Posted by
Anthony on Monday, October 19, 2009 6:35:40 PM
People of faith are trying to have their voices heard in any number of debates which will deeply impact our society, including the debate on how we will provide for healthcare. Yet their voices seem muted and not taken seriously by those legislating. What will the impact be on our culture if these voices are not heard?
The separation of Church and State has caused many to believe that people of faith are not suppose to share their ideas in the public square. The presumption is that it is automatically an imposition of religious belief if a religious person tries to bring faith informed values to the table. There is also the assumption that anyone with religious and moral convictions is somehow less rational than those without such things. But it is normally the irreligious and immoral who destroy cultures and societies. The fact is if moral and religious people remain silent in the public square, other voices impose their irrational values on everyone.
When moral convictions must rely on only limited human experience, they can not rise above the imagination or popular convention. This is why the most important voices against slavery often rooted their convictions, if not in the Lord as revealed in the Christian faith, at least in God as he is manifest in that Divine Providence which most Americans understood guided their national aspirations.
To flourish and advance basic human rights, American culture relies on the moral voice of people of faith. Convictions that grow out of man's encounter with the Living God give life to societies because such convictions are not limited to the merely imaginable. Their force of strength and long term benefits can not be calculated or manipulated. Such convictions are always over and above any limiting status quo.
Our current administration and Congress seem to see religious convictions as either a threat or something to be manipulated. They show a propensity not to respect people of faith. Whether out of a certain hubris or some other form of elitism, some members of the administration and of Congress give the impression of patronizing, even going so far as to seem to be telling people of faith what they ought to believe. At least this is the way I feel about the current healthcare debate - a debate which regardless of outcome, will have great bearing on American society and culture for years to come.
The moral convictions of people of faith (whether these concern the unborn, the gift of sexuality, the dying, the moral freedom of healthcare workers) all seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Such convictions inconvienently prolong the conversation, add distracting twists and turns to the implimentation of some sort of agenda. But how is this agenda serving basic human rights when the most important voice for human rights in our Nation's history has come from men and women of faith?