Religion in Politics: A Theory

I. Religious Ideology vs. a Religious Disposition

I’ve spent a few weeks trying to figure out what bothered me about Amy Sullivan’s May 11 Washington Post article on the rise in leftist religious rhetoric, and—after a few conversations with friends—I think that I’m getting close. The faith-based leftism in her article sometimes sounds like a mirror image of the modular, narrow-minded Christianity of the Religious Right. It takes religion as a source of political content, rather than a comprehensive way of understanding the world.

Sullivan argues that liberals are now every bit as adept as conservatives at drawing upon religion in their public arguments:

American politics is rife with religious rhetoric—but in the modern era, it has almost always been deployed on behalf of conservative positions…[BUT] Democratic politicians now unabashedly cite religion when making their case, and GOP leaders sometimes find themselves in the unusual position of justifying—rather than merely stating—their religious claims.

Somewhere out there, E.J. Dionne and Jim Wallis are smiling. Some years ago, in Souled Out and The Great Awakening, respectively, each argued that leftists were on the cusp of a religious revival. And insofar as that’s true, it’s great news for the Left.

And this brings me to what bothers me about Sullivan’s piece. Parts of the article treat faith as a foundational mine where politicians dig for rhetorical content. In other words, instead of leaning back on Rawls or secular foundations for human rights, leftists now make the same arguments—but with new and improved faith-based justifying power! For reasons I’ll get into below, I think that this approach is unprofitable. There are at least two ways to bring faith into the public square.[1] Let’s take them up in turn.
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