Religion has been much maligned in our current politics due to its misappropriation by aberrant candidates such as Roy Moore and a liberal aversion to any locus of non-relativist communal consensus. Even for many who keep it, faith has become a seemingly reactionary social force. But it is exactly the opposite.
All religions emphasize one core value: responsibility. This ideal of public duty presumes rights as a necessary corollary, but not as the overriding force of self-entitlement they currently are. The virtue of obligation is the great progressive contribution organized religion can make to our conduct as citizens, and more expansively, to our collective political culture.
Here is an example which reaches into the central issue rocking our national politics today: jobs creation for the middle class. That is the underlying source of much of the resentment and recrimination in the American conversation today. The once comfortable frostbelt middle class is now a rustbelt underclass. They are willing to tolerate rhetoric once foreign to them, such as social conservatism, because, like everyone else, they need to eat. There ought be no begrudging by the liberal coastal elites their fellow citizens’ want of food and shelter.
Those elites have projected a paternalism onto their ideal state apparatus. Our cultural and financial elites have forged a government that has become unwieldy. It has fallen squarely into the regulatory hands of a rank and file bureaucracy that operates as a publicly funded oligarchy without regard for the welfare of small business and working men and women. This administrative ruling class is not elected, and has no genuine oversight that is timely, streamlined, easily accessible to the public, and non-technical. Former Vice President Al Gore nobly tried to correct this trend with his push in the nineties to “reinvent government,” but it did not take. The government has been distanced from the people. Just ask anyone trying to sustain a Mom and Pop bricks and mortar business. Now these elites have grown accusatory and embittered, claiming that the rising voices of the middle class are endangering democracy. No. Those middle class voices are simply tired of paternalism. And the elites are afraid, like any powerful group, of losing their authoritative status.
But, the working class is not exempted from its own part in its writhing demise. Once it was known for its civic commitment to local community. Now it is primarily known for its unceasing complaint that it has been shut out of the American dream. The middle class has to take responsibility for figuring out how it can survive and put bread back on its tables. There are new industries emerging, such as IT and warehousing for online shopping. But a transition to this new economy requires the disciplined, long-term values of parents emphasizing the primacy of education to their children, young families committed to wedlock when having a child, an utter repudiation of opioids, and a commitment to sustained adult career retraining. It also means, most importantly, a complete rejection of any expectation of entitlements. Take responsibility instead of doling out blame to hard working immigrants and trade agreements long past. Most importantly, try to understand that the elites who seem so bent on opposing your most sacred hopes and ideals care deeply about democracy too.
And to those coastal elites, don’t be afraid of less regulation and smaller government. Don’t denigrate an America you don’t know because you find it a bit too traditional and locally minded for your tastes. Admit you have absolutely no idea what a former garment factory worker in Pittston, Pennsylvania, or steelworker in Smithfield, Ohio, might be going through. Don’t blame him or her for voting in a way you find repugnant. Take responsibility. Don’t continue to extend Hillary Clinton’s typology of “deplorables” into politics today. Offer respect to the families of laborers who built the bridges you commute on daily. Respect ideological difference, and take responsibility for the government you created, and its policies that failed. Understand why the working class now has to step back from your relentless push to uproot some of the basic values it will now, reactively, cling to ever more tightly, just as you cling to yours ever more tightly. Admit your role in civic disenfranchisement.
It is just at this social precipice, where the working class meets the elite in their common frustration, that religion comes in. Religion commands respectful behavior in speech and conduct. Its ritual regimen offers the security and optimism of bedtime prayers and weekly Sabbath song recognizing the bounty of creation. It inspires philanthropy and commitment to be present in communal spaces.
These features of a life of faith, if looked at through a civic, rather than a fundamentalist, prism, teach worldly responsibility and duty to others. That ethic leads to humility, which in turns results in empathy for the other. Of course, our civil liberties are vital to democracy and our individual pursuits of happiness, but these will be made more meaningful once we recognize each other and affirm our mutual civic concerns. First comes a move towards reciprocal obligation, and then towards individual uplift. That is the message of all faith.
If we miss this moment, our national decline will hasten. America will never make its outstretched hand known again. I am the other to you, and you are the other to me. Together, we can repair our country. It only takes a feeling of public responsibility. If, in the end, there is any entitlement earnestly deserved, it is our shared right to the other’s empathy for our current social and economic distress. Faith relieves that tension and brings us to each other with honesty, openness, and truth. From that civic foundation more consensual public policy and responsive government will flow.