Religions seem particularly unable to consider more than one thing at a time. And the more fundamentalist/conservative/retrograde - and often concurrently more passionate - the religion, the even harder the time it has doing that. Consider the very public religious affiliations of presidential contenders.
Until recently the only reasonably likely choice the Republicans seemed to have had was between a Roman Catholic and a Mormon. Rick Santorum, a very conservative Roman Catholic, has now dropped out of the race, so talk is that he might be Mormon Mitt Romey’s VP choice. It’s hard to imagine the two of them sharing lunch in the Oval Office when they come from religious traditions that call upon the name of Jesus but practically deny the historical existence of one another. Which of them would say grace?
Mormons believe there was no valid church on earth between the death of Jesus’ original disciples and the coming of Joseph Smith, and Roman Catholics build huge chunks of their theology on tradition developed through those very centuries. They both believe those outside their own faith tradition cannot possibly be saved. (I don’t think all Roman Catholics believe that, but I’d be surprised if Santorum does not, given his own faith’s conservatism.) To work together they’d each have to be able to consider and even respect more than one idea at a time, which Santorum surely cannot do and retain the purity he likes to claim. Romney seems very able to consider many ideas serially, but that’s a different matter.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s most recent religious affiliation was with the United Church of Christ, which he (unfortunately) hastily abandoned before the last election. Some charged he’d been listening to a preacher who did not buy the historical blindness of the heresy called “American exceptionalism”. So far as I know, he and his family are not presently affiliated with any church, so maybe he’s still UCC at heart. That’s a faith tradition with room for lots of ideas at the same time, which is a sign of the President’s intellectual prowess and also, in this political atmosphere, of his vulnerability.
Maybe, should a Romney/Santorum ticket win (which I am not advocating, but I can consider things I like and things I don’t like at the same time), they’d invite Barack Obama to offer grace when they eat together...after which they would, self-righteously, try to eat him alive.
Politics is said to be an art of the possible. Even ideologically opposed groups, if they want civil coexistence, should come to compromise. Those who on a matter of principle refuse to compromise do not belong to civil society and do not deserve any benefits from it. Religion tends to promote dogmatism, self-righteousness, intolerance, and even violence toward the outsider. The peace of society and the world will be served by religious consciousness being transformed to be accepting of diversity or the emergence of a synthesis of the core beliefs and values of world religions as Toynbee hoped. We are in an historical age in which differentiating identities are exhibited and differences, simultaneously, are condemned, even with a shame of advocating unity or harmony. "Crisis" is an apt word to describe the present world.
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