Religion and Politics: Substance not Slogans

It is an old adage that religion and politics shouldn’t mix and must be avoided in conversations, especially in churches and at family gatherings.

Clearly, we humans can be very emotional about our religious and political views. I remember being startled when two people stormed out of our church when our pastor criticized Donald Trump by name for contradicting a preacher who spoke of loving our neighbor at a national prayer breakfast. 

I also know of one family gathering where, following a political “discussion,” between two persons of markedly different views, one of them left in an angry huff and dented the new car of a family member on the way out of the driveway.  

However, these very same emotions could help us see how civic and religious beliefs belong in our conversations if we are to lead better lives.

First, Let’s Talk

But first we must undo the way we now converse when certain “hot” subjects are broached, talking at rather than to each other. We need to relearn how to listen and talk with each other.

The first step in this process is to avoid slogans and sound bites, such as “Make American Great Again” and “Black Lives Matter.” While these do carry real meaning for those who pronounce them, they also inflame those on the other side who respond angrily in turn.

What if the anti-Trump folks asked their Trump friends and relatives this question: What are the steps you believe we need to take here in our town to help make American truly Great?

Or, given what has played out in recent months regarding all too frequent interactions between some police officers and black people, what immediate and manageable steps do you think are needed to help make black lives matter?

Both of these questions serve to make the conversation more concrete and more substantive. Then, depending on how they respond, work hard to begin a dialogue with them about the issues. Such dialogues—ongoing exchanges between persons of opposing views—are essential if we are to learn from each other and identify common ground.  It is the only way to move from the unworkable stand-offs that are the result of slinging slogans at each other where we can start working together to solve problems

If, however, their response to your questions is just another slogan or political sound-bite they heard on a TV commercial, follow up with: OK, but exactly what does this phrase mean to you in your daily life? 

This method of communicating forces both parties, if they really do want to have a serious discussion, to replace abstract slogans that are inflammatory with personal substantive experiences that can bring human beings together. If you find that the other party keeps repeating the slogans or begins to insult you in an attempt to beat you into submission, it is time to end the conversation, perhaps with a “bless you” and “good luck.”

We have to recognize that some resist dialogue because they are threatened by the change it might bring, and some others because they just don’t want to talk to people they disagree with.

Religion and Politics: Sources of Value

One reason that we have all been warned not to talk about religion and politics is that both of these subjects are value-laden. Believing a certain way about your politics and your religion can define who we are—or who we think we are. They touch our soul and give us meaning.

Yet if people are sincerely puzzled about out how best to live with each other, they can find meaningful and even compatible answers in both religion and politics. Aristotle, one of the earliest western students of politics, called the political unit (for him the polis or city-state) a “community established for the sake of the good life.”  Religious communities, of course, also exist to promote “a good life”—in this world and beyond. 

Religion and Politics: Better Together?

Surely it makes sense that two ways of promoting better ways to live together could and should support each other. Even more, should not each of these “disciplines,” as they are called in the academic world, if rightly understood, promote harmony among people? The “good life” that both Aristotle and Jesus preferred (although in different ways) cannot be found among people who are at each other’s throats.

Aye, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say. “Rightly Understood.” What does that mean? There’s always a catch!  But this one isn’t as forbidding as you might think.

Let’s start with religion, or for those questioning institutional religion, spirituality. Most religious or spiritual people I know say they love both God and their neighbor. This belief would seem to require that we have some compassion for our neighbor, lest our love be merely abstract lip service. They hold love and service to others as a value.

And if we do love our neighbors, it follows that we would seek their welfare by promoting the common good.  This phase does not mean, as some think, that we hold goods in common (that would be akin to socialism) but rather that we create a society in which the good of all, poor as well as rich, is taken into account in our laws, behavior, and political structures.      

So here we have an important link between religion and politics. Religions generally want to “save” us—usually meaning our soul, the spiritual or at least non-material part of ourselves—while a chief goal of any political system is to protect our physical selves, our bodies and their surrounding material supports such as food, clothes, and housing, against attack from outsiders.

What is Rightly Understood Politics?

But here the words “rightly understood” become important.

As Americans, our reference points should be the Founders and the Constitution. From the ringing words of the Declaration of Independence to the more stolid clauses of the Constitution, we learn both that as we are all “created equal” and have the inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” our governments—at all levels—should be striving to create and sustain those conditions that promote equality and the pursuit of happiness.

In our day, we are more likely to focus on our “rights” as citizens than our “responsibilities.” The Founders believed that our democratic republic would not long endure unless we citizens played our part. They believed in what they called civic virtue, something that required that citizens give priority to the needs of the commonwealth—the common good of all citizens—over and above the wishes and wants of self-interest. This value was to be imbued in daily life to the degree   they would become what Alexis de Tocqueville called the “habits of the heart.”

How often these days do we hear politicians, the news media, or citizens speak in a manner designed to achieve the common good?

What is Rightly Understood Religion?

But does the term “rightly understood” also apply to religious or spiritual communities?

This is trickier, for the number of religions and ways of being spiritual far exceed the forms of governments that we know.  There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of “ways of being religious.”  I doubt my political scientist friends would list more than a dozen different political systems.

I must, then, risk angering my conservative Evangelical Christian friends by saying that a religion focused more on punishment and condemnation to a fiery afterlife than on love and making the here and now a better place for all of us (sometimes known as “the Kingdom of God”) is not, in my book, one that “rightly understands” religion or spirituality.

That is a risky statement because all three of the western or Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, have holy books that speak of the justice of God and of God’s punishment of human sin.  There is less true in the eastern religions and philosophies of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. But angry divinities can be found in some of them also.

Limiting my argument to Christianity, however, I will say that if you look at the message of Jesus in the New Testament, you will not find any words attributed to him that condemn the sinners he encountered to perdition.  Instead, he said things like “Go and sin no more,” and “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

In fact, the only people Jesus clashed with were either members of the ruling class, those who cooperated with the Roman occupiers and looked down on the masses of people, or those who believed they were “better” than most because they were more fastidious in their observation of the Law (the scribes and Pharisees). They were the insiders of their day, while the people spent time with were the outsiders.

Jesus was denounced for keeping company with the despicable people of his day—tax collectors and prostitutes. Who are the people today whom those with the “right” views regard as “the undesirable others?”

Remember the popular phrase from some years ago, “What would Jesus do?” While this might seem trite today, it really is a way to apply what we say we believe to current problems?  Would Jesus mock, demean, reject or verbally abuse others as some leaders in our country do today?

Because of that restraint on Jesus’s part, my personal “rightly understood” view of religion in general and Christianity in particular, leads me to conclude that God (however understood or named) is much more interested in love and forgiveness than in hate and punishment.  My God is also embodied in each of us and in all of creation, both of which are fundamentally good (See Genesis 1).

Religion and politics are not as separate from each other as we might think.

What is required, is our willingness to reject politics that puts power and greed ahead of respect for all and maintenance of the common good.  If we do that, our politics and our religion will work together to help us become both holier and more whole.

                                 (July, 2020)

(I am happy to acknowledge as a co-author/editor of this essay my long-time friend Greg Cusack, a former state legislator in our home state of Iowa and a seriously spiritual person.)