Religion, the Diaspora, and the U.S. Presidential Election
Among the many forms of public discourse in the U.S. is the bumper sticker. In a mobile society rich in automobiles but poor in opportunities for reasoned discussion, one way that people express their views on politics, religion, and even philosophy is the message or symbol that they display on the backs of their cars, on or near the rear bumper. Many Evangelical Baptists and other Protestants display the ancient fish symbol with the Greek acronym “ichthous” for “Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior.” In response, secular materialists have devised an image of a fish which has grown legs, to denote evolution – Darwinism being the nemesis of some fundamentalist Protestant sects. Today I saw yet another twist on this evolving symbolic discourse – a diagram of a fish with the word “gefilte” inside – to add a Jewish voice to the discussion.
Indeed, it has been said that the United States is practically the only advanced industrialized Western country where religion still plays a major role in politics. That, at least, is the common perception. After all, this is a country where the “Evangelical vote” is a major factor; where two of the candidates for the Republican nomination (Mitt Romney, the likely nominee, and Jon Huntsman) are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (“Mormons”), where one of the front-running Republican candidates (Rick Santorum) has offended some voters by his forthright but clumsy espousal of Catholic doctrine, and where the Democratic president’s religious beliefs continue to be an object of public scrutiny.
And yet, this religiosity is to some extent illusory. Some have argued that for all their “God-talk,” in their daily lives most Americans are no longer guided by Christian or other religious principles. When it comes down to actual decisions in everyday life, they tend to be pragmatists, or even “practical atheists.” In a review of sociologist Craig Gay’s “The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live as if God Doesn’t Exist,” Ken Myers writes that “God does not matter practically – in the practices of everyday life – because the chief end of man in modernity is the maintenance of control over reality, and we can adequately achieve such dominance through science and technology (and through social and cultural institutions that are scientific and technically ordered).” (Ken Myers, “What’s God Got to Do with It?” “Touchstone,” March/April 2012, p. 12.)
If this is true, it is certainly reflected in American politics, which are not aligned along any discernible religious guidelines.In today’s American electorate, there are two basic sets of political opinions.The typical views of a “liberal” from a “blue state” include support for greater social and economic equality, higher taxes on the wealthy, and a universal health care plan. Social equality would include equal rights for members of racial and religious minorities, women, and the GLBT (gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals). Women’s rights would include the supposed right to abortion.Liberals favor helping immigrants assimilate into American society. At the same time, they traditionally support labor and the trade unions. The typical views of a “red-state” “conservative” – and this term must be understood in its American sense of “libertarian,” as opposed to the traditional European conservative, who tends to be statist – would include minimizing the role of the federal government, particularly in the economic area. This means minimal taxes or a flat tax on all,less regulation of business and, particularly in the southern and western states, the right to bear arms. On the other hand, the government is expected to protect unborn life and the sanctity of traditional marriage. Many conservatives support the death penalty, and seek strict regulation of immigration. While liberal voters generally feel that individuals need government protection from circumstances of life beyond their control, conservatives tend to emphasize each person’s responsibility for his own condition. Consequently, liberals believe that government should even out the economic and other inequalities of life, while conservatives seek to protect individual enterprise and wealth from government interference. It is noteworthy that both liberals and conservatives tend to focus on individual rights.
It should be evident that neither of these sets of values squares perfectly with Christianity as most Catholics and Orthodox would understand it. For while liberals solidarize with the poor and disadvantaged, they de-emphasize individual moral responsibility. For example, they assume that women become pregnant against their will, and that abortion is a legitimate way to avoid the impoverishing effect of having children. Conservatives, on the other hand, support traditional Christian personal morality, but seem oblivious to Christian (and particularly Catholic) social teaching. Thus, while they defend heterosexual marriage as the basic institution of society, they oppose government regulation of big businesses whose practices weaken and corrupt the social fabric, including the family. In short, neither liberals nor conservatives represent a consistent Christian world view.
This was not always so. In the nineteenth century, there was a general Protestant consensus. The constitutional structure of the United States, especially the First Amendment, followed broad Deist principles, allowing for the “free exercise” of religion but avoiding a national commitment to any one religious establishment. In effect, the state was secular from the beginning. But in the nineteenth century, law and public life in the individual states honored the moral precepts of Christianity. Religious liberty was enjoyed by all kinds of Protestant sects, and over the past two centuries has indulged such practices as conscientious objection to military service, refusal to salute the American flag, and home schooling. Nevertheless, “free exercise” of religion under the First Amendment has never been limitless. The Mormon practice of polygamy was not tolerated. Over a century later, the smoking of the hallucinogenic drug peyote for Native American religious purposes was held not to be protected by the First Amendment. (Thomas Storck, “John Locke, Liberal Totalitarianism, and the Trivialization of Religion,” Faith & ReasonVol. 23 No. 3 (Autumn 2001), pp. 227-48.)
With the influx of immigrants from Ireland and Germany in the mid-nineteenth century and from Italy and Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth, Roman Catholics presented a new factor in American religious and political life. At first they were excluded from public life, suspected of disloyalty because of their allegiance to Rome. The unsuccessful presidential candidacy of Al Smith in 1928 – and John F. Kennedy’s successful bid in 1960 only after disclaiming any Catholic influence on his actions as future president -- represented both the possibilities and the limitations of Catholic participation in American politics.
By the 1920s, American Christians could be divided into three camps. Liberal Protestants followed the Enlightenment principle of individual conscience and autonomy, guided by personal experience. Evangelicals regarded the Bible as the prime authority. Catholics looked to the Church of Rome as the arbiter of truth, and demanded freedom to submit to its authority. These groups all accepted the general notion of religious liberty. However, they differed in how they understood it.
Between the 1920s and the 1960s, America became more secular. Courts applied the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. Catholics and Evangelicals could often find common cause in opposition to the liberal Protestants. While liberal Protestants saw individual freedom as an end in itself, Catholics held that freedom must be exercised for the common good of society. But liberal Protestantism’s emphasis on individual conscience inevitably abandoned its own Christian orientation, for there was no reason to assume that the individual conscience would remain bound by Christian principles. This led to the situation that exists in America today, with liberals (both Christian and secular) ranged against orthodox Catholics and Evangelicals. (Barry Hankins, “Liberty, Conscience and Autonomy: How the Culture War of the Roaring Twenties Set the Stage for Today’s Catholic and Evangelical Alliance,” Touchstone, November-December 2011, pp. 42-47).The latter coalition is exemplified by Republican candidate Rick Santorum, whose forthright Catholic positions on issues like marriage, abortion,and contraception have attracted a strong Evangelical following.Yet his “conservative” views on socio-economic issues can hardly be described as Catholic. Moreover, he has not been able to translate his Catholic beliefs into rationally defensible principles that people of all faiths could support – though that could certainly be done.
Where do diaspora Ukrainians fit in this constellation of religious and political forces?
In the twentieth century, most immigrants supported the Democratic Party. But the postwar wave of Ukrainian immigrants tended to support the Republicans because of their staunch anti-communism. Community leaders like Lev E. Dobriansky and Myron Kuropas achieved considerable success in that party. Today, however, a new generation of Ukrainian-Americans appears to be more evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.While policy towards Ukraine has been a major criterion of their support , there seems to be no fundamental difference in the attitudes of these two parties towards Ukraine. So will Ukrainian-Americans’ religious beliefs play any role in how they will vote?
While it may be argued that religion no longer plays a central role in American public life, last January the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement that once again polarized the country on religious grounds. It refused to broaden the narrow exceptions to its mandate that Catholic schools, hospitals, and other employers must cover contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization in their health care plans for employees, and that almost all employees would be forced to buy that coverage in their plans.
In a letter to the faithful dated February 9, 2012, Bishop Paul Chomnycky, OSBM, Ukrainian Catholic eparch of Stamford, wrote that “In so ruling, the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.” Pointing out that the rule put people of other faiths in an untenable position as well, the eparch declared that “We cannot – we will not – comply with this unjust law.”Accompanying the publication of his letter in the eparchial newspaper “The Sower” was a note from the Bishop mentioning the revised but still inadequate position of the Obama administration issued on February 10 in response to the public outcry, stipulating that payment for contraception and similar servicescould be made by the church organizations’ insurance companies instead. The exarch then cited a response by Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia published in the “Philadelphia Inquirer.” In that letter, which the “Sower” published below that of Bishop Paul, Archbishop Chaput noted that the Obama administration had long ago shifted towards “the anemiclanguage of ‘freedom of worship’ instead of the more historically grounded and robust concept of ‘freedom of religion’ in key diplomatic discussion,” and had in other ways shown its indifference to people of faith. (“The Sower, February 26, 2012, p. 3). As another Catholic prelate pointed out, even the Soviet Union permitted people to worship privately.
However, the First Amendment free exercise clause does not create an absolute and unlimited right. When it comes to living life in the way mandated by one's religion, one must sometimes take into account the priorities of a secular state and society. In the practice of many nations, the state interest in protecting public morals, general welfare (including health) and "public order" limits even the most basic human rights. If the state defines “public health” to include contraception, then the free-exercise rights of the Catholic Church may have to yield. It seems that Catholics in the US have just discovered the limits of their constitutional rights.
How do these controversies affect the Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants of the Ukrainian diaspora? Statistical data on diaspora attitudes are absent, and even careful monitoring of the press and the internet would only produce general impressions. It does appear that many Ukrainian-Americans are firmly committed to their political parties. There is an active e-mail list, “Ukrainians for Obama,” which aside from the usual partisan cheerleading sometimes features interesting political discussions. While Bishop Paul has made his displeasure with the current administration known, it is difficult to say how many Ukrainian voters are troubled by religious scruples. No doubt many compartmentalize their consciences, separating the political from the religious in a misapplication of the “separation of church and state.”
But for those who are seriously committed to an integrated Christian life where one’s political positions flow from one’s Christian world view, there seem to be only two choices. They can take the painful path of choosing the lesser evil, overcoming their moral scruples on some issues but finding agreement with one or the other of the chief political parties on others.They can try to fit their Christian principles onto the Procrustean bed of either the Democratic or the Republican Party. Thus, for example, some Ukrainian Catholics might support the Democrats’ commitment to universal health care as a realization of the Catholic social teaching that the state is responsible for the welfare of its citizens, while ignoring their tolerance of abortion. Others might favor a Republican candidate’s defense of unborn life and heterosexual marriage, while ignoring his libertarian opposition to programs for the poor at home and abroad.
Alternatively, diaspora Ukrainians can conclude that the American political discourse is so alien to Christian sensibilities that it is best for them to separate themselves from politics and the state altogether. In this they will be like some of America’s more extreme sects. Indeed, seen in the perspective of today’s prevailing mores and culture, the beliefs of Catholics – while perfectly defensible on rational and natural-law grounds -- must appear as strange as those of the polygamous Mormons in the nineteenth century. Defending those beliefs may require acts of civil disobedience. It certainly makes voting difficult for Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox. If theycould vote “against all,” as is practiced in Ukraine, they might find that to be the best expression of their political position.
Andrew SOROKOWSKI
