Liberals are often frustrated by the right wing’s use of religion and claims to having a monopoly on morality. Some conservatives agree. Heather MacDonald, writing in the American Conservative, also cringes when she heard John Ashcroft crediting God with keeping America safe after 9/11, or when George Bush basis his foreign policy on conservations with God. She notes that not all conservatives share the views of the religious right. “Skeptical conservatives—one of the Right’s less celebrated subcultures—are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it. They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument.”
I have heard it said in the last six years that what makes conservatives superior to liberals is their religious faith—as if morality is impossible without religion and everything is indeed permitted, as the cliché has it. I wonder whether religious conservatives can spot the atheists among them by their deeds or, for that matter, by their political positions. I very much doubt it. Skeptical conservatives do not look into the abyss when they make ethical choices. Their moral sense is as secure as a believer’s. They do not need God or the Christian Bible to discover the golden rule and see themselves in others.
It is often said, in defense of religion, that we all live parasitically off of its moral legacy, that we can only dismiss religion because we are protected by the work it has already done on our behalf. This claim has been debated ad nauseam since at least the middle of the 19th century. Suffice it to say that, to many of us, Western society has become more compassionate, humane, and respectful of rights as it has become more secular. Just compare the treatment of prisoners in the 14th century to today, an advance due to Enlightenment reformers. A secularist could as easily chide today’s religious conservatives for wrongly ignoring the heritage of the Enlightenment.
A secular value system is of course no guarantee against injustice and brutality, but then neither is Christianity. America’s antebellum plantation owners found solid support for slaveholding in their cherished Bible, to name just one group of devout Christians who have brought suffering to the world.
There is a brilliant man whose blog I want to recommend. I call him Southern Baptist Preacher man. Though an Episcopalian myself, I have found it refreshing that there are Christians who are not swallowing the extreme right’s positions—even Evangelical Christians. This man has had to go underground for fear of reprisal because he dares to question.
http://www.stjohnburrows.blogspot.com/
The christian right is neither
The thing that ires me the most is the fact that I’d bet everything that Bush is NOT really religious. I have no doubt that w/ his history of chemical addiction that he went through “Religious Phase” at one point (I’ve met a hundred like that) but then as time went on went cynical and then realized that this was a population that he could use and manipulate. The extreme fundamentalist believe he is a man of god, he knows their language and all their hot words. When you run up against that try asking them if they think Cheney is even vaguely a man of god. If their honest they will say probably no. So – why would he be the key man that Bush would pick then? Of course most of us here know he’s the one in control.
This administrations god is currency, period.I don’t believe for a minute that they are mostly “god focused” in ANY THING they do.
Marcus,
Initially I wondered but now I believe Bush may really be religious (in his way). There were stories questioning this earlier, such as noting limited if any church attendance. What makes me give him the credit of the doubt is when some tapes came out a while back of Bush talking when he didn’t realize he was being recorded. Perhaps he was putting on an act, but I got the feeling that he was really believing what he was saying.
Of course whether Bush is religious is really irrelevant. The important thing is that nobody should be able to use government to impose their religious beliefs on others.
Rove is an expert snake, there is barley anything that comes out about Bush that is not contrived including times that he supposedly thought he wasn’t being recorded. I just don’t buy it. And I really mean I’ve met 100 people (addicts) like him. He’s about as mysterious as glass of water to me. It’s all about money and power Ron.