Why I Must Do This: Part Two
As I wrote yesterday, there are many among the group widely labled as the "Christian Right" who are much less than thrilled about the "sudden" appearance of a loosely oranized group of liberals/progressives (is there any other kind of group of liberals/progressives?) who are speaking openly about their faith and how it informs their politics. In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not surprised. It was largely the vitriolic hatred that spews from this group that orginally made me question whether or not I actually wanted to be a member of organized religion in the first place. Their motto often appears to be "Who Would Jesus Hate?". But it was the answering levels of hate and mistrust from the opposite direction that really overcame my impetus and caused me to step forward and speak about my faith and my politics. It was the same type of vitriol from the secular left that really shocked me out of my comfort zone. I’ve sit in rooms filled with what can only be called the elite of society - people with some level of power, with high levels of education, with some amount of money at their disposal. I’ve listened to people of faith - all people of all faiths - be lumped together and smeared with a broad brush of derision.
Take for example, the fallout from Senator Barak Obama’s recent speech to Call for Renewal. Some of the criticism may be valid, but it’s clumsy and it tends to alienate the very people to whom Sen. Obama was talking. The obvious answer for many is, "So what?"
Well, I’m one of those people, so "So what?" is a big deal to me. It’s a defense used by conservatives against such things as Affirmative Action. "I haven’t deprived a black person of opportunity, and many black people are successful, so Affirmative Action must be a farce." Well, just as is true with Affirmative Action, all you have to do is to open your eyes to know why it is needed. There are, indeed, a lot of people who want to stifle all discussion of faith and politics.
In a recent conversation with my brother, he got rather hot under the collar when he spoke about the way his faith was received by atheists - calling it "superstition" and refering to him as a "deluded fool", among other things. Even many liberals and progressives that do believe and practice religion are too busy condemning it from the public sphere to give a straight answer about it - something that doomed John Kerry’s answer on abortion and what Barak Obama was trying to address. "I don’t believe religion should have any place in politics." If I had a dime for everytime I’ve heard that, I’d be a very rich man.
The suspicion and hate from the Religious Right, I can accept and understand. We are challenging the core beliefs of their faith system. It’s a frightening thing to have to contemplate the possibility of being very wrong about so much that means so much. But that is actually the reason for faith - to look into the abyss of man’s soul and find a redeeming answer.
The suspicion and hate from the left, though, is much harder to take. I understand it as a gutteral reaction against the very public voice of the Christian Right. But I don’t understand the insistance that anyone who believes anything is a priori wrong, misguided, and ignorant. I also understand that their insistence that faith be left out of politics is an inherent statement that they don’t understand what they are talking about.
Politics is nothing more or less than the methods people use to make collective decisions. That’s it. It isn’t holy. It’s simply an agreement within a group to abide by the rules for making group decisions. If you live in a monarchy or dictatorship, then your beliefs are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter to Fidel Castro if the people think he is a good Catholic. In Cuba, truly, your faith has no place in politics.
But what is faith? When put into action, faith is a means of guiding your behavior - including a set of ethical and moral precepts by which you determine your personal course of action. In simplest terms, faith is a means of making decisions. It can’t possibly tell you immediately what the preferable course of action is in many circumstances, but it can help define what the acceptable limits of behavior are.
So are we really to believe that we should take this system for making decisions and avoid using it when we try to make decisions that effect everyone around us? That’s insane!
The problem with faith in the public square isn’t that it shouldn’t be there, the problem is that it isn’t fully represented. But to live in the public square, liberal faith must be able to articulate a meaningful dialogue. It must reach people where they live and breathe and motivate them to work for a better, more just society.
Faith should not dominate the public square, but it must have a place there. To fight that is to embrace defeat. This does not mean that faith should have an elevated position in the public square. No, it must join the battle of ideas and be met on its merits. It must carve out a sphere where it can show itself plainly.
This is why I called for - and reached out for the help of good people to produce - the Progressive Faith BlogCon. Starting tomorrow night, we will look into each other’s face and find, not ecumenicism, but plurality. We do not seek to hide our differences for the sake of our similarities, but to celebrate our similarities for the sake of preserving our differences.
Untested faith is not faith, it is hope. A faith unwilling to encounter ideas that do not mesh with it fully is not the bright candle to guide mankind, but the fearful candle that is hidden under a bushel. Similarly, a plurality that is unwilling to allow all people to speak freely of their beliefs and actions is not a plurality, it is a dictatorship.
