Reining in Our Skepticism
Our community had some big wins at the Ohio Statehouse back in June. One I’m especially proud of was the “Religious Expression Days Act” (originally SB 49)—which in no small part passed due to our JCRC’s and the Ohio Jewish Community’s (OJC) advocacy efforts.
The legislation is pretty simple: It requires school districts in Ohio to accommodate K-12 students’ absences for “sincerely held religious beliefs and practices” on at least three days per year. Because this law more helps students of minority religions than those in the Christian majority (since public school calendars already accommodate most Christian holidays), I expected this would be something those empathetic to minority groups would consider a win.
Fast forward to the present, as Governor DeWine signed it into law (amended into HB 214). Imagine my surprise to read copious negative comments on social media under articles regarding the bill’s passage such as:
“Is that ALL religions or just the ones that fall down and worship the invisible sky daddy who forced a woman to bare his child!”
“Hope this applies to all religions!”
“So much for separation of church/state/our tax dollars.”
“We’ll see what happens when a non-Christian tries to use these days……”
“Hope this applies to all religions not just Christianity”
“The Ultra-Right Christians violated the Constitution again.”
“We don’t need religious quacks trying to push the Trump bible.”
“If we had separation of education and state, we wouldn’t need this humbug kind of discussion.”
Allow me to be honest: My shock isn’t from seeing that internet commenters had bad takes on an issue of consequence—that’s hardly news. However, the proportion of commenters who exhibited such profound distrust (the “ratio,” as the kids would say) alarmed me.
The skepticism and suspicion with which we treat politics in the United States has a monumentally deleterious impact on communities. When people assume ill intent in all political developments, we can hardly move forward—let alone cohere as a pluralistic polis. This drives the disaffected toward extremism (think, e.g., Cincinnati Socialists, who reject democracy as a path to progress) and conspiracy theories (consider the rise of Q Anon). Antisemitism, too, is catalyzed by this impulse to see reality—and our peers—in the most negative light.
Fundamentally, we must be willing to trust in one another’s goodness—even if we have different goals—if we want to be able to accomplish anything. In this department, we are lacking. On Sunday, as I do annually, I spoke at Hopefest. While there, I concluded my remarks by acknowledging that “those who cause us sadness, or anger, or frustration—they probably need our love, our hope, more than anyone else.” I think this is the case, when it comes to skepticism and distrust: the worst actors probably are responding to a lack of hope. They have little to no expectation that their concerns can be addressed by our political system.
I haven’t got a remedy for this problem, but I’m relatively certain that’s what we’re up against. If we want to overcome distrust, skepticism, and even hatred of all things politics, we need to find a way to renew a sense of hope in our peers about the potential outcomes of democracy. After all, as Churchill said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.”