Religion and Politics – (Just Be Nice) July 6, 2025 Dr. Roger Ray
Back in the good ol days when even state universities had a budget for inviting famous speakers to campus to expose their young audience to influential thinkers, Western Kentucky University hosted William Buckley, the famous conservative host of Firing Line, and the originator of the National Review, to speak to a packed house of teenagers from rural Kentucky.
I was an 18 year old freshman in 1974 and though I had never watched Firing Line nor picked up a copy of the National Review, I was in the audience. He didn’t talk about his recent trip to China with President Nixon when these two global super powers were just starting to talk to one another. He didn’t rail against liberals, gay people, or hippies so much as he just compassionately gave a lot of young people some advice about how to live a meaningful life.
I remember two things he said that evening. One was that he had no respect for anyone who slept more than five hours a night but the other thing I remember was more useful. He said, “You have been warned not to talk about either politics or religion in a polite society. The problem with following that advice is that you will never learn how to have a civil conversation about things that are as important as religion and politics.”
Those were the days when Republican and Democratic members of the congress could publicly debate about the civil rights movement, voters rights, desegregation, the Equal Rights Amendment, and abortion, and at the end of the day they would collect their spouses and children, and everyone would get together for an ice cream social.
In the 80’s, Democratic House Speaker, Tip O’Neil, and conservative icon, President Ronald Regan, had a pact that they were “friends after 6 p.m.”
A correspondent once brought this up to President Obama a decade ago, suggesting that maybe he should get a drink with Mitch McConnel, to which, Obama replied, “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnel?”
I get it. I wouldn’t want to spend Happy Hour with Mitch McConnel, or Donald Trump, or, if it were even possible, Ronald Regan, but I know that somehow we have to get back to a place where we can sit down at a Thanksgiving dinner and have a polite and meaningful conversation about politics and religion, at a table where people don’t agree but where they can come to understand one another better.
This week, if you pay much attention to the news, we have heard our president say boldly to loud applause that he hates Democrats. “Hates” them! For many years Americans have elected their presidents with just a 51% majority but previously, presidents would assure the public that they would be the president of those who voted for them and those who voted against him. But we have reached a new extreme of partisan division . . . and extreme in which a president can not only say that he hates the majority of Americans but in saying that, receive thunderous applause from his base. This is sad, obviously, but it may also be unsurvivable.
Once public discourse becomes laden with angry accusations, hyperbole, name calling, and dismissive characterizations, people tend to become more devoted to their prejudices and rather than being shamed or bullied into changing, they tend to deepen their devotion to increasingly radical viewpoints.
We Unitarians are fond of declaring that “love is my religion,” which would be wonderful if it were true, but I am afraid that all too often the larger truth is that “acquiescence is our religion.”
We don’t talk about religion and politics with people who disagree with us, we just avoid potentially controversial conversations to avoid conflict. And I get that. There are times to just walk away to avoid starting an argument for which there is no meaningful end but, seriously, peace without some mutual understanding isn’t really peace, is it? It is more like surrender, or maybe indifference. Let me suggest a thought exercise.
It is a broadly known fact that 32 of the 33 western style democracies in the world have universal healthcare. The United States is the only country in that club that does not and yet, we spend more per capita on healthcare than any other nation of the world and our outcomes do not match the financial commitment we make to it. In fact, by most measurements, we come out near the bottom.
So, let’s imagine ourselves at a big family Thanksgiving dinner and the subject of universal healthcare comes up. I am going to insist that sick people need access to healthcare, whether it is free, or affordable, the point is, that everyone needs access to healthcare but how do we achieve that goal that has eluded us for a hundred years while most of the rest of the world has wrestled that pig to the ground?
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, have staked out the position that we should remove the age restrictions and offer Medicare to everyone. Predictably, someone at the Thanksgiving table would quickly say that both Bernie and AOC are crazy, or communists, or radicals. Can you imagine yourself saying, “Ok, let’s assume that you are right about them. How would you suggest that we get to universal or almost universal healthcare?”
And then just stop talking. Now, some people are ok with our current situation in which one in ten Americans have no health insurance…. More than 30 million people, and that’s without the “Billionaire Bailout” bill recently passed by Congress. I’m not sure we have anything to talk about with someone who is willing to throw 30 million people under the bus just because they like the healthcare insurance they have for themselves . . . but let’s give conservatives a chance . . . what is their plan to improve access and outcomes while keeping costs down to something like what other western democracies spend? If Bernie and AOC are crazy, what is a sane plan to accomplish this obvious civilized goal?
Now, here is the problem, most conservatives won’t have an answer ready because they are not used to us listening to them. We are used to condescending, name calling, and walking away in a huff, but given the opportunity to show us that they understand the problem, that they agree with the goal, let’s talk about how to get there.
But let me show you an issue about communication. Just as an exercise, I’m going to say a sentence and ask you, in unison, to repeat the sentence back to me, ok:
Du bist mein Engel, ich bin Wachs in deinen Händen
It is a simple sentence but because I said it in German, unless you speak German, the words did not leave any muddy footprints on the clean waxed floor of your brain. But let’s try it again, in English, just repeat in unison after me:
You are my angel. I am wax in your hands.
See, even though you didn’t’ know the sentence beforehand, you know the words. It isn’t hard to do in a familiar language. Now, I don’t speak German, I just had reason to memorize that sentence. You may want to know more about that but that is not germane to the subject at hand.
If your mind is fed for hours a day on either Fox News or MSNBC, you may not have the ability to understand the language of the person on the other side of the fence.
I’m suggesting that at least a part of the solution to the partisan divide that is tearing our country apart, is polite conversation about important topics. But we have to try to find some common language, some common ground, where we can discuss these things, especially to discuss important issues with someone with whom we dramatically disagree.
I think that a huge problem about discussing religion and politics in polite society is that we are not very clear about what we mean by either of those words. I have been accused many times over the past 40 years, of preaching too much about politics but I have never been accused of bringing politics into the pulpit by a person who agreed with what I was saying.
If I say, as a person of faith, that empathy, compassion, are core aspects of religion and therefore, I believe in universal healthcare . . . then the only people who would say that I am talking about politics would be the people who don’t want universal healthcare. So, the word, “politics,” when it is used pejoratively, really just means, “I disagree with what you said so I don’t want you to be allowed to say it.” I want to learn how to say it in a way that invites dialogue, not in a way that just draws a line in the sand.
Maybe we get to universal access of healthcare through insurance companies, maybe there could be a public option, maybe we have some blending of the two, but if you just want 30 million people to be without healthcare . . . well, no one really wants to be a sociopath, right?
I get so angry when those fund-raising ads come on TV from Shriners Hospitals and St Jude’s . . . both institutions do praiseworthy work, but we have to trot out little kids with cancer or grievous birth defects to beg for the money for them to get healthcare? You don’t see this kind of ad in Japan, or France, or Germany, not even in Russia, or poor countries like Thailand, Nicaragua, or Mexico because in those countries they know that a kid who can’t walk or a kid who has cancer needs to be given proper healthcare and not be used like a circus pony on TV to get donations. I believe that Americans are better than this, I just want to know what stands in the way of our humanity?
Not all conversations are worth having. I’m not going to give much time to anyone who is convinced that the Democrats are running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor. And, just because you have a civil relationship to offer to someone doesn’t mean that they have one to offer to you, but one thing is certain, if we avoid talking about the hard stuff, no one ever learns, no one ever changes, and we all fail.
Let me try a completely different illustration on you: In a plea deal, Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange has been released from a British prison where he had served nearly 6 years after having spent a decade avoiding arrest by living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. There are those who believe that Assange was a hero of journalism and free speech and others who believe that he was guilty of some of the worst espionage crimes of this century.
I have been conversations where the mere mention of his name divided the room into adamant factions. The relevant question in his case is not whether he is a really great guy or not. I don’t know anyone who wants to carry his banner in a debate about character but, was his release of stolen documents a journalistic coups, exposing war crimes and holding the American government accountable for having hidden and lied about these crimes, or is his dump of thousands of pages of classified documents a crime that placed many secret undercover agents in grave danger?
Well, he did both, didn’t he? Which is more important, exposing the Obama administration’s refusal to prosecute soldiers who murdered journalists and first responders on the battlefield in Afghanistan, or leaking information that could expose undercover sources? Chelsea Manning, who provided the information to Wikileaks, and Assange have both served years in prison for this leak but the soldiers who murdered journalists and medics were not punished, and, for that matter, the New York Times and several British and European news sources that published the leaked material were not charged with any crime. How can Manning and Assange be guilty, and the media just gets a pass?
I could argue either side of this issue though, as you might imagine, I lean towards supporting leaking information about war crimes in order to keep our government or any other government honest. To that point, bronze statues of Assange, Manning, along with Edward Snowden have been erected in Berlin in praise of their courage . . . Germans know about the danger of allowing a government to operate in secrecy under the cover of propaganda.
I have heard a number of people I really like get very mad about this issue but what I have never heard is a civil conversation among people who have honest disagreements about it.
That is a conversation I would love to be a part of but to date, any attempt at discussing the facts becomes a partisan condemnation of either the leakers or the government.
There is an anonymous modern proverb that I really love that says: We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light. The internet will repeatedly tell you that this is a quote from either Socrates or Plato but, because it is a priority in my life to defend the corpus of Greek philosophy, I can assure you that this didn’t come from Socrates or Plato or any other ancient source but whoever said it doesn’t need a false attribution to support it because it is painfully and obviously true. The reason we can’t get some cases to trial is the same as the reason we can’t have a civil conversation about some controversial topics . . . it is because someone is afraid of the light. That, I contend, is shameful.
I cannot claim that I am always right, in fact, I would disagree with a number of things I have said in the past; but I can claim that I have always been honest and if a church is not willing to be exposed to an honest exploration of matters of ethics, well, who would want to attend a church that is afraid of the light?
When I moved here a year and a half ago, I knew I was moving to a very red state, just like the state I was leaving. So, I came here the first week I came to town because I want to sit in a room for an hour in this deeply red state, surrounded by people who largely see the world the way that I do. I also need to feel that I am not all alone in the world. Still, it just might be that the most important messages you hear are the ones in which you had to endure a difference of opinion. Don’t only seek confirmation of your own bias.
Remain willing to step into the light and heat of honest disagreement on important topics. The only way out of our current dangerous political and ideological quagmire is to engage one another in the light of honest dialogue.
My favorite British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, left us with this hope, he said:
I allow myself to hope that the world will emerge from its present troubles, that it will one day learn to give the direction of its affairs, not to cruel swindlers and scoundrels, but to people possessed of wisdom and courage.
I suggest that we give ourselves to that hope. America’s democracy is seriously in danger of giving way to oligarchy and fascism because of our deep partisan divide. If we hope to remove cruel swindlers and scoundrels from power, we have to value wisdom and courage. Here is a challenge for you, celebrate this Independence Day by having a civil conversation with a MAGA supporter.
