Berkley Center

Everyone in the world has faith. In the United States, where debates in the political and social realm often play out as battles between religious belief and secularism, “faith” is sometimes seen as something only the religious have. However, faith is a thing that everyone possesses in one form or another. Faith doesn’t exclusively mean a belief in God, Judeo-Christian or otherwise. Faith is but another word for worldview; faith is how a person interacts in the world, both with others and the everyday things we all encounter. Faith shouldn’t be a dirty word used to relegate religious people to the status of anti-intellectualism. The world is a kaleidoscope of faiths, each with its own different take on things.

The mathematician Kurt Gödel argued that for every system of belief, there would be one element that the believer would take on faith. If one examines the various worldviews closely, she would find that Gödel is right. The naturalist has faith that science is the accurate means of defining the being of the various entities in the world. The theist has faith that a transcendent being is the source of all life and morality. Faith and values are bound up because how one believes we ought to act is inseparable from how she sees the world. Where Christians have the Bible and Muslims the Qu’ran, naturalists have scientific rationalism. None of those foundational texts or beliefs are separable from the values that they teach.

All of this means that when we come to interact with each other, we ought not see ourselves as warring factions that need to conquer the other. As long as there are many unique individuals in this world, there will be many unique faiths. The “public” and “private” spheres in which our faith plays out cannot be truly divorced; how we choose to live out our private lives will always lead us to make conclusions about how the world ought to operate. With this in mind, it is prudent as citizens of a diverse country to focus on those points in which we agree. Americans want to see everyone be successful. They want everyone to be treated fairly. Our country’s laws emphasize equality and respect, all with a mind for the many ways in which different citizens see the world. We need to push past the “culture wars” and start pushing for true cultural unity, in which disagreement doesn’t exclude us from unifying as a nation.

bezell10@georgefox.edu