Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Why is being religious so closely tied with conservative politics?

loquitur · 10-25-2007, 05:26 AM

I'm not positive that as a factual matter the premise of the OP is correct, nor that many of the people who posted and accept the OP's premise are correct.

Religion per se is neither necessarily conservative nor necessarily liberal. For example, back in the 1970s and 80s there were plenty of left-wing pastors talking about how Jesus was a revoutionary and that his heir was Daniel Ortega. There are plenty of religious Jews (like Michael Lerner) who fulminate against Bush very loudly. William Sloane Coffin was a major antiwar leader. The civil rights movement was heavily led by black churches. I could go on with examples.

To some extent, I think people are extrapolating from today's set of facts by looking at a subset of religious actors and a subset of people calling themselves conservatives. The Dobsons and Robertsons of the world certainly have a substantial constituency and they also have (in my view lamentably) outsized influence in certain parts of the Republican party. But it's a mistake to equate conservative thought with religion, and it's a mistake to overlook either the diversity of views among religious people or the diverse kinds of conservatism - laissez faire capitalist types are different from holy rollers who are different from libertarians who are different from national greatness types who are different from .......... well, you get the idea. On the Democratic side, try to figure out the points of agreement among, say, blue-collar industrial union members and transnationalist environmentalists, and you'll see the tensions right away. Why should the other side of the aisle be any different?

It's true that there are a number of points of overlap between religious views and certain aspects of certain types of conservatism, most notably an emphasis on the value of traditions (or, to use the less charitable way of phrasing it, reliance on authority and hierarchy). But that gets you only so far.

I'd also suggest that people refrain from attributing political views to mental defects. What you consider a defect depends on your point of view. "Suspicion of harebrained schemes that haven't been tested" is how righties would describe their view of lefty proposals, whereas lefties would describe righties as "fearful and intolerant of change." Neither description is fully accurate, but both have kernels of truth. These things cut both ways.

I'm not particularly pleased that political views appear to be the ingredients of the latest tribalism, but that seems to be what the emerging pattern is. It's certainly better than race, but that doesn't make it good.

10-25-2007, 05:26 AM	#18 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	I'm not positive that as a factual matter the premise of the OP is correct, nor that many of the people who posted and accept the OP's premise are correct. Religion per se is neither necessarily conservative nor necessarily liberal. For example, back in the 1970s and 80s there were plenty of left-wing pastors talking about how Jesus was a revoutionary and that his heir was Daniel Ortega. There are plenty of religious Jews (like Michael Lerner) who fulminate against Bush very loudly. William Sloane Coffin was a major antiwar leader. The civil rights movement was heavily led by black churches. I could go on with examples. To some extent, I think people are extrapolating from today's set of facts by looking at a subset of religious actors and a subset of people calling themselves conservatives. The Dobsons and Robertsons of the world certainly have a substantial constituency and they also have (in my view lamentably) outsized influence in certain parts of the Republican party. But it's a mistake to equate conservative thought with religion, and it's a mistake to overlook either the diversity of views among religious people or the diverse kinds of conservatism - laissez faire capitalist types are different from holy rollers who are different from libertarians who are different from national greatness types who are different from .......... well, you get the idea. On the Democratic side, try to figure out the points of agreement among, say, blue-collar industrial union members and transnationalist environmentalists, and you'll see the tensions right away. Why should the other side of the aisle be any different? It's true that there are a number of points of overlap between religious views and certain aspects of certain types of conservatism, most notably an emphasis on the value of traditions (or, to use the less charitable way of phrasing it, reliance on authority and hierarchy). But that gets you only so far. I'd also suggest that people refrain from attributing political views to mental defects. What you consider a defect depends on your point of view. "Suspicion of harebrained schemes that haven't been tested" is how righties would describe their view of lefty proposals, whereas lefties would describe righties as "fearful and intolerant of change." Neither description is fully accurate, but both have kernels of truth. These things cut both ways. I'm not particularly pleased that political views appear to be the ingredients of the latest tribalism, but that seems to be what the emerging pattern is. It's certainly better than race, but that doesn't make it good.