The Boulder Sunday Camera - Insight
24 September 1995
The Christian Coalition thinks so. The founding fathers and many of the
world's great thinkers disagree.
The Christian Coalition is now one of the fastest-growing political forces in
America. This conservative Christian organization has progressed from an
inauspicious gathering of 125 people in 1990 to an enthusiastic delegation of
4,000 activists, representing 1.7 million adherents, at their recent annual
convention in Washington. GOP presidential hopefuls curry the group's favor, and
many congressional Republicans spare no praise in welcoming this relatively
small segment of the electorate to their party. This profound development is,
and should be, viewed with some consternation by the more moderate religious and
secular elements of our society. Despite their recently toned-down rhetoric, the
long-term agenda of the Christian Right remains essentially unchanged. Past
pronouncements by leaders Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed leave little doubt that
their ultimate goal is nothing less than the Christianization of America. This
concept leaves little room for non-Christians, for non-Christian ideas or even
for differing views of Christianity. In virtual theocracies, such as Iran and
other Islamic countries, moral injunctions - often intertwined with civil law -
are derived from religious faith. In such a system, morals are presumed to be
divinely inspired, and independent perceptions of morality are discouraged, even
condemned. The underlying theme in many sectarian societies is that persons who
do not adhere to the dominant belief system are somehow base and immoral. With
the benefit of history, political freedom and the gradual improvement in the
human condition, we of this so-called enlightened age should have the courage -
indeed, should exercise the privilege - to ask: Do people need to be religious
in order to be moral and to be good citizens?
CHALLENGE FROM THE RIGHT
The great weight of opinion throughout the ages seems to have been on the
affirmative side. Most people, including many nonreligious persons, believe that
religion is the exclusive domain and the sole font of morality, even though
hundreds of diverse religions exist today and perhaps thousands have existed in
earlier times, spanning a broad spectrum of theologies, cosmogonies, and mores.
Although most colonial governments that preceded the United States on this
continent decidedly associated religion with the moral conduct of their
citizens, the Constitution of the United States is totally silent on such
matters. However, the fact that the Constitution carefully avoids religious
involvment has not been sufficient to deter religious organizations from
repeated attempts to have their particular brand of morality legislated into law
at all levels of government. Now that the Republican "Contract on
America" has paused briefly in its sweep across the landscape, the newest
thrust by the Christian Coalition has been to grasp the moment to announce its
own gratuitous "Contract with the American Family". The timing could
not be more ideal. Despite widespread misgivings about the first contract, many
Americans do resent the perceived social excesses of government; a conviction
persists that the apparent societal disintegration we are witnessing is in
direct proportion to the abandonment of so-called traditional values. This
abandonment, the Christian Right would have us believe, is the result of secular
influences permeating society and the retreat from religious faith and
principles. If it be true, then, that morality requires religion and that
persons devoid of religion are therefore immoral, or at best amoral, the
evidence for such sweeping generalities should be clear. Those of us who hold to
no religion in the usual sense of the word, and yet manage to live in harmony
with other members of society, to bear wholesome relationships with our
families, and to be at peace with ourselves and with nature, do not perceive
ourselves as being either immoral or amoral. But perhaps this is merely a narrow
and self-serving conceit. A better way to judge the matter might be to consider
the verdicts of free-thinking scholars, philosophers, and historians who have
dedicated their lives to the study of human nature, its virtues and its foibles.
ETHICS BEFORE RELIGION
Have the intellectual giants of the ages found the world or parts of it
irredeemably devoid of virtue, kindness, selflessness, humility and generosity,
those human qualities religion purports to engender, where religion is absent?
Ethicists have come down on all sides of the question. Socrates believed that
men could be virtuous and yet 'not go up each day to offer sheep and geese';
however, as a result of his trouble to advance this simple thesis, he paid the
supreme price.
Ethics ranked high in the realm of human knowledge long before religion claimed ownership of moral authority. Men such as Democritus, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Epictetus maintained that ethical judgments could be attained by reason and wisdom, thereby providing a life of virtue in the process. Revealed religion and the Age of Faith changed most of that kind of thinking. Even thoughtful political theorists of the Enlightenment often took a strong negative position with respect to any semblance of atheistic fervor. John Locke, a pioneer in democratic principles in the late 17th century, said: "Those are not to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths which are the bonds of human society can have no hold upon the atheist." However, Thomas Hobbes, an equally strong voice of democracy and a Locke contemporary, took a different path and held to a more anthropocentric view of morality. A century later, Edmund Burke, a political conservative and one of the few friends of the American Revolution in the English Parliament, proclaimed himself to be free from religious domination but still felt that the masses required religion to prevent widespread chaos and immorality. Voltaire, known primanly for his impious satire (but who never revealed his deepest beliefs with respect to the existence of God), also maintained that belief in God was necessary for others: "if God did not exist, someone would have to invent Him".
A SECULAR NATION
Despite the claims to the contraxy by religious leaders past and present, the
United States is a secular nation. Its most influential authors and its
principal founders, Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin and Madison, were
deists, meaning that they held to a rational religion, recognized no organized
religions as their own, and nurtured their political and moral ethos from the
unfolding abundance of the Enlightenment. The principal political and humanistic
product of the age, the U.S. Constitution, is a secular document. The
Constitution never mentions God and makes only two references to religion:
Article 6, Section 3, forbids religious tests for any political office; and the
First Amendment's establishment clause guarantees religious freedom for all
Americans. Although the Constitution contains the framework for a moral nation,
it is not remotely possible to impute a religious basis for any of its parts.
Modern philosophers have tended strongly toward a rational interpretation of
humankind's relation to itself and to the cosmos. John Stuart Mill, William
James, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell rejected a purely religious basis for
morality. Rather than dogma, modern philosophy posits the roots of ethics to be
perceivable through the beneficence of archeology, anthropology, psychology, and
the other physical sciences, to conclude that human ethics are actually an
outgrowth of our biology, pair bonding, and our basic need to cooperate in order
to survive in a hostile world. Scholarly research suggests that religious ethics
are a distillation of natural ethics and not the converse. Religion simply
infused a milieu of mystery and miracle to adorn and embellish and to make the
incomprehensible seem comprehensible in the knowledge void of earlier times.
THE SOURCE OF VALUES
Were Locke, Burke and Voltaire correct in their assessment that most men are
moral only when they are religiously motivated, even if it could somehow be
demonstrated that religious morality takes no precedence over secular morality
and indeed may be derived from it? Consider, for example, the case now being
advanced by the Christian Coalition: Would organized, state-sponsored prayer in
the public schools improve the morals of young citizens? It is clearly unfair
and inappropriate to invoke the morality of children in this context, but the
same question may be justifiably applied to adults.
There is little doubt that prayer often renders a positive effect on believing persons in times of bereavement, peril, or adversity. In times of celebration and thanksgiving, prayer exhilarates and brings joy and fulfillment. But does it also serve in the sense that praying persons are more virtuous because of it? Unfortunately, there is little to commend the latter idea on the basis of human experience. Some of the most prayerful periods in western history also encompassed the unspeakable cruelties of the Spanish Inquistion in the Age of Faith and the protracted religious wars of the Reformation.
Humanism maintains that moral values derive their source from human experience. The precepts and mores of a heterogeneous society tend to accord with those of the dominant religious group within that society, but a common ground exists because the society insists upon it, not because it was commanded by God or any other moral authority. Love, kindness, and generosity would still be good things in a world where no religions existed.
Howard Garcia