Kathleen Parker has a major case of secular reason sickness and
it needs to be cured. I'll keep this short and
simple. Here is an offensive line from one of
Kat's latest columns:
How about social conservatives make their arguments without
bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one’s
values, but let reason inform one’s public arguments.
Problem #1: Social conservatives very rarely argue for
their public policy positions on the basis of straight-up
revelation. It is much more common to hear them talk about
scientific evidence that life begins from conception (which could
be found in an embryology textbook, for example) than to hear a
scriptural exegesis of, say, Jeremiah 1. If anything,
American social conservatives have worked quite assiduously to
persuade their fellow citizens without direct appeal to
revelation.
I think the Yale Law professor Stephen Carter was more correct
several years ago when he complained conservative Christians
relied on a platform that lacked spiritual distinctives and
simply mimicked Republican positions. See, Kathleen, Mr.
Carter is a scholar in the area of law and religion. His
observation runs completely counter to yours, which you have
seemingly formed on the fly in response to your personal Sarah
Palin fiasco.
And let us not forget that when some Christian leaders hid behind
the separation of church and state to avoid addressing topics
like Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and nuclear
proliferation, their liberal colleagues were applauded for highly
public spiritual approaches to those controversies. When
liberals do it, we call it "speaking truth to power" or "speaking
prophetically." When conservative religionists enter the
political process, everyone suddenly frets about impending
theocracy.
Problem #2: Ms. Parker acts as though everything we discuss
in politics can be parsed scientifically. This is the same
sort of casual toss-off we get when some self-satisfied personage
says, "You can't legislate morality." Really? Hate
crimes? The illegality of segregation? A welfare
state? Human rights?
The simple fact is that politics concerns itself with the realm
of value as well as the realm of fact. There are both
religious and philosophical approaches to questions of
value. Is there any compelling reason to commit
epistemological segregation, Ms. Parker? Must the religious
contestants sit at the back of the bus to satisfy you?
topics:
kathleen parker, secularism
