Philosophy and religious studies lecturer Christopher Chase thinks religion’s influence on politics isn’t going away any time soon.

With issues like gay marriage, the Ground Zero mosque, Catholic abuse scandals and plenty of other religious stories, religion has had a large impact on politics. Chase said that while religion includes things like deities, gods and other spirits, it’s primarily a human phenomenon.

“There is always, at least to some degree, a human component,” Chase said. “Therefore, like any other aspect of human life — be that economic, political or such — it gets messy. Because human life is messy.”

Chase believes that part of why religion affects U.S. politics so much is because of how young the United States is compared to other prominent nations.

“If you look globally at the major world empires, the United States is only a little over a couple hundred years old,” Chase said. “This contrasts with, say, China, Britain, the Dutch, etc. Those countries have a long history of self-definition and working those things out.”

Chase also thinks religion plays a large part in the concept of identity in U.S. politics.

“One of the fictions we teach ourselves … that we haven’t woken up from yet in the United States is that religion is primarily belief-based,” Chase said. “Whereas, for most religious people, it’s more about what you do and how you act in the world.”

Chase said religion won’t be going away from politics any time soon.

“Because religion always has a large component of action and activity, it’s always going to be bound up with the base political question of, ‘Who gets what?'” Chase said.

On March 7, the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition met in Waukee to discuss politics, particularly the question of the upcoming presidential caucus. Several potential presidential candidates spoke at the event, including Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is a special interest group nationwide, and one of its primary goals is to influence every level of government to achieve the political policies they desire. Their political ideals are predominantly conservative, namely free markets, limited government and combating terrorism.

Another factor contributing to religion’s role in politics, Chase said, is that religion in the United States was founded primarily by Christian Protestants.

“One of the main characteristics of Protestantism has always been moral action in the world,” Chase said. “Any time you have an impetus for moral action in the world, actualizing principles in human society that you take as having been given by law outside this world, you’re going to have a political notion. There’s no moral action in the world that does not have a political notion.”

Chase said the divisiveness of religion has been present from the beginning.

“From the very beginning of the exploration of the Americas, there was cooperation between various religious communities, and there was conflict,” Chase said. “It’s often difficult for interest groups in the United States nowadays to come to terms with a lot of the early conflict and diversity.”

This issue of identity still affects religion and politics, with a prominent example being the question of President Barack Obama’s religion.

“Obama represents a lot of the different divisions in America in himself,” Chase said. “And when you have a candidate like that, the question of religion comes into play as means of identity.”

When looking at religion from a cultural perspective, Chase advises to think of religion as “adverbial.”

“Adverbs, of course, are modifiers or intensifiers,” Chase said. “That’s more or less how religion functions culturally, especially here in the United States. As a modifier, as an intensifier of a lot of the contradictory and conflicting human impulses, it becomes one ingredient among many in a national character.”