I just came across an article about newly announced Democratic Presidential contestant Bernie Sanders, the headline of which declared him the ‘Most Irreligious’ Candidate in the 2016 race. If one reads the article, one finds out that Sanders is the child of a Holocaust-devastated family, a self-identified ‘cultural Jew’ who spent time an an Israeli kibbutz, and an admirer of Pope Francis. He’s also been a passionate supporter of liberal causes for, like, ever.
How does this make him not religious?
If ‘religious’ is defined as going to church/temple/mosque/shrine/sacred grove regularly . . . well, maybe. I’d say that’s being a supporter of a particular religious institution. I’d also say that public fervency about one’s religious views does not equal being ‘religious.’
The word ‘religion’ has at its base the latin re-legere: to re-read. In other words, to take seriously an intellectual (which can be theological, but does not need to be) tradition, to ponder and test it, and to come to conclusions that fit the current world, one’s position in that world, and one’s ethical responsibilities to and opportunities for bettering that world.
Bernie Sanders grew up in Brooklyn in the 40s and 50s, where the remnants of Jewish socialist movements — fractured by World War II, the fight for Israel, and the increasing revelations of Stalinist horrors — were trying to find a moral center. By the 60s and 70s, that moral center increasingly coalesced on Civil Rights as well as on trying to bolster the increasingly threatened Labor/Union rights which ‘Socialist Jews’ had supported for decades.
What I’m suggesting is this: that the tradition that helped shape Bernie Sanders is indeed ‘religious’ — devoted to ethical action on behalf of the disadvantaged and oppressed. This is a binding idea (another meaning of ‘religion’ — re-binding, as in the common root with ‘ligature') of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Bible. [I am not enough of a Koranic scholar to comment in regard to Islamic teachings, but I would think that Islam, as another 'Religion of the Book,' also honors 'rebinding' through re-reading, study, and contemplation.]
This short blog is not an endorsement of Bernie Sanders. Since her girlhood, Hillary Clinton has been an active and, from everything one can learn, sincere ‘Methodist Progressive’ — a mainstream Christian Protestant who believes that to be ‘religious’ is to work to make people’s lives better. Her decades-long efforts on behalf of women’s issues, domestically and globally, are a case on point.
In contrast, some Republican Presidential candidates, professed and soon-to-be-professed, appear to believe that being ‘religious’ is to trumpet one’s beliefs and allegiances as if just having them, and having them identified with a particular religious sect, is enough. Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker immediately come to mind. For other Republican candidates, like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, religious teachings may be factors regarding their stances on some issues, like immigration. Perhaps — surprisingly enough, given the history of institutional religions in the United States — being a Roman Catholic today can give one a more solid ‘religious’ justification for some sorts of progressive change than can mainstream Protestant denominations or the often reactionary Evangelical/Fundamentalist movements.
Which may be why the non-observant, socially progressive Jew Bernie Sanders admires Pope Francis.
To conclude on a personal note: religion is important to me. It was a signal part of my childhood (High-Church Episcopalian, wanna-be Jew because it made more sense) and my adulthood (college specialization in Medieval/Renaissance art iconology, minor in theology, continuing research and publications in world religions). I am, nonetheless or perhaps therefore, an agnostic — an agnostic who believes that religions and religiosity have been a huge factor, for good and for ill, in world history and in individual ethical development. I absolutely hate when the term ‘religious’ is slapped upon (or subtracted from) U.S. public figures without re-reading their actual records, and without thinking seriously about what it means to be ‘religious’ in the public sphere.
References:
[Note: I’m only listing a couple here: the blog-instigating article about Bernie Sanders, a background piece about Jewish Socialism, and a reliable enough source about Hillary Clinton’s religious views. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I often include fairly extensive bibliographies. I don’t in this case because I was so upset by the implications of the otherwise good post about Bernie Sanders that I needed to write something, without dithering about in tons of validating research.]
Dias, Elisabeth. “Hillary Clinton: Anchored by Faith.” Time Online 27 June 2014. http://time.com/2927925/hillary-clintons-religion/
Markoe, Lauren. “5 faith facts about Bernie Sanders: Unabashedly irreligious.” Religious News Service 29 April 2015. http://www.religionnews.com/2015/04/29/5-faith-facts-bernie-sanders-unabashedly-irreligious/
Soyer, Daniel. “Jewish Socialism in the United States.” My Jewish Learning n.d. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-socialism-in-the-united-states-1920-1948/5/
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