Why do I feel so defensive?

I think I've said this before: I don't like either of the presidential candidates. Why do I feel myself sticking up so much for Gov. Palin? I don't like much of anything she has to say, but I do like how much she's pissing off people that appear to me to be knee-jerk supporters of the Democratic party. I took a quiz a couple days ago, picking quotes on policy that were not identified as being from McCain or Obama. The results told me to vote for McCain--by one question. I am split right down the middle, which is maybe why I find it so troubling that everyone else around me has it all figured out, like this election is simple and I'm the only one not seeing it. I feel like I'm a relatively intelligent and thoughtful person, and it makes me wonder why more of my peers aren't on the fence like I am.

Something occurred to me today, though. Palin's a hardcore Christian, and maybe that faith, if she can tap into an openness and understanding of what she has in common with Muslim believers, will help us shift the way we interact with that part of the world. I understand completely that the Arab world is not just about Islam, that sectarianism and resources and emotions and history all play a part in where we are now. But a respect for people of faith, which it seems like the intellectual elite of this country doesn't have, may help us broker a new language and dialogue.

Maybe this is me grasping on to my last hopes. Maybe this is me imagining (fantasizing?) about what I would like to do if I were Palin/McCain/Obama... (I'm not going to pretend that I would care about being Joe Biden at all, let's be real.)

I cannot help but think of this article written by a professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service satellite branch in Qatar.

The majority of Georgetown students I know are fairly knowledgeable about religion. They can talk intelligently about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The glitch is that they talk from the perspective of anthropologists and sociologists and historians. These are valuable perspectives. But they are not enough. Of course we need to raise young people who can be smart, savvy, sophisticated participants in international affairs. What we also need are young people who can be all of those things while at the same time knowing and understanding what it is to live one's life with a commitment rooted in faith.

...It was the fall of 2004, and our conversation quickly turned to the presidential campaign. My friend argued that Sen. John F. Kerry's reluctance to talk about his own faith was a good thing, showing that the candidate understood that faith has no place in politics or public policy.

Out of the blue, a question occurred to me: "Other than me, do you have any friends or professional colleagues of any religion who attend services every week?" He was quiet for a long, thoughtful minute. "Not that I know of," he replied.

I have thought about that conversation for a long time. It has helped me understand what hobbles American higher education when it comes to educating people for careers in international affairs. It's not that we don't know about religion; it's that we don't understand faith and its life-shaping power.

The majority of people I know in higher education would argue that there is nothing wrong with religion for people who feel they need it. Their sentiments come down to something like this: "You have your religious convictions, I have mine. Let's acknowledge our differences and agree to disagree with one another within the confines of polite debate." That makes sense, of course, but it is not enough to prepare a new generation of diplomats who will be asked to engage the Muslim world in the decades to come.

This template for discussing religion and faith is fundamentally flawed. It presumes that different groups of faithful people approach their religions in the same way football fans approach their favorite teams: I cheer passionately for mine, you cheer passionately for yours, and we all agree to play by the rules and exhibit good sportsmanship. For people of faith, religion isn't like that. A person of Muslim faith and a person of Christian faith engaged in honest conversation about religion are not like two fans pulling for their respective teams. They are more like two men in love with the same woman, each trying to express, safeguard and be faithful to his relationship with his beloved. Love brings with it complexities that football does not.

The simple fact of the matter is that most of the world lives with a deep abiding faith or at the very least is heavily influenced by it, unlike the mostly secularized Western world. It seems like most West Coasters I meet--I'm just going to use them because it is the group I have the most experience with--cannot fathom how anyone believes that mumbo-jumbo anymore, and that they should shut it off when they enter the public sphere to talk about what we should do with the problems of society. I paraphrase Megan McArdle (I can't find her post about it, sorry): If you have a strong personal faith in something, why would you set that aside at the door?

I realize that I have a very different sense of how my religion and my rationalism work together than do most practicing Christians, so maybe I am exceptional in that I think that science and religion don't cancel each other out, necessarily. It is well-documented that I don't practice any faith currently, and even when I did it was fairly half-assed. I think, however, that my father's attention to personal development and steadfast belief in more--I can't call it more than that, for fear of not getting his beliefs right--help me develop, at the very least, a sense of appreciation for those who live their lives committed to faith. In mocking and ridiculing belief, we lose a language for how to talk respectfully to people who are different than we are on this particular matter. And people in the developing world aren't going to lose their faith overnight, or even over a generation. The staying power of monotheism is fairly well proven, and we are going to work with people to whom God is extremely influential. I hope that we have not lost our ability, as a society, to connect with people who do not share our secularism.