It's Sunday (at least where I am), and I feel in the mood for giving a sermon (which is kinda funny coming from me.) My subject today is religious fanaticism, its danger to liberal democracy and how this ties in to why George W. Bush can't successfully prosecute the so-called war on terrorism because of his ideology, and perhaps more importantly, his supporters' ideology.
The founders of the American republic for the most part weren't Christians in the conventional sense. May were deists - believers in a God who had made the universe and departed - others were Quakers and some were outright atheists...a more acceptable position in the 18th century than it is in ours. Even those who were more observant almost all shares a conviction in the necessity for a secular state. Historians often present this as a result of the desire to protect various the Church from the state in a nation that didn't share a consensus on religion and where setting up a state church would have been divisive - and by knowledge of the bloody and extremely lengthy wars of religion in Europe in the 17th century. But there's more to it than that.
The founders were aware that in a theocracy - and in many pre-modern European state -- the formal observance of religion trumps competence in governance. Never mind that the king was incompetent and a bastard - he went to church every Sunday and was very devout, so he must be a good king. We see echoes of this today. Many of Bush's supporters are willing to overlook his incompetence, his mean-spiritedness, the fact he's an abysmal failure, all because he's a good Christian. Read some of the letters right-wingers circulate among themselves about what a wonderful and devout man he is. This is apparently enough justification for many people for Bush remaining in office, and proof for many that he's doing a good job, or at least a Godly job.
Not only does formal observance of religion trump competence for many of Bush's supporters, many of them also don't care about good governance, or even keeping us all from being blown up. They WANT the end of days. (Frankly, many elements of eschatological thinking strike me as morally dubious...we're supposed to fuck up really badly, rather than run the shop competently in God's absence, and as a reward for fucking up we get bailed out and given paradise? Frankly, isn't the old guy more like to fire the species in the event of such a big disaster, rather than reward us?) So why bother maintaining the environment, or keeping a budget that's sustainable in the long-run, if all the people who really matter are going to be taken up to heaven in a few years anyway. It makes rational policy making unnecessary.
I don't want to seem anti-Protestant here. And the great thing about the modern world is that you've got idiotic fanatics of all denominations now. You've got your Catholic fanatics for whom the Pope isn't Catholic enough (insert name of Hollywood celebrity here) You've got Islamic extremists who think it's all right to murder non-Muslims civilians in support of the aim of creating a global caliphate (and what a FUN world that would be to live in). You've got your Jewish fanatics who think that God gave them all the land in the historical Israel stretching to the Jordan river and Damascus and the right to demolish the Muslim shrines and build a third temple and re-establish a bronze-age theocracy, which as we all know is the PERFECT form of government - never mind the unending rage of a billion Muslims and the destruction of two truly lovely 10th century buildings (the Dome of the Rock and El Aqsa mosque). You've even got your Hindu fanatics, a nifty trick to pull off in a polytheistic religion where it's almost impossible to establish orthodoxy. I was going to say the Buddhists are immune, but in Sri Lanka's elections yesterday, a party comprised of Buddhist monks ran in opposition to giving too many concessions to the Tamils, who are many Hindus.
One of the big problems with theocracy - and one of the things that made it target of the
Enlightenment philosophes who inspired the American revolution - is that it turns political disputes into religious disputes, and religious disputes are much more like to lead to war. How can you comprise when God is on your side? You're right - the other side is wrong and ungodly. You can't comprise because this means not fulfilling God's plan. Better to martyr yourself in an unending conflict. You're definitely going to heaven. While the Settlers' Council and Hamas seem diametrically opposed, they are in fact a matched pair. Hard to hold talks or cut a deal with someone when God has ordered you to cut his throat. It also makes democracy unnecessary, or even wrong - if God wants something in particular in the way of politics and governance, why argue, discuss and consult other people. Just let your rabbi/priest/imam/godman interpret the divine will for you.
I'd like to insert an odd religious note here. Religious fanaticism of all stripes strikes me as blasphemous. Whether God spoke to humans in ages past, s/he doesn't do so now, and assuming that you have the correct revelation of his or her wishes from a previous age when others insist on exclusive revelation too strikes me as putting oneself at odds with the current dispensation. God, if s/he exists, obviously wants his or her will to be unclear, wants us to doubt. It's uncertainty about the divine will that makes tolerance and coexistence possible. Believe if you must, but also doubt. Certainty is the enemy of liberalism, enlightenment and democracy, which all rely on doubt, reason, discussion and compromise. And by liberalism here I mean the kind that inspired the U.S. constitution.
The problem is that Bush is beholden to a group of fanatics - the Christian right, which is in turn tied to the Jewish fanatics who are building settlements on the West Bank. This tie I think makes it impossible for him to follow the Germans and condemn the ``Islamo-fascism'' that's inspiring many of the people who've committed terrorist attacks on the west. Instead he talks about a ``war on terrorism,'' which is a method rather than an ideology (the mainly Hindu Tamil tigers were at one point the world's most prolific suicide bombers). Attacking politicized religion isn't possible who owes his position in office mainly to a politicized religious group.
In a rapidly changing world, people like the certainty of fundamentalist religion, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, whatever. They want a simple set of answers from which to draw salvation, never mind the complexities of the real world. They want the bible to be literally true, not a metaphor, never mind the evidence of archaeology and other sciences. They want simple moral answers and a sense of community in a complex, fragmenting world. I was going to add a rather complex and lengthy explanation as to why this has happened, but I'll refrain.
So, what is to be done? I don't think a general push for atheism is the answer. Religion is important for many people and has inspired much political good in the world. Nineteenth century populism and the U.S. civil rights movement were both heavily tied to religion. Non-fanatical religion can make people MORE tolerant, MORE willing to compromise, MORE peaceable, MORE loving and accepting of each other.
I think the answer probably is for the secular left to reestablish ties to the religious left (it still exists) and to the mainstream Protestant denominations that, truth be told, are the origins of the democratic left in the English-speaking world. (I'm reminded about Clement Atlee's line about the British Labour Party owing more to Methodism than to Marx and the fact that the founder of Canada's New Democratic party having started his professional life as a Baptist preacher. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher with a PhD in theology).
As well, we liberals - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and of other faiths and none -- must reestablish our sense of agency, our sense of aim and purpose. We can't lead while we're always on the defensive, as we have been in the developed world since Thatcher (and Reagan). We need aims other than the protection of gains made during the New Deal and 1960s. We need to look forward, give people a sense that the future can be better than the past. And we need to be both programmatic and inspirational about it in order to reestablish the progressive sense of politics and government as moral enterprises and the idea that nations, states and cities can be true communities. Liberalism can, has and must once again and must fulfill some of the needs of faith in the modern world, or abdicate these responsibilities to people who would destroy our democracy and our commonwealth and through us into wars of faith which will be almost impossible to end. The fate of the world may depend on it. Please excuse my portentousness.