Moving Beyond the Binary
Since my role at the council is technically part time, the other part of my life involves leading (torturing?) undergraduate students in the ways of logic and critical thinking. As we work through different logical fallacies, I typically include examples from the world of religion and politics to illustrate the potential critical thinking pitfalls involved. When I ask them if they were raised in environments where they were discouraged from talking about religion and politics they almost always answer in the affirmative. The reality of that fact points to not only how important it is to talk about religion and politics, but how woefully unprepared we are to do it.
Our contemporary world seems fixated on binaries – reason vs. prayer, secular vs. religious, Democrat vs. Republican, Protestant vs. Roman Catholic. To some degree, at least on most spectrums of belief, one can easily find folks tucked away in each corner, and perhaps this explains our habit of categorizing people into their tribes. From that vantage point, we can justify whatever prior beliefs we already had about them, without ever having to do the difficult work of engaging and remaining in community together.
There is also, broadly speaking, the post-Enlightenment notion that what makes a person or practice religious can be cordoned off from the various other ways that we express who we are in the world – that we can, as it were, detach ourselves from our private religious concerns to engage the concerns of that which belongs to secularity (i.e., economics or politics).
The academic world of religion is not immune to this either. In “History and Presence,” Robert Orsi describes the distinction between the Protestant and Roman Catholic views on Eucharist as a difference between symbol (emptiness) and real presence. But a close reading of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli reveals a complex set of theological deliberations that not only dispute that clean binary but show us that folks like Luther and Calvin had a deep understanding of the question at the heart of the Eucharist, and a sincere commitment to working through the theological knot in light of their own intellectual commitments.
So too, the project to partition religious forms of life from that which is not religious seems compromised from the start. It has been my experience that people vote their religious concerns, and that private religious commitments are regularly informed by our political, economic, and scientific views. Our sense of self is whole, integrated, messy, and occasionally transformed.
My natural inclination, when reflecting on these notions, is to retreat into the safety of the binary – it is much easier, for example, to blame secularity for the decline of religious practice than to ponder the question of how other realms of knowledge inform (and become integrated into) my sense of self. The contemporary religious habitus is no longer exclusively religious.
All of this is to say that in a few days the Rhode Island legislative session begins, and we will once again be putting our faith into action by living into our values of love, justice, and peace. On January 1st, Hearts for Social Justice will be hosting a noon-time gathering to pray for the upcoming legislative session, our senators, representatives, and Governor.
Then, on January 4th, we’ll be taking part in the 16th Annual Interfaith Poverty Vigil, a prayer action highlighting our 2024 legislative priorities designed to reduce poverty in Rhode Island. The Interfaith Vigil begins at 1 pm with a procession from Gloria Dei Church – the program begins at 2 pm at the State House Rotunda.
There is much work to do – but this has always been the case. As we prepare ourselves to do the work, I pray that we lean into our mutual concern for one another, and away from the false comfort of our binaries; that when we are challenged by the work and one another, that we recommit ourselves to the values that unite our common humanity.
In the meantime, I pray that each of you has a blessed holiday season. For those who celebrate, Merry Christmas – and to all, I pray for a joyful and Happy New Year.
See you soon.
