“It’s true for me” This was said during a famous debate between conservative political commentator and Christianity-enthusiast Bill O’Reilly and atheist scientist Richard Dawkins. In my fundamentalist upbringing, I had been conditioned to eschew this wishy-washy postmodernist thought. “True for me but not for you” was liberal, “worldly” thinking that Christians were supposed to know how to combat, not use themselves. Yet here it was the conservative Christian saying it and not the godless liberal. Apparently just as shocked by this role-reversal, Dawkins responded with the absolutist logic which I had previously only associated with Christianity: “You mean true for you is different from true for anybody else? Something’s either got to be true or not.”
Christianity and relativism have been at odds since the dawn of postmodernism. Christianity is a religion which makes absolute claims of truth, and relativism is an ideology which rejects the very concept of absolute truth. Yet strangely, it is increasingly Christians who have unwittingly been the proponents of relativism in recent times. I’ve previously written about how sectarianism tends to prioritize subjective and relative morality over objective morality. Most Christians today haven’t transcended the culture of postmodernism even if they claim to be against it; they are still very much products, if not prisoners, of that mindset.
Even Christians who believe relativism is a problem may not be able to correctly identity what relativism actually is. For instance, some Christians erroneously oppose any religious pluralism because they have mistaken it for cultural relativism. But while relativism is a form of pluralism, not all pluralism is relativistic. Pluralism, in the narrow distinction between the two, is simply the tolerance of opposing beliefs; it is the pragmatic acceptance that those who hold beliefs which are untrue still have the right to equally coexist in the same society. Relativism, on the other hand, is a doctrinaire opinion that there is no objective truth. Relativism leads to the same tolerance as pluralism, not for the admirable reason that people who are wrong should still be treated fairly, but rather because it cannot make an evaluation of right or wrong in the first place. Pluralists, however, can still tolerate relativists without losing objective truth.
Unfortunately, Christians have not only attacked the wrong problems but also promoted the wrong solutions. For years Christians have been incorrectly told that absolutism is the counter to relativism. They’ve been led to believe that as long as they refuse to compromise on their beliefs then they are immune to relativistic influences. Doubling down on the Bible or church authority as their sole argument for everything, they’ve ignored that this sort of weak reasoning can and is exercised by people of all faiths. Christians are usually at a loss to explain why Islamic or Mormon claims to absolute truth on the basis of their sacred texts differ in any way to Christian claims to absolute truth based only on the Bible. Obviously, anyone can be an absolutist on any position, that in itself is not a remedy for relativism. The missing component is objective truth, truths which can be communicated and accepted without first having to believe in a religion. Religious identity is the last resort of people who have failed to present an objective truth. Saying “I can’t have an abortion because it’s taking an innocent life” is a more compelling argument than saying “I can’t have an abortion because I’m Catholic.” If the only justification you have for why you do something a certain way is your religion, then you probably don’t have a sufficient reason; otherwise, you would have given that as your reason in the first place.
The same-sex marriage battle is a fascinating study of how conservatives in general have lost all sense of objectivity. At seemingly every turn, they have contradicted their own arguments if it suited their cause. When the Defense of Marriage Act was on the books, they argued that federal law trumped state law, but after DOMA was ruled unconstitutional (and even before) they’ve been champions of so-called “states’ rights” ever since. Conservatives heavily criticized the Obama administration for not defending DOMA before the Supreme Court, but then remained quiet when governor Scott Walker similarly refused to defend Wisconsin’s domestic partnership registry in court. Contrary to purported claims about executive duty and the rule of law, the rightwing will seemingly take up whichever argument they feel will support their predetermined crusade. While there’s no denying these conservatives are absolutely against gay marriage, their duplicitous attempts to try to achieve their ends at any cost betray any claim to objective reasoning.
There are numerous things that churches have absolutely opposed in no uncertain terms, only to completely reverse their positions later: abolition, women’s suffrage, integration, interracial marriage. The Republicans’ latest retreat into “religious freedom” measures–allowing business owners, workers, or officials to refuse business or involvement in same-sex wedding ceremonies out of personal religious beliefs–underscores the consummation of modern Christianity’s journey into fully realized postmodernism (it should be pointed out that there was never any regard for religious freedom of churches who performed same-sex marriages before it was legal). As has already been demonstrated in case after case, conservative Christians are completely at a loss to present any objective reasoning why consenting adult same-sex couples should not be afforded the same legal protections as opposite-sex couples. Now that this loss seems inevitable at the Supreme Court level, conservatives seem to be preparing to cease universal bans and instead allow individuals to opt out. It’s noteworthy that conservatives didn’t really entertain this solution in their past failed culture wars. While some Christians still tried to maintain segregation in their private schools, they don’t try to allow volunteers at polling places to refuse women, or to permit businesses or state officials to refuse interracial weddings. These Christians are now put in the awkward position of having to justify why a nationwide ban was considered so absolutely necessary yet the same practice is now permissible on a personal level. There just doesn’t seem to be an objective way to re-phrase “I won’t provide this service for you that I do for everybody else because you’re gay.” Effectively, these individuals would be telling gay couples that their beliefs are “true for me but not for you.”
Conservatives would argue that this is merely a legal compromise on an issue forced upon them, but that alone doesn’t explain why this strategy is being deployed here when it wasn’t for other positions they opposed just as absolutely. This is likely because conservatives came to the simple realization that there were no satisfactory reasons to forcibly segregate drinking fountains. Conversely, conservatives have held their ground more capably on the abortion issue where they were able to find objective arguments based on life ethics. If conservatives behaved the same on gay marriage as they do on abortion, then we ought to have expected a stronger reaction than it simply being a matter of personal conscience (but perhaps they’ll surprise me and start an insurrection in June). While they may not be intentionally relativistic in their reasoning, this nevertheless has all the trademarks of it. Little by little, conservatives are eroding a cooperative pluralistic society by not merely tolerating nonfactual beliefs, but by permitting those beliefs to have dominance over facts. Conservatives haven’t outright rejected that an objective truth exists, yet their inability to objectively support their positions has netted the exact same results as if they had. Or perhaps worse, it looks like they’ve achieved cultural relativism without the pluralism that usually accompanies it.
Conservatism, with Christianity at the helm, is now steering us towards a relativistic society where individuals are free to ignore anti-discrimination laws if they claim it violates their personal beliefs. As much as they want to limit it just to homosexuality, I have yet to hear a good reason why sincerely held beliefs on sexuality should be protected more than equally sincere Bible-based beliefs on racial superiority or gender inequality. They might argue that sexual orientation shouldn’t be a protected class, usually for disingenuous reasons such as claiming homosexuality is a choice, somehow differing from other protected categories like religion, pregnancy, or marital status which are also choices (I should also point out that, contrary to what many conservatives erroneously think, the classes in anti-discrimination laws do not single out minorities, women, or gays for heightened protection; instead they are based on universal attributes applicable to everyone: race, gender, and sexual orientation). I would counter-argue that needing to protect classes of people should be unnecessary in the first place, and contrary to Republican assumptions, an individual doesn’t actually need to be a member of a group on an itemized list to make a valid case of discrimination. It says more about the flawed deontological morality of these discrimination advocates that they only seem to believe it’s wrong to refuse service to a black person just because the law specifically prohibits discrimination on race. Ultimately, their problem is the same fault underlying all relativism: they don’t really know basic right and wrong.
In a bizarre twist of the Republican party’s role reversal from formerly being the progressive party to presently being the conservative party, the GOP has also become a powerful champion of postmodernism. Their challenges to the Affordable Care Act have been some of the most blatant postmodern arguments in recent memory. The first case challenged the birth control provisions strictly on the personal beliefs of the employer, because they disapprove of birth control or incorrectly believe it causes an abortion. The present case before the court amounts to trying to invalidate the law on the basis of a strict reading of a typo rather than the stated intent of the law, which commenters have compared to the “Moops” doctrine from the sitcom Sienfeld. Of course, the irony is that the ACA originated as a conservative idea, effected in Massachusetts by Republican Governor and Obama Presidential opponent, Mitt Romney.
A side effect of the Right’s opposition politics is an inability to articulate what they actually stand for. They seem to be willing to reverse a position to spite an opponent, or commit to one in spite of facts. Even when I specifically ask conservatives what they’re for, I get a response that’s merely a restatement of what they’re against. Liberal positions, on the other hand, do not depend on a pre-existing “other” to oppose. When liberals stand for equality, we mean that everybody should be treated the same under the law; inequality does not need to be an antecedent. Positions, not principles, seem to drive conservative strategy these days. Principles are what guide us to conclusions, whereas positions are fixed conclusions irrespective of principles. The use of contradictory arguments to support the same position is patently unprincipled reasoning. While changing a position because of new information is admirable, changing principles relative to a position is not.
Maybe objectivity is something Christianity has lost, or maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention in my youth and conservatives never really had a grasp on objective truth. Either way, if Christianity is going to find its foothold, it cannot be with the same logic advanced by conservatives for the past decade. Just pointing out conservative relativism can get you accused of being a relativist yourself, but only because that identifies your opposite belief as liberal and conservatives associate liberalism with postmodernism. Conservatives need to stop basing their beliefs on what their opponent believes and find out in objective terms what they actually believe themselves.
seerstone 