The Bush administration lacks an understanding of the power of religion, an English professor said at the third-annual Gordon B. Hinckley Lecture in British Studies.
Vincent Pecora, professor of British literature and culture, said Western thinkers often underestimate the role religion plays in people’s worldviews.
He gave the example of President Bush and the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Tony Blair asserting that a Western-style culture of religious tolerance would thrive in Iraq after the invasion and that internecine war between religious groups was “unlikely.”
“The situation we are in right now in Iraq results from a failure to take into account how powerful religious traditions can be,” Pecora said.
Pecora said that Western intellectuals have traditionally assumed that secularism would eventually become a universal condition as modernity and progress advanced around the globe. Events in recent years have forced many to consider that the advance of secularism is far from inevitable and that non-religious Europe may be the exception rather than the rule in the future.
Western “secular” ideas, such as human-rights concepts, often have an unseen origin in Judeo-Christian ideas of morality, Pecora said.
“Our moral lives are deeply intertwined with a rich but troubling religious history,” he said.
For this reason, it is difficult to apply these “secular” ideas built upon a hidden Judeo-Christian foundation to cultures based in other religions and philosophies, Pecora said.
“With globalization, we’re increasingly economically unified, but we’re divided by religion,” he said. “Our differences make it hard to find an overlapping moral consensus.”
Pecora said that finding common ground is not impossible, but it would require a great deal of cultural sensitivity to get various religious cultures on board with Western ideas of human rights.
“Professor Pecora used an impressive range of references. It was interesting to hear an academic take on these issues of extreme current importance,” said Erin Menut, a graduate student in English.