How far can we reel in religion to political discourse? -- Is the question of the hour. The ensuing squabble would be that religion has from the days yore, been used to mobilize voters when the representatives on the right who use it are actually unsympathetic to the underlying problems. While we are at it : is it justifiable that liberal outfits adorn intolerance to a level far less liberal than their façade ?
For the matter at hand: in a multi-ethnic, multi-faceted society such as ours, bringing morality and religion into politics does carry definite risks. But these risks are inevitable in democratic politics. Liberalists in recent decades have made the blunder of yielding to religious conservatives, a cartel on some of the most intoxicating sources of political argument.
While it’s true that some people use religion acrimoniously, it’s also the truth that, on many political problems, it’s not possible to be nonaligned on the underlying moral question. I think liberals should slot in rather than avoid the moral and religious fervours that citizens bring to public life—whether the issue is abortion, same-sex marriage, poverty, health care, or the environment.
A politics of moral commitment is not only a more rousing superlative than a politics of evasion ,It is also a more promising basis for a just social order.
A stout unrestricted rendezvous with our moral incongruities could offer a stronger, basis for reciprocated respect. Rather than avoiding the moral and religious fervours that our associate citizens bring to community life, we should attend to them more unswervingly—sometimes by challenging and contesting them, sometimes by listening to and learning from them. There is no warranty that public thoughtfulness about rigid moral issues will lead in any given situation to consensus—or even to correction for the moral and religious views of others. It’s always probable that learning more about a moral or religious dogma will lead us to like it less. But we cannot know until we set out and act on it , or can we?