Is political-religious right threatening ‘civic religion’?
Published 9:00 pm Monday, December 2, 2002
WASHINGTON — ‘ve been trying to figure out why people like Attorney General Ashcroft frighten me. More accurately, I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it in a way that makes sense. I think I know the source of my fear: the danger of an imposed theocracy.
To those who don’t already agree with me, it won’t seem fair to lump Ashcroft in with the religio-political right crowd that would shove its version of religious truth down our throats. There’s nothing evil-appearing about Ashcroft; he seems only to have the strength of his convictions — including his deeply held religious convictions. He doesn’t rail at us, doesn’t preach fire and brimstone. He’s mild-mannered and earnest.
Yet it seems to me that he and people like him hold a view of what America is (or at any rate ought to be) that is based not on the civic virtues of which we are so proud, but on specifically religious ones. And I fear that he would take every fair chance to make his views the American view.
What’s wrong with that? Wouldn’t you and I want our view of things to become the prevailing view? Isn’t that one of the reasons we get into politics, or become civically active, or write newspaper columns? Am I talking about anything beyond the fact that I am on one side and people like the attorney general are on the other — and for now prevailing — side?
I think so, but I find it hard to express in words that make sense to those who hold a different view.
Take the subject of what to teach our children about our origins. Evolution seems such an obvious truth, religious beliefs and scientific arguments notwithstanding, that it seems clear to me we ought to teach evolution. But suppose (and I don’t mean to impute this belief to Ashcroft) you believe that a six-day Creation is the obvious truth — and suppose you are in a position to help your belief become the dominant view? Wouldn’t you want all our children to have access — real access — to this truth?
Do you see why it’s hard to talk about? But why should I be frightened?
Here’s why. People for whom religion is the source of wisdom and truth, whose religious and civic lives are seamlessly connected, and who hold governmental authority must be greatly tempted to do what they can to place truth on the throne. Maybe they have to make the effort.
But isn’t that just the effort that was made by the Taliban? Doesn’t that urge, or something very like it, drive the religious zealotry that, ultimately, justifies much of the international terrorism?
I think we are a long way from establishing anything like the Taliban in America — but not far at all from having imposed on us a version of truth that would justify the suspension of our civil liberties and other constitutional inconveniences. We won’t stone anybody to death for objecting to having their computers downloaded, or for declining to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or for skipping the "under God" addendum. But there are those who would extract a price for these breaches — and there is evidence that the rest of us might let them — if only for the duration of the "crisis."
Is it silly to fear that if religious-based political conservatism holds power for a few more years, we will have more crises, more erosions of civil liberties, and a deadened sense of resistance?
Do I, it is fair to ask, assume that the religio-political right is so fundamentally evil that, given half a chance, it will do bad things to the rest of us? No. I think power, combined with a view that those in power must not distinguish between their religious and civic selves, is dangerous, whatever its source. For now, the source is the right.
The genius of America is that it has managed to devise a civic religion, less doctrinally specific but no less devoutly held, that can coexist with the gamut of our private religions.
Is civic religion in danger too?
William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.
