Religion and Politics among the American People in Contemporary Times - Research Paper Example

An Analysis of the Influence Wielded by Religion and Politics among the American People in Contemporary Times Introduction: Religion and Politics undeniably are two of the most significant factors that shape a nation’s social, cultural and political life. In the United States of America, Congress never passed a law implementing the separation of the church and the state and as the First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law, respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” There is nothing clear up to the present time regarding the separation of church and state. Likewise, the government is not formally attached to any religious grouping. This paper aims to assess the influence exerted by both religion and politics among the American People in this modern era. Likewise, it seeks to determine if indeed they should be put together or separated and how the citizens of the country feel about this choice and what will be the long-term effects of the separation or combination of the two blocs. Value of Religion Religion is considered a universal component of human life. Religion makes it easier for people to communicate with each other and with God. In the words of Natambu, “People are often ready to die for their religion, and many thousands have done so. Many others sacrifice their fame, power, wealth, property and time for the sake of religion. Religion must have a great value for people otherwise nobody would die for it or give so much for its sake. People make sacrifices and offerings of the best they have for the sake of religion.” (2002) What is the significance of Religion to its nation and people? A famous British philosopher, Roger Scruton aptly described religion as “a force for good in society. The rituals of religion are shared and those who participate in them are drawn into another kind of relationship with their neighbors than those that prevail in the world of getting and spending. People hunger for this kind of membership and the power of religion resides in its ability to provide it. In the rituals of a religion all worldly differences are overcome: the Sultan bows in submission beside his subjects and the good-natured fool takes communion beside the crook who cheated him. The ritual shines on both of them from a place beyond their ordinary experience and includes them in a community whose home is in some way not of this world. And in the Christian case the ritual records a primeval sacrifice, born of love.” (2009) For majority of Americans, they are used to and more comfortable with church leaders articulating their opinions and beliefs regarding social and political matters and concerns. Churches, synagogues and other religious institutions are widely perceived as positive forces in addressing the problems of society. Nonetheless, a bigger number of voters still claim they are uncomfortable with priests or pastors advocating their political views from the pulpit. Conversely, at least 75% of voters think that while it is vital for the President to have religious faith, there is prevalent discomfort over politicians who speak publicly about their religious affiliations, sentiments and actions (2000). Wald states that “religion is more important in American polity than most people realize, but in different ways than they imagine. Is religion good for politics?” (2003, p. 14). Wald offers the thought of Richard J. Neuhaus that religion is a community and an institution needed to stand in judgment of a state moving toward totalitarianism. The other fundamental issue is whether religion imports and sustains values such as human rights and freedom in politics. Notwithstanding all these discussion, debates, disagreements and concurrences, politics seem to get in the way of religion and vice versa in the present-day American setting. Even, if religious leaders of different Christian sects and leaders of government and members of Congress and Senate make repeated claims that there is no conflict between the two and they operate independently of each other, the results are still very obvious. Current events and developments will determine if indeed there needs to be a separation of the Church and State. Religion and Politics in the USA In the year 2000, a study came out stating that approximately half of the entire population of the US claimed that they were supporters of an organized religious organization. Between 20 to 45 percent represented themselves as Born-again or Christian Evangelicals (Goodstein, 2002). What then was the relevance of these facts and figures to the political scenario during that specific era? 14 percent of the American electorate declared itself as part of the Christian Right and almost 80 percent of that sector voted for George W. Bush. Incidentally, when all Evangelicals were asked regarding their party and voting preferences, some of the results were astonishing. The fact was that, almost half of all Evangelicals were Republicans and only one-quarter were Democrats. However, the single biggest bloc among all was those who did not vote at 52 percent, followed by Bush voters with 37 percent and Gore voters with just 11 percent. Even among Republican partisans, while 77 percent voted for Bush, the remaining 33 percent decided not to vote; making non-voters the second biggest voting coalition within the Christian Right. Independent Evangelicals gave 19 percent and 18 percent of their votes to Bush and Gore respectively, but the larger group of Evangelical Independents was those who abstained at 41 percent (Kellstedt, Corwin, Smidt, Guth, and Green. 2001). This momentous development reveals one distinct pattern – Religious groups played a major role in the outcome of a political exercise. In the case of President Bush, the presupposition was that he won because of the Republican mass base of Christian Evangelicals. That religion decided the outcome of the elections in the United States in 2000 and 2004 became the basic hypothesis. He received 10 million more votes in November of 2004 than he did in the 2000 elections - 60.6 million, compared to 50.5 million.  Seven million of this increase can be traced directly to evangelicals and Catholics. President Bush owed a debt of gratitude to the millions of conservative evangelical Protestant and Catholic voters following his re-election in 2004 (Cooperman and Edsall, 2004). On the other hand, the Democratic Party was perceived as out of touch with religious people and values. It was a different complexion in 2008 when Democrat candidate Barack Obama defeated Republican bet John Mcain mainly because of the Jewish and Black Protestant votes. President Obama was described as a Champion for Secular America. In one of his speeches about religion, the President showed his sentiments as a true champion for church-state separation. He gave a very concise declaration to the effect that “while a person can subscribe to a belief and personal code of conduct on religious grounds, but for that belief to be institutionalized the person must be able to defend it based on secular principles that are accessible to people of all faiths and to nonreligious people.” It is considered a synthesis of everything that secularism stands for, and everything that America was rooted in. In an effort to encourage a greater respect for secularism among evangelicals, President Obama broached the theory that the institution of American secularism was pushed for most adamantly not by non-believers and civil liberties activists, but by the early forebears of modern evangelical Christianity who were the minority at the time and did not want to have the dominant congregations interfering with their abilities to engage their faith as they saw fit. Influence of Religion and Politics on the American People Let us examine closely the role of religion in politics in America. Ideology is not new to politics and it can be assumed that the political association of the church in a secular society is transforming the agenda of the average conservative ideologue in this country. There is a prevalent assumption that there prevails an assiduous effort by the  Church to employ its extensive influence to convince politicians and citizens alike to adhere to an ideological platform that is more religious than political. This is not totally correct since it puts at risk the very system of open democracy that has existed for centuries and is regarded as the premier basis of the separation of church and state. It has never been easy to define the demarcation between the church and state. Like any other politically-minded group, the church has always sustained a natural interest and authority in the political affairs of the American state. The power and stimulus of religion and politics on the minds, culture and way of life of Americans have been so intense. As a matter of fact, the American nation is very religious and majority of the people are in concurrence with the entry of religion into politics. They are at ease with churches discussing social and political matters and as a result the divide between religion and politics has been diminishing. Religion is a strong and growing force in the way Americans think about politics and still exerts a massive influence on political affiliation, political values, policy attitudes and candidate choice. It has also maintained the growing influence on political opinion and behavior rivals factors such as race, region, age, social class and gender. The division of opinion on these issues surprisingly occurs more along religious lines than along partisan ones. By a margin of almost three-to-one black Christians and white evangelical Protestants agree that churches should be involved in politics while majority of progressive Catholics and the non-religious are unanimous in saying that churches should stay out of politics. However, white Catholics and white main line Protestants are split evenly on this issue. A greater part of Republicans, Democrats and Independents express support for church political involvement (Pew, 2006). Most Americans have already accepted the fact that religious influence in public life will never diminish. Although they are not in favor of religion being highly politicized, it has been obvious to them that this is not bound to happen in the long run. A national survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reflected the public’s contradictory attitudes towards the relationship of religion to politics and social issues. The same poll showed that the public is not divided into liberal and conservative camps and instead, it wishes to be in the middle when it comes to relating to controversial social issues. When it comes to the broader subject of the influence of religion in society, the latest Gallup Survey conducted in January 7 to 9, 2011 for 1,018 randomly selected residents showed that Americans are divided with regards to how much influence religion should have in society with identical percentages – 29% prefer that the influence of religion increases, 29% also want it to decrease while 39% believe that the present level of influence must remain. When asked whether they were satisfied with the level of influence, 58% said they were satisfied and 36% claimed they were dissatisfied. Of the 36%, a big portion says that religion is exerting too much weight in their country. What was also not surprising is the fact that those who attended church services regularly and listed as Christians were in favor of religion having more influence. These respondents were identified as Republicans and conservatives. On the other hand, Non-Christians, those who claimed to have no religion and who do not attend church services regularly, the politically moderate and liberals support a reduction in religious influence. Given all these, the rational approach may be to put in place a renewal of values as well as a revitalization of the political views and concepts. According to Wallis, “spiritual and religious values can indeed contribute in times of social crisis to a renewed vision of politics. Most people will agree that beneath the social, economic, cultural and political problems that confront the nation and its people are critical questions that need to be answered regarding our deepest values. The crisis is one of the spirit deeper than merely the turns and twists of secular politics. A new brand of politics will require the spiritual resources of the best moral and religious traditions. More and more people, religious or not, are looking for a new spirituality and a new politics. The two must be joined and proceed together. The new spirituality that could guide our search for a new politics will most likely be found in the renewal of the moral and spiritual traditions we already know. In America, that will come from rediscovering our Jewish and Christian biblical traditions as well as learning from Native American spiritualities, appreciating the insights of other faith experiences, and remembering the moral imperatives of the political philosophies that shaped the founding of our nation. All have direct contributions to make in recovering our political ethics.”(1994, pp. 2-5) This discourse underscores the need for America to formulate the religious and political vision that will promote the fundamental values that will enable its citizens and politicians to rise above the prevailing vested self-interests and aspire for the common goal instead of reducing things to the lowest common denominator and traversing factional interests. In further support of the arguments brought forth in this discourse, it is beneficial to the readers to discuss briefly the argument of Sweetman that it is a maxim in American life that religion has no place in politics. Faith, as he explained, is a private affair that should have no bearing on public policy but this is not only unjust to the millions of religious Christian voters and taxpayers in this country. As he argues, secularism is in itself a kind of religion or world view with its own assumptions about ultimate reality, its own morality and its own vision of the good life. By demanding that all faiths but secularism stay out of the public square, secularists do the very thing they decry - Attempt to establish one religion as the official one. The concern of this author is “less with the constitutional or legal issues than with the moral or philosophical question of what role is one world view (religious or secularist) can legitimately play in a democratic society. Most important, is it wrong to vote based on ones religious beliefs - or secularist beliefs? To focus solely on the constitutional question, amounts to a kind of constitutional fundamentalism wherein one appeals to the authority of a text but gives no thought to whether the values embodied in it are actually true, just, or still appropriate to a changing society (2011).” Having presented all these facts and arguments, we can now submit our deduction on this intricate subject matter. Conclusion This paper aims to assess the influence exerted by both religion and politics among the American People in this modern era. Likewise, it seeks to determine if indeed they should be put together or separated and how the citizens of the country feel about this choice and what will be the long-term effects of the separation or combination of the two blocs. We can now come to the conclusion that indeed religion has played a major role in shaping our political values, political system and political coalitions. It has carefully presented and assessed the historical effects of religion on individual political behavior and public policy in the United States. We saw the impact of contemporary religious divisions that set religious traditionalists on the one hand against religious liberals and secular individuals particularly during presidential elections. We tried to define the relationship between religion and politics, the patterns and recent trends in American religion, the evolution of the relationship between church and state in the United States and the political orientations of a host of religious groups, the role of religion in the 2008 presidential election, and the impact of religion on American political culture and public policy. Our conclusion is that the American people will always be influenced by religion and politics. Whether, they like it or not and whatever the policies and laws of the land as well as the declarations of church leaders and pronouncements of politicians and government leaders, it is a foregone conclusion. Likewise, there can never be an actual separation of church and state since the paths of these two are bound to cross as long as the world exists. References Goodstein, L. (2002) Conservative Churches Grew Fastest in 1990s, Report Says. New York Times, September 18, 2003; based on research by the Glen Mary Research Center, http://www.glenmary.org/grc/default.html. Kellstedt, L., Corwin, A., Smidt, E., Guth, J. and Green, J. (2001), Cracks in the Monolith. Evangelical Protestants and the 200 Election Books and Culture Magazine. Christianity Today,. Retrieved from http://www.christianitytoday.com/global/html. Natambu, K. (2002). The Value of Religion in Life. An Analysis. Retrieved from Trinicenter.com http://www.trinicenter.com/kwame/2002/Feb/202002.htm Scruton, R. (2009). Extracted from Beauty, published by Oxford University Press Sweetman, B. (2011) Why Politics Needs Religion. Conservative Book Club. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. (2000). Religion and Politics: The Ambivalent Majority. http://people-press.org/report/32/religion-and-politics-the-ambivalent-majority The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. (1996). The Diminishing Divide…American Churches, American Politics. http://socyberty.com/religion/the-role-of-religion-in-the-american-political-system/#ixzz Wald, K. (2003). Religion and Politics in the United States. (4th Ed.). Rowman and Littlefield. Wallis, J. (1994). Politics and Religion: Towards a Prophetic Spirituality. Chapter 3, pp. 2-5 Read More