Amy Sullivan Does Not Speak for Me

We need to be more tolerant of religion. Religion is under attack. American is a Christian nation, and needs politicians who understand that.

I hear a lot of this lately, from both the right and the left. The most vocal advocate for this concept from the left (or, more accurately, from the center) is a woman named Amy Sullivan. (For a good series of posts on the topic, with links to her arguments, I recommend Hullabaloo.)

I am finding the voices from the center and the left more annoying than those from the right lately, and I think the reason is this:

They are both arguing from the same flawed set of root assumptions, while acting as if they are profoundly different.

These assumptions include:

1) "Religious" is the same thing as "Christian."
2) Religion has a place in politics -- perhaps even a central place.
3) Their version of Christianity is the "true" Christianity (as a corollary, it is their job -- and that of their political representatives -- to defend and promote that interpretation).
4) America is a Christian nation.
5) Morals are based in religion.
6) Faith should not be questioned or challenged. Nor people of faith. To do so is to be "hostile" and "intolerant" of religion and people of faith.
7) Secularism is bad, or at the least, inferior to a faith-based world view.
8) It is okay to make biased, self-serving pronouncements about these things based on a presumed knowledge of what "religious" people want.

Most of the discussions I've been seeing have focused on points (2), (5), (6), and (7) as the strongest critics of these assumptions tend to be vehement atheists. I'm not going to rehash those arguments, because I think they're being handled well enough, and because they are in the eyes of both sides.

I'm more interested in dealing with the assumptions that trouble me as a non-Christian lefty person of faith who believes very strongly in the separation of church and state.

Amy Sullivan and her supporters claim to be doing this in the name of "religious liberals." I dislike this for two basic reasons: first, I do not see being religious as something that precludes me from wanting to keep the worlds of government and church separate. Second, I resent how "religious" is implicitly "majority Christian."

I am a religious (or perhaps more accurately, spiritual) person of the left wing. You'd think, therefore, that I'd be all for her agenda of making liberal politicians (or, rather, the Democratic Party) more welcoming to people of faith on the left.

Her position couldn't be farther from my truth.

First, my complaints about the Democratic Party are secular rather than ones concerning faith per se. I want them to pay attention to things like poverty, environmental degradation, women's rights, gay and queer rights, international humanitarian efforts, and similar - but not because these are religious issues. Secular reasons to address such concerns are numerous and completely sufficient. I don't make demands about what my politicians do in church (or even that they attend church in the first place), so long as they enact and defend legislation that addresses these problems.

Second, talking about Jesus in a political context is exactly what I dislike about the current crop of neo-con right-wing politicians, and requiring liberal politicians to do the same makes the problem worse, not better. I do not want to live according to the neo-con version of Christianity, true, but neither do I want to live in a liberal Christian theocracy. If I wanted to hear about Jesus, I'd go to a church and listen to the preacher. I don't. And I don't like the implication that I'm only worth representing if I'm a co-religionist or potential convert.

The problem in a nutshell is this: I am not a Christian. I am an American citizen. The former condition should not interfere with my right to the full political representation due me by virtue of the latter.

The only way to ensure that members of minority religions and the non-religious are not ill-served by their representatives is to require strict religious neutrality on the part of government.

In Amy's world, the solution to right-wing Christian theocracy is a form of liberal politics that caters to liberal Christians and which defines faith and morality in Christian terms.

Neither is acceptable.
Both place the defense of faith as a paramount duty of political representatives.
Both define faith in terms of their own particular religious beliefs.

In neither is there a secure place for those who do not share that particular faith -- as Amy's easy, unthinking, and repeated conflation of "religious" and "Christian" demonstrates.

The government is to be a government of, by and for the people.
Not of, by and for religious people - just people.
Not of, by and for Christian people - just people.
Our faith -- or lack thereof -- should not matter to the government.

Requiring a religious litmus test of candidates on either right or left is a rejection of that belief.
It is also a rejection of one of the most basic principles on which this country was founded.
Advocating for religion in politics is anti-American, no matter who does it.

It's as simple as that.

cross-posted at Shakespeare's Sister

Comments

[Toast]

I am a religious (or perhaps more accurately, spiritual) person of the left wing.

Assuming I'm not out of line in asking, in a nutshell, what is your "faith"? What are your "spiritual" beliefs?

[Rana]

I'm a Unitarian Universalist with pagan leanings - at least, that's the nutshell version. That's mostly just the formal structure surrounding what is admittedly a rather inchoate sense of the divine. I believe that there is something I choose to call "God" permeating all of us and all creation, and I feel this on a gut level, but it's so personal I can't grasp the concept of trying to impose this belief on others as "the" true understanding of reality. My spirituality is comfortable with the idea that each of us is simultaneously limited and holy, and I'm suspicious of anyone or any belief system that claims special knowledge or worthiness for itself.

[Toast]

I believe that there is something I choose to call "God" permeating all of us and all creation, and I feel this on a gut level

Interesting. I've met my share of people who profess something of this sort. Over the years I've tried to find some specific ways to pin them down. So let me try this:

Does this thing you mean when you say "God" above refer to something explicitly supernatural (e.g. a "life force" of some kind that is outside the material realm, beyond our senses, or otherwise past our "understanding") or is it/could it be a metaphorical way of describing the quite literal ways in which the material universe is dynamic, living, and interconnected?

[Rana]

Honestly, I don't know if I could (or would) separate them. I'm wary of seeing divinity as something separate from the material world - I mean, a beetle (or a tree, or a person, or a rock) seems sacred to me "just because", and I don't know whether that's because of something material about the insect, or something "extra."

I think there's much about the material world that we don't understand - or can't apprehend - (I mean, heck, we can only perceive in a limited range of radiation, a limited range of sounds, etc.). I don't feel a need to add an additional "supernatural" layer to it - I'm content feeling that reality is more complex than I'll ever be able to perceive or understand.

I suppose at base you could call me a spiritual materialist, because I think the physical world is enough, but at the same time I do think that we (in the broadest sense of "we") are more than just the mere sum of our individual components. I just don't know whether that "more" is the more of an additional, unseen element, or the more of a system rather than a group of unrelated elements. To be honest, it doesn't really matter which it is.

I don't have much truck with people who put a priority on the unknowable divine at the expense of the world that we do know. Just because you can pick up a blade of grass or squash a bug or birth a child doesn't make them any less wondrous than some unknowable "something."

[Toast]

I don't feel a need to add an additional "supernatural" layer to it - I'm content feeling that reality is more complex than I'll ever be able to perceive or understand.

Indeed. Wonder at the vastness of the universe and all that we don't yet know about it (and may never know) is as close as I get to feeling "spiritual". I eschew that label (or any use, even metaphorical, of the term "God") because I find it confuses my fellow rationalists/materialists and unduly encourages the anti-intellectual fundies who run around all day making claims about supernatural entities and how they want the rest of us to behave.

I don't have much truck with people who put a priority on the unknowable divine at the expense of the world that we do know.

Me neither. And I always suspect their motives.

Thanks.

[Rana]

You're welcome. *smile*

[Phantom Scribbler]

The problem in a nutshell is this: I am not a Christian. I am an American citizen. The former condition should not interfere with my right to the full political representation due me by virtue of the latter.

Yup. Welcome to the wonderful world of religious minorities in the U.S. To say "this is a Christian nation" is to say: "You don't belong here. Your rights -- nay, your very presence -- is tolerated only as long as you accept your conditional status."

[butuki]

Have you read Barry Lopez's most recent book, "Resistance"? The whole book is full of gems, but in particular these words hit home so hard I lay weeping for a long time: "Nitch'i hwii' siziinii[Navajo]. "the Wind within one," is not conceivable as discrete in the sense of being an individual soul. This makes our vexing question of how one fits into the world meaningless. A person can't not fit. Nor is one able to achieve the distance from life necessary tp experience existential loneliness. Instead, all one's efforts are bent toward enhancing and balancing the experience of feeling included in life."

Lopez seems, often, to be heading out in a direction all his own. And finding answers to questions that usually seem so hard to answer. And he is so right. The planet is all the answer we ever need. Life around us is part of us. How did we ever start looking for god in the abstract? Why is it so difficult for people to see the purpose of living in the beetle or tree or rock or person you mention? Why can we not love the world we already have?

[Rana]

Phantom - yes. Exactly.

butuki - I haven't seen that book, but it definitely sounds like something I would like to look at.

I love the questions you pose at the end, btw.

[Demetri]

Hi Rana,

Your post is shows a really different reading of Amy Sullivan than mine.

I'm not sure that Digby captures the overall effect of Sullivan's writing.

I don't think she generally argues (5), (6), and (7) of your main beefs (I don't think she does (3), (4), or (8) either - (1) I am dubious about, so I won't make assertaions about it). Depending on what you mean by (2), I may disagree with you that (2) is wrong - religion does have a place in politics. This is true simply because religion (or spirituality) is an important aspect in the lives' of many people. How could it not have an impact on politics. How could it be otherwise?

I'm either an atheist or an agnostic, depending exactly on how one looks at these things (and probably also depending on how pugnacious I'm feeling on any given day), but in general I agree with Amy Sullivan more often than I disagree with her. I also think that she brings a lot to the table in terms of her perspective. In general she works to open up the conversation rather than to close it off, and for that I really appreciate her writing and thinking.

Cheers,
Demetri

[Rana]

I guess I see her in a different light, being both religious and vehemently secular when it comes to political action. I do get that what Amy Sullivan thinks she is advocating is that liberal politicians who happen to be people of faith should be open about that, and the ways that faith informs their politics. She is also opposed (as am I) to politican rhetoric that is hostile to religion.

However. Nothing of hers that I have read suggests that she understands religion in terms other than Christianity (which is troubling because that's not how she frames the argument - if she framed things in terms of politicians being respectful of liberal Christians, I'd feel less concerned). This makes her a flawed instrument at best, when it comes to expressing support for "religious liberals."

This can be most vividly seen when she's making the case that one of the reasons why politicians on the left need to be more welcoming to people of faith is because they represent a large percentage of the voting population. In a general way, they do, but when most of that percentage is Christian, it's not at all clear that she's thinking of the interests of liberal religious minorities except in the broadest, most general terms. Something that might appeal to a lot of liberal Christians would go a long way in tapping that population, but would not address the needs of liberal non-Christians. In some cases, like the matter of abortion or gay marriage, there may well be religious conflict within that group.

So how, exactly, is one supposed to be welcoming to "religious liberals" when one's policies may well offend some of them? Appealing to Jesus in public does not reassure this religious liberal - in fact, it strikes me as profoundly unwelcoming -- because Christianity is, at base, a religion that holds that non-believers are wrong and flawed and in need of aid to bring them to the "right" path. My beliefs are perfectly fine, thank you!

So my response is that instead of trying to turn the Democrats into a liberal version of the Republican fundamentalist party, both they -- and the electorate at large, and also people outside of mainstream religious systems -- would benefit from arguing instead that religion is a private, personal matter -- not something to be tarnished and distorted and abused by political opportunists.

That, to me, is far more respectful of people's religious beliefs, than taking what is either a really shallow approach (quote the Bible in your speeches) or one that carries the very real danger of condoning the merger of the sacred and the profane.

You cannot have a true multicultural democracy when politicians are governed more by faith than by the public welfare, especially when that faith is an evangelizing, exclusionary form. Nor is this merger good for spiritual belief, turning it as it does into just one more political slogan or soundbite to wave about in order to gain power and influence.

Separation of church and state isn't just about reining in wild-eyed theocrats -- it's also about protecting us from the benign and well-meaning intentions of people who refuse to think through all the implications of their agendas, particularly when their agenda rests on a serene complacent assumption that what is good in their eyes is of course good for everyone.

What's good for Amy Sullivan is not good for me. Even though she claims that it is, she is wrong. That's all I'm saying.

[Lord Matt]

As I know nothing of this strange person in your country I can only give you an outsiders view of the 8 arguments.

In reverse order, naturally.

8. This thought comes only from self-serving arigance and is in contradiction of point 1.

7. When truth comes darkness can not stand. If secularism stands than it is (a) truth or (b) not in any danger of encountering actual truth.

6. Faith should be challenged daily. Especially your own. The Bible calls for Christians to practice decernment and actually says "come let us reason togeather, though your sins be red a scarlet they shall be as white as snow."

5. Morals are a putting into words of the purity of goodness, love, faithfullness, self-control and hope.
Each persons morals flow from thier word view.

When your world view is tristed chruistianity you morals are twisted too. This explains point 8.

4. nuff said...

3. "true christianity" needs no defender. The light shines int he darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. Everything else is twisted as per point 5.

2. Religion has no place in anything. However, when a persons life flows with a truth or light that dispells vile and twisted things that person and that inner light needs to be central to a countries leadership.

Not rules - life.

1. Only the spiritually blind might think this was true. Of course you must maintain this point or all your arguments invite muslims, janists, spiritualism, scientology, hinduism, ba-alism, satanism and shamanism in via point 2 with just as much right.

I don't much fancy being governed by rulers who worship all sorts of assorted gods.

[DM]

My two cents (we will see if they are worth a nickel!)

I am always amazed when I hear/read "Christians" arguing that "Christianity" and/or religion is under attack. "Christians" have been running the west since approximately 313 CE (oops, I mean AD). Isn't it time for them to get over this persecution complex?