Ted claimed in his blog today that religion and democracy cannot coexist. He makes a point saying that the candidates spend too much time preparing to answer questions related to their faith which are unhelpful to governing the country, and that they should focus on more ‘important’ issues. While this blogpost is written in an extremely anti-religion worldview, it was the type of words he used to describe religion that captured my interest. More specifically, he claims that religion “oversimplifies issues”, and has ‘a fixed truth’ - these words were also used today in class to describe the Nazi and GDP’s propaganda methods. While the associations of totalitarianism governments as quasi-religious cults are plentiful in textbooks, this is the first time I’ve seen such a comparison in the public media.
Regarding his comments about how religion and democracy has contradictory points, I have a few problems with his argument:
“The essence of our system is that we, the people, get to choose our values...So everything must be open to question, to debate, and therefore to change. In a democracy, there should be no fixed truth except that everyone has the right to offer a new view -- and to change his or her mind... A claim to absolute truth -- any absolute truth -- stops that process [of democracy].”
With this quote he claims that religions have a set of “fixed truths”, and “that "there is a fixed truth" leads inevitably to the claim that "I have that fixed truth," and these truths ultimately end up being about personal behaviors that ought to be matters of free choice.” While I understand that religions have a set of rules that their followers are expected to follow, I do not think that the truths and rules are strict, or ‘totalitarianism’ enough to hinder the proper function of democracy. For example, if Christianity had a set layout of how leaders of the church should arrange their homes, like the Nazis did, then I would agree that it would hamper democracy.
In Professor R. Bytwerk’s Bending Spines, he states that “Christianity and other major religions are worldviews. The Christian assertion is that… no part of creation is outside the reach of its creator. … Christians generally agree, in principle at least, that Christianity applies to all of life, not only its edges.” (pg 12) I would accept this view on religion much easier than Ted’s view. I believe that religion is a worldview, and can provide a basis of how a political candidate will view and understand the world. Although history has shown us that many candidates often do not follow up or act upon their religious convictions, I still believe that it can provide us with an idea of the person’s morals, ethics and beliefs.
So can religion and democracy coexist? I believe so. Although religion can affect a person’s opinion on the world, it does not have the power to completely dominate a person’s actions. However, I do agree with one of Ted’s points, that they should not focus too much on it and neglect other important issues.
1 comment:
Hmm. In making the claim that there is no absolute truth, he is stating an absolute truth.
More than that, he may well be right that democracy has no absolute truth -- but that does not require that the citizens of a democracy hold no such truths. That goes back to my discussion of the principle laid out by the Peace of Westphalia that everyone need not practice the religion of the state he lived in. That still allowed for citizens to hold absolute views -- but denied their right to compel others to share those views.
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