Most cultural indicators point to an increasingly secularized American society. As corollary, bringing religious convictions to bear in the public arena is becoming increasingly fraught. American citizens are thus pressed to confront a “sacred-versus-secular” divide as never before. What values can we expect the broader culture to hold without reference to religion? More importantly, what values should be held in common and advocated for in the public square?
As it concerns the task of bringing religious conviction into the public arena, two opposite and extreme attitudes avail themselves that are unacceptable. One of these is the militantly secularist attempt to privatize religion so that it does not enter the sphere of public reasoning. This exclusionary perspective lies at the heart of John Rawls’ view of “public reason” in A Theory of Justice (1971). That method is to bracket controversial moral, philosophical, or religious issues and to exclude them because of their grounding in “comprehensive doctrines.” Insofar as religion constitutes a “comprehensive doctrine,” it is thought to be disqualified because it is not “neutral,” thus needing exclusion from public discourse and political debate.
This attempt to exclude religiously grounded values from public discourse is what the late Richard John Neuhaus famously called the “naked public square” in his 1984 book of the same name. Neuhaus argued that most secularists are in deep denial about their own articles of faith and metaphysical presumptions. Even the Rawlsian approach to “public reason,” which is committed to excluding “comprehensive doctrines” from public debate and which is assumed by many (if not most) of our contemporaries, is itself a comprehensive doctrine. In the end, a so-called “naked public square” is a vacuum just waiting to be filled by the state. As Neuhaus rightly noted, a twisted notion of the disestablishment of religion invariably leads to the establishment of the state as “church.” Having cast out one devil, committed secularists unavoidably invite the entrance of seven devils more perverse and inhumane than the first.
At the other end of the spectrum is the misguided attempt to wed or conflate religion with politics, as in “Christian nationalism.” The problem with this posture is both its failure to see the relative autonomy of religion and government, and to recognize the unique and limited theocratic character of Israel as represented in the Old Testament. This view fails, then, on both political as well as theological grounds.
A more balanced perspective is that of America’s founders who, despite their religious differences, saw the need for interaction between religion and the state in a way that neither coerces nor excludes. Such a posture facilitates a social and political environment in which a principled pluralism can flourish. After all, as George Washington insisted in his 1796 “Farewell” address, of “all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,” religion and morality are “indispensable supports” for a self-governing nation. This is indeed true, just as a politicized faith is a perversion of genuine faith.
In the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, which is underpinned by natural law thinking, no realm of human existence in the created order can be excluded from our care and consideration. This is surely the case for politics, since civil government itself was established by God for the ordering of human behavior. Jesus famously remarked that we should “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” and “render to God what is God’s.” This statement suggests both ambiguity and engagement. On the one hand, the state is not divine because it has moral antecedents. On the other hand, we are not to be politically detached since the state is clearly owed some things, like our allegiance in a limited capacity and concern for its justice.
Because any moral vacuum in society will be filled by the state, as Neuhaus warned, people of religious conviction cannot bracket their moral convictions. And as it is, the debates of today are profoundly moral, concerning beginning-of-life issues, human sexuality, and end-of life-issues. “Public reason,” at bottom, must be just that: accessible to all and reasonable. In that public process, we will need to appeal to justice (to each his due), the common good (as opposed to self-interest) and human dignity (over against moral perversion). By virtue of our public participation, we religious believers can expect to hear the continual accusation that we are “imposing” our morality and beliefs on others. Nevertheless, someone’s metaphysical viewpoint – someone’s morality – will be imposed through legislation.
Political life and political community, from a natural-law perspective, presuppose virtue. We do good, and we avoid doing evil. For this reason the cardinal virtues – justice, prudence, courage, and temperance – are necessary as we seek the common good. A natural-law liberalism affirms the need for these virtues because it acknowledges the presence in human beings of both good and evil. Responsible social policy requires this type of moral realism. It is only in such a social environment that the language of “human rights” can thrive, since human dignity – and hence human “rights” – exist only where transcendent moral reality is affirmed and moral duties are acknowledged.
Secularism, alas, cannot guarantee such basic freedoms which we take for granted. But the day of taking for granted is past. The militantly secularist spirit against which we presently battle is a threat to democratic polity. It can only produce relativism, nihilism, and a descent into darkness.
Before he died, Richard Neuhaus made the following observation. The problem today is not that the emperor has no clothes. It is that “the emperor’s garments of moral authority have been stolen from the religion he has sent into exile from the public square.” For indeed there is no such thing as a “naked public square.” And at its heart, Judeo-Christian religion is “incorrigibly interventionist,” given its universalistic claims to truth as it relates to the totality of things.
If Americans care about a democratic future then, in Neuhaus’ words, we have “a deep stake in reconstructing a politics that was not begun by and cannot be sustained by the myth of secular America.” Such reconstruction will find clues in the past, even when we don’t seek to recreate the past.