Religion and Politics in America: A Cultural Divide between Democrats and Europeans, Study notes of United States Philosophy

Download Religion and Politics in America: A Cultural Divide between Democrats and Europeans and more Study notes United States Philosophy in PDF only on Docsity! July 23, 2010 Submit Query Ford Pulls In HUGE Profits As Toyota, GM Stumble HUFFPOST BUSINESS Scott Atran Professor and author Posted: September 13, 2008 08:25 PM Religion in America: Why Many Democrats and Europeans Don't Get It I'm an atheist liberal academic who strongly leans Democrat. But I'm stunned at how blind so many of my colleagues and soul mates are to the historical underpinnings of American political culture and the genuine appeal of religious conservatism for so many of our fellow citizens. Recent economic studies (most notably Unequal Democracy by Larry Bartels, a professor of political science at Princeton) show that when Democrats were in the White House, lower-income American families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families, and that the reverse was true when Republicans were in control. If people vote rationally for their economic interests, one would expect Democrats to be perennial favorites among working poor and middle class, and especially so in this year of economic downturn. Why then does polling show the election a tossup? Conservative whites who vote Republican generally cite patriotism and national security as the most important issues in deciding who should be president. Over the last few generations, it's only when these voters perceive economy to be in dire straits, or when a previous Democratic administration has been successful in palpably increasing their prosperity, do patriotism and national security take on slightly less value than usual. Patriotism and national security are about binding and preserving what has become the primary reference group for political identity in the modern world, the nation. In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote that: "The rudest savages feel the sentiment of glory... A man who was not impelled by any Page 1 of 6Scott Atran: Religion in America: Why Many Democrats and Europeans Don't Get It 7/23/2010http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-atran/religion-in-america-why-m_b_126225.html ijn _0 05 05 42 3, v er si on 1 - 23 J ul 2 01 0 Author manuscript, published in "Huffington Post (2008) 000" deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such action by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by his exercise the noble feeling of admiration." The official website for John McCain's candidacy headlines a quote from his book Faith of My Fathers as his banner: "Glory is not a conceit. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it." As cross-cultural findings by psychologist Jonathan Haidt show, morality is (pretty universally) not just about treating others fairly, but also "about living in a sanctified and noble way." That's a reason why John McCain's appeal is powerful. Among many Republican conservatives, one factor strongly correlates with patriotism and national security, is of even more overriding concern in daily life, and stands inseparable from love of country. Religion. A Gallup poll found, for example, that nearly two thirds (65%) of highly religious American white voters would vote Republican, no matter what their interests in other issues are. If one looks at recent Gallup polls inquiring into religious devotion in the USA, as indicated by belief in the Bible and church activity, the classic division between the blue states of the east and west versus the red states of the south and Middle America is apparent. A culture's moral compass is not an innate or logical determination, but an underdetermined product of historical contingency and willful choice. Belief in moral "rightness" or "truth" is always a matter of faith rather than reason. Only some professional philosophers, jurists, scientists and academics believe that the principal point of political argument (or most any argument) is, or ought to be, truth rather than persuasion, and that an argument's principal appeal should be reason rather than passion. To paraphrase Karl Rove: reason may be fine for studying and analyzing history and politics, but not for living or making them. Faith in what is felt and hoped for but cannot be proven or demonstrated in the here and now is vastly more effective in mobilizing people to create change. Barack Obama's appeal to many people who previously voted Republican, and upon whom victory depends, requires inciting such hope, not harping back to traditional democratic "issues." What's Universal about Morality and What's not? Primatologist Frans de Waal finds that even capuchin monkeys have a sense of fairness: if an experimenter offers cucumbers to a pair of capuchin monkeys, both eagerly grab the cucumbers; but if one of the monkeys is offered grapes, the other will throw the cucumber in the experimenter's face. This is a primitive version of the outcome to an "Ultimatum Game" that all human cultures seem to subscribe to. Anthropologist Joe Heinrich and his colleagues went to more than 20 small-scale and large-scale societies with offers to split the equivalent of a day's wage between two anonymous players who had done no work for the money. The researchers found that there is always some lower bound that one of the players finds unacceptable, although this varies across cultures (average cutoff may be close to 50-50 in some societies, as in America and China, but only 80-20 in others, as in some native cultures of the Amazon and New Guinea). Studies by social psychologist Richard Nisbett and colleagues suggest that human cultures fall into two broad categories, individualist (mainly the U.S. and Western Europe) and collectivist (the rest of the world). Anthropologist Richard Shweder argues that for so-called collectivist societies there is also a strong "ethics of community" (authority / respect, duty / loyalty); often there is an "ethics of divinity" (purity / sanctity) as well. Experiments by Haidt involving thousands of subjects suggests that all of these elements may be part of every culture, but each element to a different degree. In our Page 2 of 6Scott Atran: Religion in America: Why Many Democrats and Europeans Don't Get It 7/23/2010http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-atran/religion-in-america-why-m_b_126225.html ijn _0 05 05 42 3, v er si on 1 - 23 J ul 2 01 0 the American Republic's political constitution (especially via Thomas Jefferson & friends), the fundamental social constituent of economic and political culture in the United States was neither the individual nor the state, but the sectarian community. The religious community in the USA was a civic as well as moral community, a combination which infused American economic and political culture with particular dynamism. Ironically, it was a French nobleman who first noted this novel historical condition. Alexis de Tocqueville stressed in Democracy in America, his masterful analysis of our young republic written in 1835, that religious conservatism in America does not mean sacrifice of individual interest for group interest, or subservience of the individual to the state or any other ruling collectivity. Rather, religion mitigates the selfishness of unbridled individualism and "private animosities," while shoring up free institutions that engage "aspiring hopes" as against "general despotism [that] gives rise to indifference." "It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great benefits to the world, nevertheless... tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man's attention on himself; and it lay open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.... Religious nations are thus naturally strong on the very point on which democratic nations are weak, which shows of what importance it is for men to preserve their religion as their conditions become more equal..... Thus it is, that, by respecting all democratic tendencies not absolutely contrary to herself, and by making use of several of them for her own purposes, Religion sustains a successful struggle of that spirit of individual independence which is her most dangerous opponent.... As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or feeling which they wish to promote, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found out each other they combine. From that moment they are not longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve as an example, and whose language is listened to." De Tocqueville surmised, correctly it seems, that religion in America would give its democracy greater vigor, endurance, cooperative power and competitive force than any strictly authoritarian regime or unbridled democracy. In 1852, communism's co-founder Frederich Engels wrote to Karl Marx that California's sudden rise as a social and economic force "out of nothing" showed was "not provided for in the [Communist] Manifesto... We shall have to allow for this." He puzzled over the apparent exception of "Yankee blood" to the universal rule of "historical determinism." During a brief visit to North America in 1888, Engels observed that unlike the case for Canada or Europe: "Here one sees how necessary the feverish spirit of the Americans is for the rapid development of a new country." The great German political economist Max Weber attributed this "feverish spirit" to American capitalism's peculiar "Protestant ethic." An anecdote of his illustrates the religious sentiment that seemed to pervade American business life which depended on personal trust and long-term credit relations. In 1904, on a long railroad journey through what was then U.S. Indian territory, Weber sat next to a traveling salesman of "undertaker's hardware" (iron letters for tombstones) and casually mentioned the strong church-mindedness of Americans. The salesman responded: "Sir, for my part everybody may believe or not believe as he pleases; but if I saw a farmer or a businessman not belonging to any church at all, I wouldn't trust him with fifty cents. Why pay me, if he doesn't believe in anything?" Americans have traditionally tended to build economies on credit and trust in the future and others, rather than with cash and legal contracts. (Although involvements with cultural strangers in a global economy are changing things. More generally, Americans rank at the top in terms of how fairly people treat members of their own culture. But Americans -- at least policymakers and negotiators -- Page 5 of 6Scott Atran: Religion in America: Why Many Democrats and Europeans Don't Get It 7/23/2010http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-atran/religion-in-america-why-m_b_126225.html ijn _0 05 05 42 3, v er si on 1 - 23 J ul 2 01 0 tend to treat members of other cultures, such as political rival Russia or economic rival Japan, with greater distrust and self-serving bias -- "our side is inherently fairer than yours" -- than some other cultures treat one another.) American Religion: Cooperate to Compete Humans often use religion to cooperate to compete. (For example, it was only in the 1950s during height of the Cold War, that the Pledge of Allegiance was altered to include God). As Darwin noted, in competition between groups with similar levels of technology and population size, those groups will tend to win out that favor and transmit willingness to sacrifice some self interest for group interests (that also promote individual interests in the long run). Religions with morally concerned deities arguably made the rise of civilization and large-scale cooperation between genetic strangers possible (historical and cross-cultural analyses of 186 societies finds that the larger the population, the more likely it has deities who are concerned with management of morality and the mitigation of selfishness). Most cultures celebrate costly personal commitments as morally good and glorious. Many such celebrations are time-worn collective rituals -- including quasi-religious religious national celebrations -- with proven success in fostering cooperation within the group and making it more competitive with other groups. That basic dynamic is still with us and is unlikely to go away. It is especially palpable in traditional mainstream America, even more so than in other modern societies. Republicans intuitively get it; Democrats often don't. But Democrats do get more the meaning and message of the Enlightenment, which may allow in a wider world if only they can learn better from Republicans how to gather up the country first. More in Politics... Comments 73 Pending Comments 0 View FAQ Page: 1 2 3 Next › Last » (3 pages total) Show: Page: 1 2 3 Next › Last » (3 pages total) Newest First Page 6 of 6Scott Atran: Religion in America: Why Many Democrats and Europeans Don't Get It 7/23/2010http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-atran/religion-in-america-why-m_b_126225.html ijn _0 05 05 42 3, v er si on 1 - 23 J ul 2 01 0