Religion and Politics II

I've been arguing for some time now that it's clarifying to think of the cultural sphere as separate from the political sphere.  There is obviously  overlap, but I think a lot of our current confusion and poor judgment in the political sphere lies in incorrectly understanding what politics is really about and what culture is really about. So I'll briefly rehearse here what I've said about it in previous posts.

Culture is the realm of freedom and values, and politics is the realm of power where competing interests resolve conflicts and promote projects that benefit the commonweal.  In the cultural sphere of pluralistic societies, as all modern and postmodern societies have become and will remain into the indefinite future, freedom is the central value.  People should be allowed to freely associate and live according to any values system they choose, and to engage in the pursuit of happiness in whatever way suits their idea of it. And they should expect no interference from the government so long as they don't encroach on the rights of others.  That's what it means to  live in a free society and it's at the heart of what it means to live as an American.

This sense of being an American, however, doesn't sit well with those on the cultural right, which wants to define themselves as  the only true Americans, and everyone who doesn't fit into their traditionalist template as un-American. And the Dominion Christianist wing of the cultural right wants to run the country as a theocracy.  This isn't even a traditional American idea--it's pre-American; it's medieval. And yet we find people like Monica Goodling was trained at Pat Robertson's Regents University law school, and according to the school's webpage, 150 other Regents graduates are currently serving in the Bush Administration. I'm sure most of them are very nice people in the same way most ordinary people who become involved in cults like the Unification Church are nice people.  It's not they as individuals that concern me, but their role in promoting an ideology that is designed to set up the American political system on a fundamentalist biblical basis rather than constitutional basis.

We live in a free society, and these people are free to believe whatever they want, but when they enter the political sphere, their ideas should be repudiated because they want government to be established on a basis that is undermining of the constitution. The rest of us have to call them out and see clearly that their agenda has no legitimate place in our political discourse.  It's utterly un-American and indefensible as such.

I'm a Christian, and I take my beliefs seriously, but I think every political candidate and appointee in the future needs to be asked whether in the performance of his or her duties in the political sphere, which principles take precedence: biblical or constitutional?  And anything in the background of such a persons which would indicate that biblical principles (or any other religion's principles) would come first, should render them disqualified without a second thought unless they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they have renounced those ideas.  I'd say the same of someone who had earlier publicly advocated violent revolution or was a member of the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazi Party.   Such people have a right to their views in the cultural sphere, but they should  be afforded no respect or credibility in the political sphere.  Their views are inherently inimical to the constitutional rule of law which is the essential basis for the American polity.

So now that I've been clear about how certain attitudes that are permissible in the cultural sphere ought to be disqualified from serious consideration in the political sphere, just how does the cultural sphere interface with the political?  Obviously, the people who operate within the political sphere have values and beliefs that are shaped by their lives in the cultural sphere. For me Martin Luther King's leadership of the civil rights movement is a perfect model.  It was profoundly religious in its inspiration, but it translated itself into rights language when interfacing with the political sphere.  MLK used religious language when talking to members of the desegregation movement, but secularese or rights language when talking to officeholders in the political sphere.

Politicians with religious beliefs who are elected to office are, we would hope, inspired by and shaped by those beliefs, and their performance in office would of course be affected by those beliefs and ideals.  But as officeholders their first responsibility is to the constitution, and if there was a conflict between their constitutional duty and their religious beliefs, it might be necessary for them to resign or to recuse themselves.  But never should their religious beliefs undermine the constitutional rule of law. 

Politicians have a responsibility to be who they are, i.e., the kind of persons shaped by their values and beliefs in the cultural sphere,  and yet they have a responsibility to represent the pluralism of worldviews and value systems of their constituency. For this reason politicians, whatever their cultural background, should be evaluated solely on their political program and their political track record. Good politicians are genuinely interested and respectful of cultural values that differ from their own. And their job as their representatives in the political sphere should be to translate the legitimate political concerns of their constituents into language and programs appropriate within the political sphere.

But politicians have no responsibility to engage in arguments with opponents in language other than that appropriate to the political sphere. An argument about one's beliefs in evolution or God as criteria for election should be dismissed as irrelevant without hesitation. But his beliefs or values concerning the death penalty or abortion, for instance, should be a matter for political discussion because one's cultural values shape one's political positions in areas that might be legislated in ways that affect the rights of the parties affected.

It should be clear that I think that religious people have every right to bring their concerns into the political sphere, but they have to translate their concerns into secularese. And if they don't translate, then I can't think of an instance in which it would be appropriate for political discussion. If there are readers who can think of and exception, let me know. There might be something I'm not considering.  But from where I stand, nothing could be clearer or more necessary than this separation of the cultural from the political.  If there are problems with such a separation, they are minor compared to the problems that arise when they are not separated.

But I'm open to criticism.  I know lots of people have a hard time with this conceptually.  So take your shots.

See also "Religion and Politics I" , "The Radically Centrist Narrative," and "Controlling the Narrative."

Comments

[Matthew]

I'm curious how you draw the line on what politicians should discuss and what they shouldn't.

For example, you mention that a politician shouldn't be required to talk about evolution but should talk about abortion (because abortion "might be legislated"). Isn't the evolution/intelligent design business just as legislatable as abortion?

I can see how a politician shouldn't be required to give his religious credentials ... there's a fairly clear justification for that in the first amendment. But I'm not sure how you think politicians should determine which topics are relevant to the political sphere and which aren't.

[Mike McG...]

Jack:
Quick couple of comments:
1. I very much like this idea of legitimating the entry of religiously informed views as long as they are 'translated' into the secular lingua franca. Methinks this would be good for all parties.
2. Apropos of your second paragraph, I wonder if it would be possible to arrive at any consensus of the boundary between 'outrageous' behavior that should nevertheless be regarded as permissable and behavior so transgressive that it interferes with the rights of others. This distinction has appeal in the abstract, but what about the imposition of cultural norms that have very broad acceptance. How would you handle public nudity on Main Street, hard core porn on commercial TV, billboards displaying acts of cruelty? What about the very contentious issue of hurtful speech? I guess wonder what we might devolve into if the law were prevented from reinforcing even the most elemental norms that are nevertheless culturally grounded.

[Jack Whelan]

Matthew--

The principle at stake here for me is that discourse in pluralistic fora must be as culture neutral as possible. This insures that people shaped by different cultural backgrounds find a common language when entering the political sphere, or any sphere where a pluralism of different cultural attitudes needs to be respected.

My point is to establish basic parameters within which sane political discourse can sanely proceed. In fact, there's a lot of discourse in the political sphere that I would rule out as inappropriate, and the discussion of intelligent design is one of them.

The issue of intelligent design is really about the state's role in shaping school curricula. According to the principle of subsidiarity, school curricula are subjects to be debated and developed primarily by local people in the cultural sphere. And generally that's how it works. There's a political dimension to this insofar as funding and standards are a part of the mix, but schools are primarily cultural institutions, and legislatures should have no business being involved in curriculum development.

Now public schools are a kind of special zone within the cultural sphere that should operate according to the pluralist principle. This requires that discourse should be as culture-neutral in the public schools as they are in the legislatures. That doesn't mean that different religions and philosophies should never be a subject for study, but that none is given preferential treatment.

So if I was at a local school board meeting discussing whether intelligent design should be part of the public school curriculum, I would argue that it is not a culture-neutral idea, but that it could be taught in high school as part of a philosophy or theory of knowledge class along side other non-culture-neutral theories, like materialism, transcendentalism, or positivism.

So it follows that my criteria for electing a candidate for the school board would be immediately to exclude from consideration any candidate who did not respect this culture-neutral principle in curriculum design. Any candidate who presented himself as one who would promote or give preferential treatment to a non-culture-neutral set of ideas should be rejected without hesitation.

So in the same way that it should be irrelevant whether somebody is Catholic or atheist when considering his candidacy for political office, it doesn't matter whether someone is for or against intelligent design. What matters is whether or not he respects the pluralist principle.

[Jack Whelan]

Mike--

I think that communnities legitimately make decisions in the political sphere that are built on a consensus regarding what the majority deems in the interest of the common good. Schools are cultural institutions, and most communities impose taxes on property owners whether they have children in the school district or not. Some people argue that they should not be taxed for services that they don't use. The same could be said of roads and the police, social security and other entitlement programs. I'd argue that the same could be said about issues like public nudity.

The point is that people come together all the time in legislatures at different levels to make decisions about what promotes the commonweal, bit the key is that the arguments they make for one policy or another, although they may be inspired by relgious values, need to be argued in secularese in the political sphere or any cultural sphere for that matter where a pluralism of values is coming together to make decisions regarding the commonweal.

You don't make the argument that the city needs to build a homeless shelter because Jesus commands you to. You make other arguments that appeal the common humanity of everyone in the community.

So I would say that the arguments made in the political sphere are not only about rights but also about the common good, and by that logic, if a community consensus is developed in a discussion conducted in secularese, I think that would legitimate laws prohibiting certain offensive behaviors.

I would add that this discussion to arrive at consensus should be as local as possible. If, for instance, there is a community somewhere in which public nudity is ok with the the majority, it shouldn't be prohibited by some higher level of government unless a case can be made that public nudity is linked to abusive behaviors and transgressing other's rights.