You are a hero of mine, and I have great hopes for your future in American politics. I know the
speech you made yesterday about religion was intended to generate positive discussion and make people of faith feel more welcome in progressive politics. Those are both good things.
But I was really troubled by your suggestion that democrats are wrong to question the role of religion in the public square. You are right that many democrats are uncomfortable with mixing religion and politics. But that's not because they are intolerant or hostile to religion. It's because injecting religion in politics has a great potential for causing harm, fueling divisions and reducing the quality of democratic life and discourse. That makes many people, including many people of faith, uncomfortable. If you want to discuss the future of religion in the public square you have to be willing to discuss the dangers of mixing politics and religion. Otherwise, this issue will only divide us.
The struggle of faith and politics is very real and very personal for me.
When I was in my early thirties, I had a religious awaking. It transformed me -- it would fair to say on a certain level I was born again. At the time I was a member of wonderful liberal Christian church (Presbyterian and Disciples of Christ combined). I considered myself a Christian, though I would not have met some people's definition of the term. To me, Christianity was the window through which I experienced a broader faith, accessible to all.
My religious awakening allowed me to see that my purpose in the world was serving others. There is a wonderful quote from Thomas Merton which became my creed. I still carry around with me:
We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly. . . . What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean, first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what enables us to give to others.
Armed with this conviction I set out into the world to serve others. As the single mom with a toddler working full time as an attorney, I was pretty overextended. But the energy and the resources came to me, in a way that almost felt like provenance. I won't bore you with my do-gooder stories. But I did good, and what was really satisfying is that I motivated others to do good, in a way that transformed them too.
And then I found myself in the political arena. I joined a faith-based community action group, organized using the principles and techniques of the wonderful Chicago activist Saul Alinsky. Many members came from Catholic and Methodist churches in low income and immigrant communities. We also counted a Buddhist temple and a small synagogue among our members. The diverse group was organized to tackle issues about which we could all agree: Helping the poor and elderly, working on crime and public safety. I was the head of the "jobs" committee: my main issue was working on instituting a living wage in our community.
My group's living wage campaign took us the political arena, and allowed me to witness first-hand the power of faith-based politics. Four or five us would schedule a meeting with a state law maker. We claimed our group represented many thousands of members, the total members of all the churches which were a part of the organization. We would sit down with the law maker, then say "we'd like to start the meeting with a prayer." This always had a powerful effect on the lawmaker. Usually, it took them off their game, and put us rather than them in control of the meeting. They would treat us with a certain awe and respect, like we were dealing in powerful forces beyond their control. These were liberal lawmakers in a liberal state. Even there, the impact of injecting religion into politics was powerful and palpable.
Because I was someone who was burning with a desire to serve that was grounded in religious faith, and someone who thought religion could be a force of good in politics, I could not accept the argument that religious faith had no place in the political arena. Of course it had a place! It was the entire reason why I was there!
Those were simpler times. Now it's eight years later, and we have seen the way that religious fervor has been misused and co-opted in the political sphere. Big Box Pastors claim the ability to deliver votes like old time precinct captains or Tribal leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan. Politicians hungry for those votes give cash to religious organizations or pander to their pet causes, like traditional marriage or Terry Schiavo. We seem close to allowing the religious edicts of the majority control the conduct of persons who do not share their beliefs. Our lawmakers seem close to imposing their own sort of Sharia law, in order to gain favor with the religious electorate. It never was supposed to be like this.
I really struggle to come up with some principled way to allow religious faith a place in the political discourse without risking a slide toward theocracy. I would like for reasonable people to be able to come to a consensus about how far is too far when it comes to mixing religion and politics. I think it is something we have to do to save our first amendment and our country.
Senator, I don't think we should or could drive religion from politics. It's important to acknowledge religion's place, as you did yesterday. But it is also important to acknowledge that there have to be limits, and that it is reasonable to have fears and doubts about mixing religion and politics. I hope you will help to initiate that conversation too.