Separation of faith and politics
The joint appearance of McCain and Obama this weekend at the Saddleback Church was fascinating to watch. Both candidates said several interesting things, some of which might well be the topic of future posts. In the end, I felt both candidates did very well, but this was McCain’s audience. This was a religious right crowd. My impression was that Obama probably won respect for his views that many in the audience hadn’t felt before, but that he didn’t actually change any minds. No matter how honest, real, and candid you seem, you just won’t beat the guy who can say he will be a pro-life president.
Rick Warren, though, raised one of the more important subtexts of the night in his introduction. He said, “I believe in the separation of church and state, but not in the separation of faith and politics.” Of course, the whole evening was premised on this belief. It was meant to be a discussion of issues and ideas that were important to evangelicals, which would make no sense as a concept if you didn’t believe that something about being an evangelical Christian changed the way you looked at politics.
It’s also clear that in history, in the current election, and in the foreseeable future, faith and politics have never been and will not be wholly separate from each other. I do, however, believe that a true separation of church and state depends deeply on the separation of faith and politics.
The reason I believe this is that the line between imposing a religious belief and simply passing a normal law is so totally unclear. A law against murder, for example, is clearly fine. A law requiring all businesses to be closed on Sundays is clearly not. Why? Well, because the latter is clearly trying to mandate observance of a religious holiday, while the former is serving a legitimate societal goal. That explanation, though, is much less simple than it sounds. The ban against murder is also a (very prominent) religious tenet. Having businesses close on Sundays could also serve some legitimate societal purpose — say, reducing deaths from traffic accidents or oil consumption. Admittedly, these societal purposes are a bit of a stretch, but other obviously non-religious laws have equally bad justification behind them.
Now the dichotomy above uses examples where common sense clearly delineates the correct conclusion as to whether church-state separation is being violated. There are, however, a lot of much less clear examples. Refusing to recognize gay marriage is a good one. The strong pushback against gay marriage comes almost entirely from the religious right, and the arguments used almost all have strong religious undertones. (Often God is never mentioned, but things like the “sanctity” of marriage are, treating the whole thing as an implicitly religious issue.) This is obviously an attempt to impose religious beliefs on the country as a whole. Nevertheless, the lack of gay marriage isn’t a new thing pushed by the religious right. It’s been the case since the founding of the republic (well, earlier, really). It wasn’t remotely controversial until recently. It was just taken as a given, and wasn’t really thought of as a religious belief being codified so much as just the obvious way things were. The reasons here are complicated, but the main thing to take away from it is that religious beliefs, moral beliefs, and cultural practices are so closely intertwined as to be at times almost indistinguishable.
Politicians, of course, have figured out this formulation. They say things like “I don’t legislate my religious beliefs, but my legislative positions are informed by my morality, and my morality is informed by my religion.” This has become an acceptable formulation. It’s a good sign that Rick Warren had to claim a belief in the separation of church and state. There’s no doubt that he frequently takes positions that conflict with most interpretations of the principle, but he has to endorse it in concept because it has been deeply ingrained in the American psyche as one of the accepted truths of good policy. The alternative formulations, however, allow politicians to endorse undermining the separation of church and state in all but the most technical senses without facing the immediate skepticism that would come from a more direct statement of their beliefs. Religious beliefs should not be imposed on others through law. Saying that you’re just making sure politicians you vote for all agree with the key teachings of your religion and believe laws should be made based on those beliefs is fundamentally trying to impose those beliefs.
This creates an awful situation for any court. How are they supposed to respond to a law that attempts to promote morality rather than religion explicitly, but relies on a belief about morality that is (at least for most supporters) derived from a religious belief? One option is to look at whether furthering the religion is the primary goal and effect of the law. That, however, depends on defining what is meant by “the religion”. A law banning gay marriage is not meant to make more people Christian, and the belief is not even held uniquely by a single religion. It is, however, a belief about personal behavior that is held for religious reasons and is being imposed on others. Does it not forward the religion to force other people to live by its teachings? Wouldn’t that interpretation also outlaw laws against murder, though, if most of their supporters cited religious teachings as part of their argument for the law? There are other ways of testing constitutionality, such as looking for an appearance of government endorsement of the religion. Most of these fall to the same type of problem, though. Does endorsing the idea that gay relationships are immoral count as endorsing a religious belief?
I think we need to create a taboo in our politics against using religious arguments, and against organized religion taking an active role in politics. Only then can we feel assured that the laws we pass are truly not attempting to impose religious teachings on others. If a law truly isn’t being passed in order to force religious practices on nonbelievers, then it can be supported with reason and logical argumentation that’s convincing to everyone. It can be passed without religious groups mobilizing to support it. That’s the difference between murder and Sunday holidays. You can make arguments that are plausible for either, both on religious and secular grounds, but you can only make a truly good secular argument for murder. We can’t ask courts to determine exactly what is a “good” argument for a law. That puts them too much in the position of simply picking what they feel is good policy. This needs to happen in the political arena, and the only way we can do so is by reacting negatively to religious argumentation.
I do take some solace in the fact that this does not need to be perfect. Unlike a lot of constitutional principles, if a little bit of religious argumentation gets by from time to time, we’ll all be fine. We do, however, need to limit it. We need to make sure that religion stays out of politics. (I should say that this is already true in many religious groups. A lot of religious leaders who would face criticism from their congregations if they gave a political sermon.) We can’t expect this of candidates. McCain and Obama, like any other politician, are limited by the political necessities of the time, and as long as there are large, politically active, religious groups, politicians will seek their vote. This criticism of the activity needs to come from outside politics. It also needs to be consistent. Democrats are generally better at keeping faith and politics separate, but have always made an exception for black churches. This can’t be used as a tool for criticizing religious activism you don’t like — it has to apply to everybody.