Peter Beinart thinks we need a whole lot more religion.
Maybe it’s the values of hierarchy, authority, and tradition that churches instill. Maybe religion builds habits and networks that help people better weather national traumas, and thus retain their faith that the system works. For whatever reason, secularization isn’t easing political conflict. It’s making American politics even more convulsive and zero-sum.
For years, political commentators dreamed that the culture war over religious morality that began in the 1960s and ’70s would fade. It has. And the more secular, more ferociously national and racial culture war that has followed is worse.
My thoughts.
1. He is not the first to suggest that bad things happen when politics comes to fill a void left by a decline in religion.
2. I am glad that there are people on the left who would like to see the heat turned down in politics. The Three Languages of Politics is my attempt to help with that project. The revised edition is due out soon.
3. I hope that the left did not discover that political warfare is ugly only because of their shocking defeat in November. Instead, I would prefer to believe that Beinart would have written the same essay decrying politico-religious movements on both sides even if the requisite thousands of votes in key states had gone a different way and Hillary Clinton had won the Presidency.
Beinart is thinking of modern American religion, religion that has accepted the liberal bargain, “you can practice your religion however you want, and I can practice my religion however I want, but if your practice includes constraining me, then you CAN’T DO THAT.” Religion was not that way in much of western history–and is not that way in much of the world today..
In America, many religious impulses have now shifted into politics. “I know the right way to live and you should be forced to live that way.”
I’m not sure that more people practicing laissez faire religion is going to change that much.
Ironic you wrote the title the day after Chuck Berry died…Although R&R is well accepted today, Chuck Berry wrote the ‘folk’ music about the battles of R&R in the 1950s. Johnny B Goode was written for both Robert Johnson & Elvis Presley as well as himself. We forget that good church going 1956 Americans hated R&R and thought it would bring down the white race down to the level of African-Americans. (Actual quotes were much worse.) And some of the decline of the church did come from Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, or Sam Cooke moving church music into Rock & Roll.
Several other points:
1) Politics has been ugly for decades. Rush Limbaugh was a star in 1993 so we noticed. Liberals believe only 25% of conservatives are Ross Douthat types while 75% are Ayn Rand believers. So conservatives suggesting churches position in society feels empty.
2) Churches have moving against their more liberal members for decades. My parents stop going in the 1980s because of some of the churches positions.
3) I submit the decline of the church came from:
a) Americans in the 1970s – 1990s moved a lot and churches only thrive with local support. (Mega Churches are not good local control.) Only the last 10 years this movement has slowed down but impact to the churches happened.
b) The age of first marriage has increased to 30 and so Americans are family settling later in life. Traditionally, most families go to church and as kids age they pull away (say at 16) and look to take position in the world. As this position and family comes about (say 24) they return to the church. Now this age of settling is 32 and young people are losing this connection.
“. . . I would prefer to believe that Beinart would have written the same essay decrying politico-religious movements on both sides even if the requisite thousands of votes in key states had gone a different way and Hillary Clinton had won the Presidency.”
Why would you prefer to believe that? Because it isn’t true. And Beinart and Hillary Clinton are poster children for moving religious impulses into politics. Remember Hillary’s “politics of meaning” schtick from 1992?
Go into non-Orthodox synagogue (and probably any liberal Protestant church, though I don’t know that from personal experiences), you will see that religious texts, myths, rituals and symbols have been systematically reinterpreted as representations of leftist political ideology. The Left has not only moved religious impulses into politics, it has turned religion into political cheerleading.
For all the right hatred of HRC, I always appreciated she was a strong Methodist and ran Bible study most of years as First Lady in Arkansas. She probably went to church more regularly than most Presidential candidates (especially her husband!) the last thirty years.
50 years ago churches mostly stayed out of Religion stayed out of politics and it really changed with 1980 Moral Majority support of Ronald Reagan. People forget that it was hard to trust a mediocre B actor as President in January 1980 and the Moral Majority helped solidify the Primary against Bush Sr.
You completely missed my point. Which is not a surprise.
I am sure that Hillary Clinton is as sincere a Methodist as Charles Schumer is a Jew.
I find nothing lower in politics than questioning ones faith…Maybe HRC is a strong Christian…You don’t know that.
I can guess, which seems fair given that Hillary used her supposed religiosity for political advertising purposes (although not so much in 2016) and is on board with preventing Christians with a view different from hers on the meaning of the gospel from living by their (genuine) faith. No prize for guessing how much I care what you think of my questioning Hillary’s religiosity.
A useful observation in Yuval Levin’s recent book _Fractured republic_ is that much of what has happened in religion has to do with previous “nominals” (nominally affiliated church members) becoming “nones” (no religious affiliation stated).
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Obviously there are other things happening as well.
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I find the hypothesis interesting that religious attendance is associated with increased self-control. I have no idea if that idea holds up to careful scrutiny. Baumeister has written about this, as have popularizers.
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Rumor has it that teachers who work with “ghetto” kids in the earliest grades can tell church kids because they are better at keeping quiet and holding still. That may not be the causal mechanism.
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I have so many half-baked observations on the general topic of religion and the social order that I could make them all day long. It’s hard to tell which of my musings have any merit. But it seems clear that declining church attendance is correlated with a bunch of things, and for some of them it might actually be an independent variable in some phenomena, rather than merely a correlate.
In that sense, the aphorisms of Chesterton are still worth pondering. He still has many fans.
The video of Roger Scruton “Europe’s Lessons for America” mentions a few noteworthy points as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMz3clGp_MY
There is a transcript as well–I think you can find it here:
http://www.heritage.org/europe/report/the-future-european-civilization-lessons-america
” I hope that the left did not discover that political warfare is ugly only because of their shocking defeat in November.”
I think that’s true, and I have a related worry.
It’s inevitable that President Trump will be fighting big battles with other government institutions trying to thwart his political agenda, sometimes passively and deniably but occasionally actively, and often under the cover of newly contrived interpretations of law, convenient to their ideological preferences.
That’s typical and to be expected. But my worry is that Trump will actually will some of these contests politically, in part by correctly arguing that the responsible individuals aren’t accepting the result of democratic elections and thus resisting both the popular will and ignoring rules of proper jurisprudence.
And after years of hard political struggle, he will end up winning these victories. Not that he shouldn’t win! But he’ll end up winning not for himself but for the next Democrat in office, who will use the path cut down through the structural barriers to turn the political volume up to 11. Then many of us will start wondering when the, “… Devil turned round on you — where would you hide?”
https://youtu.be/PDBiLT3LASk – A Man for All Seasons is one of my favorites
Can you imagine Hillary Clinton taking on the NSA/CIA? No, you can’t. Maybe
Maybe The Donald caves eventually, but no other President other than Ron Paul would do this.