Making America trust again

Reflecting on his accomplishments during his first year as secretary of health and human services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. articulated some central features of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. At one point in the discussion, Secretary Kennedy described the differences between his experience growing up in a big family, having never encountered at home or at school children who have many of the challenges seen today. From autoimmune disorders to allergies to autism, he said, “I never saw it, and now it’s in every classroom.”

From this anecdotal evidence Kennedy turns to religious explanations for his ascendancy to President Trump’s cabinet. Citing the health concerns facing America, Kennedy said, “I prayed every single day that God would put me in a place where I could fix this.” And, he continued, when President Trump won a second term in office and tapped Kennedy to lead HHS, “It felt providential. It felt like the answer to prayers.”

Soon after invoking divine providence positively, Secretary Kennedy unfortunately turned to a standard talking point in his repertoire, which casts religion in a rather negative light. Contrasting his approach with that pursued under the Biden presidency, Kenney contended, “We were told by the administration, trust the experts. That’s not a thing. It’s not a thing.” He continued: “Trusting the experts is not a feature of democracy and it’s not a feature of science. It’s a feature of religion and totalitarianism.” Religion and totalitarianism?

There are certainly important differences between the scientific method and religious adherence. But those differences are not stark enough to cast science as a friend of democracy and liken religion to totalitarianism. As a professed believer himself who has been touched by the renewing power of divine grace, it may well be true that Secretary Kennedy does not mean to impugn religion by associating it with totalitarianism. But as his remarks continued, the association between religion and illegitimate authority on the one hand and democracy and freedom on the other became apparent.

Drawing again on his childhood experiences, Kennedy related some paternal wisdom: “My dad told me when I was a kid, ‘People in authority lie and you know the government lies all the time.’” Sitting on stage as the federal government’s HHS secretary, presumably Kennedy was not admitting that he is or has been lying to the American people. He also presumably meant to communicate to his hearers that an authority, his father, ought to be believed when he was warning about the temptations and corruptions of political power.

And therein lies the difficulty with Kennedy’s juxtaposition between science and religion and between trust and expertise. All human activity is grounded in some kind of faith. And the proper understanding of the relationship between science and religion sees them in fundamental harmony rather than unavoidable conflict. Religion and science have both been abused throughout history by bad actors. But the abuse of something is no argument against proper use, and just because some have touted an existential struggle between natural science and religious faith is no reason to surrender to such a false paradigm.

Taken to its logical conclusion, Kennedy’s invective against expertise undermines not only those who have abused science and political authority but also anyone who might be called to exercise responsibility, himself included. This kind of cynicism is thoroughly corrosive. In his campaign to make America healthier, Secretary Kennedy would be wise to drop rhetoric that casts religious belief as intrinsically totalitarian. And if he really wants to make Americans healthier, then he needs to lead us in a way that restores trust rather than destroys it.

As the former slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass rightly observed, “Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society.” To restore trust in authority does not mean that we follow expert guidance blindly or slavishly. But it does mean that we, as free citizens, ought to exercise our own agency to trust but verify on the basis of truth. To restore trust in this country we need our leaders to be trustworthy. Our institutions need to be reformed and recommitted to the foundations of truth.

Blind faith as well as acidic skepticism destroy the possibility of trust, and in doing so destroy the foundations of society itself. Secretary Kennedy is certainly right to point out the ways in which bias, bad motives, and hubris have harmed our society as well as our physical health. But as in all things there must be limits to our distrust as well as to the loyalty and the obedience we owe to our authority. Otherwise, the medicine purported to make us healthy again will only hasten our demise.