The Separation of Church and Thought

By Roman Goerss, published in the Whitman Pioneer October 18, 2007

If you wanted to find some school of thought, some ideology that was as far from this colleges belief system as possible, you wouldnt be far off to pick social conservatism. Considering what many students think of Christianity in general, if you combed the whole campus I doubt you could find more than a few dozen people who consider the movement anything less than bigoted. The movement is certainly easy to hate. Some of its leaders are at the forefront of fighting against progressive causes like gay rights. I will not contest that some within the religious right have some very bigoted stances, and there are many issues on which we disagree, to put it mildly. But in discussing the religious right with other students Ive noticed a trend that troubles me. Too often Whitman students seem to think that people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson represent all Christians and all social conservatives. Ive been told many times that people with religious beliefs should keep them out of politics and in some cases that the separation of church and state means that Christians should leave religion at the door when it comes to the political process. The really wonderful thing about democracy is that it is doubtful. In contrast to authoritarian systems that claim to know the truth and strive to enforce it, democracy kicks back and says do what you think is right. Its a system that recognizes the legitimacy of people taking what they believe is the correct way to do things and voting for it. Now, a persons beliefs about what is right and wrong are always going to proceed out of their value system and their set of personal beliefs. Thats human nature. Christians who are active in politics vote for what they believe is right based on a set of moral principles proceeding from religious beliefs, while an atheist who is active in politics votes for what they believe in proceeding out of a set of secular beliefs. So there are two problems with telling Christians to divorce their religion from their politics. First, its impossible. A human being cant sit down and make decisions as if the basis of their belief system wasnt there. A Christians conception of what is right and wrong is inextricably bound up with his or her belief system, and the only way to keep those beliefs out is to exclude Christians from politics. Asking people to make this distinction is like trying to uproot a buildings foundation while leaving the building untouched. Some things cant be separated. Another problem with this exclusion is that it prejudicially favors secularism over religion. A recent article in this very paper called religious belief irrational on the basis that it was founded upon an assertion (the existence of a god) which could not be logically proven. By this criterion, secularism is irrational because there is no logical way any of its assertions (that god does not exist or that the universe occurred by itself) can be proven or argued. Secularism is itself a belief system founded upon faith and assertions about the universe that cant be proven. There are

simply too many big questions for any person to be able to state with certainty which explanation is correct. But shouldnt people be protected from having the beliefs of others imposed on them? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, we recognize that it is inconsistent with democratic principle to violate the mental integrity of citizens by forcing them to believe any particular way of thinking. I would argue that that is one purpose of the non-establishment clause of the Constitution. On the other hand, democracy consists of a process by which individuals enact laws on the basis of what they believe is right. In a certain sense, every law that a citizen disagrees with is an imposition of someone elses belief system. We tolerate the activism of others in support of such laws because we recognize that democracy requires a system whereby everyone is free to advocate their beliefs, even ones some consider irrational. It is just as illegitimate to exclude Christians as any other belief system. Christians and social conservatives have the same right to campaign for their beliefs in politics as everyone else. As long as religion itself is not adopted by the state and the freedom of conscience of American citizens is respected, no amount of belief in God, any God(s), should disqualify someone from politics.