Hi, my name is Jonah Palicke. In this presentation I will be sharing my essential question for The Scarlet Letter and summarizing a key source I found to support the idea presented in this question.

The essential question I made was, “why is it dangerous to mix religion and politics?” Therefore, this question evidently falls into both the religious and societal categories.

Throughout the article titled, “America’s Creed: The Inevitable, Sometimes Dangerous, Mixing of Religion and Politics,” David M. Smolin proclaims that mixing religion and politics is dangerous. To do this, Smolin has divided his argument into six main categories. Today I will be discussing just two of these of categories, titled, “Politics as a Religion” and “Religion as Mere Identity.” These topics dig deeper into some of the issues than can arise when religion is mixed with politics, especially in the United States. For further reference, this article can be found on the website, “Washington and Lee Law Review Online” which focuses on providing works about legal issues of the current time.

In this first category, “Politics as a Religion,” Smolin acknowledges how oftentimes politicians can transform their work into somewhat of a religion. In other words, the indirect presence of religion can cause some politicians to became excessively passionate in their political dealings, to the point where they would do anything to prove their opinion as right. Specifically, Smolin argues this incident is most “prominent in the United States” where people have become almost religiously defined by their politics (Smolin 26). As a result, divisions have inevitably occurred, each political side using the words “good” and “evil” to describe one another. This can also be seen in the Scarlet Letter, where the shadow of Puritanism has caused Governor Bellingham to act, in blind passion, as a if he were a religious leader in the condemning of Hester Prynne.

In this next category, “Religion as Mere Identity,” Smolin strongly makes the case that it is especially dangerous when religion is “intertwined with an ethnic or nationalistic identity” (Smolin 28). In this scenario, religion drastically increases the the political mindset of “us against them.” This issue can cause nationalism to amplify onto an extreme religious-like level, isolating America from other countries. This problem can also be seen in the Scarlet Letter, when a newly arrived group of Spanish sailors are instantly loathed by the leaders the Massachusetts colony (Hawthorne 217). This is because the Puritan religion has created a sort of nationalistic identity in the town, to the point when even foreign sailors are rejected.

To conclude, this is my works cited page for both The Scarlet Letter and Smolin’s article.