MC MasterChef's post on modernity and terrorism spun off an entire tangent about comparative religion as an area of knowledge, and how part of solving some of our conflicts will involve being open to learning about the "other" or the "alien". The discussion has been asking why this is especially a challenge in the field of religion, and some of the areas where greater learning should be promoted.

The topic is getting increasingly long and complex, so I thought moving it to the front page might help. The main part of the conversation starts here between Oscar and me.

This post responds to ideas Bondra presented about the frequent tension between personal faith and knowledge about other religions.

It is also a very belated attempt to respond to some of the observations JC made last week, responding to MC MasterChef's Christianism post, about the tensions between the personal and political in religious experience and matters of faith.

When we deal with faith or religiosity at the individual level, rather than at the level of a religion's theology, institutions, history, etc. there are clearly a bunch of factors that come into play. Here are a few observations tossed out. Not as well organized as I'd like, but you'll get the drift.

One of the big problems we've had with this whole post-election brouhaha is that nobody pays attention to level-of-analysis. Here we're dealing with indvidual voting decisions and trying to claim causality from an institutional affiliation, where we keep focusing on personal attitudes on one topic (religion) being extended to other topics (abortion, gay marriage, etc) and we're paying less attention to the institutional affiliation aspects.

By that I mean that we don't know what the actual beliefs are of a voter who "belongs" to a specific denomination, who "regularly practices" the religion (which we measure by the proxy of church attendance), how strongly those beliefs are held, the degree to which the beliefs are internal (related to the experience of faith) or external (related to membership or loyalty to group), and so on and so on.

I was raised in the Bible belt, and I spent a lot of time with the Campus Crusade for Christ folks because I did a lot of music with them. Had a number of friends who were born again and whose family lives and extra-curricular activities revolved almost totally around their religious activities. Only exception was school sports.

The range of intensity of faith, and the degree to which it was demonstrative, was huge among the kids. But for all of them, their personal identity was very closely tied to their religious activities. Similarly, some of those with the strongest faith were also some of the "wildest" -- no correlation or causality suggested, just that sometimes faith and sin are no strangers, just as virtue and secularism can also be boon companions. So what I'm trying to emphasize is how diverse the nature of religiosity is at the personal level, even within a tight knit group. Yet there's a social dimension that is shared and is, for some, as important as the personal faith.

For those with strong faith, it was clearly part of their personal makeup. But those without a strong faith, their allegiance to or membership in the religion might be an equally strong element of their personal identity. Both groups can feel mightily threatened by other groups that don't share some of the key premises around which their lives are structured but who have a similar attachment to either their faith, their religion or both. This is especially true for religions that are premised on exclusion and exceptionalism, and even more so if their authority is based on revelation.

I am certain that in virtually all religious groups, a large portion of the members, even if they attend religious studies classes regularly, don't pay a whole lot of attention. They wouldn't necessarily be all that reliable about the niceties of how their denomination differs from other similar groups. As far as I can tell, there are a whole lot more Americans who swallow at least a portion of the basis for the Rapture novels than the number who belong to denominations with a millenarianist theology consistent with the Rapture.

Whether Catholics or Protestants or Mormons or whatnot, a large portion of Americans who identify themselves as religious Christians are the same sorts who only tune into presidential elections a few weeks before it's time to vote. And they're the same types who can believe that WMD were found or that President Bush is popular around the world. It's not necessarily out-and-out ignorance, it's that it's not on their radar screen, and the hear what they expect to hear.

Yet they're fine upstanding citizens who take their civic responsibilties seriously. And a lot of their religion or their politics is as much a matter of conforming to standards of groups to which they are closely affiliated as it is independently arriving at information and opinions.

The theme of conformity/non-conformity doesn't get as much attention as I think it ought in these discussions. There are two areas where it's important. First is as a defense of a group (and indirectly of the members of the group) -- against outsiders or a shunning of those insiders who might deviate or threaten the group. Yet non-conformity was one of the first principles on which the US was built. Our system is structured around the tolerance of non-conformity, whether in speech or thought or religion (or being a minority group such as race or ethnicity or sexual preference and behavior). It's in some ways the very heart of our political and social system. Together with certain property freedoms, non-conformity is the essence of liberty. For it's not enough to be free from individual tyrants but also from the tyranny of conformity.

So the dilemma is not just to convince people who experience faith in a non-intellectualized fashion that knowledge about the other will not damage what they hold precious. It's also convincing people for whom conformity is a powerful social motivator that they are not threatened by "others" who don't conform to their appearance, their customs, their rituals, their language, culture and worldview.

I'd be interested in how much these factors are considered in the ecumenical movement that you're starting to explore. Sometimes just introducing folks to another culture through art or music, which doesn't seem as threatening, can start the process. Where else can the religions make headway?

In the interest of consolidating discussions on this and closely related matters, here's an exchange between Bondra and me from Tacitus last week.

Faith, non-conformity and the judiciary

Bondra:

Hideously intolerant "evangelicals" exist. No doubt about it. In the same way that hideously intolerant liberals exist. And hideously intolerant golfers, and omelette-lovers and stamp collectors.

I'm not being flip. My point is that intolerance is a condition rooted in fear and ignorance of the other, and it abounds everywhere -- including, in large doses, among the secular elite on the Upper East Side. At the same time, I suspect that you know committed Christians who are altogether humble, expansive and non-judgmental about way other weak humans respond to the trials and complexities of human existence (then again, maybe you don't; I sure do). But what rubs you wrong about the characteristics of your Christian connections is simply the manifestation, in a Christian context, of a universal human failing -- fear as a manifestation of ignorance. Christians aren't immune from it, and, as we're certainly seeing here lately, they sure don't hold a monopoly on it.

nadezhda's response:

As you know, I agree with your emphasis on fear as one of the primary motivators of "return to the pure" movements whether they're found on the right or left. Those on the left tend to be less focused on protecting what they have. Instead, they go off and try to build something new, and nobody pays them any attention unless they are a nuisance to their neighbors or they persuade a bunch of rich kids to give all their money to the guru.

It can be a bigger problem when we're dealing with the "purists" on the Right who are trying to hang on to what they've got or retrieve what they think they used to have. The evangelicals as a group (not necessarily individuals within the group) define the existence of non-conforming beliefs and cultural and social mores as directly threatening to them personally, their families and culture, and to the place on earth they are to prepare for the return of Christ. They can't do a faith transplant and make other people believe the way they do, but they can try to stop behavior that signifies wrong thought or threatens their efforts to create a world that accords with their beliefs. And they look to the government to do that for them.

The political correctness freaks are in effect the same phenomenon. They can't put a chip in everybody's brain that ensures "tolerance" of diversity of race, culture, gender, sexual preference, etc., so they try to police behavior instead. And they want authority (whether campus or government) to enforce those behavioral norms.

We only worry about intolerant golfers when they take over the club's rules committee and come up with a bunch of nonsense about handicaps and tee times that spoils the fun for most of the members.

I am not worried about a theocracy in the US. I think a "reformed" judiciary could make this world a good deal harder than necessary for a lot of individuals if the bench were populated with a large number of hard-right ideologues (regardless of their religious faith).

The Hamdi case, however, has given me a great deal of comfort that the Supreme Court is going to act as a brake on the federal executive in critical bill of rights matters. The justification of a never-ending war with a shapeless enemy will not be accepted as the grounds for unlimited and indefinite derrogations.

With the breakdown of Congress as an effective oversight institution, we will also be dependent on the judiciary to perform critical watchdog functions -- not on a regular basis, but on core constitutional conflicts between executive and legislative functions. Hopefully the court's deference to executive authority will not extend so far as to fail to rebalance the separation of powers if they continue to grow further out of whack.

It's these parts of the judiciary that are important, because that's the ultimate foundation of our system -- not the death penalty or abortion rights or gay marriage. The system can self-correct over time if the foundation remains inviolate. Ebbs and flows of social change will do the rest over time, with lots of hair-tearing, and frequent victories and defeats on all sides on the political battlefield.

I do believe that Harley's concern goes somewhat beyond the judiciary. I find it dangerous that the campaign maestros continue to use not only campaigns but governing decisions to signal to evangelicals that they can enforce their beliefs through the poltiical system by voting for one candidate or party. It's not healthy, because it's counter to the basic principles of our system.

We're not in the French tradition of solidarity and equality. Those are sometimes byproducts of our system in certain periods but far less so than others. Our system is based on freedom and equality before the law. An essential condition for freedom, without which it's meaningless, is tolerance of non-conforming beliefs and practices.

I wish our leaders (of both parties, I might add) would occasionaly take a refresher course in what this "freedom" stuff we're supposed to be spreading actually is. And maybe even use campaigns and the bully pulpit to give Americans an occasional civics lesson.

And bondra's further response:

Your take on the structural indispensibility of an objective, largely apolitical judiciary is dead on. From a domestic perspective, everything else is sort of empty calories. The rubber meets the road in the courts.

I'm generally pretty sanguine, though, about the federal judiciary's ability to resist significant, scary-Right leaning change. First, outside of the Supreme Court, it's just so damn big that it would take a decade at least to really change it in fundamental ways. I expect the Dems to figure all of this out and regain their traction within a few years, so the long-term control necessary to impose a real, noticeable paradigmatic change across the judiciary just will not materialize.

And at the Supreme Court level, history just hasn't been kind to those who've sought to mold the Court to their political liking. It seems, as the Founders intended, that a life appointment really does tend to liberate the conscience and to erode the sense of political obligation. There's no guarantee, of course, but even when I disagree with particular decisions, I see the Supreme Court as the one place where the better angels of our civic nature really do flourish. Maybe I'm a pollyanna, but I think it's institutionally just too strong for zealots of any stripe to do much real damage.