With December being a month of religious holidays for so many different people of faith, and with Christmas hitting us at the end of the week, I would hope that the concept of religious freedom crosses the minds of all Utahns.
It just so happens that my political career has coincided with the steep secularization of the United States. It’s really easy to see. There’s a lot more debate about America being a “Christian nation,” which will always be the high-sign that secularization and religiosity are colliding. And, in Utah, this same debate sounds a lot like Utah being described as a “Mormon state.”
If a “Christian nation” means that our country is filled with a vast majority of people who profess Christianity, then I guess we’re a Christian nation. The same can be said about Utah being a “Mormon state.” Kind of like calling Middle Eastern countries “Muslim nations.” Or calling the football stadium in Oakland “Raider nation.”
More likely than not, when someone calls America a “Christian nation” they mean that our laws and culture should be derived from (or shouldn’t be derived from) our nation’s Christian heritage. Again, we could say the same thing about Utah – our laws and culture should be derived from (or shouldn’t be derived from) our Mormon pioneer heritage.
There’s lots of ways to approach this debate. The way I’ve always seen it – as an American and as a Mormon in Utah – is that religious influence is a good thing in both law and culture. I would much prefer to live among people who had some sense of right and wrong based on a common understanding of those terms than I would to live among people who claimed to live by standards of right and wrong but who didn’t have a common understanding of them.
I think there needs to be a currency of culture in every community – just like we use the same money to transact in economic terms, I think we should have a common currency regarding our basic laws and culture. Religious understanding helps us do that.
Of course, this attempt at a common understanding can get confusing, especially in a place like Utah. Every human being has a core set of values. It doesn’t matter if you’re a person of faith and I’m not. Each of us has a core set of values that guide our every day thoughts and behaviors. In Utah, most citizens are people of faith and most people of faith are Mormon. Inevitably, and this is quite natural – as natural in a secular culture as it is in a religious one – we will blend religion and politics. And, all in all, that’s a very good thing if you believe that your religious culture is constructive and that its governing principles are universal.
The complaints I hear in Utah sound like this – “don’t push your religious beliefs on me”; “just because you Mormons hold a majority, doesn’t mean you’re justified in getting your way all of the time.” I suppose to some Utahns there are days when the line between a theocracy and democracy seem pretty thin. But in an increasingly secularized culture, the real threat isn’t theocracy, the real threat is discounting and demeaning religious influence in civic affairs. For any of its faults, religious influence has been the single greatest reformer for human rights in every free society. Dr. Martin Luther King was a doctor of theology. British and American abolitionists were nearly all people of faith. And yet, here in Utah, religious influence is often castigated as a collective attempt to restrict freedom.
As Christmas approaches this week, perhaps every Utahn ought to reflect on the meaning and role of religion in a free society. Clearly, dominant cultures can create ghettos out of minority cultures. But I don’t think the answer to that problem is to, in turn, create a legal or political ghetto out of a person’s faith.
I’m Paul Mero. Merry Christmas.
