Perspective: Most Americans are driven to good by peace and reason, not God

Cornell University professor R. Laurence Moore writes that "American religion, as a category of thought, is protean. Statistics suggest its complexity. Compared to organized religion in Western European societies, the disestablished churches of the United States enjoy enviable institutional health."

He says that to appreciate the full texture of religious thought in the United States, we must discuss it from many sides. Vice President Al Gore's selection of Joseph Lieberman, a devout Jew, as his running mate and Lieberman's insistence on making religion part of the national debate, obligate thoughtful voters to consider the role of religion in public life and its impact on developing the average person's sense of right and wrong.

Declaring his stance on religion in public life and its place in the nation's history during a recent speech at a large black church in Detroit, Lieberman said: "John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. George Washington warned us never to indulge the supposition "that morality can be maintained without religion.' "

Lieberman's unequivocal declaration makes religion itself a campaign issue. Every facet of it has become fair game. Moore writes that the most basic approach to religious thought is to treat it as a formal collection of do's and don'ts written by church councils.

But seeing religious thought simply as a composite of official codes "omits the way that ordinary people use religious ideas to shape their lives, and it overlooks how religious experience itself organizes thought in nondiscursive ways," Moore contends.

I do not know if Lieberman would agree with me when I say that his approach to religion -- if I am to trust his motives -- resembles that of Talcott Parsons, the Harvard sociologist who attempted to construct a theoretical framework for classifying societies and their parts. Parsons emphasized religious commitment as essential to maintaining norms and binding people to society. He believed that religion stabilized rather than transformed American life. For that reason, Parsons and his followers, and the likes of Lieberman, are usually viewed as political conservatives.

I do not believe that most Americans give much thought to religion when they are behind closed doors, where real life is lived. Most us live ethically because instinct dictates that to do otherwise is to vanish or live in perpetual hell.

Despite Lieberman's bloated spiel, Bush's claim that Jesus is his favorite philosopher, thinker and historical figure and Gore's silliness that he wants to know what Jesus thinks before acting on policy, the vast majority of Americans draw upon mother wit and common sense to make their way in society.

At the core of daily life in the United States is the desire to live at peace with our neighbors. Therefore, the essential amicability of daily life is the result of, among other things, rationalism, self-interest, habit and tolerance of diversity.

Indeed, religion plays a role in our public and private conduct but not to the degree that politicians running for office would have us believe. Most Americans plod along by using an ethical compass derived from the realities of living in a democracy that is home to more than 200 different religions and a vast number of competing immigrant groups.

In no way do I believe that thoughts of God guide our basic decisions. The nation's founding fathers referred to God, but they kept religion in its place -- out of the codes that frame daily life. Our civil laws, without mention of religious faith, require that we respect the rights of our neighbors.

Again, our instinct is to live at peace. To do so means that we must make decisions based on reason. Wanting to minimize conflict and anxiety, we instinctively promote public tranquility.

Moreover, just as Lieberman, Bush and Gore claim that religious faith keeps the nation moral, I argue that the same faith guided the actions of white racists in the God-fearing South. In a recent letter to the New York Times, Ira Glasser, national executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, summarizes my view:

"For generations in this country, some Southerners who believed in God and devoutly attended church went out during the week and lynched African-Americans. Many who didn't participate directly in lynching nonetheless helped maintain Jim Crow laws that subjugated and brutalized black citizens for more than a century after slavery was abolished.

"Many who worked tirelessly to end racial segregation did not believe in God or kept their religious beliefs to themselves. There is no easy correlation between public piety and civic morality, and Mr. Lieberman does us all a disservice when he suggests otherwise."

Lieberman and the other two candidates for president claim that "character" is missing in Washington, along with the rest of the nation, and that the absence of God is the cause. God was on the missing person's list in Washington and elsewhere long before Monica Lewinsky was born and unzipped President Clinton's fly.

Remember Watergate and Iran-Contra? How about the unbridled personal greed of the Reagan years? The Gipper was a God-fearing man. During those years, were Americans driven by religious belief when they turned against the poor? How about when we refused health insurance to innocent children? What about today when we neglect migrant farm workers for the sake of cheap produce? When we turn our backs on the indigent who cannot afford lawyers, are we guided by faith?

Are we to believe that the God-fearing whites who fashioned our separate-but-equal school system were morally superior to the bleeding-heart liberals who risked their lives in attempting to eradicate segregation?

Are we to believe that the thousands of secular humanists who donate time to the cause of peace and the welfare of the less fortunate are morally deficient? I do not think so. Like most other Americans, humanists' sense of justice and decency comes directly from their desire to live at peace.

They, as with most other Americans, are driven by instinct and reason.

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