Heard an interesting parallel on the radio this morning. Glen Beck, a Philadelphia talk show host, read an extended passage from an unidentified Iraqi writer living in Washington on the recent elections in his home country. In it the writer suggested that Ayatollah al Sistani, an Iranian by birth, having helped to liberate the Shiite majority in Iraq, has now set his eyes on his homeland and will be encouraging democratic reforms in Iran. He then drew a parallel between Sistani's role in the Shiite regions of the Muslim world and that of Pope John Paul II in the liberation of Eastern Europe. That two of the most influential and outspoken figures in this era's great democratic liberation movements should be religious leaders is a broad challenge to the secular left's imagery, born out of the French revolutionary experience, that identifies organized religion with oppression.
3 comments:
I don't think the "secular" left (do you just mean leftist atheists? or do you include those of us with religious lives who believe in a fairly strict separation of religious and political institutions?) has a single view of religion. Most of the major religions of the world began as liberationist movements of a sort; but the willingness of religious institutions to stake strong positions on matters of liberty is, historically speaking, a relatively recent phenomenon and not a consistent one.
There's plenty of relatively recent evidence of religion as a force for liberation: Latin American liberation theology, the role of churches in the civil rights movement, the examples you cite (though I could quibble, I won't now). But its still relatively recent, and, as others have pointed out, religious movements are unreliable allies to secular ones (and vice versa, of course) except in narrow terms. That makes blanket reconsideration difficult.
I by no means meant to imply that lefties had to be secular or that there was a single view of religion on that end of the spectrum. There is, however, on the left a long tradition of aggressive secularism. You might trace it to Voltaire who said of the Church "crush the damned thing," or to the Jacobins with their "dechristianization" campaigns or to the "red republicans" and their attacks on the Papacy, or to Marx's pronouncements on religion as false consciousness, or to the Bolshevik bans on religious activities and on and on and on. Whatever its manifestation the message has been the same -- religion is mere superstition, it is an instrument of oppression, and fundamental change cannot take place until it is purged from the culture. The "new socialist man" is not a churchgoer. This is not to say a person of the left cannot be devout. Many are, but they are not part of what I would call the "secular left."
I know many people who try to draw a clear distinction between their religious and secular lives and try to keep them separate. I just don't understand how that works. Such declarations always remind me of the last scenes in "The Godfather" when Coppola cuts back and forth between the baptism of Michael's son and the brutal killings he has ordered. Coppola's point is that you cannot compartmentalize your religious and secular selves and maintain your humanity. If you do not allow your religious faith to intrude on your secular existence from whence do you derive the moral values that govern your life? If, as a man of the left you believe that inequality is immoral, on what do you base that judgment?
I'm confused. You say that most of the major religions, which have long histories, began as liberationist movements [a dubious proposition], but then say that the willingness of religious institutions to take a strong position on liberty is a historically recent phenomenon. There's something wrong in that formulation.
For that matter, the concept of liberty, at least as it is currently understood, is a historically recent phenomenon.
I by no means meant to imply a consist liberalism or radicalism on the part of religious institutions. Only to counter the frequent assertion that religion is by definition an instrument of oppression.
I apologize for not making my point more clearly. I hope this helps.
Best,
I am religious, privately. Yes, it affects my views on policy. But when I make policy arguments, I make them on a humanist, rather than religious, basis.
What I meant about religions is that there is long period between origins and today in which most world religions are institutionally bound more to oppressive states and systems than they are willing to challenge them.
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