Of course, the religions themselves promised certain benefits to those who belonged, and these must be acknowledged. One cannot fairly overlook the many people and religious groups that appear to be motivated to charitable responsibility and moral action for the needy, chronically ill, or disenfranchised. Many of the most moral people I have known were religious. When people act in a way we would judge as moral or ethical, we often cannot really determine whether they responded that way because of their religion, or whether they would have done it even had they not been religious. Certainly, I am not suggesting that religion is predominately immoral and should be abolished. As most institutions, it is made up of people, and sometimes people as we perceive them, act in moral ways, and at other times they are very immoral or unethical. That is one reason Paul Tillich described actual life as “ambiguous.”
But the antagonism that has often been spawned from a religion is also manifest in much subtler or even confusing forms. It is usually experienced as a mixture of a religious faith combined with a very particular culture, so it is not easy to determine which is the most responsible for creating the estrangement and violence. Theologian Tillich was renowned for trying to penetrate the interdependence of religion and culture. His brief position was that religion is the substance of culture and culture is the form taken by religion.1 His studies prompted him to have to explain the difference between the two when religion, defined by him as “ultimate concern,” is also espoused by those whose concern is not ultimate. He called the latter pursuits “demonic” if they pose as “ultimate” but are not really ultimate. So “religion,” because of its aura of Absolute truth and power, is often used or manipulated—to assist other primary agenda or goals.
If one looks at any particular nation or culture closely, the lines of demarcation that separate concerns that appear to be ultimate and those that simply profess ultimacy is not a bright line. Citizens of the United States can observe in the First Amendment a certain mutual respect and separation of religion and government that the Founding Fathers legalized. It was a separation so that a secular government would not be controlled by any religion, and, in turn, religious people would not be controlled by the government unless they engaged, as Thomas Jefferson said, in “overt acts of disorder,” that is, violated the civil or criminal laws of our social contract.2 James Madison said essentially the same, also warning that government must refrain from making decisions on the basis of religion since it has no cognizance of religion.3 He warned also that of the three branches of government he and his colleagues were establishing, the most likely incursions upon that contract would probably not come blatantly from any of the three, but more subtly might surface through any when it allows itself to be influenced by a sentiment he called “majoritarianism.”4 These Founding Fathers wanted diversity to flourish and be adequately represented in government in order to protect any minorities.
Yet that new government, which had broken the theocratic tradition of ancient “Christendom” in the West in 1789 (which had prevailed for more than 1,400 years prior to this “separation”), within another 230 years would evolve inconsistently to the point that one Supreme Court Justice at the beginning of the present century would insist that the Constitution of the United States gives religion a “preferred” position in the culture, and two other Justices in Van Orden v. Perry would even go so far to say that the U.S. government has the right to defend its own religion by public displays erected from the taxes of citizens who are very religiously diverse.5 That seems to contradict the very words of the First Amendment.
One must acknowledge that these understandings of the various Supreme Court Justices are neither extreme nor violent. But by singling out just one religion by simplistically reducing all religions to a generic religion, which just happens to manifest the Christian ideas and specific paradigmatic articulations of law, does violate the very principle James Madison articulated when he insisted that the real danger in our system was “majoritarianism.” Madison knew that this favoring of a single particular religion, even under the banner of an imagined generic, natural religion or even a “civic” religion, becomes divisive in its exclusivism.
Any nation that experiences religious, racial, ethnic, sexual, or economic pluralism has a need for unity and tolerance of difference. In the United States, most of these categories of private as well as national identities have experienced difficulty in being treated equally in our society or even within the legal framework. Personal identity as well as national identity is multifaceted and lacking in uniformity and equality. When one of these facets rises in importance in one’s mind or by preferential treatment by the government to be unquestionably superior to any competing facet in other people’s identities, a sinister divisiveness ensues. When it is seen as Absolute, it becomes deadly.
So nation, ethnicity, religion, economics, and other natural forms of identity can be turned into the unquestionable, the Absolute. Some facets of identity such as ethnicity, race, and sexuality are usually passed on genetically, and so one never has much choice in the matter. These areas may be provided more protection by government (as “suspect categories”) than economic, national, or religious identity since we assume people have the power to change things in these latter categories. Even so, the nonrational element in even the latter group might also be strong in that one is born in a certain situation in which a particular economic philosophy, national allegiance, or religious affiliation is extremely powerful, making any autonomous change much less probable for an individual.
Behind much of the polarization within a multicultural nation or one with great disparity of wealth is simply people’s feeling that their freedom has been compromised, their autonomous voices no longer count in their culture, or their leaders have become totally authoritarian if not tyrannical, apparently insensitive to the needs of the people at large. Those leaders who detect the deep resentments of people who feel they have been left out can respond by listening to their problems and offering help to resolve them. But the leaders conversely can manipulate a political campaign of populism, which, after they become elected, can quickly morph into authoritarianism, and as Madeleine Albright has shown, a new form of fascism, only exacerbating the problem. This century also marks the most forced and uninvited cultural mixing in many countries due to massive displacement of different ethnic, national, racial, and religious groups, as refugees of war or the equivalent violent cultures, a cultural mixing that can be used by politicians to create fear.
As fear and authoritarianism oppose the growing pluralism or polarization in various countries, forms of absolutism become more solidified because of people’s inability or unwillingness to include others within their group. Sometimes people’s normal sensitivity to the basic human needs of others is bracketed out at least temporarily when they feel their vested interests are being possibly endangered. Here a detachment or hypothetical divestment of one’s peculiar if not happenstance interests and a sensitivity to others becomes imperative if humanity is to survive. It usually requires a re-evaluation of one’s values, honest dialog, and tolerance of difference.
Many national leaders, economic ideologies, political parties, and most religions tend toward absolutizing if not also becoming self-obsessed, although religions are usually the only groups that explicitly speak in absolutistic terms about their recognized authority. But they all have obstructed individuals’ freedom, sometimes gradually and subtly, perhaps at times unknowingly, but often even overtly and intentionally. Often, the more diversity is experienced and feared, the stronger are the absolutistic and authoritarian reactions against it, especially by religion. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have witnessed the most powerful intellectual and practical challenges to religions of the West, and have been met with new forms of authoritarianism and radically new means of indoctrination and violence, including terrorism.
Those who have the most power become the authorities. They often choose subtly or blatantly what they want to absolutize. By their delegated power, the leaders or “authorities”