Loyalty, Fantasy, and the Polity
>> 02 May, 2008
In his book Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett explains (by way of Dwight Eisenhower and General Motors) why religious skeptics like myself are forever frustrated by American elections - more so, that is, than your average voter.
By the same token, we are right to question the relationship between Barack Obama and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright - or between any other candidate and their religious order, for that matter. In a difficult time, when interests collide, to what ideas and to which individuals will they be loyal? Those of us who put our first allegiance with secular systems of democracy recognize the wisdom of freedom of religion, and I for one defend it even when it interferes with my own personal worldview, but candidates who claim to be religious make me question where their true loyalty lies.
Loyalty, however, is but one part of this question, especially where it concerns religion. Gullibility - of the media, of the voters, and of the candidates themselves - deserves equal discussion. American presidential candidates have, over the past thirty years, been compelled more and more to take an unofficial religious test as part of the price of running for office. Unfortunately, the superficiality of religion as a political issue not only degrades discussion of spiritual matters, it also insults the intelligence of both candidate and voter.
How is it, for example, that Reverend Wright is deemed paranoid for saying that the American government created AIDS to kill black people, but not for preaching that God helped Moses part and then close the Red Sea to kill an army of Egyptians? Each in its fantasy suggests great spite but only one, the latter, is acceptably discussed by a candidate's pastor. Both are fiction, but at least one - the AIDS tale, with a tenuous precedent at Tuskegee, as noted by Wright - holds a promise, however slight, of plausibility.
In any presidential election, Americans are charged with choosing the most powerful leader on the planet, an individual entrusted with the world's largest economy and a nuclear arsenal capable of obliterating life on earth several times over. And, as such, if we learned tomorrow that John McCain was a wiccan or that Hillary Clinton was a scientologist, we'd rightfully disqualify their candidacies in our minds immediately. No one, we'd say collectively, who subscribes to such self-evident balderdash should be allowed within ten miles of The Button.
Why, then, should we hold Christianity to a different standard? Why are the utterances of Obama's pastor any more absurd than those heard and believed by millions of parishioners - many of them our elected leaders - every week? You know, the stories in which God helps Joshua topple the walls of Jericho, or in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead or...well, most anything beyond "love thy neighbor" and "thou shalt not kill."
Why wouldn't we want as president a person capable of admitting to a healthy agnosticism on spiritual matters?
"I don't know if there's a god," this candidate would say, "but if there is, I don't pretend that he talks to me or that I have a personal relationship with him."
All else being equal, a person capable of such honesty - both intellectually and politically - is someone I might trust with The Button.
_________________
Notes
1 Image by Doug Westbrook
Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower nominated Charles E. Wilson, then president of General Motors, as his secretary of defense. At the nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wilson was asked to sell his shares in General Motors, but he objected. When asked if his continued stake in General Motors mightn't unduly sway his judgment, he replied, "For years, I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." Some in the press, unsatisfied with this response, stressed only the second half of his response - "What's good for General Motors is good for the country" - and in response to the ensuing furor, Wilson was forced to sell his stock in order to win the nomination. This was a fine object lesson on the importance of being clear about priorities. Even if it were true, other things being equal, that what was good for General Motors was good for the country, people wanted to be clear about where Wilson's loyalties would lie in the rare event that there was a conflict. Whose benefit would Wilson further in those circumstances? That is what had people upset, and rightly so. They wanted the actual decision-making by the secretary of defense to be directly responsive to the national interest. If decisions reached under those benign circumstances benefited General Motors (and presumably most of them would, if Wilson's long-held homily is true), that would be just fine, but people were afraid that Wilson had his priorities backward. Imagine the furor that would have been provoked had Wilson said that for years, as a good Methodist, he had believed that what was good for the Methodist Church was good for the country. (362)
By the same token, we are right to question the relationship between Barack Obama and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright - or between any other candidate and their religious order, for that matter. In a difficult time, when interests collide, to what ideas and to which individuals will they be loyal? Those of us who put our first allegiance with secular systems of democracy recognize the wisdom of freedom of religion, and I for one defend it even when it interferes with my own personal worldview, but candidates who claim to be religious make me question where their true loyalty lies.
Loyalty, however, is but one part of this question, especially where it concerns religion. Gullibility - of the media, of the voters, and of the candidates themselves - deserves equal discussion. American presidential candidates have, over the past thirty years, been compelled more and more to take an unofficial religious test as part of the price of running for office. Unfortunately, the superficiality of religion as a political issue not only degrades discussion of spiritual matters, it also insults the intelligence of both candidate and voter.
How is it, for example, that Reverend Wright is deemed paranoid for saying that the American government created AIDS to kill black people, but not for preaching that God helped Moses part and then close the Red Sea to kill an army of Egyptians? Each in its fantasy suggests great spite but only one, the latter, is acceptably discussed by a candidate's pastor. Both are fiction, but at least one - the AIDS tale, with a tenuous precedent at Tuskegee, as noted by Wright - holds a promise, however slight, of plausibility.
In any presidential election, Americans are charged with choosing the most powerful leader on the planet, an individual entrusted with the world's largest economy and a nuclear arsenal capable of obliterating life on earth several times over. And, as such, if we learned tomorrow that John McCain was a wiccan or that Hillary Clinton was a scientologist, we'd rightfully disqualify their candidacies in our minds immediately. No one, we'd say collectively, who subscribes to such self-evident balderdash should be allowed within ten miles of The Button.
Why, then, should we hold Christianity to a different standard? Why are the utterances of Obama's pastor any more absurd than those heard and believed by millions of parishioners - many of them our elected leaders - every week? You know, the stories in which God helps Joshua topple the walls of Jericho, or in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead or...well, most anything beyond "love thy neighbor" and "thou shalt not kill."
Why wouldn't we want as president a person capable of admitting to a healthy agnosticism on spiritual matters?
"I don't know if there's a god," this candidate would say, "but if there is, I don't pretend that he talks to me or that I have a personal relationship with him."
All else being equal, a person capable of such honesty - both intellectually and politically - is someone I might trust with The Button.
_________________
Notes
1 Image by Doug Westbrook
9 comments:
If you're not careful the invisible man in the sky is going to do something terrible to you.
Don't be surprised, then, if I end up dead from a bolt of lightning...or anything else. You'll know who did it.
If that invisible man does that, I'll kick his invisible ass for you.
Speaking as a nominal Buddhist (which is really more of an guide to life than a religion since it has no diety), I share your view that religion is just another source of beliefs and values and does not belong on a higher plane from secular sources like the social and hard sciences.
However, I believe your comparisons of Reverend Wright's views on the Tuskegee experiment and Moses parting the Red Sea are irrelevant to the context of the modern US. The first, though more plausible, influences how African-Americans view their government, the medical establishment, and whites in general. The second has no impact on race relations, the health care gap, or any other aspect of American life.
I'm less concerned about Christians thinking Moses parted the Red Sea and more worried about my gay friends who cannot marry because Christians selectively quote from the Old Testament, whose compact was superceded by the new covenant with Jesus. Interesting how Christians ignore the prohibitions against eating pork and working on the Sabbath yet use Old Testament passages to denounce homosexuality.
Sonagi
Sonagi...
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
I'd be more inclined to examine the social and political influence of Wrights comments if he were merely another political consultant working for Obama. As it is, most discussion of Wright bottom-lines at "This pastor says crazy things," as though the standard preachings of a "normal" pastor should be considered perfectly logical and benign.
I agree that parts of Wright's worldview (i.e. governmental spreading of AIDS) are shared by many African-Americans and, as such, can't be dismissed as raw paranoia, however demonstrably false they may be. What irks me is the notion that Wright's words somehow represent a unique moment of illogical dottiness from the pulpit.
I can't help but wonder why we even expect sound reasoning and moral consistency - to which you alluded in your comment - from churches.
Checks and balances wi\ould surely keep a wiccan or scientologist from doing too much damage....you could put a trained monkey as the leader of your country and it wouldn't make much of a difference as you can plainly see from the past 8 years...
But, of course. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
You know I too would love for a politician to simply come out and say, you know what I honestly dont know if there is a God or not. But I will certainly now pretend to know I do, or pretend to talk to him or have a personal relationship with God.
However I cant help but think that most americans will be turned off to this not because of their own personal believes, but simply because they will be taken out of their comfort level.
See I believe with most American Christians, its no longer about true believe, this is why they pick and choose from the bible what they want. With most its simply about accepting familiarity, and keeping it that way, no matter how outrages it is.
You write very well.
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