If you buy Bruce Ledewitz's proposal for "A New Progressive Vision for Church and State" which he presented on a panel at Netroots Nation, you probably think that Jefferson's old wall of separation is doing more harm than good. And if you do, I beg to differ -- as I vigorously did with professor Ledewitz at the panel. Generally, I find that he is basing his ideas on a pile of false premises. As I told a reporter prior to Netroots Nation, "If he was making a baloney sandwich, he used the whole package."
Since then, there have been some colorful blog posts written, the panel video has been posted, and I have posted my prepared remarks. There is much to chew on for those who really want to dig into the contemporary debate on these things.
Today, the online webzine Religion Dispatches has followed up by featuring Ledewitz's report on the panel and a "round table" conversation among Religion Dispatches' co-editor Linnel Cady, Ledewitz, a professor of law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and me.
Here is a brief excerpt:
The Netroots Nation panel description:
The old liberal vision of a total separation of religion from politics has been discredited. Despite growing secularization, a secular progressive majority is still impossible, and a new two-part approach is needed—one that first admits that there is no political wall of separation. Voters must be allowed, without criticism, to propose policies based on religious belief. But, when government speaks and acts, messages must be universal. The burden is on religious believers, therefore, to explain public references like "under God" in universal terms. For example, the word "God" can refer to the ceaseless creativity of the universe and the objective validity of human rights. Promoting and accepting religious images as universal will help heal culture war divisions and promote the formation of a broad-based progressive coalition.
Frederick Clarkson: Thanks for hosting this discussion, Linell. I think these matters are integral to the functioning, the advance, and indeed the survival of Constitutional democracy. But I think that in order to give them the kind of attention they merit in light of the particular challenges of our time, we need to begin at a different place than Bruce proposes.
First, the general ideas of "religion and public life" and "separation of church and state," while related, are primarily different matters. I think we risk confusion and distortion of the important issues at stake and our ability to discuss them in meaningful ways if we conflate them. So let me begin by trying to sort it out a bit.
I think that those who have bought into and advocate, as you put it, a "separation of religion and secular public life" are relatively few and in any case, of little actual consequence in our national life. I thought that maybe we had dispensed with this argument in the wake of Jim Wallis’ book God’s Politics in which he claimed that "secular fundamentalists" and "the secular left" were a tremendous problem on a par with the religious right. Wallis and his supporters have been repeatedly invited, nay, challenged to supply actual evidence in support of such claims, but none has been forthcoming. Bruce made a similar claim in announcing our panel at Netroots Nation, stating: "The old liberal vision of a total separation of religion from politics has been discredited." Since there is no such liberal vision, it seems to me that saying it has been discredited is more of an acknowledgement that it never existed in the first place. Let’s resist trying to solve problems said to be associated with a broad phenomenon that no one can document or even describe.
But allow me to briefly expand on a deeper problem Bruce referenced in his report on our panel: This is an internalization of that old-time framing of the religious right itself; and a peculiar adaptation of their claim that liberals are godless communists, or witting or unwitting agents thereof. Rightist commentators like Bill O’Reilly blow this dog whistle all the time—slyly referring to "secular progressives" and "the secular left," as though progressives were solely secular while conservatives have God on their side.
Linguist George Lakoff has famously observed that we hamstring ourselves in communicating our values if we adopt the framing of the arguments of those who do not share them. So let’s not.
Let’s also consider that there are many non-religious conservatives in public life—notably, many of the followers of such influential thinkers as Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss. Additionally, there are obviously many religious progressives in public life, and there always have been. The false frame breaks down in light of the compelling evidence of facts.
As for the wall of separation of church and state as an authoritative way of discussing the establishment clause of the First Amendment—yes, let’s keep the wall high and strong. As Sandra Day O’Connor put it: "Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?"