The interaction of religion, moral life, worldview, and politics is one of the most critical problems in any state. Various aspects influence people’s decisions due to the personal beliefs and cultural views of an individual. Depending on certain assumptions caused by a spiritual direction or a general outlook on life, a person forms a unique values system. Determined by what is most important for a particular individual, their views on politics are created since they expect the state to satisfy their values and needs. Thus, the relationship between religion, ethics, and worldview determines political views.
A church or any other religious organization, claiming the authority of “higher morality” in its activities, invariably strives to acquire some of the functions traditionally inherent in power structures. Particularly, such entities define the most important directions of the development of society and interpret the main events taking place in the country, according to concepts of faith. In the example of the United States, one can see that having originated even before the establishment of an independent political system, religious organizations continue to exert a significant, albeit indirect, influence on the political process in general, actively interacting with society (Lindsay, 2017). The peculiarity of the evolution of religious organizations lies in forming a certain “balance of power” in which none of the churches can gain complete dominance in the dissemination of their values in society. Such a situation also reflects the specificity of the role of religious organizations in the political process.
As practice shows, many political actions or private political positions are based on principles attributed to political morality. Importantly, many individuals understand them as the normative guidelines for individual thinking. Different political situations and conflicts norms, and values are initially activated in mind. This is influenced not only by the individual’s internal beliefs but also by the external environment, which dictates the conditions of the game. Public institutions establish specific rules and requirements for the behavior of political figures. Therefore, as the external environment changes, shifts occur in the conduct of political players (Nili, 2019). In recent decades, people have seen a tendency toward an increase in the role of moral and ethical requirements for the leading players in the field of politics. Notably, such a process is attributed to the so-called “culture shock”, a profound crisis of domestic and foreign policy of states, which entailed the processes of rethinking and shifts in ideology. The formation of an independent and responsible citizen for his actions, who knows their rights and freedoms and assumes the possibility of influencing the government, requires, first of all, having a strong worldview, high political consciousness, and political culture (Ruande, 2018). The formation of each community’s ideological conviction will help instill the values of a democratic culture in new generations, which will create a free society.
Even though politics, morality, and worldviews are formed in a person on an individual basis, these aspects of public life are controlled by large institutional spheres of life. All three directions, to one degree or another, affect each individual’s life and form the personal view of the surrounding world. Politics is an integral part of modern society due to the democratic methods of the decision-making process. Depending on religion’s adherence to absolute moral norms or worldview, a person can form a particular public policy system of views.
References
Lindsay, J. (2017). Challenging the secularist assumption: Religion, public policy and civil service culture. Social Compass, 64(2), 262-274. Web.
Nili, S. (2019). The people’s duty: Collective agency and the morality of public policy. Cambridge University Press.
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Ruane, S. (2018). Using a worldview lens to examine complex policy issues: A historical review of bushfire management in the south west of Australia. Local Environment, 23(8), 777-795. Web.