Friday, April 14, 2006

a good read.

via toast, i've just read this interesting post from rob salkowitz about religion and democratic society. he starts off:

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the resurgence of “faith-based progressives.” Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have both taken visible roles in reminding Democrats how to talk to religious voters. Moderate churches are fighting back against fundamentalists with messages of tolerance. Opposition to the war is increasingly being framed in explicitly-Christian moral terms.


rob finds this development disheartening, and he notes:

Look around the world: the Middle East, India, Northern Ireland, the Sudan, Israel, Russia – is there anywhere that more religion in politics makes the situation better? When people feel they are doing the will of God, there isn’t much room for compromise and accommodation, even when their positions are compatible with humanist liberal ideals. Democracy requires theological humility on the part of all participants: recognition that human politics is a give-and-take between legitimate interests and provisional truths on both sides, not a clash of absolutes.


much thought-provoking stuff here. as toast points out, this kind of argument for a secular government, and a secular approach to achieving an overall civil society, is not a popular one: "to question the value of religion itself is to open oneself to the charge of being a sneering, coastal elitist." and that's important - even just to question it is discouraged! so i'm glad that rob is talking about it, and i encourage you to go read the rest and consider it, because regardless of one's opinion, religion in society is not an issue that's going away any time soon.

1 comment:

kate.d. said...

karen, thanks for the thoughtful comment! i think this is a huge topic, with lots of different facets. i think rob makes the point that everyone should absolutely be able to believe what they believe in a civil society. the problem arises when we start trying to codify religious beliefs, to mandate certain "types" of belief as more valid than another through state mechanisms.

and it's interesting, rob addresses the dr. king issue in his comments with a few interesting points - i haven't fully processed it yet or know exactly where i stand on it. but i think rob makes some good contextual points there. and i think it's not even a question of whether dr. king should've been able to do what he did, or whether people shouldn't have been able to join the movement for those reasons. it's a question of whether we should advocate for the religious tactic on a broader scale as the vehicle for change.

/pre-coffe ramble