Mariah Helgeson (George Washington University) on Faith and Values
March 17, 2012
Is Faith the Only Sure Foundation for Values in Personal and Public Life?
“Always we are chasing words, and always words recede. But the greatest experiences are those for which we have no expression. To live only on that which we can say is to wallow in the dust, instead of digging up the soil. How shall we ignore the mystery, in which we are involved, to which we are attached by our very existence?”
-Abraham Joshua Heschel
I grew up in a family of big conversations. Set against the stark Minnesota landscape, my sisters and I took long wandering walks talking about meaning and existence. So when my sister announced at the dinner table that she was an atheist, the reaction from my mom, the interfaith minister, was “How wonderful! Let’s talk about it.”
-Abraham Joshua Heschel
I grew up in a family of big conversations. Set against the stark Minnesota landscape, my sisters and I took long wandering walks talking about meaning and existence. So when my sister announced at the dinner table that she was an atheist, the reaction from my mom, the interfaith minister, was “How wonderful! Let’s talk about it.”
It is for that reason that when I read, “faith is the only sure foundation for values in personal and public life,” that I, like many veterans of big conversations ask, why faith? Because though I know my sister as a fierce champion of social justice and compassion, by the standard definition of faith (belief in God), my sister falls short.
Too often in our conversations about faith in public life, receding words, like faith get in the way. Presidential elections illustrate a double-bind. When candidates discuss their faith, they risk excluding people of different faiths, who fear that professed belief in a particular God will translate to a theocracy unfriendly to religious diversity (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”) or candidates feel that their right to share their faith identity in public is being restricted (“...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). What is clear is that the attempts at honest big conversations about faith, ethics, and ideas, almost inevitably devolve into a thousand small conversations. The shared commitment to the principles of liberty, equality, and compassion is lost in the chaos.
For me faith is not just about belief in God, it’s about meaning, ethics, ideas and the big conversations in which we form and share our beliefs. In my experience, these conversations are the glue that holds our nation together. Conversations about faith allow us to bring our full selves to the table. It is there that we uncover the foundations of our values by understanding our own and others’ perspectives, and consequently, creating better policies, no longer “wallowing in the dust,” as Heschel wrote, but collectively “digging up the soil.”
Too often in our conversations about faith in public life, receding words, like faith get in the way. Presidential elections illustrate a double-bind. When candidates discuss their faith, they risk excluding people of different faiths, who fear that professed belief in a particular God will translate to a theocracy unfriendly to religious diversity (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”) or candidates feel that their right to share their faith identity in public is being restricted (“...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). What is clear is that the attempts at honest big conversations about faith, ethics, and ideas, almost inevitably devolve into a thousand small conversations. The shared commitment to the principles of liberty, equality, and compassion is lost in the chaos.
For me faith is not just about belief in God, it’s about meaning, ethics, ideas and the big conversations in which we form and share our beliefs. In my experience, these conversations are the glue that holds our nation together. Conversations about faith allow us to bring our full selves to the table. It is there that we uncover the foundations of our values by understanding our own and others’ perspectives, and consequently, creating better policies, no longer “wallowing in the dust,” as Heschel wrote, but collectively “digging up the soil.”
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