So the first of the values, first not necessarily in the order of importance:
1. Freedom to Choose a Way of Life
Value: All citizens should have the right to take responsibility for their own life and embrace a faith or a way of life they deem meaningful without suffering discrimination.
Rationale: One’s faith touches the core of one’s life and cannot, and should not, be coerced, a view arguably implied in the statement of St. Paul that one believes “in the heart” (“If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” [Romans 10:9]). "When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’... Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’” (John 6:60, 66-67), the implication being that one is free to chose another way of life.
Rationale: One’s faith touches the core of one’s life and cannot, and should not, be coerced, a view arguably implied in the statement of St. Paul that one believes “in the heart” (“If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” [Romans 10:9]). "When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’... Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’” (John 6:60, 66-67), the implication being that one is free to chose another way of life.
Debate: The debatable issue should not be whether people should be free to choose and exercise their religion (or irreligion) without discrimination; that’s a given. Public debate should be about which way of life, including its public dimensions or implications, is more salutary, and whether there are ways of life so inimical to human flourishing and common life that their exclusion doesn’t represent an act of discrimination but is a requirement of humane social life. We should also debate publicly the moral foundation a state that is “neutral” with regard to distinct faiths and secular interpretations of life as well as the precise nature of political arrangements required to keep the state “neutral.”
Questions To Ask: Does the candidate respect the right of all—fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, and secularists, conservatives and progressives, to name a few groups at odds with one another—to take personal responsibility for their lives and to lead their lives as they see fit? Does the candidate think of America as a Christian nation (so that, in one way or another, all others have to fit into a Christian mould) or as a pluralistic nation (in which a way of life is not imposed on anyone without their endorsement)?
No comments:
Post a Comment