Secularism and religion equally reasonable beliefs
If you wanted to find some school of thought, some ideology that was as far from Whitman’s belief system as possible, you wouldn’t be far off to pick social conservatism. Considering what many on this campus think of Christianity in general, if you combed the whole campus I doubt you could find more than a few dozen Whitties who consider the movement anything less than bigoted.
The movement is certainly easy to hate. Some of its leaders are at the forefront of fighting against progressive causes like gay rights. I will not contest that some within the religious right have some very bigoted stances, and there are many issues on which we disagree, to put it mildly.
But in discussing the religious right with Whitties I’ve noticed a trend that troubles me. Too often Whitman students seem to think that people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson represent all Christians and all social conservatives. I’ve been told many times that people with religious beliefs should keep them out of politics and in some cases that the separation of church and state means that Christians should leave religion at the door when it comes to the political process.
The really wonderful thing about democracy is that it is doubtful. In contrast to authoritarian systems that claim to know the truth and strive to enforce it, democracy kicks back and says “do what you think is right.” It’s a system that recognizes the legitimacy of people taking what they believe is the correct way to do things and voting for it.
Now, a person’s beliefs about what is right and wrong are always going to proceed out of their value system and their set of personal beliefs. That’s human nature. Christians who are active in politics vote for what they believe is right based on a set of moral principles proceeding from religious beliefs, while an atheist who is active in politics votes for what they believe in proceeding out of a set of secular beliefs.
So there are two problems with telling Christians to divorce their religion from their politics. First, it’s impossible. A human being can’t sit down and make decisions as if the foundation of their belief system wasn’t there. A Christian’s conception of what is right and wrong is inextricably bound up with his or her belief system, and the only way to keep those beliefs out is to exclude Christians from politics, which is clearly undemocratic.
But the larger problem with this exclusion is that it prejudicially favors secularism over religion. A recent article in the Pioneer called religious belief “irrational” on the basis that it was founded upon an assertion (the existence of a god) which could not be logically proven. By this criterion, secularism is “irrational” because there is no logical way any of its assertions (that god does not exist or that the universe occurred by itself) can be proven or argued. Secularism is itself a belief system founded upon faith and assertions about the universe for which we have no evidence. There are simply too many big questions for any person to be able to state with certainty which explanation is correct.
But shouldn’t people be protected from having the beliefs of others imposed on them? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, we recognize that it is inconsistent with democratic principle to violate the mental integrity of citizens by forcing them to believe any particular way of thinking. I would argue that that is the purpose of the non-establishment clause of the Constitution.
On the other hand, democracy consists of a process by which individuals enact laws on the basis of what they believe is right. In a certain sense, every law that a citizen disagrees with is an imposition of someone else’s belief system. We tolerate the activism of others in support of such laws because we recognize that democracy requires a system whereby everyone is free to advocate their beliefs, even ones some consider irrational. It is just as illegitimate to exclude Christians as any other belief system.
Christians and social conservatives have the same right to campaign for their beliefs in politics as everyone else. As long as religion itself is not adopted by the state and the freedom of conscience of American citizens is respected, believing God exists is just as appropriate a political motivation as believing in secularism.
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As the author of the article, I want to clarify that my editor changed the title of this piece without my knowledge or consent prior to publication. It should be fairly obvious to anyone who reads it that I’m not arguing that secularism and religion are equally valid belief systems, whatever that means, but that it’s unreasonable to call for political opinions based on christian principles to be excluded from democratic debate. That’s all.
I want to applaud you for this very factual, logical, and fair assertion. It is interesting to me that all who cry for anti-religion stand on their own soapbox of a particular value (that religion is less important and narrow-minded than secularism). We must recognize that our call for no universals is inherently subjective. By claiming that one’s subjective is a universal (in that all who think universally are wrong, universally) we contradict, thereby making hypocrites out of ourselves.
I say, why not let the Christian right have their say? If their opinions are truly harmful, then I believe that democracy ought to sort it ought. That is the beauty of pluralism, right? Values can compete. It is via discourse such as this wherein people can contradict and argue and point out flaws.