Is Lieberman's God Thing a Problem?
Judith ShulevitzPosted Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2000, at 1:21 PM ETBy giving Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a religious Jew, a chance to enthuse about his maker on a campaign rally platform, Al Gore took a big step toward legitimizing the public display of religious fervor. Suddenly, God isn't just for Christians anymore. But what about all the Americans who don't think anybody's God has a place on the public square? Do all these frank confessions of faith by candidates, whatever their denomination, threaten to blur the line between church and state?
The piety quotient in politics has been on the rise for quite some time, since long before Lieberman appeared on the scene. "[P]residential candidates in the current campaign have been publicly invoking God and Jesus Christ at a pace not seen since the days of William Jennings Bryan," wrote Wilfred M. McClay in an essay, "Two Concepts of Secularism," published early this summer in the Wilson Quarterly (sadly unavailable on the Web). Lieberman just quickens that pace. So, is there cause for alarm? Yes, in a standard we-must-be-ever-vigilant way: There's always tension between religious passion and its constitutional restraints. But also, provisionally, no. McClay's essay offers some interesting new grounds for cautious optimism.
In trying to determine whether secularism is, in fact, losing ground to religion in American life, McClay concludes that there are actually two kinds of secularism at work, what he calls positive secularism and negative secularism. (He borrows the terms, and his title, from philosopher Isaiah Berlin's celebrated 1958 essay "Two Concepts of Liberty," which outlines a theory of positive and negative liberty.) Positive secularism is a vigorous belief in the irrelevance and even wrongheadedness of religion; it is often underpinned by a rationalist worldview and the conviction that science has superseded God. Negative secularism, on the other hand, is defined, of course, negatively, by its opposition to the institutionalization of any one religion (including positive secularism) in the public domain. As you probably guessed, McClay is for negative secularism--which he identifies with the First Amendment's anti-establishment clause--and against positive secularism, which he rejects as coercive, a form of active discrimination against religious behavior, an effort to shut it behind closed doors. Positive secularists, he says, are monist: They insist on there being only one true way. Negative secularists are pluralist, inclusive, all-embracing. Positive secularism is in decline, and, according to McClay, deservedly so. But is negative secularism really rising up to take its place?
That question McClay doesn't answer. He merely says that the answer should be yes, and leaves it at that. Culturebox thinks so too, but worries that McClay underestimates the dangers posed by the religious majority to religious minorities when faith becomes once again a significant part of public life. After all, evangelical Christianity (to which 25 percent of the American population adheres) is as "positive" in its desire to convert others as positive secularism has ever been. (This may not be a coincidence; Berlin, for one, sees modern rationalism as the intellectual descendant of Protestantism, complete with its history of zealotry.)
But as much as Culturebox is made nervous by Lieberman's (and Bush's, and Gore's) overt religiosity, she is equally cheered by his warm embrace by Christian fundamentalists. This is a happy sign that they accept the need for religious pluralism, however tactically--that is, as a way to make alliances in their larger battle against the secularists. If McClay is right, religion as a public exercise is not about to fade away. If we're lucky, such displays of inclusiveness by the pious will turn out to be part of a trend--one that began with the Catholic John F. Kennedy, stretches to Lieberman, and will soon reach beyond Judeo-Christianity to scarier, less familiar creeds. A Muslim secretary of state, anyone?
Wilfred M. McClay responds:
First, I was very gratified that Shulevitz really seemed to understand what I was getting at. The article is an attempt to move beyond stale and unhelpful "religion vs. secularism" debates, and to point out that there is a certain understanding of secularism---what I've called "negative secularism"---that deserves the support of everyone, religious and nonreligious alike. The most critical reactions I've had to the article have come from two different directions: from hard-core positive secularists who think of religion as nothing more than a scourge, and the principal source of human suffering; and hard-core religionists who believe that secularism is our principal enemy, and should therefore be given no quarter whatsoever. I don't accept either view, though I think a robust understanding of religious liberty requires us to tolerate the free public expression of both views.
I think the best way to understand all this is dialectically. We have come through a period in which Protestant Christianity has been disestablished, and that was absolutely the right thing to do. (Not only for the good of the nation, but also for the good of Protestant Christianity.) But we have in some instances gone too far, and there is a corrective movement well underway. The proscribing of all public expression of religious belief and sentiment is wrong, and unconstitutional. No one should be required to salaam before someone else's God-talk, but no one should be forbidden to engage in their own. That is what the First Amendment says. And perhaps I should add that religionists probably need to be more generous, or thick-skinned, about permitting agnostics and atheists full expressive liberties too. Similarly, your reader who expresses dismay at the suggestion that we should "embrace" all sorts of stupid superstitions needs to read the First Amendment, which does not, the last I looked, use the word "embrace." And he needs to reflect on why religious liberty is so important, why it is at the heart of any fundamental respect for the dignity of the human person, and why it therefore should be given the widest possible berth. Not absolute, but as wide as possible.
In answer to Shulevitz's query, yes, I think we are well along in the process of arriving at a negative-secularist regime in this country, although one of the goals of my article was to articulate just what such a settlement would be--because until we make the terms clear and articulate, misunderstandings will continue to abound. I respectfully disagree with her assertion that I underestimate the dangers to religious (and irreligious) minorities. I don't think so. That was the whole point of my introducing the extended discussion of India's religious wars and the problem of the Ayodhya temple. I did this to show why secularism, rightly understood, is indispensable to religious freedom in America. And notwithstanding the overheated claims to the contrary sometimes made about them, conservative religious groups in America such as the Christian Coalition do not come even within a mile of saying, or believing, anything remotely like the chilling assertions of the Hindu nationalists. The point of the comparison, then, is not only to remind readers of the dangers of religious groups whose energies are not countered by other expressions of (secular) power. It's also to highlight how far we are from having such worries in contemporary America. I make it quite explicit in places in my article that religious groups must accommodate themselves to a very strong framework of negative secularism, if they are going to make it in the 21st century. By and large they do.
Nothing in history repeats itself. The current "return to religion," if that's what's going on, is not a simple reprise of the past. Instead, it brings along with it some of the admirable features of the secularism it's displacing. That's why the term "desecularization" (which sociologists like Jose Casanova like to use) is actually a very useful term for what's going on. The religion of the 21st century in the West has passed through secularism, has absorbed its insights, but also recognized its inadequacies. The return to religion is not going to mean a return to theocracy. I think almost everyone knows that. What I've tried to provide in my article is an explanation for why this is so.
I'd also like to bring out one thing that perhaps Shulevitz missed, or just didn't have any reason to comment on. That is the thrust of the last few pages of the article. In these pages I raise the possibility that negative secularism itself requires us to make certain presuppositions about the structure of nature and of the universe, in order for us to be able to talk meaningfully about, say, human rights or human liberty. I can't rehearse all that now. But what I end up suggesting is that, just as liberalism played a necessary historical role in the past, in countering the domineering of the historic religious faiths, so we are now at a point in human history in which religion will play an indispensable role in helping us recover, and stand for, the meaning of human life, as over against a domineering secularism---a positive secularism which was genuinely liberatory in its day, but whose hyperextension may have the effect of reducing us to endlessly manipulable blobs of protoplasm. If I'm right about this, then it's yet another reason why a debate framed as the war of "secularism vs. religion" doesn't make much sense. I advocate secularism and religion, but with each of them transformed by the other's presence.
(8/17)
Reader Comments from The Fray:
Frankly, I wouldn't mind a Jewish veep or Muslim secretary of state in the least. Perhaps they would crack the stained-glass ceiling enough to let in a few nonbelievers too.
--Gilker Kimmel
(To reply, click
here.)
Just what we need, a nihilistic embrace of anything "tolerant" no matter how moronically superstitious it is. Extremist Jewish and Christian sects are actively anti-intellectual and preserve barbaric, mindless strictures that no civilized man could help but laugh at. Typical of Shulevitz' emotive nonsense, she ends by wondering if one of the worst, most primitive, backwards religions of all might be enshrined in this resurgence of religious expression. Hey, while we're at it, why not Scientologists or Astrologers? Unfortunately my guess is Shulevitz would say, "Sure, why not?"
--Brian
(To reply, click
here.)
(8/16)
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Wilfred M. McClay responds:
First, I was very gratified that Shulevitz really seemed to understand what I was getting at. The article is an attempt to move beyond stale and unhelpful "religion vs. secularism" debates, and to point out that there is a certain understanding of secularism---what I've called "negative secularism"---that deserves the support of everyone, religious and nonreligious alike. The most critical reactions I've had to the article have come from two different directions: from hard-core positive secularists who think of religion as nothing more than a scourge, and the principal source of human suffering; and hard-core religionists who believe that secularism is our principal enemy, and should therefore be given no quarter whatsoever. I don't accept either view, though I think a robust understanding of religious liberty requires us to tolerate the free public expression of both views.
I think the best way to understand all this is dialectically. We have come through a period in which Protestant Christianity has been disestablished, and that was absolutely the right thing to do. (Not only for the good of the nation, but also for the good of Protestant Christianity.) But we have in some instances gone too far, and there is a corrective movement well underway. The proscribing of all public expression of religious belief and sentiment is wrong, and unconstitutional. No one should be required to salaam before someone else's God-talk, but no one should be forbidden to engage in their own. That is what the First Amendment says. And perhaps I should add that religionists probably need to be more generous, or thick-skinned, about permitting agnostics and atheists full expressive liberties too. Similarly, your reader who expresses dismay at the suggestion that we should "embrace" all sorts of stupid superstitions needs to read the First Amendment, which does not, the last I looked, use the word "embrace." And he needs to reflect on why religious liberty is so important, why it is at the heart of any fundamental respect for the dignity of the human person, and why it therefore should be given the widest possible berth. Not absolute, but as wide as possible.
In answer to Shulevitz's query, yes, I think we are well along in the process of arriving at a negative-secularist regime in this country, although one of the goals of my article was to articulate just what such a settlement would be--because until we make the terms clear and articulate, misunderstandings will continue to abound. I respectfully disagree with her assertion that I underestimate the dangers to religious (and irreligious) minorities. I don't think so. That was the whole point of my introducing the extended discussion of India's religious wars and the problem of the Ayodhya temple. I did this to show why secularism, rightly understood, is indispensable to religious freedom in America. And notwithstanding the overheated claims to the contrary sometimes made about them, conservative religious groups in America such as the Christian Coalition do not come even within a mile of saying, or believing, anything remotely like the chilling assertions of the Hindu nationalists. The point of the comparison, then, is not only to remind readers of the dangers of religious groups whose energies are not countered by other expressions of (secular) power. It's also to highlight how far we are from having such worries in contemporary America. I make it quite explicit in places in my article that religious groups must accommodate themselves to a very strong framework of negative secularism, if they are going to make it in the 21st century. By and large they do.
Nothing in history repeats itself. The current "return to religion," if that's what's going on, is not a simple reprise of the past. Instead, it brings along with it some of the admirable features of the secularism it's displacing. That's why the term "desecularization" (which sociologists like Jose Casanova like to use) is actually a very useful term for what's going on. The religion of the 21st century in the West has passed through secularism, has absorbed its insights, but also recognized its inadequacies. The return to religion is not going to mean a return to theocracy. I think almost everyone knows that. What I've tried to provide in my article is an explanation for why this is so.
I'd also like to bring out one thing that perhaps Shulevitz missed, or just didn't have any reason to comment on. That is the thrust of the last few pages of the article. In these pages I raise the possibility that negative secularism itself requires us to make certain presuppositions about the structure of nature and of the universe, in order for us to be able to talk meaningfully about, say, human rights or human liberty. I can't rehearse all that now. But what I end up suggesting is that, just as liberalism played a necessary historical role in the past, in countering the domineering of the historic religious faiths, so we are now at a point in human history in which religion will play an indispensable role in helping us recover, and stand for, the meaning of human life, as over against a domineering secularism---a positive secularism which was genuinely liberatory in its day, but whose hyperextension may have the effect of reducing us to endlessly manipulable blobs of protoplasm. If I'm right about this, then it's yet another reason why a debate framed as the war of "secularism vs. religion" doesn't make much sense. I advocate secularism and religion, but with each of them transformed by the other's presence.
(8/17)
Reader Comments from The Fray:
Frankly, I wouldn't mind a Jewish veep or Muslim secretary of state in the least. Perhaps they would crack the stained-glass ceiling enough to let in a few nonbelievers too.
--Gilker Kimmel
(To reply, click here.)
Just what we need, a nihilistic embrace of anything "tolerant" no matter how moronically superstitious it is. Extremist Jewish and Christian sects are actively anti-intellectual and preserve barbaric, mindless strictures that no civilized man could help but laugh at. Typical of Shulevitz' emotive nonsense, she ends by wondering if one of the worst, most primitive, backwards religions of all might be enshrined in this resurgence of religious expression. Hey, while we're at it, why not Scientologists or Astrologers? Unfortunately my guess is Shulevitz would say, "Sure, why not?"
--Brian
(To reply, click here.)
(8/16)