I have struggled tremendously over the last 8 years to understand my friends and co-workers who find solace in republican leaders. It was clear to me that what they heard when Bush spoke was wildly different that what I heard. I didn't want to have a beer with Bush, I wanted to grab him and shake him and beg him to realize that this was really happening and he really was in charge of the US and using the term crusades was a really bad idea.
My friend found this article that at least causes me to breathe a bit.
There is a lot in the article but I think there are some key sections that are really helpful for those of us that are trying to influence our republican friends.
Religion and political leadership are so intertwined across eras and cultures because they are about the same thing: performing the miracle of converting unrelated individuals into a group. Durkheim long ago said that God is really society projected up into the heavens, a collective delusion that enables collectives to exist, suppress selfishness, and endure. The three Durkheimian foundations (ingroup, authority, and purity) play a crucial role in most religions. When they are banished entirely from political life, what remains is a nation of individuals striving to maximize utility while respecting the rules. What remains is a cold but fair social contract, which can easily degenerate into a nation of shoppers.
The Democrats must find a way to close the sacredness gap that goes beyond occasional and strategic uses of the words "God" and "faith." But if Durkheim is right, then sacredness is really about society and its collective concerns. God is useful but not necessary. The Democrats could close much of the gap if they simply learned to see society not just as a collection of individuals—each with a panoply of rights--but as an entity in itself, an entity that needs some tending and caring. Our national motto is e pluribus unum ("from many, one"). Whenever Democrats support policies that weaken the integrity and identity of the collective (such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, and immigration), they show that they care more about pluribus than unum. They widen the sacredness gap.
I have heard about democrats learning to speak about faith ad nauseum and it grates on me, because I don't want my relationship/beliefs about the cosmo to be relevant to policy decisions, but after reading this article I appreciate why that is a false dichotomy.
I am not sure what the answer is, but I am working on understanding that how we have the conversation matters. So I thought I would put this out there and hope it would help other people on DailyKos