Image created by Flickr user exper (CC-usage).

So, in my last post I explored why Marxism was actually religious and mystical.  I think on that basis alone there’s a pretty good case to make for breaking down the faulty distinction between religion and ideology on the one hand, and whether countries like Turkmenistan and the United States are so diametrically opposed on the other.  But, come on, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t give the West a good thrashing.

The Europeans aren’t so godless after all

The second argument is my own, but it builds on Schwartz’s from the last post.  The key issue is arbitration: he who is empowered to decide what is and isn’t legitimate belief becomes the vicar of the divine.  Keep in mind that I’m talking entirely in terms of this side of the material-spiritual divide; I’m sure the spiritual world all too often laughs at the many pretenders to the prophetic throne in human history.

Which leads me to the subject of Europe.  I find it remarkable that the governments there wag their fingers at Turkmenistan and others when they themselves have official religions.  Look no further than the Anglican Church in England, the head of which is the monarch herself, who also just so happens to be the head of state.  But this is just an obvious case.  It gets more interesting when you go across the Channel.

A particularly interesting case is Belgium, the constitution of which generally provides for freedom of religion in terms of practice, but the government officials of which continue to have the authority to research and monitor religious groups that are not officially recognized.  The fact that a religious community has to be “recognized” and hence authorized is weird enough; that the government also directly subsidizes the clergy of “recognized” religions, replete with representative bodies and salaries, rings a lot like certain Soviet and Turkmen arrangements.

But it gets better!  The Belgian government also actively supports the freedom to participate in secular organizations.  Yes, you read it: “humanism” is essentially treated as a religion.  Like the Catholics and Muslims, the humanists even have their own representative body, the Central Council of Non-Religious Philosophical Communities of Belgium, which receives funds and benefits similar to those of the other recognized religious groups.  I ask: is this really secularism?

The Gospel according to pragmatism

Jumping across the Atlantic pond, we come to the opposite problem: the attempt to remove arbitration entirely.  Yes, I’m talking about the home of “separation of church and state” itself, the United States.  To begin with, there actually is no separation per se, not in any legal sense: the American Constitution’s freedom of religion clause actually stipulates that there would be no official religion.  But wait a minute, what would that actually look like?

The undeniable historical fact is that the Founding Fathers were practicing Protestants and Masons, which meant that they subscribed to theistic belief systems, albeit rationalistic ones: an America without God, or any kind of religious belief, would have been a contradiction in terms for them.

Of course, the clause served a political purpose in giving them conceptual leverage vis-a-vis the British.  However. it also spoke to a broad, if embryonic, pluralistic vision of a religious America — not a religiously neutral one, which so many libertarians and liberals today mistakenly believe were the Founding Fathers’ intention.

Today in the United States we hear a lot about the need to “remove” all values or ideology from decisions and leave behind only pragmatism.  Yet, pragmatism can only deal with existing realities, namely, political circumstances that are themselves produced by ideology or value systems.  For example, it’s not as though the pressing need for healthcare reform appeared from a void — ideology led Americans to this desperate point and only ideology can lead them out from it.

So, drum roll please: pragmatism is ex post facto to ideology.  That means you cannot have pragmatism as your ideology.  Indeed, you can’t even be pragmatic without a pre-pragmatic ideology.  At most, pragmatism is a virtue, not a value.

The real question is whether it is ever actually possible to create the kind of neutral space libertarian and liberal Americans so long for.  Indeed, this utopian vision of a valueless, religiously empty civic landscape is itself becoming a kind of ideology or — dare I say it? — a religious creed!

So, I think I’ve proved my point.  Anyone who would like to challenge me is welcome to it.  }:-)