Religion in Politics

The First Amendment to our Constitution bids the government to “make no law

respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It is pretty clear what that means. For many years British civil servants and politicians as well as professors at Oxford and Cambridge universities needed to be Anglicans. Those jobs were not open to members of other religious persuasions. In Germany until World War I, only Christians could be civil servants, including university professors. Jews could not have those jobs unless they converted to Christianity.

No one in the United States today, even folks who keep saying that ours is “a Christian nation,” proposes that we should demand of all government officials that they be Christians.

But surely the question of religion and politics goes beyond that. The Catholic Church is refusing to allow its members to have their birth control paid for by insurance companies. Members of various Christian denominations refuse to support equal marriage rights for gay people on the grounds that the Bible describes homosexuality as an abomination. Many people oppose abortion on similar religious grounds. Teachings of specific religions, they think, may be used as the justification of legislation. All of us, even those who do not share the religious belief in question, may be forbidden to practice what one or another religion condemns.

Underlying these controversies is a serious disagreement about religion. Implicit in the First Amendment is the belief that religion is a private matter. A Christian may believe very firmly that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah and died for our sins. A Jew may praise Jesus as a notable prophet but insist that the Messiah's return is still in the future. But, because religion is a private matter, neither of them can impose their belief on the other.

When you enter grade school you learn to add and subtract. Your teacher teaches you that 2+2 = 4. If you don't want to accept that, you get punished with a bad grade. The belief that 2+2 = 4 is not a private matter. You have no choice in it; you must accept it because it is true.

Not so, for instance, your preferences in ice cream flavors. I like chocolate, you like vanilla. It would be totally bizarre if I forced you to eat chocolate because chocolate is, I think, “objectively” the best ice cream flavor. If I tried, you would point out to me that one's taste in ice cream is private, is subjective. Different people are entitled to their own tastes in food.

But most followers of one religion or another, whatever they may say, do not accept that religion is a private matter in precisely that sense that you may not impose your religious beliefs and the conduct these beliefs demand or forbid on anyone else who has different beliefs. The Pope does not believe that Catholic theology is something that you may accept or reject. For Jews the Law is a divine gift that we must follow. The beliefs of different religions are not merely subjective. They are not private.

When Mormons baptize people posthumously, they are telling us that Mormonism is the only true form of Christianity. Catholicism, different varieties of Protestantism are all idolatry. What is more they don't regard this as just some personal belief which others may share or not. They know that that is absolute truth. The Catholic Church – not necessarily its members – know for a fact that birth control is sinful. Evangelical churches know the same about gay sex. And all of them know for fact that Jews and Muslims are going to burn in hell.

The First Amendment demands that we treat all religious beliefs as purely personal and subjective. It makes no more sense, the First Amendment tells us, to force our religious beliefs on others than it would be to force on them our tastes in ice cream. But most religious people – except perhaps some Unitarians or Quakers – do not believe that about their religious beliefs. For many religious persons their religion is the bedrock on which their life rests. Make those beliefs subjective and, in some sense, arbitrary like tastes ice cream, and their lives would have no foundation. For that reason, religious persons hold on for dear life to the belief that their religion is the true and only one.

So when in the course of the current electoral campaigns, Catholic bishops fuss endlessly about birth control, and other candidates fulminate against abortion or gay marriage on religious grounds, they seriously challenge the First Amendment with its non-establishment clause. It makes us realize that our dedication to the First Amendment has always been conflicted. Some people are serious about regarding religious beliefs as private. Most religious people regard religious beliefs other than their own as private, subjective, and arbitrary – if not completely mistaken. But the First Amendment does not apply to their religion. It is literally God's truth. Their dedication to civil rights is clearly qualified.

This is not intended to be a condemnation of religion. But it is important to understand the Rick Santorum phenomenon: their religious faith--not that of others--is as true and as important as anything in the lives of seriously religious persons. The First Amendment holds for all religions--except their own.

Widespread Desperation and what to do about it

Widespread Desperation--what can we do?
There are many desperate people in our world. Some act out their desperation. They shoot and kill perfect strangers, they invade a former workplace and kill one-time colleagues. Husbands kill their wives and children and then themselves. Men kill former girl friends. Abused wives kill their husbands. Other direct their desperate violence against themselves and cut their arms or numb their unhappiness with pills, or alcohol, or drugs, or commit suicide.
Explanations of this flood of desperation are endless. There are those who blame it on the decay of family values, or on people turning their backs on God. Others blame rampant materialism. Others again blame our restless movement back and forth across the country that destroys established communities.
A recent, particularly pathetic story raises other questions about desperation and what we might be able to do about it.
Bobby Yurkanin, an only child grew up to set up his own business. In the late 1990s his mother was diagnosed with cancer and he returned home to nurse her until she died in 2001. By that time is father was showing clear signs of Alzheimer's and Bobby took the challenge gamely and nursed his father as he became more and more demented and, with that, more and more difficult. He moved to Florida with his father and was constantly at his side. A short while ago, at the beach with his father who had taken his trunks off, when Bobby tried to put those trunks back on, the father fell in the water and drowned. Accused of contributing to his father's death, Bobby's lawyer negotiated a deal for 15 years of probation.
Bobby, the newspapers report, was the only caretaker for his father, as he had been for his mother before. For the last ten years this man had dedicated himself to caring for his sick and, in the case of his father, very difficult parents. Was his father's drowning an accident or did Bobby finally snap?
The central fact is that no one helped Bobby. In Florida he and his father lived in a large condominium. Many neighbors had seen them for years, had witnessed Bobby's struggles and heard his occasional outbursts of rage against his father. Did anyone help? No, Bobby was the sole caretaker of his father. The neighbors watched, they complained about the old man running down the hall clad only in a diaper. But if anyone tried to help Bobby, it is not recorded.
The newspapers do not even ask whether anyone helped Bobby; they assume that no one would. The neighbors did not talk it over and go to Bobby to offer him a night off every now and then; they did not hold a bake-sale to raise money to hire someone to help. No, they all just looked out for themselves.
This represents one American tradition: everyone is out for him or herself. If neighbors or even strangers have problems looking after their own lives, we surmise that they must have done something wrong. At any rate it is not our problem. This individualism goes back to the early days of capitalism. Adam Smith the 18th century prophet of the free market said it in these words: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, or brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest.” As long as all look out for themselves, we will all be better off.
That may be true in some aspects of the economy, but even an economic system requires mutual trust; all participants must be mindful of the requirements for a functioning economic system. Much more obviously, just looking out for number one produces dysfunctional families. Schools work well if they create a caring community where everyone counts and every one considers everyone else; they fail if all only benefit themselves. In neighborhoods where no one knows or cares about their neighbors, crime is liable to be rampant. Health care, care for children and the elderly will be defective if selfishness is the rule.
While, on the one hand, we believe that all should take care of themselves and we have few responsibilities to our neighbors, we have, on the other hand, always known that. Americans worshiping different gods have all been taught to love their neighbor like themselves. We have always practiced this--some of the time-- in a variety of ways. Many people who grew up in smaller towns, talk about how everyone took responsibility for all the children. If you did something you were not supposed to do, someone would notice and call your mother before you even got home. In later years when you came home you would visit all of these, now old, ladies who had watched over you and cheered you on. In many communities neighbors used to with casseroles when there was a death in the family. After 9/11, the bumpers stickers. “United we stand” testified to the same theme: in times of trouble we need to look out for each other.
We live in a particularly hard times – many people have lost their jobs and/or their houses. We confront a clear choice between the different sides of our traditions: acting as separate individuals, and treating others as the same, denying that we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. If we choose that, we will see more mass shootings, more killings, more suicides. On the other hand, we can also keep alive those aspects of our traditions that involve looking out for our neighbors and expecting them to do the same for us. In desperate times, we can reduce desperate acts by taking some responsibility for the suffering we witness. We can make it our business to be good neighbors and reduce the extent of desperation and desperate acts.
The choice is ours.