Symposium: Divided America

THE DOUBLE CITIZEN: RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

Frederick Turner

T A m current panic on the Left over the one-fifth of merican voters who apparently put "values" at the

top of their priorities is surely misplaced. No, we are not going to become a theocracy, and Britney Spears is not going to have to wear a chador. America is haggling its way R)ward compromises on gay unions and abor- tion and public recognition of rel igion--and neither side is going to get all it wants.

We will end up with civil partnerships for gays that are legally the same as the status of heterosexual couples, with the name "'marriage" being left to civil society (in- cluding religious comnlunities) to define. Some armi- slice line in the abortion fight will be established, pre- serving abortion in at least the first trimester, with increasingly tougher legal and medical tests for justify- ing it thereafter; probably partial-birth abortion will be outlawed, but there will not be a domino effect as re- gards women ' s reproductive rights. The three prin- c i p l e s - f r e e d o m of religion, separation of chu,'ch and state, and realistic recognition of America 's religious history and traditions- will be bargained to a standstill roughly in the middle of the triangle. Religious folks in govermnent, schools, and the courts will be able to ex- press their views in their public offices, but only at the risk of having to allow other views, such as Hinduisn3, Wicca, Vodoun, and atheism, equal access. Where the compromise lines will end tip won't be very different tinder a Republican administration than under a Demo- cratic one. In a way everybody with any sense knows this, but is trying to establish the most extreme bargain- ing position in order to have more chips when the legis- lative game begins.

But there is a real concern underneath all the theatri- cal rug-market screaming that deserves to be addressed. Is our democratic republic threatened by the presence of a religious nmiority? The question can best be ap- proached in terms of the doubleness of the democratic

citizen. The president of the nation himself has two roles:

that of leader of his party responsible to the platlk~rm on

which he ran, lind sovereign representative of the whole nation. But the ordinary citizen too has two roles: as voter, tasked with the burden of decision on the candi- dates and issues; and as the loyal melnber of a nation, subject to its laws and required to support the rights of all the other citizens, including even the right of the majority to make htws with which one does not agree. The citizen must be both subjective and objective, both a decision maker and an obedient observer of the law, both an individual and a Inember of a collective, both skeptical about foreign policy and at the same time ready to bear arms for the nation at the behest of the majority.

Voting is the way we test how policy actually affects the individuals in the society. We must honestly vote what we want, and must therefore go to the trouble of actually deciding what we want, and thus the pain of rejecting alternatives that we might also want, but not as intlch. We must be partisan to be able to do anything. As voters we cannot be Hamlets, balanced between "to be" and "not to be", unable eithe," to take arms against a sea of troubles or suffer in the mind the slings and ar- rows of fortune. As voters we cannot be honest to our ambivalence about whether to act or endure, if that means being paralyzed by our honesty. To be a voter we must hold our nose and choose the lesser of two evils. To be an active political advocate--which is the duty of any- one with information and talents valuable to our collec- tive decision-making process- -we must go further, and artificially suppress our doubts, making the best case we can for our own view, like a legal advocate for the prosecution or the defense.

But if, in the tunnel-vision, the necessary blinkers, of partisan debate, we lose the other side of the citizen, and forget our necessary doubleness, we neglect our duty just as much as does a non-voter. There must be another side of us that accepts the wisdom of the majority, that tries to step outside of our own interests lind perspec- tives, and that is willing to work for policies we w)ted against.

14 SOCIETY' �9 MAY/JUNE 2005

We need the same doubleness when we engage in tile market. Something that is overpriced can still be a bargain for us: sometimes we don't buy something that the h)cal pricing mechanism has nlade nlarvelously inex- pensive- tomatoes in SeptemberIbecause we don't wanl it. If we come to accept tile valuations of the market en- tirely, as passive consumers we are like docile nonvoting citizens; if we are outraged by the consulnerism of oth- ers and defy it by stealing or shirking at work, we are like the voter who will not accept the results of an election.

The good bargainer must fight every inch of the way, but must also have an internal picture of what an ac- ceptable range of outcomes might be: he must be an +'actor" in Hamlet 's double sense, one who actually does something and one who pretends to. The good citizen intist argue his position but accept the decision of tile elector- ate. I iamlet does end up peiibrming his political and moral duty, after all, and he does it, as Krishna persuades Arjutla to do in the Bhagavadgita, by cahnly recognizing both the need for passionate action and the vast imperturbabil- ity of the providence within which he is iUl ignorant player.

In the light of this analysis of the task of tile citizen, some rather startling conchlsions abtmt tile religious and secular voter emer-e Tile reli.-ious voter, who is by moral training well accustonled to separating his own personal valuations and priorities from those of God, lind is thus habitually "'double" ah'eady, may be a better voter and citizen than tile purely "'single" sect.lar voter who has no theoretical basis for dividing his view of tile world from that of the larger conmmnity. The religious buyer or seller may be a betler marketer for being able to separate his own inlcrests from those of the collective as represented by the price of goods: in- deed, this capacity may the core t+l" the virtue of hon- esty, which is proverbially tile best policy.

Certainly there are secular positions such as huMall-

ism and environmelatalism (and Marxisl class-solidar- ity, and racist race-solidarity) that do postulate a higher unity that we nltlSl ba lance against our own self- centeredness. But those positions are explicit that the "'intentions" and "'interests" o1 that larger unity are ac- cessible and intelligible to human undcrstariding, and thus that there exists an elite lhal grasps those inten- tions and interests, and is therefore qualified to ct)lll- mand the rest of us. It is always easier for a human tyrant to control a human-made idol, and thus the wor- ship of his followers, than to be held responsible to ,i deity that no human owns. The tyranny of the contem- porary Islamofascists is made possible by tile substitu- tion of Sharia, Islamic la\v, for Alhih himself tile rulebook becomes the idol, and the religious basis of the law disappears. In a strong sense, Islamofascim is really an odd kind of secular humanism that lilts re-

placed a compassionate deity with an idol of human organization. Marxism has solnetinles been described similarly as a secular version of Christianity, in which the grace of charity, which is a divine gift, is replaced by the stale redistribution of the fruits of work.

Jewish and Christian rel igion--and tile deepest Ira- ditions of all religions, inchiding Islam--insist that there is zl threshold of understanding before which the hu- nlan mind must fall silently to ils knees and acknowl- edge a mystery, lind accept. We cannot know Ihe mind (/1 provMence. The l)ao that cau be spoken is not the l)ao. We nltlSl love our neighbor and renounce our pride and recognize humility as a virtue and strength, not a weakness. And at the same time the great religions in- sist on the unique value and dignity of every hunlan soul, and the importance of the drama of our actions, and even tile myste U that we are redeemed in the very recognition, and thus in the very existence, of our siuful- ness. Religion lets us off neither the hook of our submis- sion to a higher mystery, nor the hook of our responsi- bility to act and be ourselves in all our ignorance.

"'Render unto Caesar the things that are ( 'aesiu"s. and unto God the things that are God's,'" said Jesus, in the full tradition of the Hebrew prophets. The context of Ibis injunction is very interesting: he has been tested by the intellectual deconstructionists of his lime, who want to know if Pie advocates the paying of taxes land thus thc participation in a political ec(momy), lie asks to see a coin, and inquires whose head is on it. ()n being told it is Caesar's, he gives his answer. The deeper point is this: if we pay taxes to Caesar because Caesar 's image is on the coin and Caesar coined it, what is it that bears the image of God and must also be rendered up to the image-maker when the law requires? Since (}od made hunlankind "'in his ima<,e and likeness," then hu- man beilws themselves are the tribute that God levies upon his citizens. We render coins to Caesar, and Ihc divine part of ourse lves- -God ' s image in US--IO (led. Again, the necessary doubleness.

But secular ideolo-ies�9 ,, noble and beautiful as Ihey often are, are always in danger of becoming pure indi- vidual selfishness, in which case the vote becomes Ihe way thai the majority loots the wealth of the minority. On the other hand, if they do postulate a higher unity (race, class, the human race, Gala), they are in danger of dissolvin<,�9 the individual in the collective, "'liquidat- ing" tile individual "false consciousness" that Slilnds out flom the "'masses." And that postulated higher un i ty - - that "'popular Wil l" - -be ing the conception of human beings themselves, is, in theory, understandable by an elite, which is thus mandated to rule.

L' This is not an argument that the ~overnment should take sidcs and support religion. Of course, any con>

TIlE I)Ot :BIJ': CITIZEN: REI.IGIOt.fS AND SECUI.AI4 15

pelled ideology would destroy the very goods it valued (which is why secular Political Con'ectness has been so

corrosive to our democracy). But the w)luntary and

uncompelled religious beliefs of citizens may be a bet- ter foundation for the exercise of democratic citizen- ship than the ideological beliefs of non-religious people.

The current division in the more philosophical reaches of our national debate is tragically distorted by the asymmet,'y of the knowledge of the two sides about each other. Leftist and liberal secular humanists of vari- ous stripes have politically controlled the universities, schools, press, and official culture since the 1960s, and their views are well known to everyone, including reli- gious conservatives. The latter have taken the opportu- nity to hone their arguments against those of their op- ponents and incorporate tile better elements of their opponents' positions into their own. These religious intellectuals have, meanwhile, been living in virtual exile from the academy--or in "'internal exile" within i t - - and therefore their views and ideas are invisible to the secular Left. Hence the present outcry about the stu- pidity and ignorance of the voters who elected Bush; seculars simply do not know about the profundity and erudition of their ,'eligious compatriots, their deep sense

of democratic responsibility, and the urgency of the debate about freedom and rights and objectivity and science that has been going on among religious believ- ers. For Christians and Jews and the large majority of Muslims in this country, fi'eedom is not just a desirable

political condition, but the absolute foundation of their moral beliefs.

It is no coincidence that democracy was invented by religious people--the Greeks, the Icelanders, the Dutch, the British, the Americans. It was not invented by athe- ists and secular humanists, thou,,he democracy may be the environment most hospitable to atheists and human- ists, and most liable to benefit from their own valuable insights. When atheists and humanists had their chance to invent appropriate regimes in the twentieth century, they came up with Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Calnbodia, all of which murdered religious people by the millions. Perhaps democracy is safer in the bands of those who believe both in a higher unity whose values are finally unknow- able to us, and in the personal caring and love of that higher unity for us, that values our individual decisions and our freedom. Those who are best accustomed to the pain and tension o f religious "doubleness'" may be those who are best qualified to handle the two para- doxes of free societies--the contradiction between my valuations and the valuations of the free market's pric- ing system, and the contradiction between my neces- sary political opinions and the verdict of the election.

f )vder ick "limu'r is I"oumh, rs Prqli',v~m o /Ar l s a m / H u -

manities at the University o f Te.ras at Dallas. A poet. critic.

a/ld./'o/'mer editor (?l The Kenyon Review. his books in- clmh' The Ctdture of ttopc: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit, Shakespeare's Twenty-first Century Economics: The Morality of l,ovc and Money, and Social Mobility and Political Attitudes: Comparative Perspectives (published by Transaction).

Politics and Religious Consciousness in America George Armstrong Kelly With a n e w in troduct ion br Jean Be thke Elshtain

Kelly sets forth a chronology and topology of the patterns of collaboration, competition, and interaction of politics and religion in America. Elshtain's introduction underscores the continuing importance of this seminal work, that remains the first coherent history of American religious thought and practice within tile context of politics.

ISBN: 0-7658-0597-9 (paper) 2004 335 pp. $24.95/s

t r a n s a c t i o n Publisher of Record in International Social Science

transaction Rutgers--The State University of New Jersey Department BKAD05 PRCA 35 Berrue Circle

o8o4 Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042

Avai lable at bookstores wor ldwide or direct from the publisher.

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www.transaction pub.com

16 SOCIETY ~ �9 MAY/JUNE 2()05