God is bigger than politics

This article by Ira Chernus, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado, makes several good points with respect to religion and politics.

First, he points out that belief in a transcendent moral order is not the sole property of the political Right. Thoreau and Martin Luther King, for example, both justified their civil disobedience by appealing to a moral law that transcends the positive laws of the state. If anything, belief in a transcendent moral order can well be subversive of the existing order, since it calls it into question and judges it in light of moral principles which are independent of any particular set of social arrangements. As Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote in her study of Lord Acton, “To take seriously this Liberal theory of history, to give precedence to ‘what ought to be’ over ‘what is,’ was, [Acton] admitted, virtually to install a ‘revolution in permanence.’”

The second point made by Chernus that is worth highlighting is that religion isn’t the property of any side of the political debate. There’s been talk among certain religious progressives about “taking back” God/Christianity/faith from the Right. But as Chernus warns, “As soon as one group says, ‘God’s on our side. Just look at the sacred text,’ that gives every other group the right to make the same claim. Then you’ve got a recipe for disaster.”

Chernus concludes:

Religion was, is, and always will be available to any political persuasion that can offer it love and respect. As in any courtship, though, you can’t fake it and get by. The love and respect have to be genuine.

There are plenty of people on the left side of the aisle who can offer religion real love. Let’s let them do their work. Everyone else can offer respect. And that’s enough. Most religious people don’t ask to be loved by the non-religious. They ask only to be respected. They deserve it.

As I’ve written several times on this blog, I’m all for “de-linking” religion from a particular political agenda, be it of the right or left. It simply doesn’t do justice to the fact that religious people can and do come to varying conclusions about political questions. This doesn’t mean that religiously infused values don’t or shouldn’t influence one’s politics, or that religious people have to remain agnostic about political issues, but that there’s rarely a straight line from a particular value to the policies that will best put it into effect.