Religion in the Public Sphere, Rev. 1

(I've resurrected a prior post and given it a substantial rewrite. I hope to get it published as an opinion piece in a local newspaper. Any suggestions would be welcome.)

There's been much uproar lately about purported attempts by both Left and Right to shape public policy in ways that critics charge are undemocratic. James Dobson of Focus on the Family condemns so-called “activist” judges who he says put personal ideology over loyalty to the Constitution. The so-called “New Atheists” – men like Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins – decry religion and argue that it has a corrosive effect on the democratic ideals of society. The Left accuses the religious Right of a conspiracy to impose a Christian world-view on non-Christians and cite the efforts to outlaw abortion and stem-cell research as evidence of this. The religious Right accuses the secular Left of conspiracy too, a conspiracy to wipe out all trace of Christianity from the public sphere.

Examples could be multiplied. We live in a society where a secular Left and a religious Right hurl accusations across what might seem an unbridgeable political divide. My intent is not to weigh in on this or that particular issue but rather to say something about the place of religion in the public sphere. Some say that when we enter into public debate about public policy, we must leave our religion behind. (I've heard this said both by the Right and the Left, but the charge seems more often to originate from the Left.) Others say that religious belief must be the primary if not the sole source of one's political views.

These two opinions about the place of religion in the public sphere are the extremes, and as is so often the case with extremes, both must be rejected. The secular extreme requires the impossible. Religious folk can't simply shed their religious beliefs when they enter into political debate. The religious beliefs of religious folk penetrate to the very core of their being. They can no more shed them than they can shed their skin. But this is no reason to embrace the religious extreme. Much that religious folk here in the U.S. believe should not be written into law. Christians hold that they must attend church, and yet I expect everyone will agree that church attendance should not be mandated by law. I don’t mean to suggest that Christians hold that any purely religious duty should be written into law. Indeed most say precisely the opposite. No Christian of whom I know hopes for the emergence of a Christian body of law – a kind of Christian correlate of Muslim sharia - that will control behavior in minute detail. My point is only that we must reject both the secular and the religious extremes. Religion can’t be forbidden a place in the public sphere, but neither can it be allowed to dictate the practices of non-religious folk.

So then we must seek for an intermediate view – a view that lies between the secular and religious extremes. But where is that mean between the two extremes? What is the reasonable compromise, the compromise to which all parties can agree?

My suggestion is this. It is quite legitimate to bring your religious beliefs to bear in political debate. But if you do so, you must give arguments that do not presuppose loyalty to your religious world-view. Rather your reasons must be, insofar as this is possible, universal in the sense that they have the potential to sway everyone who hears. If you have no universal reasons to give, you must no longer attempt to write your views into law. We live in a democratic society. When issues to do with the common good arise, no one group may simply impose its views on another. Rather each group must enter into the realm of public debate and there give reasons that have at least the potential to sway its opponents. But reasons like that – reasons that have the potential to sway one’s opponents – must be universal. They must be reasonable in themselves and not presuppose commitment to one or another religious world-view.

Consider the example of abortion. For many, their opposition to abortion has its foundation in their religious world-view. Should opposition to abortion that has a religious source have a place in political debate? Of course it should. (We might say as well that it will inevitably have a place there. As said, no one can simply shed a deeply held belief.) But how ought opposition to abortion be justified in political debate? Is it legitimate for religious folk to say that it ought to be outlawed because it's contrary to God's will as revealed in Scripture? It most certainly is not, for that justification presupposes a Christian commitment to the truth of the Bible, and that commitment is not universally held. A legitimate justification is one that makes appeal to some universal moral principle to which everyone can be expected to agree. Perhaps that principle is that it's wrong for anyone anywhere to intentionally kill an innocent human being. But no matter what we think about this matter (and even if we think that abortion should not be illegal), we must say that in the public sphere, reasons must be universal.