Religious Speech in the Public Square

Abstract

I examine the reasons often given for restricting religious language to the private domain. Despite acknowledging their force, I argue that suppressing religious speech in public conversations is inherently dangerous, suggesting that such a policy undermines mutual trust and confidence, is corrosive of individual integrity and that such marginalization of religious language deprives social discussions of vital resources. Finally I propose a set of qualities and virtues that should underpin the way that religious languages and perspectives are deployed in public so that fears about this can be overcome in service of a more harmonious and enriched level of exchange in the public sphere.     

Distracted by Religion: On Doing Bioethics in Public

The conflict between science and religion dominates public debate about bioethical issues. However, this conflict is a bad guide to the real and sometimes tragic dilemmas of bioethics. It frequently obscures important practical and theoretical differences between otherwise like-minded commentators over such questions as the relative importance of cloning versus abortion, what it means to live well while dying, and whether human dignity is best understood as equal and universal or as comparative and based on particular human excellences. In this article, the author reviews the treatments of several controversies concerning the role of religion in bioethics in the recent work of the President's Council on Bioethics and concludes that these treatments have failed to reach the real questions confronting us in bioethics.     

The Public Role of Religion: A Central-European Perspective

Abstract

Church leaders in Europe frequently lament that the environment is non-religious and unchristian. Reflecting on how the European countries which fell under Communist domination have adjusted to the post-Communist era, the paper advances the view that the situation should be characterized differently. European Christianity stands on the threshold of another of its historical metamorphoses. The continent is not simply unchristian or non-religious, but neither is not religious in a Christian way. Christianity is not the religion of present-day Europe, and at the same time European Christianity can no longer be seen as a "religion."     

Words of Wisdom,Words of Prophecy: Why and How Biblical Law Speaks in the Public Square

The study of biblical law enables us to pursue justice. Its application involves selecting from a body of discourse and emerges not only from “rules” but from narrative and worldview. It also means internalising a fixed text and improvising a faithful response. It is shaped and constrained at every point by practical wisdom. Religious beliefs should not be excluded in principle and cannot be excluded in practice from a liberal democracy. As has always been the case, communicating biblical law means recognising and surmounting difference through argument, appeal and persuasion. A key part of this communicatory strategy, whether ancient or (post)modern, is fleshing out biblical law in compelling, real-life situations. Questions of application and communication are thus closely linked. Although its application may be counter-cultural, biblical law is comprehensible when instantiated in practical action.     

The Cross or the Double-Cross: Roman Catholicism,Anti-Communism,and the Political Theology of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

The Venerable and Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen was an advocate of American Catholic patriotism and opponent to the spread of totalitarianism, especially communism. He grounded the two positions in what I call the “ecclesial foundation” in which he defined American citizenship in terms of membership in religious institutions. In Sheen's view, religious institutions provided the ultimate, spiritual ends for humankind. Therefore, the American government had to protect, above all, religious liberties at home and abroad. Totalitarian regimes, which Sheen believed sought to replace spiritual with material ends of the state, violently deprived their subjects of religious liberty and, therefore, embodied the spirit of the anti-Christ. Only the Vatican had the spiritual and moral authority to identify this spirit, and—especially after the Second World War—only America had the military and economic power to confront it. Ironically, this argument was an appropriation of the old Nativist arguments against the Vatican itself. The Nativist argument was that religious liberty of Protestant churches was the source for political authority of the American state to use against the absolute, arbitrary, foreign dictator in Rome. Sheen's appropriation and redeployment of the old narrative persuaded millions of Americans to oppose totalitarian ideologies and view, after centuries of distrust, American Catholics as loyal citizens.     

Faith before Creed: The Private and Public Religion of George Washington

George Washington's religious beliefs have long been debated by scholars, who have insisted that he was anything from a devout Anglican to a Deist. This study argues that he was neither, instead contending that Washington had Latitudinarian tendencies, and that while he believed in God, he was not otherwise particularly religious. As some with Latitudinarian affinities, he showed no preference among varying creeds or forms of worship despite his Anglican upbringing. His personal beliefs also intersected with his stance on public religion. Washington favoured broad religious liberty for Christians and non‐Christians alike, reflecting his Latitudinarianism because he believed that denomination, dogma, doctrine, and creed were insignificant, and that it was up to the individual to decide the best way to worship God.     

Sociology,Religion, and Historians Revisited: Towards an Historical Sociology of Religion

Abstract

Two great movie directors were both born in 1930. One of them, Jean-Luc Godard, revolutionized filmmaking during his 30s and declined in creativity thereafter. In contrast, Clint Eastwood did not direct his first movie until he had passed the age of 40 and did not emerge as an important director until after he was 60. This dramatic difference in life cycles was not accidental, but was a characteristic example of a pattern that has been identified across the arts: Godard was a conceptual innovator who peaked early, whereas Eastwood was an experimental innovator who improved with experience. This article examines the goals, methods, and creative life cycles of Godard, Eastwood, and eight other directors who were the most important filmmakers of the second half of the twentieth century. Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg, and François Truffaut join Godard in the category of conceptual young geniuses, while Woody Allen, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, and Martin Scorsese are classed with Eastwood as experimental old masters. In an era in which conceptual innovators have dominated a number of artistic activities, the strong representation of experimental innovators among the greatest film directors is an interesting phenomenon.     

Religion, Society, and the Historian

In a secularized age, the study of past religion encounters problems both of empathy and categorization, and the student who derives his understanding from current belief and practice may be in a worse position than the detached observer. Yet historians have never before taken religion so seriously, while wider interest in the history of Christianity is growing. "Religious History" is sometimes said to have taken the place of "Ecclesiastical History." But both disciplines flourish, and the difference between them has been overstated. Historians can learn from social scientists questions about religion which, confined within the safe boundaries of period, they have not always had to face. The social functions of religion have been threefold, religion acting as a precipitant, a bond, and a source of legitimation. It has been said (by an anthropologist) that the study of religion has recently lived off the conceptual capital of its ancestors. The understandings of the social meaning of religion advanced by three of these "ancestors," Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, are examined. Only Max Weber is found to provide helpful guidance to the social historian of religion, particularly with his key concept of "elective affinity."