Religion and Politics: A Match Made in ?

by Denise Beck-Clark

The great thing about Blog writing and reading is that they stimulate thought. The Blog written by Jim Aiken relates to something I’ve given a lot of thought to over the years: the relationship between religion and politics, and, specifically, how it impacts on personal relationships.

My late mother, who identified herself as “a Democrat,” was married to a man who believed that Ronald Reagan was too liberal. I would always ask her on the phone, for this was when I was an adult, and didn’t see her much in person, how could she even be in the same house with someone with such views, no less be married to him, my belief being that a person’s character and his/her politics are inseparable. Her answer: We don’t talk about politics. Now I realize that there was another reason that explained the feasibility of their relationship: they weren’t religious. I never realized that before, but I do now. If either one of them had been into God, they couldn’t have stayed together. But just their political beliefs were avoidable.

It often happens that people with certain religious beliefs also have certain political beliefs. But this is not always true: there are many Democrats who have a strong belief in God. What separates them is the desire to impose their beliefs on others. That’s also where religion becomes pernicious. What would it matter if most of the world had strong religious beliefs if they didn’t condemn me for not having them. Religion, when it is done sincerely, can have very positive effects, viz., a Mother Teresa. Unfortunately, so many people get more caught up in imposing their religious beliefs on others than in the beliefs themselves, to the fanatical extreme of incarcerating or killing people who don’t agree with them.

But I digress. Recently, something interesting happened with a colleague at my job. Though she is a strong believer in God, she and I were becoming quite friendly, being aware of and tolerating each other’s differences. Until one day recently the talk turned to politics and she started to rant and rave about “those Democrats.” I said to her, “Betty, I am one of those Democrats.” Since that day our friendship has cooled. It was as if we could tolerate the one major difference, but add to that the political thing and it became too much. Oh, we are still friendly, we still talk and like each other superficially, but we know this friendship can only go so far; ultimately, there’s too much about each of us that the other doesn’t like or approve of.

Is there a conclusion here? Yes, and I think it’s the same one that Jim was given as advice by people who responded to his Blog. Above all, most of the time we do what is practical. It’s practical for Jim to smile at his mother’s neighbors so they will look after her. It’s practical for me to be friendly with my colleague at work. It was practical for my mother to be married to her husband. It’s when people’s actions go beyond the practical and focus more on principle that the stakes get higher. So the real problem is when people act on principle; that’s when relationships, be they of a personal or a societal nature, become strained and people get hurt, individually or en masse.

On the other hand, there’s an argument to be made for acting on principle, but that’s another essay. Read more!

Drugs are bad...m'kay?

I had an unusual interview two weeks ago.

I sleep through most media interviews now, since the questions tend to be the same, and in about the same order: Tell me a little about your book, Why do nonreligious parents need their own separate resource, How do you deal with moral development, How can you help kids deal with death without an afterlife, Isn't it important to believe in something greater than ourselves, Before I know it, I'm being thanked for a fascinating hour I can't quite remember.

It's a bit like teaching. In my last few years as a college professor, I'd hear my brain stem doing the teaching while my neocortex was planning dinner. I'd come back just in time to dismiss. That's when I knew it was time to do something else.

But the interview two weeks back snapped me out of my usual snooze. I was a little wary anyway, as the station runs syndicated neocon culture-warrior nonsense of the Medved/Prager variety most of the day. Even so, I was not prepared for the very first question to come out of the host's mouth:

"Without a higher power," he asked, "how are you going to keep your kids off crystal meth?"

Wha?

Now I can see this kind of thing coming up at some point...but right out of the starting gate? This, of all questions, was knocking on the back of his teeth? When he heard he would be interviewing a nonreligious parent, the first thing that bubbled up was, "B-b-but how's he gonna keep them off meth?"

I answered that instead of a higher power, I encourage my kids to engage these questions with the power of their own reason, the power of their own minds. There are many compelling reasons to stay away from self-destructive things, after all -- including the fact that they are, uh...self-destructive.

He threw it to the other guest, a minister at a private junior high school, who answered confidently that the higher power was the one and only option. Without Jesus, he'd have no way whatsoever to keep his kids from whirling out of control and into the black abyss. Only by staying tightly focused on biblical principles, he said, can kids avoid utter annihilation.

Mmkay.

Ready for the follow-up? Trust me, you're not:

"Now Dr. McGowan," said the host with a chuckle, "I gotta tell you, when you talk about the Power of the Mind, it sounds an awful lot like Scientology to me. Can you tell me what if anything distinguishes your worldview from Scientology?"

What, if anything.

This is what we've come to as a culture. When you advocate teaching kids to reason things out, it sounds to some like the process of auditing past lives to become an Operating Thetan, casting off the evil influence of Xenu (dictator of the Galactic Confederacy) and battling the alien implants from Helatrobus that seek to control our thoughts and actions.

I apologized for being so very unclear, assured him I had intended to evoke nothing alien, supernatural, or magical by encouraging my children to think. I've also never "informed" them, a la Mr. Mackey in South Park, that "drugs are bad, so don't do drugs, or you're bad." That's commandment-style morality, and it's weak as hell. Instead, we've talked about what they stand to lose, what others have lost, how addiction works, and what a fragile and fantastic thing the mind is.

I remember drawing that last connection vividly as a teenager. I knew that my mind was the key to any eventual success I might have, an asset to protect. I didn't want to risk screwing it up for any kind of pleasure or thrill, and drugs were just too unpredictable in their effects. It was a simple risk analysis, clinched by the death of my dad as an indirect consequence of smoking. I got the message: When you put poisonous stuff in your body, you risk too much for too little. And I never touched so much as a cigarette. My kids have received that same message: Grandpa David never got to meet them because he became addicted to poisonous stuff, couldn't stop, and paid with his life.

I came out of my study after the interview and Connor (13) asked how it had gone. "A little weird," I said, "but fine."

"What was weird?"

I looked him in the eye. "Well, his first question was how I'm going to keep you guys off crystal meth without religion."

"Pfft," Connor said. "As if it's an issue."

It was nice to hear his quick, dismissive snort. I know my kids really well, and though anything's possible, I don't see drugs as a serious threat. In addition to reasoning through it, we've talked about craving and addiction -- that your body can be chemically tricked into thinking it needs the drugs, and that this can be hard to reason your way out of once you're in the middle of it. That, plus a number of personal, family, and community assets, kept me from using. And all without a Savior in sight. I figure it has a good chance of working with my kids as well.

I wasn't surprised to learn that both the host and the minister had gone through the requisite "lost years" of sex and drugs, only to be gloriously saved by coming to Christ. It can and surely does work for some. I'd just love to hear someone on that side acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, there are other ways as well -- ways that involve no magic, no demigods, no thetans, no fervent, focused distractions -- just the ability to draw on our own natural resources.


Read more!

An Inconvenient Commandment

by Dale McGowan
Author/editor, Parenting Beyond Belief
_______________________

One of the common worries I hear from religious commentators about nonreligious people is the absence of a solid, reliable, unchanging moral compass. Lacking that...why, folks could make up the rules as they go along.

I've written about this nonsense before ("The red herring of relativism," July 8, 2007), so I won't go too deep into the silly idea that moral relativism follows from the absence of religious guidance. I'm more struck at the moment by just how quickly the "solid, reliable, unchanging moral compass" of religion is cast aside when it's inconvenient.

The Ninth Commandment, for example -- which prohibits lying, or "bearing false witness" -- is taking quite a hit at the moment among the most fervently religious of my fellow Americans as the presidential campaign heads into the final weeks.

Some will note that all politicians lie, as if that makes my outrage moot. Even if that's true, it seems clear to me that they don't do it with equal abandon. Jimmy Carter, who found it difficult to lie, declared the country had fallen into a "malaise" and was booted for his honesty. Ronald Reagan followed up by declaring "Morning in America," then ushered in the most corrupt and scandal-ridden Administration in memory.

Secular, un-compassed me is furious when my own party lies or cynically stretches the truth, which is little different. About a decade ago, the Democrats in my then-home state of Minnesota ran a television ad with a little girl struggling to read a sentence on a blackboard: "Republicans in the state legislature cut 32 million dollars from education funding." A tiny asterisk led to the following at the bottom of the screen:

*(Cuts forced by Governor's memo of 03/08/99.)

It flashed by too fast and small to read, which I'm sure was an oversight.

They were forced to do it by our governor, Jesse Ventura, an Independent. I dashed off an angry note to my state party, which thanked me for (and ignored) my petty plea for integrity.

Barack Obama has offered at least one wincing, bald-faced lie in this campaign when he claimed that his comment

"it’s not surprising then that [some voters] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations"

was really just an acknowledgment that in tough times, people turn to "the things they can count on," traditional values that "endure." Even without the obvious disproof of this (anti-immigrant sentiment is an enduring value?), it was obvious to all but those blinded by bias on the left that he had meant something much less flattering. The original statement, though impolitic, was true; the cover-up was false, and that diminished him in my eyes.

The half-hearted, embarrassed reaction from much of the left at the time shows that liberals tend to wince when their candidates lie so shamefully. At the very least, we tend not to line up behind him or her and repeat the obvious lie.

See where I'm headed, do ya?

How many supporters of Sarah Palin's candidacy are wincing with embarrassment at the astonishing, breathtaking stream of lies (both half and whole) coming from her and her surrogates in the past ten days? The Bridge to Nowhere ("thanks but no thanks") lie is just one of a dozen or more towering fabrications that have again raised serious questions about not just our collective gullibility but also the willingness of the Right to bear false witness whenever it suits the needs of the moment.

There's a term for this -- situational ethics. It also goes by the name of moral relativism. And the fact that it displays itself so dazzlingly in conservative Christian evangelicals -- those whose God devoted fully ten percent of his ethical instruction manual to forbidding it -- should give any sane person pause before yammering on about the rock solid reliability of that unchanging moral compass.

When Charles Gibson asked Sarah Palin about the Bush Doctrine last week, any thinking observer could see that she had no idea what he meant. She paused awkwardly, then asked if he meant "[Bush's] general worldview." To cover themselves and perpetuate the larger lie that Palin is prepared for the national stage, the McCain campaign engineered a whopper: Palin knew the Bush Doctrine so well that she wasn't sure which of its many facets Gibson wanted her to address.

And a shriek of needles on paper was heard across the land, and countless polygraphs now sit sweating in straitjackets, their needles quivering fearfully, humming "Give Me Some Truth" loudly to themselves for fear they will hear the Republicans say...it...again.

When (Roman Catholic) Sean Hannity interviews (Assemblies of God) Sarah Palin this week, there can be little doubt what they will do to their beloved Commandment. He will ask her (no doubt with "respect and deference") about the Bush Doctrine, and she will faithfully parrot the lines she has learned since Thursday about its many, many facets, pretending to have known this all along, locking the inconvenient truth away with a click as decisive as the syllables of "Ahmadinejad" she had so faithfully learned the week before.

And afterward, all talk will be about whether she hit a triple, a home run, or a ground rule double, measured not against a standard of truth, nor what it takes to be Vice-President of the U.S., but against "expectations" and the dial-in-your-vote-for-the-next-American-Idol perceptions of three hundred million marionettes.

Maybe we can't ask for an administration that doesn't lie. I don't know. But is it too much to hope for one that feels some semblance of shame when they do it? Read more!

the mix

by Dale McGowan, author/editor, Parenting Beyond Belief

You've got to be taught, before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
____________________

From the musical South Pacific

Our three summer family reunions were terrific, especially for the kids, who have discovered or re-discovered no fewer than 50 cousins of various degrees of remove. Better yet, these cousins are good kids, enjoyable kids, funny and friendly and loving kids.

And ohhh so very religious. Which is fine, of course.

My wife and I are the dolphins in the tuna nets of our respective families. Most all of the relations on all three sides are not only churchgoing but fish-wearingly, abstinence-swearingly, cross-bearingly so. The fact that most of them are also genuinely delightful to be around -- funny and friendly and loving -- serves as a nice slap on my wrist any time I find myself lumping together all things and people religious.

How can I not love it when my twelve-year-old second cousin, working on a leather bracelet, asks, "Mister Dale, how do you spell 'Colossians'?" (I nailed it.) Or when Becca, watching another young cousin making a wooden picture frame with the letters JIMS across the top, innocently asked, "Is that for sombody named Jim?" only to be told patiently that "it stands for 'Jesus Is My Savior'." It's sweet. It's lovely. Creepy-lovely, perhaps...but that's a kind of lovely, isn't it?

When it comes to assessing the many conservative religious folks in my life, though, there's a complication, one that still makes me dizzy after all these years. It was captured by (of all people) Larry Flynt, who wrote in the LA Times about his unlikely friendship with Jerry Falwell after the televangelist's death last year:

My mother always told me that no matter how repugnant you find a person, when you meet them face to face you will always find something about them to like. The more I got to know Falwell, the more I began to see that his public portrayals were caricatures of himself. There was a dichotomy between the real Falwell and the one he showed the public.

The same weird dichotomy is present in many of the deeply religious folks I know. Many are just plain good in word and deed, and I love having their influence in my kids' lives. But many others, including some I like so much I could burst, will be in the midst of a perfectly normal conversation, then suddenly spew bile or rank ignorance -- often without changing expression -- before turning back to the weather or the casserole.

It's not a case of some believers being lovely and others being nasty. That I could sort out. It's much more confusing. Like Larry said of Jerry, they're often the same people. But in the case of folks I know, it reveals itself in the opposite order of Flynt's description. I liked them from the beginning, then was blindsided by the nastiness.

The conversation at one reunion found its way to gays and lesbians, and a cousin -- one of my favorites, a deeply religious college graduate and the pick of the litter -- suddenly said, "What kills me is when they say [homosexuality] shouldn't be treated. Well if that's the case, why treat schizophrenia? Why treat cancer?"

All heads nodded but mine. I was searching for the perfect line. Finally it came. "And what about the lefthanders?" I said. "And those got-dam redheads, roaming the streets untreated!"

They laughed, not quite getting it, and the topic quickly moved on to (if I remember correctly) boat motors.

I find myself related by blood or marriage to several ministers, including a couple who are among my favorite people on Earth, open and honest and deeply humane, without a shred of pretense. There's another of whom I'm very fond as well, but in him we encounter The Mix. A quickish wit, he spends most of his time trying to make other people laugh. But when the conversation turned to the war and someone had the gall to mention the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, he erupted:

"Oh innocent civilians, innocent bystanders, boo hoo! First of all, they're not so innocent. Second of all, this is war! If you are my enemy, I'm not gonna shoot you in the leg, I'm not gonna shoot you in the arm...I'm going to put one right between your eyes. I'm going to annihilate you. And the sooner I do it, the sooner the world will be safe for God's people."

Several kids were sitting in earshot, getting themselves carefully taught. I was livid. "Now there's a man of God!' I said. "Hallelujah!"

Beloved Relation looked me in the eye, momentarily wordless, then decided to play it for comedy. "Just like the old days!" he bellowed. "Kill a Gook for Jesus! Kill a Commie for Christ!"

Nice.

Anybody wish to guess the denomination that would have a minister playing so fast and loose with the Sixth Commandment, not to mention the Beatitudes? Yes, you in the back, Reverend Falwell -- what's your guess?

I listened to two high school teachers bemoaning their "lazy Mexican" students. "It's like an entire culture of unaccountability," one said. "And if I say a word about it, I'm a racist!" The other couldn't agree more. "Joo can't say dat to me, joo ees raceest," she mocked, and they laughed. I also heard them both bemoaning the posture, attitude, and irresponsibility of their non-Mexican students, but in those cases, it's because they're teenagers. For the Mexican kids, the same behaviors are attributed to Mexicanness. One group of sinners, in other words, is unforgiven.

On the ride home from one of the reunions, Erin told of a cousin she idolizes saying "I hate Democrats!" then informing the rest of the group in a whisper that Obama is "a Muslim."

My kids are plenty old enough to pick up on these things. Connor was nine when he asked, "Why does [Beloved Relation X] hate A-rabs so much?" with the requisite long 'A'. In answering such questions, I find myself struggling more than anything with The Mix, trying hard to emphasize the positive qualities of religion, to keep them away from the broad brush, to remember that we are all a Mix, to not to create my own category of unforgiven sinners. Again -- many of the religious folks in their lives are wonderful, kind, and ethical. But I can also say, with honest regret, that the greatest poison my kids hear comes from fervently religious people they know and love.

Why is that? (he asked rhetorically). And why am I so damned hesitant to point it out?

Visit Dale's secular parenting blog The Meming of Life. Read more!