c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. Visit his Web site at http://www.onajourney.org.)

(UNDATED) From its inception, America has struggled with the consequences of its ideals and has seen the ensuing morality debates exploited by the clever for low-minded ends.

Our ancestors came seeking religious freedom, then denied freedom to all but the like-minded. We declared “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” as ultimate values, and immediately declared some lives more worthy than others. We fought a Civil War to redefine liberty, then prevented the war’s outcome from changing much except the science of weaponry and battlefield medicine. We fight continually over who deserves access to happiness.

We embrace diversity, then hem it in. We declare standards for the other guy, then ignore them ourselves. We open our borders as a gift to humanity, then close them when new arrivals violate racial or marketplace norms. We regulate our worst impulses, then give them free rein. We encourage freedom, then recoil at the choices free people make. Noble ideals, it seems, don’t guarantee noble follow-through.

Moral debates proceed at every level, but presidential elections have served to focus our attention, usually on one issue whose time has come. National consciousness versus regional, for example, factory versus farm, urban versus rural, immigrant versus native, male versus female, slave versus free, capitalism versus socialism, global versus isolationist, democracy versus communism.

Such issues require more thoughtfulness and subtlety than political campaigns can give them. We rally to slogans, not nuanced discussion. And yet every one of these struggles has been necessary for working out our health as a nation. Had we not debated slavery, factory conditions, women’s suffrage, free markets and school integration, we would be a different and diminished nation. Not remembering ideals is even worse than poor follow-through.

We have learned the hard way that extremes are to be avoided in policy-setting, especially religious extremes. Americans value faith and want to think our lives as having higher purpose. But faith’s practitioners can be fractious and prideful, often more determined to proclaim their views as ultimate truth than to hear God’s still, small voice. When we lapse into religious bullying, we violate other values, like neighborliness, tolerance, fairness and common sense.

Now “moral values” have center stage. Where they ranked as determinative factors on November 2 is open to debate. But clearly a century’s seismic shifts in gender relations, living patterns, sexual behavior, marriage, and cultural depictions of social realities have reached the point at which we must work out who we are and what we value, if only to agree again that freedom inevitably generates diversity.

Cultural conservatives now have the critical mass and political champions to force the debate. Cultural liberals, meanwhile, need to get over their surprise at being so easily overwhelmed and prepare for battle, even if that means setting aside other issues they consider more important.

At the same time, we must all be wary. Cultural debates engage our passions, but they usually aren’t the real thing going on. Deeper control issues are at work. Their advocates encourage misdirection.

In the 19th Century, for example, America’s rapacious plutocrats amassed wealth by diverting people’s attention to race conflict, and they averted the logical consequences of financial meltdown by buying a war with Spain. Throughout the 20th Century, industrial magnates fought against fair wages and decent working conditions by encouraging fear of socialism. They denounced imports to avoid accountability for poor decisions on products and technology.

Whenever the spotlight shifts to a burning moral concern, we need to ask whether it is a cover for something else, and who is fanning religious flames for reasons that have nothing to do with faith itself.

As liberals and conservatives wade into cultural issues focused on family and sexuality, we should be wary of being played, of having our sincere beliefs and passions exploited by the clever. While we debate gay marriage, we must ask who is minding the rest of the store.

MO END RNS