I just finished watching two intriguing programs on television that mix, at least in my mind, notions about religion and politics. The first was tonight's Charlie Rose. This was the most pessimistic assessment of the Iraq war I've seen so far on Charlie Rose. Last week's episode with William Kristol was the complete opposite - oh how things have changed in a week, how the propaganda of a decapitating victory and the cheering crowds of Iraqi's seems to have disappeared in a single week. Although I know full well that a week is far too little time to judge such a vast enterprise as regime change and rebuiliding in Iraq, I do so love it when the media suddenly discovers that the world is far more complex than they have portrayed it, or that chance rules human affairs far in ways we can rarely comprehend.
After watching Charlie Rose I turned to the Discovery Channel special report by Thomas Friedman "Searching for the Roots of 9/11." I admire Friedman a lot and I felt this documentary was one of best I've seen about the roots of terrorism. Although Friedman clothes many of his ideas in neologisms and metaphors that sometimes seem too trite for their own good, there is a real sense of subtlety to what he says about the resentments of the Arab-Muslim world for America. America has long acted in the world with a double standard. The entire cold war was a long struggle between the rhetoric of freedom and the realpolitik need to contain the Soviet Union by whatever means were necessary. In the Middle East this meant supporting a large number of cruel dictators, including Saddam Hussein. It is no surprise to me that we are now feeling the blowback of those actions.
All of this links to my recent post that cited some commentary by Fred Clark and Richard Dawkins on the religious dimensions of the current war, especially from George Bush himself. What offends me most about Bush is his lack of subtlety. And I begin to wonder how much of this simplemindedness comes from religion, especially the evangelical religion of Bush.
A lot of simplifications occur in religious faith. Friedman cited many of them in his documentary when he acknowledged that there are strains of Islam struggling to create a holy utopia in which a master race is replaced by a master religion. In such a belief system the individual becomes merely a martyr for the cause, just like the hijackers of 9-11. The movement seems to be from a simple black and white view of the world to a black and white view of the person.
Evangelical Christianity seems to make the same move, but in reverse, from a simplified individual to a simplified world. The relationship of the individual with God is all that matters for the evangelical believer. And as long as that person has a "Good Heart," and faith then they can never be wrong or led astray. Fred Clark puts it thus
The dangers of such an approach are obvious. All considerations of consequence and outcome (including respect for the potential of unforeseen consequences) become secondary to the matter of intent. For Mr. Bush, if someone has a "Good Heart," his intentions are pure and he can do no wrong.
This is what makes me so worried about George Bush and the current war; there is no public acknowledgement in the current administration of subtlety or doubt. Hussein is evil and therefore must be eliminated. Such attitudes strike me as religious instead of political. A religious war, at least on the basis of history, seems guaranteed to be far more dangerous than a political war. If we are fighting a religious war for democracy in the Middle East then we have inflated our risk by measures that can hardly be measured. The cynic in me says it would be better to be fighting for oil then to fight for the grand wave of democratization some of the neoconservative advisers to George Bush seem to expect to arise out the ashes. When gambling with such stakes the chances of falling into the same double standards we perpetrated during the cold war seem massive. If we build up the expectation for democracy too much the blowback will be that much greater in the future.
My ultimate question is why does religion fall into these traps of simplfying the world. Personally I am an atheist. But I admire the possibilities of religion. I know that religious belief is as diverse as individuals, just as there are some atheists who want to eliminate religion there are some theists who wish to coexist with the faithless. A month ago there was a conversation on a few of the weblogs I regularly read. It started with Steve at One Pot Meal talking about the appeal of monasticism to an atheist. From there comments were made by AKMA and others. The points made by AKMA that are most interesting are about how the community constrains the belief of the individual. It seems to be a truism in American Protestantism that a personal relationship with God is the only way to be faithful and that the traditions of Catholicism stunt the personal relationship. Although I strongly support the individual's journey toward faith I wonder if Bush and other evangelicals need to acknowledge the community around them. And that community cannot be confined to other believers. If it is confined then it is like standing inside a hall of mirrors.
Although I disagree with almost everything my coworker Larry has to say about religion I admire his willingness to engage in conversation. The problem is that it is merely talk - there is no risk for the evangelical believer. Larry is never going to become an atheist. Yet I feel that I might become a believer. If there is no risk of changing another's mind then the cost of the conversation eventually seems to become too large. This is the way I now feel about the war debate - the cost of resistance seems too large, the blindness of faith too strong. How can such a beautiful impulse as religion fall into such twisted despair?