Religious Faith and Human Freedom

By Dr. James Hitchcock
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 1/31/02)

It is now obvious, if it was ever doubted, that Muslim extremists cannot hope to defeat the United States on a military basis, whatever they may have once thought. But they will probably keep fighting because they see the war as a spiritual struggle, a conflict of beliefs and ideas, and they are correct in thinking that the United States is ill equipped for such a conflict, indeed refuses to enter into it.

Polls now show that the events of Sept. 11, despite the temporary "return to religion," which they seemed to inspire, will have no long-term effects on our culture, especially given the ease of our military victory.

The main strength of the terrorists, indeed practically their only strength, is their absolute conviction, their refusal to entertain even the possibility that they may be wrong, their utter unwillingness to modify their beliefs through "dialogue." On the other hand there are no longer any working absolutes in American culture except the insistence that there are no absolutes, precisely the spiritual flabbiness that invites attack by extremists.

This reality causes some people to see the struggle of "us" against "them" not in terms of Muslim versus Christian, but in terms of religion versus secularism. "We" are the people who believe in endless toleration, including abortion and all forms of sexual liberation.

"They" are the bigots who want to restrict people’s freedoms. "We" embrace the modern world in all its complexities. "They" are resolutely anti-modern.

The irony is that somehow "freedom" has come to mean that we have no choice but to embrace things of which we disapprove. For a long time this contradiction was papered over with vague talk about liberty for everyone. But now it has become increasingly common for liberals to admit openly that freedom only extends to movements and ideas which are themselves liberal.

One typical recent analysis "proves" that religious belief inevitably leads to terrorism, because people with strong religious beliefs cannot accept "diversity" and are frightened of personal liberty; they thus use force to try to hold back the clock. Such an analysis does, of course, describe some believers.

But the argument is dishonest in that it ignores all the modern evils, including terrorism, which have nothing to do with religion and even in fact emanate from sources which are anti-religious, Communism being the chief example. People who warn that strong religious beliefs lead to extremism seldom add that strong political beliefs of any kind have the same effect. Recalling the evils of Communism would require admitting that the rejection of religious absolutes, the "liberation" of people from old orthodoxies, and the embrace of "progress" can themselves lead to the same evils as extremist religion.

Nor is the problem confined to Communism. Few modern wars, and none of the great ones, have been fought for religious reasons, and what is sometimes seen as religious conflict, as in Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia, is often more a matter of ethnicity or territoriality. Bad as the Taliban are, they do not rank at the top of the list of the most evil regimes of the past century. The totalitarian modern state began with the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, an episode precisely intended, among other things, to "liberate" Frenchmen from the shackles of religion.

Faced with the accusation that their beliefs inevitably lead to violence, some Christians become nervously apologetic. It is ironic that some Democrats are accusing the Bush administration of being aligned with religious fanaticism, since President Bush has now endorsed the United Religions Initiative, a liberal group which condemns religious orthodoxy as a threat to peace and freedom. Thus the president seems to confirm the claim that some of his own strongest supporters are a danger to society.

(George Schultz, who was Secretary of State during the Reagan administration, is a member of the URI advisory board.)

Some Christians may be tempted to look almost with nostalgia at the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where raw coercion was used to maintain approved behavior. But the real challenge is to continue to show that genuine religious faith, including moral absolutes, is possible in a culture that also respects human freedom.

Dr. Hitchcock is a history professor at St. Louis University.

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