Sermon for 13 January 2008, 1^st Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois

 

THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN POLITICS

Ronald J. Glossop

 

  I.  Introduction

A.  With important elections scheduled for this coming November the role of religion in politics is a issue about which we need to be informed.  

B.  Already in the televised debates we have seen candidates asked whether they believe everything in the Bible is true and the obvious reluctance of anyone to answer in the negative, or even indicate some doubt about that, for fear of losing the support of many voters.

C.  The term "culture wars" was first popularized by James Davison Hunter in his book Culture  Wars: The Struggle to Define America.  He described the two opposing views as "Progressivism" and "Orthodoxy."  Commentator Bill O'Reilly has used the terms "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists" to describe them.

D.  In general the progressives have favored the separation of church and state and using the courts to restrain the power of the religious fundamentalists while the traditional religionists have favored using their political power to enact laws which advance their religious views.

 

II.  Let us take a long view of our subject.  Throughout most of human history in most places, political leaders and religious leaders have worked together to rule the society, theoretically to promote the good of everyone in the society against outsiders but also simultaneously taking good care of themselves.

A. When humanity made the transition from tribes to larger organized communities at the time of the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, we saw the beginning of governments ruled by kings and their allies and also the beginning of group religious rituals and practices controlled by the priests and scribes.

1. The political authorities used physical force, well-paid armies and other employees, to collect taxes and control the people in their own community as well as to expand their power over other groups.

2. The religious authorities used their influence to tell people what to believe and how obedience to the authorities, both political and religious, was their highest duty.

3. This included the notion that supernatural forces as well as the government would punish them if they didn't obey.  The Biblical story of Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden is an example of this focus on "obey or be disciplined."  What was their sin?  Disobedience!  As some would put it, they disobeyed "the Old Man."

B.  The period of agrarian communities lasted from about 8000 BCE to about 1800 AD when the industrial revolution began in northern Europe and north America.

1. During this agrarian period, only 1-2 percent of the people knew how to read and write.  As a result this small literate group felt superior, and the rest of the population also believed they were superior.  The educated few were the leaders of the religious community and also employees of the leaders of the political community.

2. The knowledge of this agrarian period is described as "classical knowledge" by economist Kenneth Boulding.  It consists of studying the sacred writings containing the teachings of the"wise men" of that society such as Confucius, Lao Tse, Zarathustra, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed.   These "classics" written between about 1500 BCE and 700 AD became the basis for the world's main traditional religions.

3. An important characteristic of this classical knowledge is that it is the literature studied by the young as they are learning to read and write.  It is "sacred wisdom" from the past and not to be questioned.

4. This attitude of reverence and unquestioning acceptance toward the Bible and the Koran is still adopted by fundamentalists. They are ignorant and totally unaware of how old & pre-scientific these writings are once they are stripped of their "sacred" character.

5. Nevertheless, even in agrarian societies a few questioned "sacred knowledge, namely, the first philosophers and scientists such as Thales, Anaximander, Democritus, Socrates, Aristarchus, and Epicurus.  

 

C.  The spread of this philosophical questioning and requiring knowledge to be based on experimentation rather than speculation was slow because of vigorous persecution by political and religious authorities.  But gradually things changed.

1. In Europe in the 1400s two critical developments occurred which began to break the power of the authorities: (1) the introduction of gun-powder and guns which began to undermine the power of the political elites who relied on well-trained armed forces and (2) Gutenberg's invention of the moveable-type printing press (1450) which was crucial in undermining the power of the religious elites because books suddenly became much more common and affordable.

2. In the early 1500s a decisive break in the power of the religious authorities came with the Protestant Revolution led by Martin Luther and John Calvin.  The focus of the Protestants was on having the parishioners read the Bible for themselves rather than relying on the current religious authorities to teach them about the Church's teachings.

3. During the next 150 years the political leaders (the kings) determined whether their subjects would be Catholics or Protestants.  There was no doubt that the proper role of religion and religious leaders was to support the political authority regardless of which religious views were required.

4. In 1568 Unitarian King Sigismund of Transylvania issued the famous Edict of Toleration which permitted individuals to be Catholics, Protestants, or Unitarians, but not atheists.  But at least he did not require his subjects to be Unitarians. 

5. During this same period a few scientists such as Copernicus (1473-1543) & Galileo (1564-1642) were making and publicizing discoveries which conflicted with the Bible & what the religious authorities were saying about the relation between the Earth and the sun.  The spreading knowledge about these discoveries greatly undermined the religious authorities, both the institutional Catholic Church and the text of the Bible on which the Protestants relied.

6. The rise of Protestantism and the emphasis on reading the Bible was accompanied by expanded use of the national languages rather than having everything in Latin.

7. The Catholic Church did not sit idly by while these changes were taking place.  The Council of Trent (1545-1563) sought to modernize the Catholic Church and restore the authority of the Pope over the Church.  This effort to revitalize the Church led to implementation of the Inquisition to drive heretics and doubters out of the Church as well as creaton of the Index of books which Catholics were prohibited from reading.  Such vigorous counter-action by religious authorities against the progressives continues to this day. 

8. A subsequent change in the 1700s in northern Europe following the weakening of religious authority was the lessening of restraints on the acquisition of new scientific knowledge in the physical sciences, a change which in turn led to the development of the steam engine and the beginning of the industrial revolution.

 

III. The spread of literacy and the questioning of authority, both political and religious, culminated in the 18^th century Enlightenment.

A.   The American revolution (the separation of the American colonies from England) and the French Revolution were both manifestations of the influence of Enlightenment thinking, thinking which emphasized opposition to authority, critical (rational, scientific) thinking, education for everyone, faith in social progress and the inherent goodness of people, natural religion based on the observed order in nature as opposed to revealed religion imposed by authority, and basic human rights for all.

B.   The cry of the French Revolution --" Liberty , Equality, Fraternity"-- beautifully sums up the ideals of the Enlightenment. In his book TheAge of Reason Thomas Paine, who played a role in both revolutions, provides the arguments and the details.  The U.S. Declaration of Independence applies Enlightenment ideals to political questions.

C.   It is worth noting that in England , where the battle for liberty seems to have begun with Magna Carta (1215), there was a widespread movement led by conservaties such as Edmund Burke against the excesses of the French Revolution, excesses which raised doubts about French-style democracy and in fact ended in the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.  The British helped defeat him at Waterloo in 1815. This victory was followed by a century of global dominance by the British Empire, the "Pax Britannica." 

D.  The 18^th century is also when the industrial revolution begins to produce the great transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society where humans become less directly dependent on nature and more on human ingenuity and manufactured goods.

E.  One great difference between an agrarian society and an industrialized society is the great increase in the proportion of people who can read and write, skills that individuals must have in an industialized society.  Once people are more educated, they are more ready to think for themselves and less inclined to accept authority, political or religious.  Democracy can replace authoritarian regimes, and religious authorities are more likely to be questioned by their parishioners.

 

IV.  From the Enlightenment onward we have had "culture wars" between the adherents of the Enlightenment faith in reason and progress on the one hand and those who reject it by appealing to some religious authority (the Church, the Bible, or the Koran) on the other. (The optimistic, rational, liberal Enlightenment outlook has also been attacked by opponents advancing anti-rational, anti-scientific romantic/intuitionist views or some authoritarian secular anti-liberal ideology like Marxist Communism or Fascism, but the term "culture wars" is typically restricted to struggles between philosophical/scientific pro-Enlightenment intellectuals on one side and religious traditionalists on the other.

A.  One such "culture war" of free thinkers vs. champions of traditional religious faith occurred in the earliest years of this country.  It is described in the article "America's Founding Faiths" by Unitarian minister Forest Church in the most recent UU World for Winter 2007, a magazine which all members of this church should have received in the past month.  The cover features a painting of Thomas Jefferson with his draft of the Declaration of Independence plus the words "Divine Order vs. Sacred Liberty," the theme of Church's article.

1.  One of the interesting aspects of this first national "culture war" is that we had Unitarians leading both the opposing factions!  The leader of the "divine order" faction was God-fearing anglophile New Englander John Adams while leader of "sacred liberty" faction was free-thinking francophile Virginian Thomas Jefferson.

2.  The "divine order" faction led by Adams believed that the new "nation would not survive independent of a strong Christian government" while minority religious groups such as Baptists, Methodists, Jews, Roman Catholics, and non-Christian Deists adopted the view that religious liberty required strict separation of state and church.

3.  It is worth remembering, as Forrest Church notes in his article, that at this time the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Quakers, the Congregationalists, and even the Unitarians had become accustomed to operating under government protection and support.  They were the establishment.   In 1798 Adams even proclaimed a national day of fasting to show that the American people are committed to establishing a Christian Commonwealth, but the Baptists and Methodists viewed this event as merely an effort to give a boost to the mainline churches of that day whose public support was lagging.  

4.  Church notes that George Washington believed in Providence but attended church mainly just to accompany his wife Martha.  He always left before the Communion part of the service.  He agreed with the idea of religious liberty and that each citizen "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience," but he was also concerned that religious groups could cause trouble by their involvement in politics.  Although Forrest Church fails to note this in his article, George Washington, like many of the Founding Fathers, was a Freemason -- a member of the non-denominational, non-Christian lodge for those who believe in a Divine Being and the Brotherhood of Man.  The images on our dollar bill reflect that reality.

5.  We know that John Adams was a Unitarian, but it is important for this discussion to note Church's comments about Adams.  " . . . Adams fell several tenets short of the requirements of Orthodox Christianity.  For starters, he rejected original sin and the doctrine of predestination; the Atonement--"Christ died for our sins"--fit nowhere in his theology.  He didn't think like a true believer, but he felt like a true believer.  A lifelong church-going animal like his fathers and mothers before him, to Adams the Bible was the best book in the world and Christianity the one indispensable guarantor of public morality." 

6.  When Jefferson ran against Adams in the most interesting 1800 election, his party, the Democratic-Republicans, got 80 percent of the southern vote with support from the Baptists and Methodists and other religious minorities while Adams and his Federalists, backed by the establishment churches, got an even higher proportion of the vote in New England.  Nevertheless the Democratic-Republicans, by taking New York, got more votes in the Electoral College.  But Jefferson and Democratic-Republican VP candidate Aaron Burr were tied in the Electoral College because separate balloting for President and for Vice-President had not yet been instituted.  Consequently, the Democratic-Republican electors cast all their votes for both of them.  Jefferson eventually won the election in the Federalist-controlled House of Representatives when his arch-enemy Alexander Hamilton heroically persuaded one Federalist Representative to stop voting for Aaron Burr in order to break the tie and let Jefferson win.

7.  The relevant point is that in 1800 Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party won a victory for the anti-establishment keep-state-and-religion-separate "sacred liberty" view over the pro-establishment "divine authority" view.  Jefferson's view that there should be "a wall of separation between church and state" had prevailed.

B. But after the election of James Monroe in 1816, the wall seemed less necessary because the establishment churches lost their political franchise.  For example, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Methodists worked together to get a new state constitution in the state of Connecticutt which guaranteed equal rights to all denominations, thus ending public financial support just for the Congregationalists.

C.  The last state to give up its right to require citizens to support religion was the state of Massachusetts in 1833.  There the law had allowed the government to use public money to support an "institution for the public worship of God" if none were otherwise available in the community and to require "attendance" in order to be taught by those hired to be "public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality."

D. Church ends his article like this:  "With the collapse of New England's Standing Orders . . . , the battleto save the Americna government, either from French infidelity or Puritan theocracy, had finally ended.  Only with the coming of the Civil War and the emergence of Abraham Lincoln as national theologian did God reenter the White House.  But that is another story."

 

V. Skipping way forward to the 1920s, the political battle between the pro-Enlightenment champions of science and the religious fundamentalists  shifts to what gets taught in the public schools with regard to Darwin's theory of evolution.

A.  In 1925 in a plain case of religious intervention in the political sphere, the Tennessee state legislature passed a law forbidding teachers in the state's schools and colleges to teach "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible."

B.  This law ruling out the teaching of evolution was the basis of the famous Scopes' "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee in which former U.S. Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan was a witness for the prosecution and Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow, recruited by the American Civil Liberties Union, was chief counsel for the defendant John Scopes.  Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the media throughout the world mocked the gross ignorance of the Fundamentalist Christians who cheered Bryan and the verdict of guilt as well as the state of Tennessee as a whole.

C. The battle continues to be focused on the public schools and the teaching of the theory of evolution.  The fundamentalists have conducted a continuous campaign to get their supporters elected to school boards and to support the teaching of Intelligent Design as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

D. In December 2005 federal circuit Judge John Jones III in a case involving a schoolboard in Dover, Pennsylvania ruled "Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science."

E.  In December 2007 Christine Castillo Comer was forced to resign her position as science education director of the Texas Education Agency because she had sent e-mail messages to some teachers to inform them of a lecture being given by Barbara Forrest, a philosopher of science who is a hated enemy of the creationists.  It seems that Comer would have had a central role in the coming review of the science-education standards incorporated in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills document and her sending of the e-mail was taken as evidence that she is not neutral on the intelligent-design issue.

F.  Another strategy of the fundamentalists has been to argue for teaching courses about the Bible in the public schools and then using textbooks that propagandize rather than presenting the material in an objective fashion.  A group called the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools promotes the use of textbooks that promote a fundamentalist Protestant view of the Bible.

 

VI. It seems that the best way to deal with these efforts to discuss evolution vs. creationism in the schools is to address it in philosophy courses rather than in science courses.  Then one could provide the arguments for and against not only the theory of evolution but also for and against accepting the Biblical accounts in a literal way.  If the fundamentalists want to play thiis game in the public schools, let their children learn to think for themselves rather than just being indoctrinated to believe whatever their parents want them to believe.

 

VII. It is also time for the opponents of the fundamentalists to stop being so fearful and deferential to them.

A. The statement that everything in the Bible is true needs to be openly challenged every time that it is uttered.

B.  If someone asserts that everything in the Bible is true, the proper response is to ask, "Do you believe that absolutely everything in the Bible is literally true?"  If the answer is "yes," then you can ask, "Do you believe that the sun and moon were created on the fourth day as is stated in Genesis 1: 13-16?  How could there be days and daylight before there was a sun?  Isn't it obvious that whoever wrote that did not know that day and night are caused by the revolution of the Earth on its axis and that the sun is the source of our daylight?"

C. You could also ask them whether or not plants already existed when God created Adam.  You could note that Genesis 1:11-29 indicates that plants were created before Adam, but that Genesis 2:4-7 says very clearly that there were no plants before Adam was created.  In the first two chapters of the Bible there is an explicit contradiction!

D. The culmination of this questioning about whether they accept the literal truth of everything in the Bible is whether they accept Mark 10:18 and Luke 18:19 where Jesus is reported to have said, "Why do you call me good?  No one is good--except God alone."  The words are exactly the same in both accounts.  If you believe that everything in the Bible is literally true, why do you not accept these verses?

E.  Retuning then to the issue of the role of religion in politics, you could ask them if they think that it would be a good idea to have a law calling for severe punishment of anyone who does not accept the view that God alone is good and that that term should not be applied to Jesus?

F.   It is wrong to allow people who have some particular religious view to use whatever political power they have to require others to believe and act in accord with those ideas.  We can see this clearly when the religious views of the politically powerful are different from our own.  We should be able to see that the same principle should be followed when the views of the politically powerful happen to be the same as our own.