[2-9-01]

Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Jewish equivalent of a born-again politician, notoriously said that the Constitution guarantees "freedom of religion, not freedom from religion."

Even President George W. Bush knows better than that; he has declared his "commitment to pluralism--not discriminating for or against Methodists or Mormons or Muslims, or good people of no faith at all." (How consistently that principle will be applied by his Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives remains to be seen.)

That brings me to an important article that is definitely worth reading--"Freedom From Religion: What's At Stake in Faith-Based Politics," by Ellen Willis, a professor of journalism at New York University. (It's in The Nation, February 19, 2001.  You can hear an interview with Ellen Willis, about her article, on The Nation's web site.)

Willis takes note of the widespread rhetoric that religious organizations are "victims of a biased and rigid secularism"; the pro-voucher argument that "nit-picking about church and state should not stand in the way of educational opportunities for poor black and Latino kids"; and the claim that opposition to the sexual politics of conservative churches is "tantamount to discrimination." Obviously she knows her way around, and she has pondered the arguments of Richard John Neuhaus and Stephen Carter that "a public role for religion is essential to American democracy."

That's when she gets mad at the way Neuhaus excuses the Christian Right as "an inevitable reaction to the relentlessly antireligious program of the secular elite," and at the way Carter accuses secularists of "trivializing" people's religious convictions "by treating them as a matter of choice rather than an absolute commitment."

"[I]n demanding that state and society defer to the absolutism of religious devotion," she says, "Carter gives the game away," exposing nothing less than a potential tension between religion and democracy, more precisely, between the power of religious conviction and a decent respect for the rights of dissenters and minorities. The problem, she says, "is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist."

That's an important conceptual clarification, exposing a widespread conceptual confusion or sleight-of-hand. It's one thing for religious people to defend their rights; it's quite another thing for them to demand "exemption from challenge to, or even criticism of, their claim to a privileged role in shaping social values."

Now for another clarification. We have all heard (and probably have all uttered) the argument that the absence of religion creates a "vacuum" into which rush "the nightmarish inversions and perversions of morality that characterized the totalitarian secularisms of recent history."

That argument assumes, without logical, historical, or psychological grounding, that morality depends upon religion. Anyone who has taken Ethics 101 in college or seminary knows better than that--and knows, in addition, that a typical strategy of conservative politicians has been to encourage religion as an instrument of social stability and even control.

Willis says provocatively, "it's as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law." Why? "When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral."

Think about it. Engage in examination of conscience. And listen for the subtle temptations lurking in the political rhetoric we hear all around us.

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