By Greg Shaw, Ph.D., Columbia University '98
Professor of Political Science
This post is part of our series on "Religion and Politics" Check out more by following the "Religion and Politics" tag.
As the saying goes, there are two subjects one should not discuss in polite company: religion and politics. As it turns out, my wife is an Episcopal priest who trains hospital chaplains, and I teach students about American politics. Given this, what else are we supposed to discuss if not religion and politics? Happily, she and I agree on most of the important stuff. However, I’m acutely aware that religion has a powerful way of leading people to make absolute-truth claims, some of which clash with the norms of liberal democracy. So here’s the rub: How can I be a faithful Christian while also being a citizen who strives not only to tolerate others who see public policy through very different lenses than I do, but a citizen who indeed strives to respect and indeed appreciate their differences? How is the doctrinaire Roman Catholic supposed to make peace with his neighbor who insists on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy for elective reasons?
How is the progressive opponent of capital punishment supposed to take seriously the Old Testament reader who firmly believes in the notion of an eye for any eye? How is the
conservative evangelical who sees the world through a paternalistic lens supposed to cope with a female vice-president-elect? How is the atheist supposed to accept the idea of government grants going to religious academies, even if those funds are supposed to be limited to purchasing secular teaching materials?
In the abstract, we can probably paper over such differences, either with silence or platitudes. But at some point the reality has to settle in that we and our neighbors see the world in fundamentally different ways, and that those differences logically (and emotionally and theologically) have deeply problematic consequences. Religious extremists murder French satirical cartoonists. Abortion foes shoot physicians who perform abortions. Presidents strive to appoint persons to the US Supreme Court with the goal of overturning Roe vs. Wade explicitly in mind. Papering over our differences may work at cocktail parties, but it’s a poor strategy for running an open society that’s committed to democracy and the noisy free speech involved therein.
Having observed social behavior for several decades now, I’ve come to understand that the veneer of humanity is indeed thin. When it suits us, we smile (or cringe) and say we can agree to disagree, and that perhaps our party’s candidates will fare better in the next election cycle. But when the temperature gets too high we drive cars into peaceful street protests with the goal of harming our political opponents. We urge our supporters to give the other side no quarter. This might take the form of “liberating Michigan” from its Democratic, and democratically elected, governor by attempting to take her hostage. It might involve shooting at federal land management officials in the American west. It might express itself as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the decades-long troubles between Irish Catholics and British Protestants. Or it might devolve into genocide: Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, Myanmar, etc.
To the extent religion and its absolute-truth claims leads us to eschew compromise, it’s a set-up for broken-down political discourse. While the notion of tolerating the other may be appealing, it’s probably a great deal more important to strive to develop an appreciation for the other. I should work to find the interesting and the admirable in my neighbor, not to simply refrain from harming her because of her absolute-truth claims based on her religious beliefs. As one example, I have come to greatly appreciate the Jewish emphasis on teaching, learning, and community building that, frankly, outstrips practices I have seen in many Christian congregations over the years. In some (many?) cases, this building of true appreciation can hard work, but the alternative would seem to be to flirt with violations of the veneer that separates us from the violent us-versus-them outlook that lurks just below the surface. Cultivating a true appreciation of the other just might grant us enough of a buffer that we can live with each other in peace.
Greg Shaw has taught politics at IWU since the late-1990s. He is particularly interested in
American social policy, which tends to intersect often with religious concerns. In addition to this, he’s a husband, a father of two teenagers, a choir member at a local Lutheran (ELCA) congregation, a stained glass craftsperson, and an avid cyclist. He thinks John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is probably the best novel ever written in English.
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