The name of this sermon is Faith Wars 2012: Religion and Politics in the USA. I decided on that topic about a month ago
because it seemed that every time I read or saw the news – that’s what I
saw. Faith Wars.
Now I was expecting to hear and read about politics of
course. This IS an election year. But there seemed to be a whole lot about
religion and faith all mixed in with it.
And I have two confessions to make here.
First, I had thought, “There’s so much going on with
religion and politics and being written about it now. So this should be an EASY one!”
And the second confession is: I’m a FOOL.
Speaking of fools….
Here’s a short clip you may have seen with Alexandria Pelosi
interviewing folks in rural Mississippi.
Now I’m not trying to make fun of these folks. Hey, they could be my relatives. But I want you to see how much their FAITH
seems to be connected to their political views.
Now to be fair – Pelosi interviewed inner city folks the
following week who made statements that fit the stereotype of freeloaders. But I’m not going to show that because, unlike their rural southern white counterparts, they did NOT use their faith in
the rationalization of choices. Indeed,
conservatives have been much more effective in using faith as motivation.
I’ve decided that this “Faith Wars 2012” topic would be a
great one for one of our 3rd Sunday night Philosophy Group
sessions. But it was not the best pick
for a 15 to 20 minute Sunday Sermon.
Nevertheless, I have been trying to gain some
understanding. Actually – I’ve been
trying to ameliorate this concern for a long time. For many years, it really bothered me so much
that the extreme right seemed to have taken ownership of faith – and used
faith, religion, or God to support their agenda. And I – being a good religious liberal – felt
that was wrong. Indeed, its one reason I
answered the call to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. I wanted to be able to stand up as a
recognized person of faith on some of these issues. And I felt that it was important in the Bible
Belt for folks to HEAR a liberal voice from a religious leader, especially a
liberal religious voice spoken with an authentic southern accent! And I, along with many of you, have been
trying.
After I announced this topic, I saw that a new book was
coming out on March 13 that might help.
I pre-ordered it and the book arrived on March 15.
This thick book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is
called: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and
Religion. And due to my
inability to do some other preferred activities because of my recent injury, I
WAS able to read this entire book. It’s
heavy laden with reviews of social and moral psychology and philosophy –
throwing in some biology as well – with carefully analyzed research by the
author and others.
It’s a good book. But
I do NOT recommend it as good healing therapy.
I would have been better off watching old chick flicks, I think. But I did accumulate some knowledge that may
– at least – help us understand our more conservative neighbors, and perhaps
ourselves.
Haidt divides the book into three major sections with three
or four chapters in each. And each
section presents one major principle of moral psychology. I’m going to attempt to give you a glimpse of
these today – and perhaps we can explore more later.
Part I is about the first moral principle –
“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”
Haidt says:
“Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously,
long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first
intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning.
If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the
truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical
people become when they disagree with you.
But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to
further our social agendas – to justify our own actions and to defend the teams
we belong to – then things will make a lot more sense. Keep you eye on the intuitions, and don’t
take people’s moral arguments at face value.
They are mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to
advance on or more strategic objectives.”
“The central metaphor (of this section of the book) is that
the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to
serve the elephant. The rider is our
conscious reasoning – the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of
mental processes – the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually
govern most of our behavior.”
Haidt likens the rider to the press secretary or the
politician’s spokesperson – who provides all the rationale for the words of
decisions that have been made by the politician. Of course, sometimes the spokesperson can
make things worse – like in the “Etch a Sketch” analogy made by one of Romney’s
folks. In any case, the conscious mind
is not really doing the steering! Haidt
provides numerous research studies that he and others have done to back this
up. We think we are objectively using
conscious reasoning to make our decisions, but usually – for most of us (even
we UU’s who tend to worship reason) – we use our conscious reasoning to
convince ourselves that the decision we want to make based on other more
intuitive factors – IS logical.
The second part of the book emphasizes this principle of
moral psychology.
“There’s more to morality than harm and fairness.”
Haidt says that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six
taste receptors. Secular Western
moralities are like cuisines that try to activate just one or two of these
receptors – either concerns about harm and suffering, or concerns about
fairness and injustice. But people have
so many other powerful moral intuitions, such as those related to liberty,
loyalty, authority, and sanctity.
Haidt explains how politicians on the right have a built in
advantage when it comes to cooking meals that many voters like – because they
prepare meals that activate all of these receptors, while liberal politicians focus
on one or two.
Part III of the book is about this third principle: Morality binds and blinds.
Haidt’s central metaphor for this principle is that human
beings are 90% chimp and 10% bee. He
states that “human nature was produced by natural selection working at two
levels simultaneously. Individuals
compete with individuals within every group, and we are the descendents of
primates who excelled at that competition.
This gives us the ugly side of our nature, the one that is usually
featured in books about our evolutionary origins. We are indeed selfish hypocrites so skilled
at putting on a show of virtue that we fool even ourselves.”
“But human nature was also shaped as groups competed with
other groups. As Darwin said long ago,
the most cohesive and cooperative groups generally beat the groups of selfish
individualists…. We’re not always selfish hypocrites. We also have the ability, under special
circumstances, to shut down our petty selves and become like cells in a larger
body, or like bees in a hive, working for the good of the group. These experiences are often among the most
cherished of our lives, although our hivishness can blind us to other moral
concerns.”
Haidt notes that while our
bee-like nature facilitates altruism and heroism, it also facilitates war and
genocide. (And you can’t help but wonder
about the actions of the man in Florida who has probably sacrificed his own
life now in his foolish and horrendous need to protect his “Hive” – his neighborhood. And now a young man walking home from the
store is dead as a result.)
In any case, here’s where both religion and political
parties also come into play. Haidt
concludes from his studies and others that “religion is probably an
evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create
communities with a shared morality. It
is not a virus or a parasite as some scientists (the “New Atheists”) have
argued in recent years.”
Additionally, “people bind themselves into political teams
that share their moral narrative. Once
they accept a particular narrative (though), they become blind to alternative
moral worlds.”
Now speaking of blindness – Haidt believes liberals (and he
identifies as one himself) have a particular blind spot that has harmed our
efforts. He believes that we have failed
to recognize and use moral capital.
Moral capital refers to “the degree to which a community possesses
interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities,
institutions, and technologies that mesh well with evolved psychological
mechanisms and thereby enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness
and make cooperation possible.” And this
is one way conservatives have an edge.
Haidt demonstrates in one chapter about communes that failed
or survived. Belief in gods and engaging
in religious rituals turned out to be crucial ingredients of success. But even without religion – those groups with
a clear list of values and virtues printed and displayed throughout the commune
did better than those who did not have these.
Communes who had some system whereby they could use these to suppress or
regulate selfishness were more likely to endure.
Now Haidt goes on to say that moral capital is not always an
alloyed good. It does lead to the suppression of "free riders," but it does not necessarily lead to other forms of fairness, such as equality of opportunity. "And while high
moral capital helps a community to function efficiently, the community can use
that efficiency to inflict harm on other communities. High moral capital can be obtained within a
cult or a fascist nation, as long as most people truly accept the prevailing
moral matrix. Nonetheless, if you are
trying to change an organization or a society and you do not consider the effects
of your changes on moral capital, you’re asking for trouble."
Haidt believes that this is the fundamental blind
spot of the left… It is the reason he believes that "liberalism – which has done
so much to bring about freedom and equal opportunity – is not sufficient as a
governing philosophy. It tends to
overreach, change too many things too quickly, and reduce the stock of moral
capital inadvertently. Conversely, while
conservatives do a better job of preserving moral capital, they often fail to
notice certain classes of victims, fail to limit the predations of certain
powerful interests (like corporations), and fail to see the need to change or
update institutions as times change.”
Yes, morality binds and blinds.
Well, what’s the SO WHAT of these principles?
Haidt gives us this advice in his last chapter.
“If you want to understand another group, follow the
sacredness. As a first step, think about
the six moral foundations, and try to figure out which one or two are carrying
the most weight in a particular controversy.
And if you really want to open your mind, open your heart first. (emphasis mine) If you can have a least one friendly interaction
with a member of the ‘other’ group, you’ll find it far easier to listen to what
they’re saying, and maybe even see a controversial issue in a new light.”
I’m very fortunate in that some of the people I love most in
the world have very differing world views.
But I know they are good people.
And sometimes – knowing that – I can see where they are coming
from. And… the opposite occurs as well.
Why, just the other day my Mama, who identifies as social
and fiscal conservative, was defending President Barack Obama in my kitchen. I was sharing with her a little about Haidt’s
views of our groupishness, and I said: “You know – I just get so frustrated that Barack Obama seems
to end every speech he makes with ‘God Bless America.’ If he’s going to bring God into it – why not
ask God to bless the whole world?”
And my Mama says --- “Well, I actually kind o like it when
they say, ‘God bless us all.’ But Jane –
let me ask you – who is Obama talking to in those speeches? Is he overseas in some foreign country or at
the United Nations?”
And I said, “No Mama – he’s talking to Americans.”
So she says, “Well then that’s okay; because he’s just
asking God to bless them.”
And I said, “Mama – I see your point.”
And can’t we all do a little more of that – not that we have
to agree – but perhaps just try to see their point.
That’s all.
Amen, Blessed Be – and
God Bless the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Statesboro
