The disturbing entry of right wing religion into American politics over the past few decades raises an important question for all of us with a spiritual commitment: how should our spirituality appropriately influence our lives as citizens?  As citizens we are called upon to take some responsibility for our community, a community where most members have different spiritual beliefs and practices than we do.  As religious people our beliefs are foundational to our way of life.  Many of our Founders believed religion could play a positive role in our country’s politics, and sometimes it has.  How does all this go together?  We know the religious right is wrong.  What might be right?

If we know much history we know religious beliefs can inject a spirit destructive to the requirements for a democratic society.  The 30 Years War saw Protestants and Catholics collectively slaughter 1/3 the population of what is now Germany and the Czech republic.  The “Christian” Right would repeat the actions that led to this lethal outcome.  But many of us, I among them, find our deepest ethical commitments rooted in our spirituality, and motivating our political action. What should we who treasure both our values and a free society do?

To the extent we take being a citizen of a democracy seriously, and I take it very seriously, we should offer reasons others who have not had our religious experiences can find convincing.  The more universally applicable the arguments we make and examples we give, the more we integrate our spirituality and our citizenship in ways that strengthens both.  But in giving a reason, we open ourselves to having to defend our reason, and change our conclusion if our reasons are found wanting.  But our religious beliefs are rarely based on a rational argument.  Mine aren’t. They are based on experiences.  

So democratic politics requires us to translate our values into a different language, one that opens us to rebuttal in ways that might force us to retreat from our claims as citizens, even as we still hold tight to them personally.  This is tricky ground.

We can get some clarity here by looking at Martin Luther King compared to the “Christian” Right/  Both claimed to apply their Christianity to politics.  We can learn from their examples.

King said certain values (in his case respect for people regardless of race) are worth following by any person.  While he spoke in their defense from within his own tradition, every decent spiritual tradition values them as do our founding political principles.  Segregation and denying voting rights violated these values and should stop. One did not have to agree with King’s specific theology to agree with his conclusions.

Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Dobson, and the rest of this sorry lot. have said certain people are enemies of God/Morality/etc., and so they must be fought.  What is moral (subordination of women, opposing abortion as murder and being gay as an abomination to God) is moral because according to their reading of scripture, God says so.  He gives no reason beyond that, and neither do they.  Theirs is a reading that many other Christians do not share.  We are called upon tom believe because they claim their God says it.

King strengthened democracy and the religious right subverts it. A free nation depends on its citizens in the last analysis privileging reason and persuasion over power and authority, on all sides.  Given that people will always disagree it is the offering of reasons on all sides that provides grounds for coming together or agreeing to disagree.

To take a personal example, my environmental work is rooted in my love of the earth and its life forms, and my personal experience that both the Earth and many elements within it that our society deems inert are in fact sentient and aware, from mountains and oceans to trees and flowers.  I have had experiences that this is so.  

But I cannot reliably guarantee similar experiences to people who have not had encounters like mine.  So I seek to discover arguments enabling us to agree on concrete outcomes even if their motivations will be as limited by their own experiences and individuality as mine are. Doing so requires me to try and find commonalities between myself and others, bridges over which we can come to agreements.

When I cannot do this I would argue my position may remain a strong personal value, but I have no right to argue others must adopt it.  Those who would argue others do have to adopt it have made themselves the enemy of their fellow citizens, the enemy of democracy, and the enemy of everything I have experienced that could be called spiritual.