I wrote this about a month ago and shopped it around, but I haven’t heard anything back yet. So I publish it here.
“Don’t panic.”
That’s the first action that the Democrats need to take, in light of
the election returns. Then they need to get to the business of
addressing the role that religion plays in public life in our society,
as many Democrats have for many years been uncomfortable talking about
religion in public.
Public professions of religion serve as one sort of shorthand, a signal
for the star of values that guides a candidate through the night of
policy. Voters are wise enough to know that they will not care
about the arcana of legislation and regulation. They prefer to leave
decision-making to their politicians, as long as the shortcuts that
tell voters how a candidate might make a decision reassure them that he
shares the ways they might make similar decisions.
Eighty-four percent of Americans attend a religious service with some
regularity. And yet, very few religious believers seem to exist
publicly on the higher levels of the Democratic Party (with notable
exceptions like Mike McCurry).
If the Democrats want to connect on religion, what should they
do? From a former Christian evangelical turned Anglican and
Harvard academic, here’s my few cents.
1. Don’t use religion, be religion – I grew up as an evangelical
Christian in a conservative part of California. Although no
longer an evangelical, I still know the language, and I can hear it in
virtually every speech that George W. Bush gives. And it
resonates with a number of Christians in this country because it tells
them that he’s committed. In their understanding, to use the
language of life-conversion indicates a wholesale change of heart, of
life, of love. Anyone who would reveal such an inner personal
transformation in public demonstrates the life-altering effect of that
change, proving that his religion resonates deep down within him.
Faith has and does play a role in American public life, and many
Democrats need to get used to and accept that fact. The Democrats
need to begin becoming comfortable talking about the role that faith
plays in their own lives. Even if they don’t speak an evangelical
language, they need not be shy using the language of their faith,
whatever that may be.
Using religion will have the opposite effect that the Democrats want
right now; being religious will make all the difference.
Religious Democrats must get used to speaking openly and honestly about
how their faith informs the choices they make. They must call out
hypocritical uses of religion for political gain, whether by
Republicans or Democrats. And they must explain how the historic
faiths they hold value openness, honesty, charity, and mercy.
2. Social values versus personal values – If you actually read the
Hebrew Bible, the Qu’ran, and the Christian Scriptures, you note that
God spends lots of time lecturing his people on the care of the
lowliest people. God lays down rules for the Hebrew nation how to
treat the poor, slaves, and all sorts of vulnerable people. When
God gets angry in the Hebrew Bible, it’s often because his people have
abused the poor and lowly. Mary, pregnant with Jesus, sings of how God
will “cast down the mighty from their seat and exalt the humble and
meek.” Jesus promises in the gospels again and again to upset the
social order and take care of those who are forgotten.
These are all the values and morals of a society, and historic Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam have focused the vast majority of their
attention on these matters. Yes, personal morals are of concern
to each of these religions. But the greater concern of these
great religions (and to some extent in all the world religions) has
been for how a society treats its weakest and meekest. Not only
do these have a basis of appeal to religious believers, but also they
can help appeal to non-believers in a language of political ethics.
Religious Democrats (and there are a number of us) know that our
opposition to this war draws heavily on the moral teaching of our
faith. We believe that we proclaim our moral values most loudly
when we take care of the poor. We believe that God made a world,
and to treat that world badly, to harm that creation demonstrates a
lack of love and gratefulness to that God and ourselves. We believe
that our Creator has made us all good, unique, and equally valued,
which is why we believe that we must minimize the effects of inequality
and discrimination on racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious
minorities. Even when we act in ways that seem to discriminate
against some of the religious (opposing prayer in schools, for
example), we do this at least partially out of our religious concern
for the inherent dignity of all God’s human children and the different
understanding of God that a different religion teaches – and even
respect for no belief in God.
When Democrats explain that such policies above are traditionally the
highest Christian values, Jewish values, Muslim values, and religious
values, they will present a coherent philosophy that tells the voters
they can trust Democratic politicians to make decisions.
It has become something of a cliché to note that every “progressive”
gain in our nation’s history has had its deep roots in committed people
of deep faith. But it is true that the moral force, patience, and
authority of each have grown out of religious faith. From the
abolition of slavery to the expansion of protections for laborers to
the civil rights movement, faith has played a fundamental role.
Yes, religious impulse has also lain at the root of retrograde ideas,
but change for the better has almost never come without faith and
religion.
And frankly, the country would be better off if Republicans understood this whole message, too.
3. Faith does not equal idiocy – Even though I no longer identify as an
evangelical, I would still say I am an orthodox Christian, even if one
of the “liberal” variety. With a foot in two vastly different
parts of the American religious experience, I understand why
evangelicals think as they do, even when I think they are wrong. But I
try to remember they are not stupid or evil.
Many times, evangelical claims that society at large denigrates faith
or engages in “Christian-bashing” are overblown. But they are
also right on some level. For example, I was eating lunch with an
agnostic friend recently. Frustrated with some of the religious
fundamentalisms on display in the recent election, he blurted out, “For
heaven’s sake, more people in this country believe in the Virgin birth
than in evolution.” I had to remind him that I believe in both of
these, just as I believe in gay marriage and the bodily
Resurrection. On more than one occasion, my friends have failed
to understand how someone like me can believe something like “that.”
Such pairings need not be contradictions.
Without conducting a course in apologetics, suffice it to say that
those of us who have a faith do not have lesser rational or moral
reasoning faculties. We are not idiots, and we do not respond
well to being told we are. The base of the Democratic Party often
forgets this. In academic circles, among progressive activists,
on the pages of center-left and left publications, religion comes
across as a phenomenon of those with fewer brain cells than the
speaker. In these fora, it often proves easier to come out as a
gay or lesbian person than as a religious believer. In the days
after the election, for example, a new map of the U.S. circulated the
Internet, claiming the blue states as the “United States of Canada” and
the red states as “Jesusland.” To do this, the “progressive”
creators of the map had to engage in the same demagoguery and
small-mindedness as purportedly inheres in the people residing in
Jesusland.
If Democrats are to convince middle America (geographic and
socio-economic) that they are not immoral, many “progressive” Democrats
must stop regarding middle America as stupid and hateful.
Religion does not equal stupidity, just as progressivism does not
equate with intelligence.
When the dust settles from the election, the Democrats will remember
that they are not after conservatives, that they will have to put more
effort into getting out their voters, and that pocketbook issues do
constitute a substantial part of the party’s appeal. But mere
materialism will not inspire voters to support Democrats. After
an election where so much of the national “discussion” seemed to be
about fear, voters want to reward those leaders who can inspire them.
Religion will not provide a panacea. As the prophet Micah noted,
we have to take action ourselves “to do justly and to love
mercy.” In a time of broken politics, ideas, and people, religion
can provide a meeting place to come together across all sorts of lines,
to unite and not divide, to provide one of the bases for new hope in
our grand democratic experiment.
