George Mitchell once said that “although he’s regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.” The meaning of this proposition is not clear after George Bush’s victory. Bush was propelled to power on the support of evangelical Christians. In America it is almost impossible for an atheist to win a presidential election. It is remarkable that a country that has a rigid and constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state should produce more politicians who wear their religion on the sleeve than any nation. American voters are increasingly beginning to track their religious attendance. Voters who go to church every week overwhelmingly vote Republican, and those who are less regular in their attendance of God overwhelmingly vote Democratic. George Bush is, of course, famous for invoking God at every turn. He told the Southern Baptist convention that “I have heard the call. I believe God wants me to be president.” Before launching the attack on Iraq he prayed that, “I will be as good a messenger of His will as possible.” What is astonishing is that these professions of faith do not appear to be faintly ridiculous. Bush has one trait in common with Bill Clinton. Both have a remarkable ability to appear utterly sincere. Their ability to appear sincere comes from their capacity to talk expansively about their faith. It is important to both men that faith rescued them from squandering their lives on mistakes. Whatever else Clinton may have been accused of, he was never accused of being a hypocrite: His faith and public confessionals allowed him to remain trustworthy despite his occasional meanderings about the truth. Americans will forgive a man who has made a mistake but not a man who appears insincere. In hindsight, Kerry had a sincerity problem. His senate career was a series of flip flops. And the insincerity of his Catholicism was an issue. The suspicion that his words were never his own — a charge never leveled at Clinton or Carter, Reagan or Bush — cast a shadow over him. Tocqueville famously argued that religion would emerge stronger in America because it was not allied with political power. In Europe the connection between the state and religion meant that the corruption of political power redounded on the authority of religion. By dissociating itself from political power, religion retained its authority in American life. In the process, religion also became liberal and non-sectarian. But its continued existence was required by the moral psychology of democracy itself. Tocqueville argued that in America, “it is not important that all citizens profess true religion but that they profess a religion.” For Tocqueville, religion acts as a kind of limit that prevents the democratic experience from shrinking into pure nihilism. A democratic civilisation, having eroded all sources of authority, takes great pride in its own self sufficiency and freedom. But freedom can generate a kind of moral vertigo: What are the limits to this freedom? Is anything possible? Tocqueville wrote that religion “prevents him (the democratic soul) from thinking everything and forbids him to dare anything.” Two characters haunt this election: Prometheous and Proteus. Prometheous asks: Can we dare anything? Proteus asks: Can we change ourselves at will? Both anxieties haunted this election. The world is astonished that issues like stem cell research, gay marriage, cloning, abortion, are such potent electoral issues. These issues invoke the question of limits. Are there limits to which we can remake the world? This issue divides the religious and the liberal. The question of limits does not apply to the application of American power around the world, because that power is justified in the name of democracy itself. It is consistent to exalt democracy and then worry whether freedom requires limits. In a world of open possibilities religion provides a dogmatic anchor, an assurance that a personality has a center. Having a sincere and effectively conveyed belief in God may excuse your untrustworthiness elsewhere. But a lack of this belief will almost certainly not make up for your trustworthiness elsewhere. Liberals construe religious believers as possible fanatics, purveyors of a politics of conviction that will lead to conflict. Religious believers construe liberals as those who exalt freedom over any sense of restraint, and hence are contemptuous of ordinary morality. Bush has given religion an unprecedented expression in political life. He has ridden the wave of what Robert Fogel called the Fourth Great Awakening, when “moral values” become central to American politics. It is something of a fallacy to suppose that people simply vote their crude economic interests. This election was about a civilisation trying to come to terms with its identity. Having, in their own self conceptions at any rate, exalted freedom, Americans are struggling with, how much Prometheus and how much Proteus they will tolerate. And you bet that God takes sides in this struggle. The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research. Views expressed are personal
