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Is Progress a Religion?

Is Progress a Religion?

Last updated on: March 30, 2017 at 1:54 pm by Melinda Selmys

Is Progress a Religion? 2017-03-30T13:54:58-04:00 Melinda Selmys

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”

– G. K. Chesterton

There’s an article over at Crisis today called the “Priesthood of the Transgendered.” Dealing with all of the problematic claims that the article makes would take several blog posts, but I would like to choose this one: the fairly routine claim of religious conservatives that secular liberalism has made a religion out of “progress.”

This is not actually true. There is no such thing as a religion of progress. Nor, for that matter, is there such a thing as a religion of traditionalism.

What there is, is a very simple fact of human psychology. All humans like progress when we feel that we are moving in the right direction. If you’re sure that you’re on the right road, and you’re looking forward to reaching your destination, it is very natural to want to get there sooner. Your foot itches on the accelerator, and the speed limit seems like an unjust imposition. If you think you made a wrong turn, you naturally slow down and start looking for a good place to turn around.

Politics is no different. In the last couple of months, we’ve seen a substantial shift in American politics towards the triumph of a right-wing agenda. For folks on the right, the speed at which Donald Trump is moving to bring about the accomplishment of their goals is a cause for celebration. When the checks and balances in the American constitution move to put the brakes on – to conserve the present political order from too-rapid change – this produces frustration and irritation. Far from wanting a conservative GOP presidency, the contemporary Right wants rapid and revolutionary progress towards the fulfillment of their agenda.

The Left, on the other hand, has started settling into a decidedly nostalgic frame of mind. I’ve seen dewy-eyed “progressives” posting memes about how much they miss the Bush era. “Have you seen his paintings of vets?” “Did you ever consider how maybe his seemingly “stupid” comments might have been the result of age-based neurological problems?” Good old George W. Those were the days, my friend. Those were the days.

This is because humans are not actually either progressive or conservative, and neither are political ideologies. The truth is that all of us will want to maintain the status quo in so far as it is working for us and for those that we sympathize with. All of us also want to change the status quo in so far as it is making us uncomfortable or is hurting those we love. If things seemed better in the old days, we will pine for them. If the future looks bright, we will move forward with optimism.

This is not a product of ideology or political belief, it’s just how humans work. To believe that what the Left wants is “progress,” without understanding that there are genuine moral goals that they are progressing towards, is to make a fundamental error not only about the motivations of a large group of people but also about human nature itself.

Those on the left who have championed gay rights and trans rights have not, for the most part, done so because they want to undermine the traditional bases of our civilization or because they have a mindless love of progress for progress’ sake. I don’t deny the existence of extremists who see “transgression” as a positive value in itself, or who think that Western society is fundamentally bankrupt. These people do exist, they do have influence and they do have followers. But they’re kind of the equivalent of folks on the Right who think that the belief that A=A logically leads to the acceptance of Ayn Rand’s elitist libertarianism.

LGBTQ rights are actually derived from a very simple set of moral premises which actually have very deep roots in Western, and particularly American, culture. First, the belief that individual human beings have a right to be loved, affirmed and supported on the basis of their essential humanity, rather than on the basis of external traits including moral respectability. This premise is one of the key, distinctive tenets of the Western tradition. It is immediately derived from the teaching and example of Christ in the gospels, though it seems to have had some antecedents in Roman and Greek thought particularly among the Stoics.

Second, the belief that human beings have a right to freely define and pursue their own ideals without facing violence, discrimination or legal obstruction should those ideals come into conflict with the beliefs of the majority. This is one of the central concerns which defines modern constitutional republicanism: the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are supposed to be guaranteed over and against the potentially violent prejudices of mob rule. Offering people the liberty to choose the type of long-term relationships or gender presentation that they believe will make them happy really does just seem like a very natural extension of the basic values of modern Western civilization — values which, whether you like them or not, lie at the foundation of American society.

Pretending that there is some kind of religion of progress, that its goal is to undermine the fundamental values of our culture, and that trans people are its new priesthood, allows religious conservatives to avoid honest engagement with the actual issues. It creates a straw-man that can easily be turned into a burnt offering. But it doesn’t get us anywhere, because it fails to engage with the fact that actually most liberals are not incoherent moral relativists who reject Christianity, Aristotle, Right Reason and the American Constitution.

The truth, which is much more challenging, is that actually the divisions in contemporary society are driven by sincere and authentic disagreements about how our cultural traditions ought to be interpreted and upheld. Until both sides of the political divide are willing to recognize this, and to have reasonable and responsible dialogue based on the assumption of mutual intelligence and good will, we will have neither peace nor justice. Rather, we will continue to see the creation of factitious political divisions which can only be resolved by the application of an increasingly arbitrary and dangerous will to power.
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