GOD AND THE
COMMONS: DOES RELGION MATTER?
An Issue Brief
and Guide for Deliberative Dialogue
Introduction
Religion: A
Gathering Storm in American Public Life
“God was in Rindge
on Saturday,” said a reporter for
the Keene Sentinel, referring to
the many references speakers made to the
divine from the podium at last year’s
Franklin Pierce College graduation ceremony.
The headline for the story read “In
God They Trust.”
“While graduations
are often a time to thank God, among other
clichés,” the news reporter
explained, “several speakers went
above and beyond a passing reference to
the deity, instead focusing their entire
speeches on the effect God has had on their
lives.”
Chief among them was Lisa
A. Biron, valedictorian for the graduate
and professional studies program.
She spoke about how her faith in Jesus Christ
had helped her to overcome a life of alcohol
and partying, and enabled her to change
the abusive nature of her intimate relationships
and to successfully complete her education.
She went on to say that she now plans to
go on to law school to arm herself with
the knowledge and skills to fight the American
Civil Liberties Union, which she says is
trying to destroy religion in this country.
She concluded her speech by saying, “
I am more certain that ever that with God
all things can be done.”
Maybe the reason she is
optimistic about affecting social change
in the country is because she is one of
a growing number of organized and politically
active conservative evangelical Christians
in America, President George W. Bush among
them, who have come to feel that our country
has been on a harmful course in recent decades
because its major social institutions—the
family, law, government, the media and education—are
being shaped primarily by secular values
rather than religious ones, in general,
and conservative Christian ones, in particular.
In their view, the American
Civil Liberties Union, with its mission
to defend an interpretation of the Constitution
and Bill of Rights that stands for a “wall
of separation” of religion from politics
and defends all manner of free thought and
expression, has become emblematic of the
shift in the last half of the twentieth
century to a more secular (non-religious)
American society. This way of
viewing the Constitution seems to have guided
many of the rulings of the Supreme Court
in recent decades, which has strengthened
this transformation to a more secular society.
Many, like Columbia University
Law School professor Stephen L. Carter,
say these decisions have led to the trivialization
of the religious devotion of many Americans
and to a widespread “culture of disbelief”.
They say America was formed, in large part,
by Christian values and that the founding
fathers never intended the freedom of religion
and the non-establishment clause of the
First Amendment to lead to the kind of strict
institutional separation of church and state,
and to what, in their view, has amounted
to a government-enforced freedom from
religion in the public sphere.
More liberal, progressive
evangelicals and people of other faiths
are also critical of the drift toward a
more secular America. They argue for
restoring the civic value of religion in
our society, which, they say, has historically
been profound and today is sorely missed.
Important social movements that have greatly
improved our society over the years—abolition,
women’s suffrage, and civil rights—were
aligned with spiritual motivations and faith-based
organizations. Other speakers at Franklin
Pierce’s 2005 Commencement, some of
which received honorary degrees, made references
to the spiritual motivations of these movements
in our nation’s history and to contemporary
organizations that are making efforts on
behalf of international peace and the rehabilitation
of gang members and drug addicts in inner
city America.
Liberal and progressive
believers like political/religious/cultural
editors Jim Wallis of Sojourners
magazine and Michael Lerner of the Jewish
journal Tikkun are inclined to
agree with Alexis de Tocqueville, who, in
1831, recognized the central, but indirect
role that religion played in American society.
“Religion in America takes no direct
part in the government of society, but it
must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost
of the political institutions in that country;
for if it does not impart a taste for freedom,
it facilitates the use of free institutions…
I do not know whether all Americans have
a sincere faith in their religion, for who
can search the human heart? But I am certain
that they hold it to be indispensable to
the maintenance of republican institutions.”
But many others such as
writer Susan Jacoby in her recent book Freethinkers
defend the secularist heritage of America.
They emphasize that many of the founders
fathers, as students of the Enlightenment,
had as much faith in human reason as they
did in God and they were intent on giving
Americans the first government in the world
based on it rather than on the authority
of religion. Governmental checks
and balances on power, the non-establishment
of religion, freedom of thought and religion,
mechanisms for civic discourse and democratic
participation, they thought, would be sufficient
to foster and guide Americans into the future
toward the good life and a free society.
Moreover, prior to the
Enlightenment, Europe lived through hundreds
of years of bloody wars fueled by religious
group differences. For this very practical
reason also the American founders were concerned
to keep religion out of the public domain
as a way to eliminate one of the major sources
of conflict in society. Their solution
involved relegating religious belief and
practice to the private sphere of life.
And indeed, the First Amendment and the
non-establishment clause in the Constitution
have protected our pluralist nation and
preserved a measure of peace among religious
and cultural groups and between the religious
and the non-religious in our society.
The United States is unique in that it was
founded expressly as a place where people
could be set free to practice their religion,
where there was no official national church,
and where religion and government can co-exist
but operate separately.
In the intervening years
since the founding period in American history,
however, we have lived through many cultural
and social changes. Faith in reason
and democratic political mechanisms alone
has been shaken to some extent by events
in the last century such as the two World
Wars. Scholarship and science have relentlessly
defined themselves as agnostic enterprises
explaining the natural world and human behavior
without any transcendent points of reference
(i.e., evolutionary theory, Marxism, rational
choice theory, conflict theory, structuralism,
functionalism, secularization and modernization
theory, etc.).
Now at the beginning of
a new millennium, it seems many people in
America and across the globe are not satisfied
with a purely scientific worldview.
In spite of its many legitimate achievements,
we are starting to see its limitations.
In response, many are returning to traditional
religion or other orthodoxies or to new
spiritual beliefs and practices in their
quest for meaning, which transcends the
restricted space of empirical existence.
Concurrently, it seems that the appropriateness
of certain social policies and political
arrangements such as the separation of church
and state, the foundations of which were
laid during the Enlightenment and built
and sustained through the increasingly secular
19th and 20th centuries, are today being
renegotiated and redesigned with post-modern
concerns in mind.
The idea that religion
would become increasingly irrelevant in
modern society (secularization), a view
held by many intellectuals over the last
couple centuries, has now come to seem seriously
misguided and shortsighted in light of the
resurgence religion is experiencing in America
and around the world. The religious
impulse beats strong in human beings and
appears to be a perennial feature of humanity,
perhaps ultimately because, as sociologist
Peter L. Berger explains, of the feeling
that existence bereft of transcendence is
an impoverished and finally untenable condition.
In his recent book Why
Religion Matters, comparative religion
scholar Huston Smith says, “that the
finitude of human existence cannot satisfy
the human heart completely. Built
into the human makeup is a longing for a
‘more’ that the world of everyday
experience cannot require. This outreach
strongly suggests the existence of the something
that life reaches for in the way
that the wings of birds point to the reality
of air. Sunflowers bend in the direction
of light because light exists, and people
seek food because food exists. Individuals
may starve, but bodies would not experience
hunger if food did not exist to assuage
it. The reality that excites and fulfills
the soul’s longing is God by whatsoever
name.”
We stand at a crossroads
in human history and in American life.
How will human beings in the new millennium
give personal and public expression
to this perennial feature of their existence—the
religious impulse? What role should
religion play in public life, if any?
How valid are the critiques of secular culture
raised by both conservative and liberal
religious people? What are our concerns
regarding secularism, fundamentalism and
about the political aspirations of conservative
Christians, Muslims and other traditional
religious groups?
Today more citizens see
religion as one of the few antidotes to
a perceived decline in morality and more
politicians want not to have to check their
religious beliefs at the public door.
And there are others from across the political
– and religious – spectrum who
call our attention to the civic purposes
of religion. If we are not to ignore
those religiously motivated citizens and
public officials – and recent elections
indicate that we cannot – then the
fundamental political and social challenge
of these times is one of figuring out how
a polity can be open to religious insights
without succumbing to the temptation to
impose specific religious beliefs through
the state.
The path that avoids these
pitfalls, globally and within our own country,
is one that recognizes the need to genuinely
listen and engage the liberal and conservative
critiques of secular culture. Having
a way to talk productively about and think
through the challenge that religion presents
both at home and internationally could help
improve our society and reduce religiously
based mistrust, hatred, and violence in
the 21st century. The circumstances
call for campus conversations as well as
a national, public dialogue.
To help facilitate such
a deliberative dialogue this brief outlines
three broad approaches to social change
with regard to this national dilemma.
It is essential that college students, who
are our next generation of leaders, discuss
this issue and offer their input.
Each approach in this issue brief offers
a different diagnosis of the problem and,
therefore, calls for different remedies.
Weighing each of the approaches and considering
the pros and cons of each one and sharing
perspectives with each other will help to
better inform us as individuals and as a
public. For, in a democracy, it is
the citizens who must make choices and provide
direction for the future about the proper
place of religion in society.
Approach One: Stay the
Secular Course
Proponents of this approach
believe that, overall, our country’s
secular public culture is good and that
the enforcement of a strict separation of
church and state is essential to preserving
social peace and fostering a diverse, pluralist
society. Most Americans, as a recent
Pew Charitable Foundation poll results show,
whatever their religious views, have a healthy
respect for the Constitutional principle
of separation of church and state.
Religion may play a role in people’s
private lives, they admit, but should not
be used as a guideline for public policy.
When people speak as citizens or as elected
or appointed officials in the public sphere,
they should “check their religious
beliefs at the door” and make their
arguments for particular policy positions
in rational terms (pragmatic and empirical,
etc.) and on the basis of general non-religious
moral principals. One does not, proponents
of this approach explain, have the right
to demand that others accept the tenets
of one’s own faith in making a political
decision.
What Should Be Done
- Continue to support
a strict “wall of separation”
between church and state by restricting
governmental support of religion, i.e.,
outlawing prayer in public schools, the
teaching of religious doctrines such as
creationism or intelligent design alongside
of scientific evolutionary theory in the
curriculum, and the display of particular
religious texts like the Ten Commandments
and symbols in schools and in other public
places such as courtrooms and in town
commons
- Support scientific
literacy and rational thought in schools
and in all forms of public reasoning and
participation
- Keep tax dollars
and government agencies out of the business
of supporting faith-based organizations
in the social service aspects of their
work
- Insist on the
appointment of judges and other public
officials who do not seek to blur the
distinctions between “God’s
justice and ours,” between secular
government and religiously-guided politics
Critics Say
- The founding fathers
were not atheists, for the most part,
and they did not intend that government
be the enforcer of a secular culture on
its citizens
- Most Americans believe
religion is a positive social force and
that government should play a role in
supporting religious institutions and
faith-based organizations in society
- Scientific and rational
explanations are not enough to address
life’s ultimate questions and to
guide the moral and political decisions
that impact our individual and social
lives
A Likely Trade-Off
Keeping our public life
thoroughly secular may reinforce damaging
trends of materialism, selfishness and ethical
and spiritual decline.
For Further Reading/Stay
the Secular Course
Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers:
A History of American Secularism, (New
York: Henry Holt, 2004).
Approach Two: Recover
Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
Proponents of this approach
are most concerned that our culture has
become a toxic one and that secular humanist
values have encouraged this cultural decline.
They believe these values are anti-religious
and are privileged in all our public institutions—government,
law, education, the media, etc. Proponents
of this choice believe these are not the
abiding values that shaped our nation at
its founding and through most of its history,
nor are they the values that are held by
most Americans today. Instead, they
believe our society has been hijacked by
a secular cultural elite who imposes their
values on the rest of the nation through
their disproportionate power as leaders
of major social institutions. They
argue that most Americans are religious,
and that many have come to feel that their
religion is under assault by a militant
secularism that allows no place for their
beliefs and shows no respect to their culture.
It is time, they argue, to recover the Biblical
values of our nation’s Judeo-Christian
heritage and to allow these values to have
effect in our public lives and policy.
What Should Be Done
- Allow public schools
to teach about the Judeo-Christian heritage
of America and theories about natural
and human origins that challenge scientific
evolutionary theory
- Strengthen the public
(governmental) support of faith-based
initiatives and encourage government-religious
institutional partnerships for a wide
array of societal tasks from social services
to international diplomacy
- Let religious belief
inform our public discourse and policy
decisions
Critics Say
- Whatever our past, America
is today a pluralist society that cannot
enforce one religious/cultural perspective
on its citizens through government, law
and public policy
- Teaching religious based
theories about natural and human origins
alongside scientific evolutionary theory
is dumbing down the scientific curriculum
of our nation’s schools and leads
to less respect for the capabilities of
human reason
- Mixing religion with
political ideology and political power
is dangerous and can lead to great oppression
and evil carried out in the name of religion
A Likely Trade-off
Trying to reestablish Judeo-Christian
values through operations of government
and other social institutions may foster
intolerance and lead to the creation of
a social ethos many in our modern society
would find oppressive, if not politically
totalitarian.
For Further Reading/Recover
Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
Antonin Scalia, “God’s
Justice and Ours,” speech
given at the University of Chicago Divinity
School reprinted in First Things: The
Journal of Religion and Public Life,
May, 2002.
Stephen L. Carter, The
Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and
Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion,
(New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1993).
Charles L. Glenn, The
Ambiguous Embrace: Government and Faith-Based
Schools and Social Agencies, (Princeton,
NJ: University Press, 2000).
Approach Three: Embrace
Religion’s Civic Value
Like the proponents of
approach two, proponents of a third approach
also think that many of our nation’s
problems stem in part from our secular culture
that has come to undermine religious and
spiritual sensibilities. But, they
differ from those who advocate restoring
our Judeo-Christian heritage as a remedy
in that they advocate embracing religion’s
civic value in ways that gesture outward
in an inclusive embrace of all religious
traditions as well as those who champion
non-religious moral viewpoints.
The main problem in modern society, as Michael
Lerner has argued, is not secularism, but
rather the materialism and selfishness that
have become the common sense of global capitalism.
Like Lerner, advocates of this approach
remain adamant about church/state separation
not as a means for keeping religious and
spiritual values out of the public realm.
Instead, getting the state out of the God
business is a way to ensure that spiritual
values retain their vital and distinctive
character, uncompromised by an alliance
with political power. Only in
functioning separately from the state can
religious and cultural pluralism be preserved.
Moreover, it is in the realm of civil society
apart from the state that religious institutions
and spiritual values express their strongest
civic value and play their important role
in society and public policy as a redemptive
alternative to socially destructive capitalist
values. Additionally, proponents of
this approach argue that secularists go
wrong when they claim that their position
is the only one compatible with intellectual
sophistication and scientific truth.
Science does not and could not take any
stand on religion any more than it can broker
public policy decisions, as public problems
are ultimately moral questions and not scientific
ones.
What Should Be Done
- Recognize that religion
is a perennial feature of humanity and
an important thing to most Americans and
it plays a vital role in society, but
keep it separate from government
- Allow religious perspectives
to be part of the public discourse, but
seek to persuade others on the basis of
the beliefs universal ethical content
rather than on grounds that they are mandated
by a particular religious tradition
- In political discourse,
be civil and don’t resort to demonizing
when there is disagreement
Critics Say
- Religion is backward;
human reason alone is the only way to
solve our public problems
- Both historically and
in contemporary society, the majority
of Americans are Christian, therefore,
it is appropriate and democratic to emphasize
that particular religious tradition in
our cultural life and to do so through
the mechanisms of government
- Allowing religious perspectives
a place in the public sphere is to invite
the worst kind of conflict into society;
religion is best kept in the private realm
of life
A Likely Trade-off
Welcoming religion into
public life may result in greater moral
conflict in society and could lead to oppressive
laws and policies that violate our sense
of personal and economic freedom
For Further Reading/Embrace
Religion’s Civic Value
Jim Wallis, God’s
Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and
the Left Doesn’t Get It (San
Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 2005).
Michael Lerner, “Church
and State: When the Right Breaks the Barrier,
How Should a Spiritual Left Respond?”
Tikkum, Vol. 20, No. 4, July/August
2005.
General Sources/Religion
and Public Life
Richard John Neuhaus, The
Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy
in America, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns,
1984).
Peter L. Berger, editor,
The Desecularization of the World:
Resurgent Religion and World Politics,
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 1999).
Huston Smith, Why Religion
Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in
an Age of Disbelief, (San Francisco,
CA: Harper Collins, 2001).
E.J. Dionne Jr., Jean Bethke
Elshtain and Kayla M. Drogosz, One Electorate
Under God? A Dialogue on Religion and American
Politics, (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press, 2004)
Terry Easterland, editor,
Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court:
The Cases That Define the Debate Over Church
and State, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns,
1993).
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