Apropos of last week’s post on this month’s cover story, we received a thoughtful comment from Christian Dude. He took issue with our casting Sen. Dean Johnson as a possible candidate to head up a putative “Christian Left.” He wanted to hear more about what Sen. Johnson has to say about the role of religion in politics. Fair enough, we thought. Johnson more or less dismissed the question, saying there is no serious role for instituional religion in politics.
Here is why: The Christian Left cannot in good conscience legislate morality from any specific denominational or confessional position. It is an earmark of the Left–whether it is Christian, Jewish, secular, or Satan-worshipping–that diversity is a positive value, and specific creeds should hold no sway in the body politic.
True, it may be possible to compile a sort of universal code of conduct that transcends religious differences, but has civic/spiritual overtones. In fact, that’s been done–it’s commonly known as the US Constittion, the Bill of Rights, and the Criminal Code. This is what scholars have long identified as the “civil religion” of the US. Modern efforts to rewrite any facet of these documents along denominational lines is to subvert them in the most fundamental way. And let’s make no mistake here: The Christian Right, as we have called it, operates like an exclusive, self-righteous, lockstep political entity–essentially a denomination that has become active where it is not all that welcome. (It is not welcome for the simple reason that most Americans are not fanatically self-righteous moral prigs who see the world only through the eyes of a conservative evangelist.) The Christian Right perceives itself as judge, jury, and legislature, and it does not tolerate dissent on the most obvious, discrete political issues like abortion and taxes. It sees “diversity,” especially of political opinion and identity, as widespread error, and it sees itself as victimized by this secular affliction. Even though there are significant differences in theologies on the right, these people do not waste much time on rational colloquy, and typically cut straight to the chase of self-service through the bizarre idolization of Jesus Christ as the personal patron saint of conspicuous consumerism. (As a wise man recently said to us, “Who do you think Jesus would associate with if he came back today?”)
As a slightly related aside, we strongly recommend last week’s article in the New Yorker about “intelligent design,” the beguiling pseudo-scientific effort to debunk Darwinism. It speaks to the deep neurosis so many Christians have that reality is not sufficient unto itself, that despite all overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is a God the takes a personal interest in my affairs, the state of my soul, and the intricate mechanism of all life. That life itself is not sufficiently miraculous without some Prime Mover in a toga somewhere beyond the stars. More to the point, these people are pushing intelligent design not to do what science normally does–limn the working laws of physical nature without respect to the existence of an unseen deity–but to support a political and social agenda. As writer H. Allen Orr so eloquently points out, intelligent design has never actually succeeded in any meaningful way in the laboratory, which is generally where legitimate science is practiced under the arcane conceits of experimentation, repetition, and peer review.
On a recent episode of TV’s best series, House, the good doctor suffered through a near-death experience himself. He saw the white light, he saw the future. His colleagues were galled that Dr. House would dismiss these visions as “physical, chemical reactions” occuring in a decommissioned brain. “That’s it? Is that all there is? Why?” they demanded to know. Dr. House had the best, most succint answer we have ever heard, in all our years of dabbling in theology, religion, politics, and culture. He said, “Because I prefer to believe that this [life] is not a test.”
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