There is no separation of religion and politics in the USA

Or, what Europe doesn't understand about the US and what the US doesn't understand about Europe

Yesterday afternoon I found myself watching a show on TV, a political documentary exploring current attitudes to the USA among young people in France and Germany. The makers of the show also visited the UK but there they concentrated their attention on American Rhodes Scholars attending Cambridge University. The tacit assumption made by the producers of the show is that France and Germany have been the major backers of the European Union as a political as well as economic project, and that they will remain so for the foreseeable future - an assumption in which they may well be right. Even under Blair's premiership - and Blair is the most shamelessly pro-European premier the UK has had for decades - the UK is still not 'at the heart' of Europe but continues to be extremely wary of futher social and political integration.

Since Britain in its recent foreign policies has been and seems set to remain the most fervently pro-American of all the members of the EU, the producers of the show were also making the tacit assumption that opinion in the UK will a) have no effect on the future development of EU-as-a-whole/USA relations; and

can be counted on to reflect the basic assumptions of American foreign policy. Both assumptions are fundamentally flawed.

Blair's response to 9/11, his involvement of the UK in America's latest political/military debacle, and his doing so on the basis of outright lies told to both Parliament and people, have seriously undermined the reflexive, almost instinctual manner in which most people in the UK have regarded the USA. And while the British have always regarded Europe with suspicion and contempt - after all, they're Europeans - the steadily increasing calls from the public for a 'foreign policy of our own' may well force the realization that active engagement within the social and political project of the European Union will be for the foreseeable future the only way in which the people of the UK can gain a voice for themselves in international affairs.

After 60 years development under the defensive aegis of the USA, Europe is not what it was - and its attitudes toward America are not what they were. The EU is not merely a loose alliance of trading partners: it has its own Parliament; it has ambitions toward the development of a unified defence force free of the structures of NATO and of the political imperatives of America. Presently, these are still largely aspirations and not attainments. The European Parliament is not fully representative of the people of Europe, an independent military is more wish than reality: but even the aspiration is indicative of a real change in fundamental attitudes within Europe. An important part of that change is (except among European Muslims) advancing and militant secularism. A secularism which sees that there is NO separation of religious faith and State, religious faith and Government, in America. A secularism which draws parallels between the unthinking adherence of its believers to Radical Islam, and the unthinking assertion of the virtues of American democracy, by force when force is deemed necessary.

America has no established church, in the way that the UK has established the Church of England as its 'national' church. But expressions of religious sentiment and religious life are commonplace throughout America - in the form of signs by the roadside exhorting God to protect American troops, in bumperstickers with religious themes, in the unending numbers of church buildings that dot the landscape wherever one looks, in the overtly religious nature of the Oath of Office undertaken by high officials of the Republic, in the exhortation to God to bless America with which every major political speech ends, in the prayers undertaken by Congress. In Europe you will not see ordinary people in a McDonald's praying aloud before they eat; and you will under no circumstances whatever find 70% of the population believing that it's important that their leaders be strongly religious - as 70% of Americans do. (Link)

In a recent poll in the UK (Link) 82% of those surveyed said they thought of religion as a force for harm and division - religion per se, not some particular faith. And Europeans view American politics as being saturated in religious fervor to such a degree that they see little difference between the pronouncements of President Bush on the 'axis of evil', and those of Bin Laden on the nature of the evils of the West and its coming downfall. Both are seen to be the pronoucements of a religiously motivated politics of aggression having nothing to do with the 'real' world of secular politics. A real world characterized, for most Europeans, by humanism, secularism, ecological concerns, and concerns for social and economic justice that run completely contrary to the barbarous simplicity and selfishness of Americans and their leaders (as seen from Europe).

What Americans do not understand about Europeans is the emphasis they place upon the Office as opposed to the Office-holder. Mr. G. W. Bush presently holds the Office of President of the United States of America. And while his occupancy of that Office must inevitably be colored to some degree by the personality and personal values of Mr Bush, Mr Bush as President has no right to take decisions involving consequences for the whole people of the USA exclusively based upon or exclusively motivated by his opinions or his faith. An Office-holder, particularly the holder of an Office of vital importance to the nation as whole ought, in the European view, to strive for complete impartiality, to distinguish Public duty from private conviction, and to follow the Law before following private inclination or conviction (rather than making startling innovations in Law to suit personal prejudice, as Bush has done in taking the power to declare war solely in to his hands, and those of any subsequent President). And least of all should he indulge the passions and prejudices of individual religious belief.

A French participant in the show laughed in incredulity at the thought of a President of the French Republic taking an oath of office on a bible - or any other holy book. As she said, how could he possibly be the representative of all if, in his oath of office, he immediately identified himself with one segment of society - the segment that shared his faith in that particular holy book? She laughed - but her incredulity was more than a little tinged by offence and hostility, and fear. Fear. An intelligent, articulate, educated Frenchwoman is learning to fear the nation that once liberated her country from the horrors of Nazism. This is something that those who criticize the nature of European opinion in relation to America don't realize. They are becoming afraid of us.

The ideal approach to the problems of the Middle East, for a European, would be to divest any response to those problems of any religious connotations whatsoever; to divest discussion of these problems of the messianic lunacy encapsulated in the term 'axis of evil'; to cease to portray the conflict in Iraq as between 'men of good faith' of any religion, and 'men of bad faith' in regard to Islam. In short, to remove questions of faith entirely from the attempt to resolve these issues. They should, according to the European view, be pursued with pragmatic impartiality, with the intent to secure peace before national advantage, and with a regard for the role of history that is laughably absent from the ways in which Bush, Bremer et. al., have proceeded.

I am not in any sense saying that, if Europe had been the dominant player in the Iraq situation, that Europe would have made any better a fist of the job than America has. We are not talking about facts on the ground but about prevailing sentiments and opinions, and why Europeans are beginning to hate and fear America.

In France, to a greater degree than in Germany or the UK (and it's in France that anti-American sentiment is becoming both vocal and widespread) the structure of the Republic is seen as a framework which enables the life of the Public Sphere, and defends the rights of the private individual, while maintaining a complete impartiality in the face of both public concerns and private demands. The holders of Office are meant, except in the case of the highest Office-holders, where publicity is unavoidable, to be faceless, nameless, functionaries whose individualities do not intrude upon political decision-making. Contrast the situation here, where even those seeking the position of dog-catcher are to be elected, appraised as to their personal worthiness, and if found wanting to be rejected as unfit. And as part of that appraisal, even for the Office of dog-catcher, the individual's religious affiliation or lack of it will play a part. There is a separation of Church and State in America; but in Europe there is a separation of religious sentiment from the State which, in America, is almost literally inconceivable.

And it is a fact that in Europe, religious sentiment is seen as one more form of prejudice which ought not to be supported by egalitarian democracies. Europeans assume that America is such a democracy (whereas in fact it is, at its best, a meritocratic Republic that makes use of democratic processes in its organization) and are therefore outraged that while America claims to be a democracy (the Founding Fathers made no such claim) it behaves in ways which contradict European expectations of democracy. Why should it not? America is a Republic having democratic form, not a democracy.

The European tradition of political thought and practice, dating back to Hobbes, is to view the State as an impartial entity devoid of human passion. In America, by contrast, the State appears to be viewed as the result of collective actions by human individuals, and as such cannot be separated from the personalities, convictions, faith, of those individuals. Representation involves personality because without it how is the representative to understand and represent his constituents? It's impossible to exclude the religious impulse from American politics because America remains a community in which that impulse is still seen as a force for good, in and of itself. It's impossible to exclude religious sentiment and religious concerns from national policy in America because the persons mandated to formulate and implement that policy are themselves, in large degree, religious people.

Why do many Europeans see Bush as a greater threat to world peace than Bin Laden? Because in one respect there is no difference between them, to the European mind, and because Bush is possessed of infinitely greater means to project his messianic zeal around the world than is Bin Laden. That one respect in which there is no difference between them is this: both see the world in terms of the crude simplicities of their faith; both use faith-based justifications for their acts of demented folly; and both appeal to God for victory. While Americans insist that there is a separation of Church and State in America because no church here is national in character, or is formally represented in Government, as the C of E is in the British Parliament; and because children are not allowed to pray in school nor are representations of the Ten Commandments to appear in courtrooms, Europeans laugh themselves sick in horrified amusement at the chronic penetration of religion into American politics. Laugh with horror, and no little fear. Religion per se has become for them an attribute of the irrational and the aggressive (except, of course, for Muslims within Europe who no doubt view European antipathy to America with considerable glee), an irrationality and aggression they've discovered over recent years that they have cause to fear.

And nothing more clearly distinguishes the disconnect between Europe and America on these issues than the final segment of the show I watched yesterday.

In the concluding segment of the show, the interviewer spoke with a group of American students at Cambridge University. The last student to speak made a point which to him and his fellow-students, and to the interviewer, seemed to make perfect sense. European attitudes to America are changing because Europeans have lost faith in America as a force for good in the world, and that in order to combat those changes America will have to demonstrate that it is a force for good. America must make her morality manifest and live according to it, both at home and in the world.

I laughed, on hearing him. Not at him, because he was genuine in his conviction that America is a force for good in the world, and because he was sincere in his belief that America has an obligation to the world to demonstrate that innate goodness by doing good things and being accountable for her errors.

I laughed at the disconnect between what this intelligent, well-educated, articulate American believed about the nature of European opinion, and what can plainly be seen to be the nature of that opinion in fact. Nothing could be further from the truth of things than this young American's understanding of them. The idea that, in the first place, America has an identifiable morality of its own is an affront to the developing pan-humanism of the European political consciousness. The idea that America is justified in exporting its morality, its democracy, its economic way of life, is an affront to deep-seated impulses of anti-colonialism, of economic and political self-determination, which in particular characterize French opinion. And the utter lack of separation between personal religious conviction and the practice of international politics, and of war in particular, is beginning to fill the minds of European populations with something very akin to fear, because no difference is discernible to the European mind between the zealotry of Islamist fanatics, and the 'fanatacism' of American self-belief.

Certainly those who plant bombs in subways are the enemy: but we are, in the European mind, beginning to be seen as the source of the evil that gives rise to these enemies and fuels their hatred.

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To: little whip

Too slow for words. And tomorrow will be just as bad... But never mind. If it is, I shall write a critique of de Beauvoir's essay on de Sade, which I've spent this evening re-reading.

My. Won't that draw the traffic in?

Say something, you intellectual pygmies. Or confess that's what you are.

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cactoblasta

Join Date 04/2004

+48

Interesting. I have to say I've always found the US a little frightening, if only because US governments don't seem to understand the consequences of their actions, or, perhaps worse, don't care.

Religion per se has become for them an attribute of the irrational and the aggressive (except, of course, for Muslims within Europe who no doubt view European antipathy to America with considerable glee), an irrationality and aggression they've discovered over recent years that they have cause to fear.

It's the same in Oz as well. There are few slurs so sticky as 'god-botherer', and in the minds of most there seems to be only the most minor difference between a terrorist and a fundie in terms of potential harm.

It makes sense, when you think about it. All the worst outrages of the last century have been caused by people who believe strongly in something - an ideal, a religion, a philosophy, whatever. So by association strong belief is a harbinger of disaster. Terrorists want to blow us up, god-botherers want to stop us from having fun, democracy zealots want to fight, economic rationalists will get you sacked from work, environmentalists want to see the destruction of civilisation in favour of some green ideal.

There is no danger so clear and present as zealotry and strong belief.

If Americans really do believe as you suggest - ie that zealotry is a must for public office - then the rest of the world has even more reason to fear them.

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To: cactoblasta

Thanks for an interesting response.

Interesting. I have to say I've always found the US a little frightening, if only because US governments don't seem to understand the consequences of their actions, or, perhaps worse, don't care.

When I came to America I did so in the smugly happy belief that, as someone who had spent time in the company of Americans at college, who loved American culture and followed events in America avidly, that I would arrive there and fit right in. I went there thinking that I already understood - in part at least because of what I felt was a shared history and intersts and aspirations. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

At first I couldn't even make the bathrooms work. That's how much I understood.

Americans, for example, are not greedy. What they do is respect value. If you can get two giant hotdogs with all the trimmings for lunch, for the price of one - then that's too good a deal to pass up. Americans eat enormous portions, not because they're greedy but because the maniac energy that has built America in a little over two hundred years was fuelled, in part, by enormous numbers of calories. From wilderness to world-dominatig civilization in two centuries; you have to eat well to do that. And Americans care profoundly about what their country does, its reputation in the world, and the honor, decency and integrity of their government. But they care according to a different scale of values, which involves individual action as a willing part of the community. Which is why there is much more 'micro-charitable' giving here. Local churches organize food banks (for example) and give to those needing help from the stores of the community. They turn, first, to themselves, to their families, and to their communities for 'welfare' rather than to large scale agencies of the State.

If Americans really do believe as you suggest - ie that zealotry is a must for public office - then the rest of the world has even more reason to fear them.

And then there's their religion, which is a much more vital part of everyday life in America than it is in Europe. In Richmond there's a Church of one kind or another on every street corner; some no more than tiny congregations meeting in backrooms - but still lead by any number of Bishops and Apostles; and some hundreds or thousands strong. It pervades everything, from the vanity license plates of cars (PRZGOD) to roadside signs exhorting God's blessing on American troops in Iraq. And it's all sincere. Especially the belief that a zealously God-fearing nation should be lead by a zealously God-fearing man. And I think most Americans, if they were made aware of it and could be persuaded that it had any relevance to them, would regard your statement with incomprehension. America is a force for good in the world (good as perceived by Americans) and why would you be afraid of the guys in the white hats?

Start to worry when they finally get tired of the rest of the world's obtuse incomprehension and decide that if you won't do good willingly through following their example, then they'll make you be good in your own best interest. Which is, of course, America's interest because America is a force for good in the world.

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kingbee

Join Date 04/2004

+42

as much as i wish it weren't the case, i don't believe it's possible for a republican candidate for president to win that party's nomination without the blessing--so to speak--of the self-appointed moral majority headquartered in your current home commonwealth.

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