Motus Mentis

One of the warmer and more persistent disagreements between liberal and conservative viewpoints in recent years has been over the commingling of religion with politics. We hear a steady drumbeat from the Left alleging that the Bush cadre is trying to turn the USA into a “theocracy”, and in academic circles, where the prevailing attitude toward religion is pitying scorn, if not downright hostility, conservative Republicans are as rare as hen’s teeth. Meanwhile, in the opposite corner, reactionary firebrands like Ann Coulter inflame the pious with books such as her recent screed, Godless.

So it was interesting to see CNN present a program over the weekend in which the current crop of Democratic presidential aspirants fed the electorate great helpings of santimonious treacle in an effort to demonstrate that their worldview was informed not only by the shrewd and worldly calculus of political advantage, but also by the sine qua non of American public life, namely “faith”.

Why is this necessary? Why must American politicians demonstrate not only that they have the intellect, statesmanship, and grasp of complex issues required to pilot the ship of state, but must assure us also of a full-duplex link to Heaven?

It’s easy enough to point out that Americans, 90% of whom believe in God, and more than half of whom reject the idea that we humans are descended from nonhuman ancestors (the scientific equivalent of denying the roundness of the Earth, or the existence of atoms) are far more religious than citizens of other liberal democracies around the world. But even so, we don’t vet our doctors or lawyers for belief in the supernatural; why must it be so for our politicians?

Well, you might say, in a democracy, our elected representatives are our proxies; we want them to be as much like us as possible, in order that society shall move in the direction we would have wished it to ourselves. Interestingly, though, what seems to be paramount is not that the candidates share our particular religious beliefs: all that matters, apparently, is that they not be altogether Godless, that they can be trusted to have some sort of religious commitment.

I think this is a fascinating fact. The actual content of their beliefs or superstitions matters, apparently, less than that we be convinced that they don’t lack them entirely. Watching the program I was struck by the scrupulous care that was taken to avoid questions like “Well, tell us, Mrs. Clinton, we’ve talked a lot about faith — in fact tonight’s entire program is all about your faith — but what is it, really, that you actually have faith in? What, exactly, is your image of God? What specific role do you believe God plays in the management of the world? Do you think that there is a place in Heaven for non-Christians? …” And so on.

But there is none of that. We wouldn’t want to examine any of it too closely, because one of two outcomes would be the likely result: either that the candidate actually possesses very specific doctrinal views that would, almost necessarily, contradict the beliefs of many potential voters, or else it would be revealed that there really isn’t anything very solid there at all, other than a vague and somewhat incoherent jumble of bracing generalities.

No, this is a perfectly illustrative example not of a genuine interest in what the candidates actually believe, but of what Daniel Dennett refers to, in his book Breaking the Spell, as “belief in belief”. I think the reason it expresses itself so strongly in politics has to do with the prevalence of the notion among religious folks that morality requires a supernatural basis: that even though, once our politicians are in office, we can’t make sure they behave, at least they will have the fear of God to keep them in line. This fits in well with our requiring that publicly binding oaths be sworn on a Bible, or “so help me God”, but it’s far from foolproof, since a scurrilous nonbeliever would presumably have no qualms about faking the whole thing in the first place — so the only ones you are really filtering out by these proceedings are the corrupt believers who might well have tried to get away with something if you hadn’t pre-empted them with an oath. But to the faithful among the electorate, of course, God is watching the whole game anyway, so it will all get sorted out eventually — and I suppose they are solaced to imagine that things will go even worse, come Judgment Day, for our crooked pols if they have gone so far as to swear falsely upon the Bible, or to piously and publicly avow a false belief in the Almighty in order just to get ahead.

To those of us who see the whole business as a sort of mass hypnosis, however, it all seems quite bizarre, and not at all reassuring.

Meanwhile, just to pile it on, there is this item from today’s paper. But that’s another story.