The Deceptive Difference of Paradigms on Religion

Last night, my husband and I had a long and fascinating discussion with someone from a very different political background. For the sake of polite conversation (and our somewhat desperate attempts to make friends in a new city), everyone's views about most things were expressed in general terms that called on shared values of love and tolerance. However, later that night, something occurred to me about the narratives that both sides use to discuss the role of religion in society. On the surface level, they sound very similar, but there is a small, sinister difference between these two arguments. See if you can identify it:

1. We shouldn't go around judging who's right and wrong.

2. We shouldn't insist that everyone agree with us.

The first argument could be reworded to say, "What gives me the right to claim that I'm right and that someone else is wrong?" It challenges the ethnocentrism of our personal beliefs and values. By saying we shouldn't "judge" the beliefs or actions of others, it implies that our own opinions of rightness and wrongness aren't necessarily universal. What I perceive is “wrong” may be just wrong for me, but not for someone else. In fact, my insistence on being right could lead to fanaticism and even terrorism (see Andrew Sullivan's post-9/11 New York Times Magazine cover article, "This is a Religious War"). This argument naturally leads to the view that organized religion itself can be dangerous, so it's important that we keep them in check by adapting our beliefs, or at least becoming more flexible with them, in order to foster a free and civil society. Let's call this group "relativists".

The second argument says, "I absolutely believe I'm right, but others have the right to be wrong." It just accepts that people will always have strong beliefs about what is right and wrong, and that in fact, personal convictions are inevitable, regardless of whether we realize we hold them (even 3 year-olds recognize the immorality of something being "unfair"), or whether they are contained in an organized religion (think:"We hold these truths to be self evident"). It also acknowledges that even if we agree on certain core values, we still differ in our beliefs about the nature of God and mankind and the universe, the purpose of life, and what actions are good and bad. But the second argument doesn't see inflexible beliefs as a problem - in fact, this argument is fine with people believing ridiculous or even dangerous things and disagreeing with each other vehemently - the second argument believes we can still live in the same pluralistic society where we respect each other's privilege to worship without being required to accept the rightness or wrongness of those beliefs. Let's call this group the "pluralists".

Can you see the difference between these two arguments? Two similar phrases each reflect the tip of a metaphorical iceberg representing a different social paradigm toward religion. So why is this difference so sinister? And why does it matter?

Look at them again. 

While wearing the clothes of respect and tolerance, there is something deceptively intolerant about the relativistic argument of religion. Relativism is itself an ideological paradigm. The belief that there is no universal code of conduct is, in fact, a belief, a value system: a religion. The church of relativism seeks social unity not by embracing diversity, but by eliminating it. And when that paradigm becomes the law of the land, it becomes paramount to a state-instituted religion. It's a bit paradoxical, but think about it this way. An adherent to the relativist argument will say "I believe there is no universal moral code of right and wrong" but the unspoken follow up is, "...and if you don't agree with that, then you're wrong." You see? Moral absolutes are still strongly held, it's just being done in a way that is less noticeable. Those who use the paradigm of irreligion as their religion are like fish in the sea claiming they don't believe in water.

Pluralism, as I describe it in argument two, is also a belief system - but it's about the nature of society, not the attainability of truth. Rather than seeking to whitewash religion or restrict certain actions and beliefs, it provides a framework under which adherents of all faith groups can believe and practice freely, however their conscience dictates. Requiring "flexibility" sounds perfectly reasonable to irreligionists, but it may be a ticket to hell for some groups, for whom any flexibility in keeping God's commandments is not patriotism, but sin. And remember - requiring people's beliefs to be flexible is in of itself a very inflexible belief!

Kevin Seamus Hasson, the founder of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said, "We can, and should, respect others' duty to follow their consciences even as we insist they're mistaken. Why? Because others have their duty to follow their presumably mistaken consciences as we do to follow our presumably correct ones." So...shouldn't that make us relativists? Not at all:

Respect for conscience makes sense of clashing truth claims without denying them or relativizing them. It's not that there is no truth, as the deconstructionists would have it, or that everything is somehow true for somebody, as the greeting-card writers would. It's that people make mistakes about what truth is, yet still have to obey their consciences nonetheless. So we can respect their duty to follow their consciences and embrace a particular faith-- and at the very same time be utterly convinced that the faith they're embracing is absolute drivel. [The Right to Be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America (San Francisco: Encounter, 2005), pp. 15-16.]

Pluralism doesn't waste any time trying to decide who is right or wrong, or whether there is a right or wrong. It doesn't need to. It accepts that even if I was utterly convinced of the rightness of my beliefs (including the belief that all religions are oppressive!), others have the right to be wrong, even holding beliefs that I consider oppressive, misogynistic, racist, old-fashioned, unscientific, or just weird. 

Adherents to the first argument believe that their position respects all different viewpoints, that their 'tolerance' is making this country safe for minorities and American pluralism. However, by insisting that "the price of freedom for everyone is that no one can be allowed to publicly claim that anything transcendent is absolutely true" (Hasson, p.3), these self-appointed guardians of public trust actually just eliminate pluralism itself. Hopefully, it is clear to everyone reading this that we don't keep our country safe by excluding persons we disagree with from national discussions (Evangelical Christians or nazis, communists or polygamists), but by including everyone. 

Reflecting on relativism as a religion, bent on eliminating religious diversity in order to protect it, Catholic commentator M.J. Sobran said the following (replace the word "secularism" with "relativism"): 

The Framers of the Constitution...forbade the Congress to make any law 'respecting' the establishment of religion...and they explicitly forbade the Congress to abridge 'the free exercise' of religion. It takes a special ingenuity to wring out of this a governmental indifference to religion, let alone an aggressive secularism [we might say aggressive relativism]. Yet there are those who insist that the First Amendment actually proscribes governmental partiality not only to any single religion, but to religion as such; so that tax exemption for churches is now thought to be unconstitutional. It is startling to consider that a clause clearly protecting religion can be construed as requiring that it be denied a status routinely granted to educational and charitable enterprises, which have no overt constitutional protection. Far from equalizing unbelief, secularism has succeeded in virtually establishing it.  

What the secularists [relativists] are increasingly demanding, in their disingenuous way, is that religious people, when they act politically, act only on secular [relativist] grounds. They are trying to equate acting on religion with establishing religion. And--I repeat--the consequence of such logic is really to establish secularism [relativism]. It is in fact, to force the religious to internalize the major premise of secularism: that religion has no proper bearing on public affairs. [Human Life Review, Summer 1978, pp. 51-52, 60-61]

I agree with Neal A. Maxwell that "irreligion as the state religion would be the worst of all combinations...its orthodoxy would be insistent and its inquisitors inevitable." If the state religion is irreligion or relativism, than every other religion is oppressed and marginalized in the name of tolerance. Elder Maxwell continues:

In its mildest form, irreligion will merely be condescending toward those who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian values. In its more harsh forms, as is always the case with those whose dogmatism is blinding, the secular church will do what it can to reduce the influence of those who still worry over standards such as those in the Ten Commandments. It is always such an easy step from dogmatism to unfair play--especially so when the dogmatists believe themselves to be dealing with primitive people who do not know what is best for them." ["Meeting the Challenges of Today", The Inexhaustible Gospel: A Retrospective of Twenty-one Firesides and Devotionals, Brigham Young University, 2004]

Even with its tenets of liberality and tolerance, note the word Maxwell uses to describe relativism: Dogmatism. Isn't that ironic?

"Not judging" is not the same as "not insisting that we agree," even if it sounds very similar. I have written many posts about the importance of being able to recognize and analyze our own social paradigms. It is in large measure because of this problem – when a paradigm is so persuasive it no longer seems like a paradigm at all, but rather the only way to possibly interpret the facts. But let us stop and question the most fundamental tenants of this "religion" which by its very nature condescends, discounts, and oppresses those who hold any other firm religious belief that differs from our own. Is that the way we want to look at society? Is that how we want America to be? Is there a better way?

As a Mormon, I care deeply about this topic because I personally hold some very strong, unusual, and admittedly inflexible beliefs. I believe that a man named Jesus who actually lived in Judea was the Son of God and died for our sins. I believe Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to a 14 year-old boy in a grove of trees in New York in the Spring of 1820, and that that boy later uncovered and translated by the power of God the Book of Mormon, another witness of Jesus Christ. I believe there is a living prophet today who gives us counsel from God for our current challenges - and that acting on that counsel will lead to better and happier lives for everyone, universally. I believe my religion teaches me not just to take these actions myself, but to encourage those around me to take these actions, so they can be happy too.

You may not agree with me. But that's the point isn't it? If your religion believes that "there is no universal code of good and bad", then I won't stop you from preaching that. But I hope you will be a pluralist as well as a relativist, and allow me to practice my faith as well, which insists that there is an eternal law, and commands us to "discern between truth and error" and between "good and bad" (1 Kings 3:9).

I agree with Hasson that fundamentally, every person “share(s) a thirst for the true and the good, and a conscience that drives our quest to find them." I hope America will continue to be a nation that respects and protects our individual quest to do so.