A strange argument

Via Isaac Chotiner, Ross Douthat takes predictable, but I think ultimately baseless, issue with Jon Chait's column about faith-based politics:

Chait's chief complaint seems to be that the intrusion of religious language into politics inevitably leaves secular politicians and activists at a disadvantage. And he's absolutely right - by cutting themselves from metaphysical claims, secularists come to debates over justice and fairness, political right and political wrong, with arguments that can seem thin and bloodless compared to their religious counterparts, particularly in a country with a civil religion as potent as our own. But this is their free intellectual choice: Nobody's forcing them to disbelieve in the "endowed by their Creator" part of the Declaration of Independence (which lends that document an awful lot of its oomph). And it seems a little much to argue that in order to avoid handicapping their secularist fellow citizens, religious Americans should unilaterally disarm, divesting themselves of their own deepest convictions the instant they step into the political fray.

But isn't this all-too-convenient coming from a religious polemicist? Of course Ross thinks secular arguments against segregation and poverty and inequality and the death penalty are toothless. They're not his arguments! Over on this side of the faith fence, people like me find the secular arguments about injustice more compelling--and no surprise there.

Then there's this:

It’s so kind of him to grant the civil rights movement permission to talk about Moses and the Promised Land, so gracious of him to let them appeal to their fellow Southerners’ Christian principles in making the case for human equality, so considerate of him to grant a special exception to the rule of secular politics. I wonder – just how many alternative political outlets would have had to be available to the civil rights movement to render MLK’s sermonizing speeches unseemly in Chait’s eyes? (Quite a few did exist, after all, starting with the NAACP – and of course as Christopher Hitchens never tires of pointing out, there were atheists and Communists doing their part for civil rights as well.) More importantly, where does one apply for the special License to Commit Faith-Based Politics that Chait grants to King and Abernathy? Is there an Office of Causes So Desperate That It’s Okay To Invoke the Supreme Being?

I think there is a decent point buried in here somewhere, but neither Jon nor Ross have parsed the issue in quite the right way. Specifically, there's a categorical difference between issues like segregation on the one hand and issues like abortion on the other. The civil rights movement wasn't just one intellectual fight--it involved Constitutional arguments and moral arguments and was in its nature bound to attract religious activists into its ranks. But it was not, in its origins, a religious battle started by religious people for parochial reasons.

By contrast, a large number of religious conservatives in this country have crusaded for a series of causes--a gay marriage ban, an abortion ban, etc.--that were whipped up in seminaries and mega-churches and that at times rely upon arguments that appeal to a small number of secular activists. That's an extremely important, if subtle, inversion. And inasmuch as a religious appeal to religious people in pursuit of secular causes creates the illusion--exploited by religious people--that religious arguments should have traction in the three branches of the American government, then Jon's right to be concerned.

Which brings us back to Ross' question-- "how many alternative political outlets would have had to be available to the civil rights movement to render MLK’s sermonizing speeches unseemly?" I'm not sure he was really looking for an answer, and if he doesn't see or acknowledge the underlying differences between the various moral fights in the world of politics, then there is no good answer. But if he does, then the answer's simple: Just enough that an appeal to faith-based actors would have been unnecessary for the fight to be won.