As the US gears up for more religious contestation in the political battles to win votes, Michael W. Higgins hopes sanity and rational judgment will prevail
As presidential election fever takes hold of the US yet again, religion continues to rear its head and more often than not in ways that are counterproductive, counter cultural and incendiary. Presidential hopefuls compete in the public arena to show either their rock hard attachment to “Biblical Christianity” or to distance themselves from any faith position that can be construed as “ideological”.
As a consequence, religion is hijacked for political reasons, reduced to cheap sloganeering, used as a tool for scoring points against adversaries and served up to the discerning citizenry in ways that repel rather than inspire.
Faith, spirituality and religion – the first casualty of the electoral wars.
The current religio-political spate du jour is around various states that legislated acts that protect people of faith from having to infringe their own liberties and compromise their own consciences should they choose in their business dealings not to serve people whose moral behavior offends them, i.e. same sex marriage partners dealing with florists, caterers, etc. The push back from the business communities was thunderous and most of the state jurisdictions that enacted these laws – or are poised to do so – are now hastily re-writing those parts of the legislation that could be seen as discriminatory.
But the point has been made. How do you protect people of faith from having to do something that runs counter to their creed without in the process discriminating against those who do not subscribe to the same creed, or, as importantly, differ with positions taken within their own faith community but still profess allegiance to its core values?
For years now several churches in the US – the Roman Catholic prominent among them – have been lobbying the lawmakers to ensure that religious freedom remains a priority in the Republic.
Nothing has pressed this point as aggressively and as painfully as the same-sex marriage battles – legal, moral and social – that have scarred the landscape.
Debates around religious freedom – what it means in a pluralistic society, its prerogatives and limitations – will play an important role in the coming election cycle and the opportunity to move beyond caricature, intolerance and scare mongering is one not to be missed.
Sadly, the culture warriors are ill-disposed to grant quarter never mind moving pacifically to heal. And there is fear in the air.
For instance, increasing restraints on the public face of religion in France – once, the “eldest daughter of the Church” – are alarming moderates everywhere.
The Socialist government of Francois Hollande is fervently secularist-adhering with near fanatical devotion to the principles of laïcité, and especially so in light of the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket.
One town in France has ordered all state schools to avoid serving vegetarian meals in their cafeterias, a natural fall-back option for Muslim and Jewish students who may find pork on the school menu.
Instruction
In addition, instruction in secularity or laïcité, is taking more time in the school curriculum, teachers are obligated to spread the message that religion and the state inhabit discrete and utterly unconnected worlds and that this is the noble legacy of the Revolution (actually laïcité only became official state doctrine in 1905).
But its implementation is becoming increasingly problematic and is generating a new level of intolerance with the spectre of persecution hovering dangerously on the horizon.
The Observatory of Laïcité, an official body attached to the Prime Minister’s office, heard recently from the president of the conference of French bishops, Georges Pontier, who pointedly noted that the various public disagreements and controversies over religion in France “are not debates that free our society from an illegitimate and dangerous influence, but to the contrary incite the growth of uncontrollable reflexes of identity politics, which can be violent, especially if one feels stigmatised and dialogue is difficult or absent… We must not forget that one never wins by humiliating a category of citizens, the members of a religion, or even religion itself.”
Pontier’s fine remarks are pertinent not only to France but to Canada as well where a leftist political provincial party sought to implement a Charter of Secular Values only to be roundly defeated by an electorate that, though far from pious, is not inclined to swallow poorly conceived secularist dogma.
In fact, a federal Supreme Court ruling in March instructed the province of Quebec to recognise the rights of a Jesuit private school – Loyola in Montreal – to teach Catholicism from its own faith perspective rather than using the province’s ministry of education program on world religions – an atheological, sociological and historical compendium dependent only on data, not conviction.
Hopefully as the US gears up for more religious contestation in the political battles to win votes, something of the sanity and rational judgement of a French archbishop and a Canadian court might occasionally prevail.
Visit Michael W. Higgins’ blog, Pontifex Minimus:
http://sacredheartuniversity.typepad.com/pontifexminimus/