The Faith-Based Republic

I overheard an incredible discussion on C-Span this morning. What were the burning issues of the day that were being explored? A war that has cost us over 1,000 lives and billions of dollars? The precarious state of the nation's finances? The inability of the government to insure an adequate supply of flu vaccine for those who are in need? No, this morning's topic on C-Span was "who does God support" in the upcoming presidential election?

Why is it that the question of religion so dominates our politics while barely registering in countries that rank with us economically and socially? The answer lies to a great degree in the structure of our polity.

The Constitution was handed down to us by the Founding Fathers like Moses coming down off Mt Sinai to deliver the law to the ancient Israelites. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a closed door meeting. The people were invited neither to participate or observe the deliberations. The law itself was riddled with contradictions. For example, the preamble states that "the People of the United States do ordain and establish" the Constitution which implicitly recognizes their power to toss it aside and ordain a new one if necessary. But then, Article V forbade those same people from altering so much as a comma in the Constitution without submitting to a tortuous amending process. The point is that in order for the Constitution to work, the people were required to suspend their powers of reason rely on faith instead.

Reliance on faith as the foundation for our political system encouraged and nurtured its growth as a cultural phenomenon as well. This is one reason, though certainly not the only, why religion continues to play such a great role in our politics while it has all but withered away as an issue in Great Britain and Western Europe.

The culmination of our system's reliance on faith is the faith-based presidency of George W. Bush. Bush not only functions as our chief political leader, he is also the acknowledged leader of the evangelical Christian movement in the United States. Despite the great influence of faith on our politics over the past 200 plus years, this is an unprecedented development in the nature of the presidency. According to a recent article in the New York Times magazine by Ron Suskind, Bush relies solely on "gut, instinct and prayer" to make decisions that will affect the lives of millions. He demands "unquestioning faith from his followers" (i.e. other members of the government). In a particularly shocking passage, Suskind relates how a senior Bush advisor told him that he was merely part of "the reality based community." The aide went on to say that the U.S. is "an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

That sounds like something straight out of a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I'd love to hear somebody from the Bush administration explain this to the families of the 1,000 plus people who have lost their lives due to the reality visited upon them by the Iraqi insurgents.