Transcription
[Applause] Good morning. So I want to, I want to take you on a journey, my journey of the last 15, 20 years from Germany and England to Indonesia, India, to Palestine and Israel, Argentina to South, South Africa. And we'll use the model of the United States, which is where I did most of my research. But I want to take you with me and what I learned about the ways that religion fuels the rise of nationalist, nationalist populism. Right? So that's, that's where I want to take us. And there's a reason for this.
Now, I know that, that you see these scenes of, of tens, hundreds of thousands at rugby games, at the World Cup, at, at the football games. But the reality is, the only place where adults regularly, overwhelmingly will come together and talk about meaningful things are in churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques. Even those, there's a drop, a diminution of, of engagement in particular religious institutions. Still, we're talking about billions of people around the world who pretty regularly go to religious settings, and they hear about meaning, they're thinking about meaning, they're addressing issues. And so I decided I wanted to, to see this nexus of, of religion and politics, religion and the ways that civilizations, that countries imagine themselves moving forward.
And I'm going to start with an area of research, very small research, my classroom at NYU of graduate students. And I want to note two things to kind of riff off of what we heard this morning. The first is that I taught a class called Identity, Policy, and Politics. And in that class, we talked about racism, critical race theory, we talked about queer theory, we talked about feminist theory. But when I mentioned the group in America of poor white men in Appalachia, I was assaulted by my students that that should not be included because that group put a tie, wash their face, and they can go anywhere in America, unlike the other groups. So I want to note that where I found myself going, well, what is the meaning of that?
The second thing I want to say is, I wanted in a course that I taught on activism and advocacy. And I taught this course that, how do, how do you, how do you really engage and change things? And I decided to use what I thought would be a really, really excellent example, Moses confronting Pharaoh, and how step by step Moses moved from "Let us pray" to "We are leaving, let my people go." You know, what my problem was? Almost nobody in the class knew that story.
So it's with that that I would like, kind of as a foundation, to understand when I was in political science, the big move was to, was to rational choice theory. And rational choice theory basically said, people will respond to their economic interests. But what we heard today was something I think far more powerful. Beyond economic interest, people are concerned about what they care about, about their culture, about their values and norms, and they will vote that way, even against their economic interest.
So we began the conversation about democracy. And I want to talk about democracy, at least from the view of the populist, and then religious populist, which is, well, you all knew that when you were little kids. If you went to preschool or kindergarten, the teacher would say, "Who wants to play outside? Who wants to play inside?" You take a vote. And what happens? You take a vote, and the majority rules, right? The majority rules. Now, yes, in America, we know that we have a different view, which is majority rules, minority rights. But there is this fundamental sense that, no, the majority should have a right to determine what happens. And particularly when it's religious-fueled populism, it's saying, "No, we're going to defend our culture. We are going to defend who we are. That's what the majority wants. We can have minorities, you can, you have rights, but you can't determine what is the culture of our country, what are the core values, what's the meaning system of our country?" That's really the first point I want to make. When we say, "Oh, we're, we're for democracy, not like them," we have to recognize democracy is not understood in the same way everywhere. And there is at least some legitimacy to say, if the overwhelming majority of our culture believes this is the way to be, why should that be threatened and undermined by people who don't agree, who are such a small minority?
That leads to a second point, which is elites in America are deeply concerned about very personal, private. Right? Well, in, you know, my school, everybody presents themselves first by their pronoun. And it's very important as a professor to remember everybody's pronoun. What is the concern of the overwhelming majority of the governance of the country about the particular interest of this person or that person or that person? Can't we have a shared consensus? Now, I'm not arguing for this. When I'm telling you this is my experience of what I've learned in the field, right? Why this preoccupation? When we're talking about a fractional minority of the population, whatever happened to Mom and Pop and the kids who live happily ever after? Well, we, we kind of know that's not always quite the case that Mom and Pop and the kids, right? But elites, East Coast, West Coast of the United States, the elites in Europe, as we, as we heard, for example, in, in England or in Germany, where they say, "We have to remember the past." You can't. Well, we'll talk about that because that brings us to pride and shame, right?
I'm an Evangelical Christian in West Virginia, in Kentucky, in, in Vidalia, Georgia. Anybody know what Vidalia, Georgia is known for, right? I actually came home from my work in Vidalia, Georgia. I took my clothes, I stuck it in a plastic bag, and I brought home 25 pounds of Vidalia, Vidalia onions, right? But in those places, they're told to feel shame. Shame for being faithful Evangelical Christians who have these strange beliefs of talking in tongues, these strange beliefs, right? As opposed to the, well, like my students who didn't know the story of Exodus, they didn't know the story of, of Moses. But then they go to a Trump rally or they go to their church, and instead of feeling humiliation, instead of feeling shame, they feel pride. They feel pride about who they are. They feel honored about who they are. And that is there. That is also the case in India for Hindus who, who they've been told of a thousand-year Hindu dynasty will exist, Hindutva, the ideological support. Or in, or in South Africa, where overwhelmingly the Christians are committed, are committed participants in society, but they want to feel honored for who, for who they are.
What I did learn as well, in the process of these interviews and experiences, is this is a, was for me very important. My colleague Jonathan Haidt and I, um, met together, and he has this notion of what fundamentally makes a society work. What do they need? What does successful societies need to succeed? And they noted five different, we need five different categories. But what was very important in this is that authority, loyalty, and particularly purity. And we'll talk more about purity, but that really matters. A successful society needs to have some sense, some sense of authority, sense, sense of the way, the way it works, and who gets to make decisions. It's not that it's anti-democratic. It only recognizes that I, as an individual, have to respect what is the consensus out there, the authority that's established and represented by whatever the governance mechanism is.
Authority and loyalty is kind of a sign. Ask not what my country can do for me, but ask what I can do for my country. Isn't that amazing? How many years ago was that a line that had great meaning, great power? I, I'm a citizen. I'm engaged. I am going to accept my role and obligation as a citizen to behave in a certain way. As opposed to saying, wait, it's all about me and what my particular, my particular interests are.
The issue of purity is one that grabs me. Because if I'm looking at religion, religion deals a lot with purity. Now, I know that for many of us, we're saying, "Well, if purity is so important for the religious nationalist, why would they support a man like Donald Trump?" Purity, right? It's a good question. Well, let me tell you, one, I'm not sure I know. But I will tell you what I heard. What I heard was King David. What do we know about King David? Arrogant. He was arrogant. What else? Poet. A poet. Lovely. What else? Father of Solomon. Father of Solomon. Good. You're all missing some of the core stuff. He was an adulterer. He was a rapist. He was a murderer, because he murdered her husband to justify her pregnancy, right? And his descent, David's descent, he comes from forbidden marriages on every side. And through King David will come the Messiah, right? Through King David will come the Messiah. God works in mysterious ways, right? Even the impure can be the source, the source of Messianic redemption. And it's a little bit of language we've heard, haven't we? About Messianic redemption, God's intervention to save his life. Well, that's not just here. That is all around it. It is in Israel. It is in India. It is in Indonesia, right? So purity becomes very important.
Fairness is viewed in different ways. Fairness can be leveling the playing field. But fairness can also be, you get what you deserve. And the issue of compassion is much more on the liberal side. They're the ones who are concerned about compassion, much more than authority, loyalty, and purity. But you see in the Catholic Church today, the United States Conference of Bishops is very adamant about the issues of loyalty, purity, authority, abortion, homosexuality. Those are areas they must be, we must stand against them. The Pope overwhelmingly has said, "No, it's about compassion. It's about compassion, not about power, not even about purity." So we see divisions even within religious, religious settings and religious institutions.
But I want to focus on this issue of purity, because this becomes very important. This is actually my father-in-law. I'm very, was a great Bible scholar. And he posed the question in the Bible, if you get rid of demons, if you get rid of other gods, then where does, where does evil reside? Evil can only reside in human beings. And that becomes very important for the American story, very, very important for the American story. The founding of this country, of the United States, is founded on a covenant. Well, that's, you heard that from the Pilgrims. You heard that actually on the ship coming over with the first Pilgrims that are going to settle in Massachusetts. We are in a covenant with God. That's why when you travel through the Northeast, there's one biblical city after another. It's the story of a renewed Israel. The United States forms, or the colonies then formed, as a renewed Israel. And a renewed Israel that's in covenant with God. But if you're in covenant with God, God will defend you. God will protect you. You'll even have a Jewish guy, right? "God Bless America" in a song that all of us learned, learned to sing. But there's also human obligation as well. There's the obligation of citizens. And if we sin, if we allow for sin, if we sin, God can evaporate. God can abandon God's holy land. So that this is not simply about my view and your view, and we can have a conversation. Because to fail to be covenantal, to fail to hold on to God's promise, to defend an America that is blessed by God because of its holiness, if you do that, then God will leave. And if I'm a citizen of this country, if I'm a citizen of America, and I participate in a society that sanctions, not only sanctions but sanctifies marriage between a man and another man, or between a woman and another woman, that the government allows for the murder of a, well, a child who's in the womb, but taking a life. If it allows for the corruption of the core moral values that we believe as faithful religious members, then I am also liable. It's my liability because I'm a citizen and I have allowed this to happen. And if that is the case, that I allowed this to happen, and this is now everywhere. It is in India, where the primacy of Hinduism must be maintained for the sake not only of the people, but but of what India is meant to be. And if the, if the mayor of, of Jakarta, who's a Christian, says the wrong thing about Islam, he is going to go to jail for blasphemy. Or in, where in Uganda, where Shir and I were in Uganda, which at the time was dealing more openly with, with, um, with homosexuality. And actually, we met with, with, uh, sex workers who were being protected by the lepers there. And then the president of Uganda becomes a born-again Christian, and the next thing you know, the legislature is passing the death, passing the death sentence for homosexuals. All of this, and all of this is about protecting the sacredness of our nation. And if you don't do that, then you, as a sinner, will bring on its destruction.
In the research that, um, we did, that I did across the United States, we had a good research. You have a series of questions. I was interested in the connection between people's political views and their religious views. What influences what? Turned out the core question was this: You were asked, "Do you value, do you see the world is filled with with evil and sinful forces, or is it a place of goodness and care?" Those who valued purity and said the world is filled with sin and evil, we're almost entirely going to view on the social and political issues the most conservative possible populist decisions. Those who believed that the world is goodness and that, and that compassion is their value, overwhelmingly supported what we would say as the liberal, the liberal views. Right? So there I had what couldn't be, you know, better evidence of a fundamental, a fundamental battle line, a true battle line of separation, which I think poses the problem of what does it mean to come together to talk?
The last thing I want to, I want to give us is this wonderful James K's game theory model. Liberal democracy loves the game. You're playing, you're playing chess. You finish the game, and somebody wins. What's the next thing you want to do? Play another game. And it's all right, I lost this one, but I'll win the next one. Because what is so important is the infinite game that we can play. That's, that's democracy. That's liberal democracy. Religious-fueled democracy, populist democracy is something else. If the covenantal commitment is so crucial, if sin is so pervasive, and I need to stand against it, if I need to protect the core values that that ensure God's promise to us, then I don't want an infinite game that plays again and again. I need a finite game. I need a game in which, "Oh, my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. His truth goes marching on." That was a great religious voice for the Civil War.
So I want to just pose, given this, I want to pose the end. In the 30 seconds I'll take over my 20 minutes, I want to pose the following: For me to believe that I own God's truth, that I know absolutely what God wants, is a form of heresy. That is a form of idolatry. What I believe religions can do is to recognize there's like this puzzle of God, and all these different religions have different pieces of the puzzle. And therefore, we need each other to find the greater truths. And if we rip out and don't allow these to participate, these, and these, and these to participate, we will never, in fact, find the greater truth, whether you call it God or whether you call it anything else. And that, that type of diversity, that type of infinite democracy is absolutely crucial. Until the Messiah comes, however you believe Messiah comes, then we don't have to worry about it. But until then, we need to work hard to recognize that that diversity is, in fact, the divine plan, and it was all along. And that's what we need to be fighting for. Thanks.