A Secular Candidate? What an Idea!
This is a heartening statement. It’s good to see something, finally, to counter the bilge about presidential candidates and religion one sees in a lot of the press.
In Campaign 2004, secularism has become a dirty word. Democrats, particularly Howard Dean, are being warned that they do not have a chance of winning the presidential election unless they adopt a posture of religious “me-tooism” in an effort to convince voters that their politics are grounded in values just as sacred as those proclaimed by President Bush.
Aren’t they though. And there aren’t nearly enough people saying what childish nonsense that is. Maybe they’re all too busy explaining why they call themselves ‘brights’ – no, I won’t believe that.
At any rate, this op-ed says something I’ve been muttering for years. Years.
Americans tend to minimize not only the secular convictions of the founders, but also the secularist contribution to later social reform movements. One of the most common misconceptions is that organized religion deserves nearly all of the credit for 19th-century abolitionism and the 20th-century civil rights movement…Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, and the Quaker Lucretia Mott, also a women’s rights crusader, denounced the many mainstream Northern religious leaders who, in the 1830’s and 40’s, refused to condemn slavery. In return, Garrison and Mott were castigated as infidels and sometimes as atheists — a common tactic used by those who do not recognize any form of faith but their own. Garrison, strongly influenced by his freethinking predecessor Thomas Paine, observed that one need only be a decent human being — not a believer in the Bible or any creed — to discern the evil of slavery.
It’s not even only Americans. I heard Ann Widdicombe, the Tory MP, say the same thing on the BBC once – that religion is a good thing because it inspired the abolitionists. Well it also shored up their opponents, so that argument is at best a wash. And as Jacoby indicates, there were far more pious opponents of abolitionism than there were pious advocates of it.
Not a scintilla of bravery is required for a candidate, whether Democratic or Republican, to take refuge in religion. But it would take genuine courage to stand up and tell voters that elected officials cannot and should not depend on divine instructions to reconcile the competing interests and passions of human beings… Today, many voters, of many religious beliefs, might well be receptive to a candidate who forthrightly declares that his vision of social justice will be determined by the “plain, physical facts of the case” on humanity’s green and fragile earth. But that would take an inspirational leader who glories in the nation’s secular heritage and is not afraid to say so.
And of course with all the candidates uniting to nag each other to declare for religion, and columns like this one all too rare – we’d better not hold our breaths while waiting for that inspirational leader.
Not to mention that it was an uphill battle for abolitionists because the Bible doesn’t condemn slavery and, in fact, condones it in several places. Here’s a quote from a TNR review by Eugene D. Genovese of “America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln” by Mark A. Noll:
The pro-slavery arguments were straightforward. Nothing in the Old Testament condemns slavery. The great patriarch Abraham and other of God’s worthies held slaves with God’s blessing. Solomon built the Temple with slave labor as well as a corvée. Jesus drove moneychangers, not slaveholders, from the Temple. Every church mentioned in connection with the Apostles included slaves and slaveholders. Neither Jesus nor the Apostles uttered a word against slavery, much less declared it sinful. The strength of the pro-slavery performance makes comprehensible the ease with which Southern whites satisfied themselves that God sanctioned slavery.
The abolitionists did not successfully make their case for slavery as sin. Noll recognizes but dangerously underestimates the influence of radical abolitionists, including leading clergymen, who declared that if the Bible could be shown to sanction slavery, it should be discarded as the devil’s own book. By the 1830s abolitionists were leading the war against Christian orthodoxy.
Actually, who formed orthodox Christianity in the antebellum period is pretty blurry–though a number of people and denominations claimed the prize.
The big destabilizer was–and still is–the ability of people to choose congregations and ministers. Over time their choices alter the teachings.*
Today, many people have taken that a step forther and accept what is preached to them selectively. This is not at all the same thing as knowingly sinning. It is editing the faith on a personal basis, much to the irritation of the more orthodox in any denomination.
Today, while the vast majority of Americans are Christian and distrustful of avowed “freethinkers,” their own actions suggest far more freedom than they think. It’s an odd contradiction.
*See Nathan Hatch’s “Democratization of American Christianity” for a good discussion of the changes in early US Christianity.
It seems a bit ridiculous to gerrymander the New Testament, what with it being rife with contraciction. But i just can’t help myself sometimes. Especially those times when some rabid Christian is in my face about his/er concern for my salvation. Odds are they have not read the Bible well and so i keep a couple of handy passages regarding slavery. A dirty trick to be sure but i usually shuts them up when i say i have no intention of praising any wanker that condones slavery — i’d raather go to hell!
1 Timothy, chapter 6
1: Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed.
2: Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these duties.
3: If any one teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness,
4: he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions,
5: and wrangling among men who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain
and further:
1 Corinthians, chapter 7
20: Every one should remain in the state in which he was called.
21: Were you a slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.
22: For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ.
23: You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.
24: So, brethren, in whatever state each was called, there let him remain with God.
greg
Exactly – ‘accept what is preached to them selectively.’ Richard Dawkins makes the same point in an article I linked to in Flashback a couple of weeks ago, ‘When Religion Steps on Science’s Turf.’
“Unfortunately, the hope that religion might provide a bedrock, from which our otherwise sand-based morals can be derived, is a forlorn one. In practice, no civilized person uses Scripture as ultimate authority for moral reasoning. Instead, we pick and choose the nice bits of Scripture (like the Sermon on the Mount) and blithely ignore the nasty bits (like the obligation to stone adulteresses, execute apostates, and punish the grandchildren of offenders). The God of the Old Testament himself, with his pitilessly vengeful jealousy, his racism, sexism, and terrifying bloodlust, will not be adopted as a literal role model by anybody you or I would wish to know. Yes, of course it is unfair to judge the customs of an earlier era by the enlightened standards of our own. But that is precisely my point! Evidently, we have some alternative source of ultimate moral conviction that overrides Scripture when it suits us.”
We do indeed, so it would be nice if religious people would notice that fact and realize the implications – that morality and religion are different things.
I overlapped with Greg there.
Yup. David Brion Davis’ ‘The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture’ has a good few examples of defenders of the peculiar institution quoting from the Bible by way of support. For every Garrison there were – what, a hundred? a thousand? scripture-quoting slavery-defenders.
OB writes, “…so it would be nice if religious people would notice that fact and realize the implications…”
Well, that would require them to think, which is precisely why they turn, or perhaps cleave to religion — all the thinking is done for them, they just have to follow. And of course their view is right, just ask their friends there in the pew beside them.
A GROSS generalization i realize, but it would certainly be characteristic of a ‘largish’ proportion of the believers, no?
Which is in large part why i despair, as noted in my comment to; “27-12-2003: 19:50:23 Asymmetry Again” post. What an intractable mess; …notice? …realize? In their peaceful oblivion they are “as ineradicable as the flea-beetle”, but ever, so much more dangerous.
greg
Well, yes, I tend to think so. Though I cringe a bit as I say it. But I’m afraid religion does tend to function as an alternative to thinking, and that that is often the point.
And then there’s the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect. The more the word ‘faith’ is used as a hoorah-word, for instance, the more people are reinforced in the idea that one ought not to think, one ought to believe blindly instead. And so it goes.
In working through the recently exposed antagonisms of ’old’ Europe towards the U.S., I discovered that a long standing difference is the religiosity of Americans as contrasted with the more secular mindset of Europeans. This is a complete disconnect for me. The explanation offered above – that religion is merely a source of selectively chosen philosophical concepts and rhetorical tools to support a secularly convenient position – works somewhat better because it allows for the possibility that not all Americans mindlessly thump the Bible to make a point. I could be mistaken and I can’t offer authoritative research, but my ’guess’ is that too many international intellectuals have misjudged the strength of the ’Evangelical’ Right in this country and, hence, George Soros is now stepping in with $15 million to save us from ourselves, or at least level our pitifully imbalanced playing field. I just don’t see it.