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Yesterday’s NYT has a review of Jim Wallis’s God’s Politics. Short.
But Ryan Lizza, of The New Republic, points out the following:
And to liberals wary of any prescription that includes more religion in
politics, and to those worried that his evangelical Christianity is not
ecumenical, Wallis makes an important point rarely heard on the
religious right. ”We bring faith into the public square when our moral
convictions demand it,” he writes. ”But to influence a democratic
society, you must win the public debate about why the policies you
advocate are better for the common good. That’s the democratic
discipline religion has to be under when it brings its faith to the
public square.” It is a reminder that Martin Luther King may have had
a Bible in one hand, but he had the Constitution in the other.
Winning the public debate by appealing to and persuading via the public
good. This is the essence of liberalism and the tolerant
secularism that it demands. Funny that it takes an evangelical
preacher, arguing for the re-emergence of a religious progressivism in
our contemporary politics, to remind us what the soul of the
secular compromise is. What the religious and the “secular”
(let’s call them the non-religious) have both forgotten is that
secularism
demands that we make arguments about how to live our common life on the
basis of appeals accessible in common.
Religion cannot make an appeal to the common, except perhaps in a
theocracy. So it cannot be the basis for an argument as to why we
should or should not pursue a policy.
Similarly, secularism does not require that we never make mention of
factors and forces like religion in public. In fact, it’s
perfectly acceptable to do so. It might even be desireable to
understand the motivations that religion provides. But secularism
cannot require the shut-down of all talk of religion, for that’s a
similar problem. Areligiosity cannot make an appeal to the common
either.
The original toleration thinkers (I especially mean Locke and Mill)
thought that Reason would provide the basis by which people of varying
viewpoints and beliefs could talk together in public. I’m not so
sure that such would work today (as there are plenty of signs that
reason does not dominate our ways of thinking in public), but there has
to be a middle ground, wherein we can acknowledge differences in
beliefs without allowing them to be publicly determinative personally
or politically.
It’s much more complex than that. Because “evangelicals” aren’t monolithic. Or so the latest Pew report seems to say:
Overall, the total share of Bush’s vote from Evangelicals
in 2004 was the same as in 2000 (40 percent); the Evangelical share of
the Kerry ballots was 14 percent, up slightly from Gore’s 13 percent in
2000….Foreign policy was rated as “very important” to the votes of 80 percent
of the entire sample, and reported as the “most important” for 35
percent. Both of these figures are far greater than for social issues.However, there is very little variation in relative importance of
foreign policy across the religious landscape, with the highest group
scoring 88 percent (Jews) and the lowest 71 percent (Latino
Protestants)….Overall, 58 percent of the entire sample said economic issues were very
important to their vote, and 33 percent said it was top priority. So,
economic issues ranked second, behind foreign policy and ahead of
social issues….Thus, economic issues were important to Kerry’s strongest backers,
presenting a contrast to social issues, which were a priority among the
top Bush supporters.
The report contains some small problems of methodology, including what
seems like a tautological definition of evangelical and traditionalist
(“For evangelical Protestants, traditionalists were those who
claimed to be fundamentalist, evangelical, Pentecostal, or charismatic….”), but it seems overall quite a sound piece.
My great-uncle, Noel Kincaid, died in New Mexico recently. He was 87.
I never got to meet him, but I’ve heard much about him over the
years. He has always sounded like a man much-loved and respected.
His obituary came out earlier this week, and it seems he was even more respected than I had known.
…He knew the place he called home and raised his three children was soon to become a national park.
Meanwhile, as politicians came to view the Guadalupes, the Kincaid
kitchen table at the small Frijole ranch house was a place where many
notable politicians ate their meals during their visit to the
Guadalupes. One such notable was Chief Justice William O. Douglas who
dedicated a chapter in his book “Farewell to Texas” about his
experience in the back country with Kincaid, his dry sense of humor and
his mule train.
In his book that discusses the proposal of turning the Guadalupe
Mountains Ranch into a national park and the effort it took to get the
designation, Douglas said: “Noel Kincaid, who is not only a good ranch
foreman and justice of the peace, but also the best architect of hot
biscuits I knew, spoke up and to say, ‘No road should ever git beyond
this here Lodge.”
Keith Olbermann, who’s a
reporter over at MSNBC, proudly proclaims his membership in the
community of the religious, while still pointing out James Dobson’s
idiocy over the whole SpongeBob thing. Why is this
relevant? Well, Dobson’s group singled Olbermann out for “e-mail
action” because of his anti-God viewpoint.
And not to let the facts get in the way of FOF’s prejudice, but I
happen to be a religious man. I believe in God, I pray daily, and if
I’ve ever gotten any direct instructions from my maker, they were that
I’ll be judged by whether I tried to help other people, or hurt them.
Also, that true belief should not be worn like a policeman’s club, nor
used like one. And, finally, that I’m in big trouble for helping to
introduce funny catchphrases into sportscasting….It goes back to the core of the Dobsonian point of view here: the fear
of the “pro-Homosexual” agenda. That may be the way he delicately
phrases it, but it is not shared by most of his followers who emailed
me. They were clearly angry that there was no anti-homosexual
agenda. And one of the most fascinating things about the studies of
homosexuality in this country is that while there is still debate
between the creationists and the environmentalists, I’ve never heard
anything suggesting that a child is more or less likely to be gay, depending on whether he’s taught not to hate nor be intolerant, of gays….Hey, guys, worry about yourselves. You’re
spewing hate, while assuming that for some reason, God has chosen you
and you alone in all of history to understand the mysteries of
existence, when mankind’s existence is filled with ample evidence that
nobody yet has been smart enough to discern an answer.You might try keeping it simpler: did you help others, or hurt them?
I’ll
be happy to be judged on the answer to that question, and if it’s a
group session, I don’t expect I’ll find many members of “Focus On
Family” in the “done ok” line.
Machiavelli taught us that in fear lies one of the most effective
political tools available. Seems like Dobson read his Machiavelli
— too bad he didn’t read more of Jesus.
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