards (which itself evolved as a sort of microcosm of social categories or roles). Monarchies contained face cards– kings and queens.
The face cards not only represent secular power, of course; monarchies derive their authority from the concept that the monarch is either created or chosen by the Creator of the Universe to rule. So the protections of law that obtained generally could be trumped, or overridden, by the dicta of a godly monarch and his ministers.
Vonnegut held that the Founding Fathers, regardless of the complexities and paradoxes arising from a group of elite aristocrats designing a new form of democratic government, recognized that the “face cards” were the root of injustice and inimical to the enlightened rule of law. The Constitution, in effect, removed the face cards from the deck. In the USA, freedom of expression and other civil rights would be adjudicated without face cards, meaning either direct or subliminated “divine right”, automatically taking the trick. Furthermore, churches– religious institutions– were not to be accorded any special privilege or place in government. Churches weren’t banned or persecuted, just deprived of special status including seats in government. No religious tests for office, etc.
They drew what they considered a bright line separating their new government of men and laws from theocracy, i.e. the theocratic principles that underpin traditional monarchies.
Again, IIRC, Vonnegut explained that he wasn’t crushed by being censored, because organizations like the ACLU exist to patiently remind bigoted, hysterical censors that righteous indignation founded in religious belief doesn’t cut it anymore. And in fact, at least in those days, courts routinely rejected clumsy censorship promoted under the rubric of enforcing community standards of decency. Unjustified censorship based on religious opinion is a form of the “tyranny of the majority” which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written to oppose, or at least minimize.
I offer this long-winded tangent not only because I share Vonnegut’s analysis, but because IMO, like the Ring of Power in “Lord of the Rings”, the face cards were never quite destroyed or expunged. This is to be expected in a society founded on freedom of religion; obviously the Founders didn’t intend to abolish or exterminate religious belief– just neuter it politically.
One possible reason that the “left” (whatever that means these days), or “progressives”, lash out at this latest resurgence of religion is because it represents an attempt to re-introduce face cards into the political deck, albeit indirectly. Arguing that religious belief is inherently valid and wholesome, and a ligitimate topic of political discourse, necessarily re-introduces theology into the mix. Thus, those ludicrous questions during the Dog and Pony Show pseudo-debates, and the spectacle of candidates preaching garbled and labored sermons on religious doctrine.
All of the exasperated, supercilious scolding about how the left/progressives shoot themselves in the ass by criticizing or disparaging religious belief ignores the deep-seated and thoughtful rejection of letting the godly camel’s nose back under the tent. We’ve already seen what seven years under a delusional Manichean theocrat is like, and the Dominionists proceed apace.
As far as the tired canard about left/progressives “hating” religion and religious persons goes– it’s about equal parts misunderstanding and condescension. As such, it’s at worst an equal and opposite reaction to the believer’s “hatred” and contempt for aggressive non-believers. (Yeah, I know; you may hate the sin but never the sinner. Back at ya!) Of course it’s the case that there is unfortunate, ignorant, and wrong-headed vitriol expressed by passionate skeptics. It’s indefensible, as is its converse. This patronizing idea that the problem is that the left somehow doesn’t “get” religion is another lame generalization concocted from elements of truth– and I’m not sure that affronted believers accept that anyone who doesn’t “get religion” can still “get” religion.
Arguing that religious belief is a vital, necessary, and laudable aspect of Amerikan life, and advocating the placing of religious matters back on the table because it’s simply more useful, even vital, information about candidates, is a mistake. The religious reactionaries are perpetually pissed off that non-believers affect superiority, as reflected in the drumbeat from fundies claiming religious persecution from mean-spirited secular humanists. But adding theology to the political discussion, in full-strength or diluted form, can only vitiate true egalitarianism by inspiring another two-tier adversarial relationship between the godly and the godless.
Well”fellows it’s been good to know ya.”
from :the Wreak of the Edmond Fitsgerald
“Is Religion a Threat to Democracy?”
Yes!
Religion is the corruption of the spiritual for the purpose of controlling the masses. It is inherently corrupt and therefore a threat to true freedom and democracy.
I am surprised that professor Chernus’s rambling essay fails to mention the illegality of diverting tax dollars to faith based charities or the irrationality of launching a faith-based war in Iraq (or anywhere else).
To me the more serious question is not whether religion is a threat to democracy; it is, rather, whether faith-based decision-making on a national scale is a threat to our survival as Americans or as human beings.
To make a decision based on doctrine rather than provable facts-at-hand is to risk suicide. I am not for that.
It surprises me and scares me that our nation, perhaps our world, is rapidly polarizing into two camps: believers and non-believers. That centuries of learning, science, and education should be successfully vetoed by faith-based idealogues is enough to make us all view life—what’s left of it—as would a cancer patient. Enjoy it while it lasts.
It’s possible that this presidential election—to return to Professor Chernus’s essay—could turn out to be a referendum on faith-based government. If so, I would neither bet on the outcome nor see much hope of national conciliation on the matter.
Julian Jaynes suggested that ancient humans were not conscious in the way we think of consciousness today.
I submit that we are still not really conscious.
It’s like I can hear the minds snapping shut at the use of the word religion.
Followed by blanket statements.
It’s too stereotypical. The anti religion movement is a crutch in itself that scapegoats.
To say religion is bad for democracy is like saying people are bad for democracy, and maybe they are.
If we treat religion as a form of oppression that historically dominates and controls.
Then the same can be said about democracy.
What democracy? The one were exporting to Iraq? does that mean democracy is bad?
To hate on religion is to seek refuge in an ambiguous grey area without having to really say anything.
Because then we have to have a discuss