Politics through an evangelical prism
The New Republic has a piece about whether evangelical Christians really are under liberal attack in America today. On the whole, it's a fair though short (hence, superficial) article.

But it comes up short here.

What ... 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.

Almost right, but still wrong enough to be plain wrong. It's condescending to say "it's fine" for religion to influence one's moral values, then insist that religion be set aside in making public arguments. This reveals one of the major weaknesses of the left side of the aisle in addressing religion: TNR and its ideological allies grudgingly allow me to be religious (as if I need their acquiescence) but insist that I leave my religion at home when venturing into the public domain. What gives this author the right to set such rules? Nothing.

If liberals, as TNR uses the term, were to be true to their longstanding, self-stated principles, they would welcome any basis for arguing public policy. The United States somehow manages to putter along with every other stripe of ideology active in the public square, but TNR thinks that evangelicals alone are "dangerous."

But then, instead of explaining why evangelicalism is "dangerous" to the republic, TNR instead claims it is merely impractical: evangelical arguments aren't "accessible" to non-evangelicals and hence "don't persuade" them. If true, how can unpersuasive, narrowly-constructed arguments with no broad appeal be dangerous?

It strikes an incongruous chord for the writer to say that evangelicals' claims of anti-Christian bigotry are overstated while claiming that evangelicals are dangerous.

Even so, the broader point seems right: religious arguments don't persuade anyone outside the religion. "The Bible says" is a claim of decreasing power in America today, and has been for a long, long time. TNR continues,

Sometimes, conservative evangelicals grasp this and find nonreligious justifications for their views. (Christian conservatives sometimes argue that embryonic stem cells hold little scientific promise, or that gay marriage leads to fewer straight ones. On abortion, they sometimes cite medical advances to show that fetuses are more like infants than pro-choicers recognize. Such arguments are accessible to all, and thus permit fruitful debate.) But, since the election, the airwaves have been full of a different kind of argument. What many conservatives are now saying is that, since certain views are part of evangelicals' identity, harshly criticizing those views represents discrimination.

It is discrimination or bigotry when criticizing evangelicals' arguments is done simply because evangelicals make them. Nonetheless, a particular weakness of theologically conservative Christians is that they often are close to absolutism. Insistence on absolute truth is a religious weakness, not strength, especially in the broader, public arena. I agree that religiously-founded beliefs, to be translated into some sort of public policy, need to include arguments from reason as well as revelation. That is the tactic I used to write about same-sex marriage last February, for example.

In the secular democracy of the United States, all public-square arguments are finally judged on their merits, whether they are religious or not. If an increasing number of people find religious arguments politically persuasive, then welcome to a working democracy. Personally, I think the chance of that is somewhere between slim and none, and slim has left town.

Update: This evangelical thinks,

The Presidential election of 2004 will be a miserable victory for evangelicals. They coalesced in record numbers to vote for a man who didn't mean what he said and didn't deserve their vote. They voted for a lame duck who no longer needs their votes.

The heartbreaker is that such a vote of solidarity was unprecedented. It's unlikely to happen again anytime soon.

Yep, slim is out of town. (ht: Dean's World)

Update: Check Pelto has a lot more to say on this topic and the TNR article over at his blog.

by Donald Sensing, 11/20/2004 07:17:59 PM. Permalink |