Unifying Santicity of the Right to life.

Chris Hedges--"Fueling the Fire of Real Change"

After discussing a completely unrelated issue with a certain religious professor of mine, I became aware of a small movement that can be labeled, pending qualification, as "religious liberal progressive" groups. I have become intensely fascinated with this, because such a movement would bridge the lacuna between the 'religilous' (to use Bill Marr's term), and the secular humanists, who can be just as ridiculous at times.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from the seminary at Harvard Divinity School seems to be spearheading this movement in many ways. The link provided leads to his short, cogent, eloquent rendition of one of these groups. I will not provide a rhetorically nuanced summary of his piece here; both, in an attempt to encourage you all to read and evaluate it for yourself, and to give me more space for my own thoughts. (again its short, please read it)

Before going ahead with my point I would like to share my favorite aphorism concerning religion in order to make my agenda more transparent to you: "Religion is a curse on mankind, for it is the best of all devices for leading nations by the nose."

Realizing the existence of the aforementioned groups I may have to adjust this concept a bit. For if the pious can paradoxically hold progressive liberal views than it serves to reason that contemporary contentions in the US over religious freedom is neither between liberals and conservatives, nor secularism and piousness. And neither would the distinctive academic discourses of Constitutional Religious Clause theory--'benevolent neutrality' versus 'strict neutrality'-- explain what divides Americans on the proper role of religion and politics. Because if staunchly religious groups can come to the same conclusions as those on the other end of the spectrum then all these dichotomies begin to collapse into one dominant citizenry view.

I will try to demonstrate this unifying principle through some abstract thought. If, for the sake of constructive argument, we disregard the authority of our Constitution, and put aside the authority ascribed to religious dogma, then I would posit that the contention can be simplified down to two discourses; those who demand substantive active freedom, and those who maintain that formal freedom sufficiently enables liberties to manifest substantively. Both are aimed at the goal of actualizing freedom, these camps simply disagree on how to manifest this freedom into reality.

To those who maintain the latter, I would invite you to address the insurmountable evidence exposing the inadequatecies of formal interpretations of rights. More concretely, there are millions living under the protection of the Bill of Rights that are not enjoying the freedoms awarded to them, as Chris Hedges points out, because while they may formally have rights, in reality they don't have the means to exercise those rights, hence, the popular socio-legal term which describes these unfortunate people as 'have-nots'

Now, deducing this abstraction down to our discussion about religious rights--we must realize and understand the essence of the Religious Clauses. If we stick to just what they prescribe or proscribe textually, then in reality we more often than not create 'have-nots'.

It becomes quite apparent, considering our other rights, that the Religious clauses are meant not only to safeguard religion from government or government from religion, but also to safeguard our nation from division over religion by binding us in a principle of non-religion, and thereby creating a vacuum for debate free from dogma. And it seems that this principle is coming to realization on the religious front with groups such as the Catholic Worker. As Chris points out, many of the Catholic Worker sites are run by protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, secularists..etc.

We can all agree, I hope, that there exists a national sanctity of the right to a life free from oppression of any kind. I would contend that this right cannot be limited by text of any document, dogma or constitution. This means that it is in all of our interests, not just as citizens of the US, but as human beings to separate religion (which is dogmatic and rigid) and politics (which is dialectic and flexible) as much as possible, without unraveling the rule of law which allows for those rights.

A funny video worth your time