,

Accommodating People’s Wrong Religious Beliefs

Stephen C

•

For a couple years my kids attended an evangelical homeschool co-op. For those who are aware of the idiosyncratic dynamics of religious homeschool culture in the US, this is no small feat. Typically we Latter-day Saints were not invited to participate since they often involve signing some statement of faith that usually includes some trinitarian formula, so we usually hang out with the secular homeschoolers. 

But anyway, somehow we got them to make an exception for us and my son was attending a school with very, very Protestant people. Like, one of his friends did a campus visit to Liberty University. Overall, it was a fine education, with one exception, which you can probably guess. 

I wasn’t terribly worried that he was going to lose his “testimony” of evolution (and even if he did, I admit to not really caring that much), even when he came home with a logic handbook that used evolutionary arguments as their examples of bad logic. We thought it was actually a neat experience and good training to be able to hold a contrary belief in a crowd and adroitly, appropriately, and politely handle it. Perhaps we were expecting too much, because one day he came home with a story of an argument he had with the rest of his class over the issue.

We explained that, as their guests it wasn’t really couth to come on their turf and challenge their beliefs, it would be like somebody coming to an LDS Sunday school just to argue against Book of Mormon historicity, and that we probably have some beliefs that they think are weird as well (that forced smile when you tell Protestants you’re LDS and you can tell they’re thinking “heavenly harems” or something). As far as we know, that was the end of our son’s “here I stand moment,” and the weird Mormon family did not end up getting kicked out.

The incident caused us to reflect and discuss with our children what it meant to respect religious beliefs or at least their holders we don’t agree with. I’ve already written a post on when it is okay to criticize somebody else’s religious belief, so I won’t retread that ground, but a step below beliefs we want to criticize are beliefs that we essentially don’t agree with, but, to paraphrase Jefferson, “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my [or anybody else’s] leg.” 

The fact is that if I had to choose between having a son who had the same wholesome vibe as the Evangelicals (or Latter-day Saints) but who thought that the earth was 6,000 years old versus one who got the age of the earth right but was a Hitchens-type who was a miserable human being in their personal life, the right choice should be obvious. Of course we don’t have to make that tradeoff, but still, on the list of things I hope my kids get right in this life the age of the earth or the descent of man is pretty far down there. 

While I think we’re pretty good about respecting such beliefs that have sufficient distance from ours, I’m surprised at how rather benign beliefs in our own backyard can trigger people. Evolution is one of those. We’re reading from the same bible, so it’s easy to be flippant about their beliefs because we have more secure exegetical grounds. Similarly, a Latter-day Saint who would never dream at scoffing at a Muslim who had an idiosyncratic but sincere take on Halal will often roll their eyes at a fellow member who doesn’t drink caffeine.

In religious liberty jurisprudence there is an interesting rule where the court can’t adjudicate theological claims as long as they’re sincerely held. So if a prisoner says “as a Mormon, I need to wear red shoes, so you should accommodate that,” the Supreme Court can’t say “that’s ridiculous, Mormonism doesn’t talk about shoe color at all.” What matters is that that person has a sincere belief that their Mormonism stipulates that they wear red shoes, and then the court goes from there.  

In much the same way, I don’t see why caffeine, R-rated movies, or evolution are any different than a particular interpretation of Rabbi Akiva or this or that Hadith. (Of course that doesn’t mean we can’t disagree openly with the belief or argue against it in certain appropriate contexts.) I don’t believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, but I also don’t believe that Mohammad was a prophet, and I see no more or less of an obligation to not sneer at and maybe even accommodate religious beliefs whether they’re coming from my own backyard or not. 

Comments

7 responses to “Accommodating People’s Wrong Religious Beliefs”

  1. ji

    The apostle Paul allowed for differing perspectives within the same faith community. There are two parallel thoughts: we sustain each other in holding our own sincere beliefs (“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind”). and we don’t cause others to stumble (“Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.”)

    Someone else said, “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.”

  2. Carey F.

    While not exactly the same, I think a lesson learned from an essay a philosopher wrote about Phil Connors overlaps nicely with your post:

    Phil Connors at the beginning of Groundhog Day is irritated that people seem to treat the weather predicting powers of Punxsutawney Phil as if they were real. He takes it so seriously that it makes him miserable, and he ends up making everyone around him miserable too. But in reality, most people do not literally believe in the groundhog’s predictions. They are either playfully suspending disbelief or just enjoying the tradition for what it is, a shared experience that brings people together.

    What Phil does not see at first is that the value is not in whether it is true, but in what it does for people. The whole event creates joy, connection, and a sense of participating in something bigger than themselves. His frustration comes from insisting on taking it literally when that was never really the point. Over time, he starts to see that meaning can still be real even when belief is held more loosely, and that sometimes what matters most is how a practice shapes the way people relate to each other and to the world.

  3. Raymond Winn

    Thanks, Carey F – that puts a really nice spin on a socially-acceptable way to interact with folks whose traditions – of all sorts, including religion, or vaccines, or aliens, clothing customs such as headscarves and long dresses – don’t jibe with ours.

    The world is complicated, and the more people we have to interact with on a social level, the more complicated it becomes. So a rule of thumb as Carey posited seems very useful.

  4. Stephen C

    ji: Amen

    Carey F: Also agree, although I do think one significant difference with that wonderful film is that is that in Groundhog Day everybody is kind of in on it, whereas with religious beliefs people really do believe it, so how to handle disagreement respectfully takes on more gravity.

  5. ji

    Stephen C, would it be better if you re-named your post?

    Accommodating People’s Differing Religious Beliefs

  6. Stephen C

    I don’t know, when framed that way hardly anybody disagrees; the point I’m making is that the reflex of respecting different benign beliefs is valid *even for beliefs you think are patently wrong* that come out of your own tradition.

  7. Carey F.

    On some things, I try to apply this lesson because I no longer see them as purely literal. On others, I still feel there is some real underlying component, but I am not always as confident about what that actually is anymore. Either way, the takeaway for me is to be charitable and not insist that an academic lens is the best or only way to approach them, although I do rely on a healthy dose of academic sources to inform and ground my perspective.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.