Those who try to oppose “faith” and “reason” often fail to distinguish among the faiths, and paint all religion with the same brush of irrationality and tribalism. I could do no better in beginning to answer this question than to quote Chris Hedges, journalist and theologian, as this is a point he often makes in regard to those who would paint all religion as irrational and who therefore advocate eliminating it.

“[I]ndividualism–the belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that at times defy the clamor of the tribe or the nation–is a gift of the Abrahamic faiths. This sense of individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for a deep altruism. And this laid the foundations for the open society. This individualism is the central doctrine and most important contribution of monotheism. We are enjoined, after all, to love our neighbor, not our tribe. This empowerment of individual conscience is the starting point of the great ethical systems of our civilization.

This is what the progressive traditions have in common–the absolute ethical priority of love of neighbor over tribe or even nation state. It is the very root of a sane approach to the world, and, as Hedges emphasizes, a bedrock concept for “the great ethical systems of our civilization.” In other words, God bless sanity, in religion and in politics.

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