What these (and most other) liberals are saying is that the Christian Right sees politics through the prism of theology, and there's something dangerous in that. And they're right. It’s fine if religion influences your moral values. But, when you make public arguments, you have to ground them—as much as possible—in reason and evidence, things that are accessible to people of different religions, or no religion at all. Otherwise you can’t persuade other people, and they can’t persuade you. In a diverse democracy, there must be a common political language, and that language can’t be theological.Stephen Mack makes a good counter-point to Beinart's statement, saying that:
It’s not only absurd but unfair, some argue, to ask religious intellectuals to disarm their political speech of its fundamental moral rationale.While I understand what Beinart is saying about having a common language, I also think it is just as important to learn to speak the language of religious people in order to better understand them rather than simply invalidating their claim because things aren't being communicated. Now granted I don't know a lot about Beinart, so I don't know what his deal is, and I'm only going off of his quote here, but I wonder if it's really language that Beinart is concerned about here, or maybe his frustration is not so much with the terms used, but with the beliefs advocated? I don't think so much that Christian conservatives and liberals speak different languages, but just that they have different beliefs and because those beliefs lead to different policy goals, there are bound to be clashes. A more constructive approach would be for both sides to learn each other's language, to sit down and actually try to understand why the other side believes what they believe, and then if there are disagreements, to simply hold it as a difference of political opinion rather than demonizing religion altogether or making accusations about a political philosophy without morals; once demonizing occurs, there is a breakdown in communication and very little progress can be made from then on.
This is one of the big frustrations I have with partisan politics - it's always the Right accusing the Left, and the other way around. Surely better progress would be made if politicians stopped treating everything like a sports match, each party on opposing teams, fighting for votes like points. We're all supposed to be on the same side, working for the common good of the country rather than special interest groups, right? Don't get me wrong, I think the American democratic system is very rich for having two equally strong parties with differing views. This is essential to our whole system of checks and balances, each party toning the other down so as to arrive at an overall middle way that's acceptable to a larger group of people. That's one of America's great strengths, is its diversity. The problem is when diversity becomes self-limiting and politicians get more hung up on their differences than in utilizing each other's strengths.
We don't necessarily need a common language in politics, as vaguely as that word 'language' is used; much more beneficial would be to learn the language of the other so as to better understand and relate to them. Political philosophy and religious theology, while they should not be synonymous definers of what laws we make, should neither be isolated as exclusive to each other. As Mack points out in his post, so much of US history and politics WAS grounded in theology. So to completely remove that element would be to severely restrict the wealth of ideas found in the US political system.
Both religious and non-religious people speak a language much closer to each other then they think, and translating religious beliefs into political jargon is not as difficult as one might think, and indeed has already been done throughout US history. Mack points out that:
American politics “uses” religion in the sense that it draws something vital out of it, redefining it in the process as something secular, essentially social—and not at all dependent on the belief systems of particular faiths. In short, liberal democracy takes from religion what it cannot supply on its own: a deep sense of belonging.Kwame Appiah, whom I introduced in my previous post has some very relevant things to say on this issue as well. Big Think's website has several video interviews of Appiah discussing his philosophy on various issues. In one video titled "What's Your Question" Appiah demonstrates his open-minded, disinterested approach to philosophical questions when he asks himself:
If I'm so sure I'm right, how come she's so sure she's right too? If it's obvious to me what the answer is, if the answer's obvious, why isn't it obvious to the other person? And I think just that sort of turn-taking, standing in the other man's moccasins, walking in the other man's moccasins kind of thing, saying, well, I'm so sure I'm right about this, and yet here are these other people who don't think what I think. How is that? Are they just fools or irrational? Is there some part of reality that's hidden from them? Or could it be that I ought to reflect more carefully on what I think and listen a bit more to what they have to say?I like Appiah's objectivity and his desire for unbiased truth. His approach to philosophy seems to consist of honest debate with himself about things, playing around with his own ideas and allowing other ideas from outside of his mind to flourish as well, allowing him to find truth from all of it as a whole.
In another video interview, Appiah is asked, "Does religion inform your worldview?" In response, he talks about how his parents raised him, but he quickly clarifies that:
Where an idea comes from doesn't settle the question whether it's right or not.Appiah states that he sees no problem in religion informing philosophy - he cares more about whether it's correct or not rather than where it came from. Later in the video he addresses the reality of accepting differing viewpoints from your own:
People have to live with the views that they have, I think that they should sustain them, subject them to some kind of analysis, reflection, perhaps even criticism. But still, even if you do that, you're going to end up with a view that is going to be different from the views of lots of other people, and you're going to have to live in a world where that's true - where lots of people have different views about these religious questions and you're not likely in the course of your lifetime to be able to persuade any single person around to the same view as you have. And nor are you going to be able to come to consensus with them at some view in between your view and theirs. And so we have to learn to live in a world in which because we're in a poor epistemological situation, because we're not well-placed to find out the truth, we have to accept that other people will have views that are different from ours on some very important questions, and that there's not much we can do to come to an agreement about that. I think there is something we can do to try and understand other people's points of view and to learn from that. I think even the most thoughtful and convinced atheist has things to learn from talking to people from religious traditions whether or not she recognizes it, and vice versa. People of religious traditions I think have things to learn from each other and from non-religious people if they're willing to engage in the conversation. But if the conversation is guided by the thought that three weeks from now we'll come to an agreement, then that's a mistake and you're setting yourself up for disappointment.So the question that I'm asking is: Are Christian conservatives and liberals having the conversations necessary to understand each other and learn each other's languages?
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