I was reading Slacktivist this evening and came across a piece that contained a simple idea that I had never thought about. (It seems so obvious now that I wonder if I’m the only one who hasn’t got it.) Put simply: religious conservatives and political conservatives are both obsessed with the primacy of authority over reason. Their sacred texts must never be subjected to reasoned interpretation, because then they cease to be magical tokens of authority.
Let me quote the author, Fred Clark:
At the FRC’s “Justice Sunday”… clergy and religious leaders… railed against any judge who dared speak of a “living Constitution”…
[they cited] a Supreme Court ruling barring the execution of the developmentally disabled. That decision was based, in part, on evolving community standards, and that idea — the evolution, or progress, or development of moral understanding — is what these religious leaders find dangerous and terrifying. From their perspective, community standards have been devolving ever since Mt. Sinai. The idea that the Constitution, or any revered text, might be read differently over time due to evolving community standards is the very idea these folks have been fighting against for the past century.
This is simply a continuation in a new arena of the fundamentalist/modernist controversy of the early 20th century. The fundamentalist “battle for the Bible” has escalated to include the battle over another sacred text: the U.S. Constitution. The terms of this battle are exactly the same. So too is the underlying motivation. It’s all about control. A “living Constitution” threatens that control as surely as the living word of the Bible.
A superficial reaction would be to assume that the fundamentalists of both types adopt this stance – authority instead of reason – because they are incapable of defending their positions rationally and reasonably.* A more nuanced view is that capability has nothing to do with it: conservatives are temperamentally drawn to arguments from authority. (This is perhaps the fundamental distinction between the conservative and liberal worldview, although many conservative intellectuals might disagree.) And finally a cynical view is that conservative leaders – intellectual, organizational – adopt this stance simply because it is a path to power, to command and control the mass of people. Demagogues have always known the power that comes from unshakable conviction coupled with unquestionable authority.
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* The last thing a Biblical fundamentalist wants is to be dragged into a debate about why Leviticus is authoritative about homosexuality but not shellfish, let alone slavery and mixed fibres.