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Volf, “A Public Faith”

As America heads into another presidential election cycle (do they ever really end?), a new book by Yale theologian Miroslav Volf evaluates the proper role of religion, especially Christianity, in public life. In A Public Faith (Brazos 2011), Volf rejects both a coercive Christianity that would seek to dominate society and an idle Christianity that would retreat completely to a private space. He advocates a middle way for Christians in our religiously pluralistic culture, a “creative engagement” with the world. The publisher’s description follows.

Debates rage today about the role of religions in public life. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, various religions come to inhabit the same space. But how do they live together, especially when each wants to shape the public realm according to the dictates of its own sacred texts and traditions? How does the Christian faith relate in the religious pluralism of contemporary public life?

While Volf argues that there is no single way Christian faith relates to culture as a whole, he explores major issues on the frontlines of faith today: 1) In what way does the Christian faith come to malfunction in the contemporary world, and how should we counter these malfunctions? 2) What should a Christian’s main concern be when it comes to living well in the world today? and 3) How should we go about realizing a vision for human flourishing in relation to other faiths and under the roof of a single state?

Covering such timely issues as witness in a multifaith society and political engagement in a pluralistic world, this compelling book highlights things Christians can do to serve the common good.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Merry Christmas, Mr. President

At the lighting of the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in Washington last week (that’s last year’s tree on the left), President Obama wished Americans a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season. His remarks, in part, were quite sectarian:

More than 2,000 years ago, a child was born to two faithful travelers who could find rest only in a stable, among the cattle and the sheep.  But this was not just any child.  Christ’s birth made the angels rejoice and attracted shepherds and kings from afar.  He was a manifestation of God’s love for us.  And He grew up to become a leader with a servant’s heart who taught us a message as simple as it is powerful:  that we should love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

That teaching has come to encircle the globe.  It has endured for generations.  And today, it lies at the heart of my Christian faith and that of millions of Americans.  No matter who we are, or where we come from, or how we worship, it’s a message that can unite all of us on this holiday season. . . .  And this holiday season, let us reaffirm our commitment to each other, as family members, as neighbors, as Americans, regardless of our color or creed or faith.  Let us remember that we are one, and we are a family.

Our readers in Europe (and Rhode Island) might find the first paragraph, which could easily have come from an evangelical preacher, a bit shocking, but official statements like this are very much a part of the American tradition. Did the President violate the Establishment Clause? I hardly think so, even under the endorsement test, given the context of his remarks and the fact that he coupled the sectarian reference with a more universal message of good will to everyone, regardless of creed — a message that is part of the Christmas story, too.   (H/T: First Things).

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“Big Mountain Jesus”

Yet another religious display case, this time from Big Mountain, Montana.  For more than 50 years, the Knights of Columbus has maintained a six-foot tall statue, “Big Mountain Jesus,” as a tribute to World War II veterans who told of seeing similar shrines while fighting in Italy. The statue is on public land administered by the US Forest Service. In response to a complaint from the Freedom from Religion Foundation that the  statue violates the Establishment Clause, the Forest Service told the Knights the statue could not remain. This decision caused a public outcry, and the Forest Service is now reconsidering. One possible solution is a land swap, in which the Forest Service would give the 25 x 25 foot parcel on which the statue stands to a nearby ski resort in exchange for another piece of real estate.

This dispute is very similar to Salazar v. Buono, the Mojave Desert Cross case from 2010, the last occasion on which the Court addressed religious displays on public property. Salazar involved a Latin cross erected on public land by a private group as part of a war memorial; when lower courts ruled the cross unconstitutional, the government executed a land swap to convey the memorial to private parties. Procedural complications made Salazar rather narrow, though, and it doesn’t give too much guidance here. Quite apart from Salazar, the Court’s jurisprudence on public religious displays is famously unpredictable. Under some versions of the endorsement test, “Big Mountain Jesus” is pretty clearly unconstitutional. But the Court doesn’t always apply the endorsement test, and Justice Kennedy’s plurality opinion in Salazar indicates that even a sectarian display, in the context of a longstanding war memorial, may be constitutional. The Forest Service plans to announce its decision next year.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Keeping Thanks in Thanksgiving

This Thursday, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, a national holiday that commemorates a meal the Pilgrims shared with their Native American neighbors in the Plymouth colony almost 400 years ago. It is, at least in origin, a religious holiday; the “thanks” are being “given” to God. Yet Thanksgiving does not cause the dissension that official Christmas commemorations sometimes do in America, probably because it is not clearly tied to a particular faith tradition.

Starting with George Washington, American Presidents customarily have issued Thanksgiving Day proclamations, although the secular-minded Thomas Jefferson famously declined. Traditionally, Presidents call on Americans — to quote one of Bill Clinton’s proclamations — “to express heartfelt thanks to God for our many blessings.” Separationist purists object to this sort of thing, which may violate some versions of the Supreme Court’s endorsement test, but the proclamations really do fall within the American tradition of public religious expression.

Last week, President Barack Obama issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation for 2011. In many respects, including its references to God, it’s quite traditional. In one respect, though, it’s not.  In addition to thanking God, President Obama encourages us to “thank each other” for the blessings we enjoy. A subtle redefinition of the holiday? An example of a new secularism in America? I’m not sure; but I do wonder if this idea of appreciating one another will eventually displace the original, religious meaning of the holiday, much as the celebration of family and friends has displaced, for many, the original meaning of Christmas. Not that I object to expressing appreciation to other people. In fact, in the spirit of the President’s proclamation: Thanks, everyone. You know who you are.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

If anyone calls, Say I am blockading St. Paul’s

In a sure sign of the impact of globalization, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to Europe. In London, the protests have centered on St. Paul’s Cathedral (right), an impressive, if slightly sterile, architectural wonder that Sir Christopher Wren designed in the 17th Century (you may remember the school rhyme about Sir Christopher quoted above). The protestors have not targeted St. Paul’s to protest the Church of England. St. Paul’s sits in London’s financial district, the City of London. So protestors have erected a tent city at the entrance to the church. It’s a pretty obvious location, if you want to send a signal to financiers.

The problem is that the tent city blocks access to the church, and at least some clergy want the protestors to leave. St. Paul’s commenced an eviction action against the protestors last month, but that has led to what the New York Times describes as “a leadership crisis” within the Church of England. Some Anglican clergy support the protestors; two leading priests at St. Paul’s resigned this week over the lawsuit. Following intervention by the Anglican Bishop of London, St. Paul’s has suspended the lawsuit to see if it and the protestors can reach some kind of agreement.

As a gesture of good will, perhaps, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, yesterday expressed sympathy for the protestors’ aims and suggested some legal reforms. The archbishop endorsed a Pontifical Council’s call last week for higher taxes on financial transactions and for the restructuring of banks that have received public bailout funds (discussed by my CLR Forum colleague Marc DeGirolami here). The Pontifical Council’s proposals, the archbishop said, should be a starting point for discussion of serious legislative reform. Whatever else they have done, the protestors at St. Paul’s do seem to have succeeded in getting more high-ranking clergy to inject religious views into public policy debates. – MLM

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The Personhood Amendment and Pragmatism

From the New York Times, a report on a proposed constitutional amendment in Mississippi that would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person. As the Times points out, the Personhood Amendment would effectively make abortion, as well as contraceptive methods like the morning-after pill that prevent the uterine implantation of a fertilized egg, a form of murder under state law. According to the Times, the amendment’s supporters speak in frankly religious terms. One is quoted as saying that the Amendment is “an opportunity for people to say that we’re made in the image of God.”

A couple of points. First, notwithstanding the Rawlsian critique, theological arguments like this are actually fairly rare in American politics, for understandable reasons. As a practical matter, if you want to persuade people in a pluralistic society, you’ve got to make arguments that appeal to different religious and ideological commitments; you’ve got to speak in an idiom that includes rather than excludes. (This may not be the case in Mississippi, concededly, where the amendment is popular and has the support of both the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates). This explains why the right-to-life movement in America tends not to speak in strictly theological terms, but to rely on arguments from reason and, lately, embryonic Read more

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Another Ten Commandments Case

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding religion in America’s public schools are widely disregarded.  No matter how many times the Court rules that officially-sponsored school prayers are unconstitutional, for example, the prayers continue.  The same pattern holds with regard to public Ten Commandments displays – though here, the Court bears much of the blame.  The Court has issued three decisions on public Ten Commandments displays over the past three decades, but they turn on very specific facts and fail to announce an easy principle.  For example, in two decisions issued on the same day in 2005, the Court held that a display of the Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse was unconstitutional, because reasonable observers would perceive an endorsement of religion, but that a display of the Commandments on the Texas State Capitol grounds was constitutional, because, well, the display had secular elements and hadn’t seemed to bother people.  One could forgive local officials for being confused.

A new Ten Commandments case has arisen in Giles County, Virginia, where the ACLU is suing the local school board in federal court for ordering that the Commandments be placed in the lobby of a local high school.  The school board argues that it has displayed the Commandments along with other historical documents, like the Declaration of Independence, that show that the school is not endorsing religion as such.  But the Supreme Court has been particularly suspicious of displays of the Commandments in public schools, and the facts suggest that, as in the Kentucky case, officials in Giles County surrounded the Commandments with secular documents only after some parents complained Read more

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Sukkahs in TriBeCa

Tonight, according to the New York Times, the Community Board for New York’s neighborhood of TriBeCa (if the Times spells it that way, so will we) votes on whether to allow a Jewish group to erect a sukkah, a ritual hut associated with the Jewish autumn holiday of Sukkot, in a neighborhood park. It’s not clear how the Board will vote.  A few members apparently have concerns about allowing religious symbols like the sukkah in a public park.  As a legal matter, the sukkah is probably acceptable.  Once the state opens up a public forum for private speech, it cannot discriminate on the basis of content. The state must treat religious and non-religious speech equally — and it seems that the city does allow private speech in Duane Park.  Also, although the Supreme Court’s case law on religious displays is famously unpredictable, past decisions suggest that a private group may erect a religious display on public property as long as reasonable observers would not conclude that the state had endorsed the group’s religious message.  So it might be a good idea for Chabad, the group seeking permission for the sukkah, to include some sort of disclaimer that makes clear that the sukkah is not an official city structure.  However the Board decides, this case could well reach the courts. — MLM

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Paris Bans Prayer in Streets

Here’s an under-reported story: starting this month, Paris has banned praying in the streets. The ban apparently results from concerns about crowds routinely overflowing mosques and blocking traffic during Friday prayers. Surprisingly, from an American perspective, the  government is not justifying the ban as a neutral time, place, and manner restriction applicable to all public gatherings.  Rather, according to news reports, the government is justifying the ban as a necessary restriction on religious expression as such. Public prayer “hurts the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens,” Interior Minister Claude Guéant is quoted as saying. “Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism.” The Minister vows that force will be used on Muslims — and adherents of other faiths — who violate the new rule.

I wonder whether the Minister is being quoted out of context. Although it’s certainly reasonable to keep the streets clear, it doesn’t seem reasonable to single out religious gatherings in particular. And, notwithstanding the Minister’s comments, I’m not sure that French secularism, or laïcité, requires such a ban. Laïcité is a complex concept, but both the Conseil d’État and the Conseil Constitutionnel have indicated that, as a legal matter, laïcité does not generally require bans on public religious expression. (For helpful discussions of laïcité as a legal concept, see CLR’s recent symposium, Laïcité in Comparative Perspective, in the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies). Wouldn’t it have made more sense to ban all crowds that block public streets without a permit? One irony: notwithstanding the concern for secularism, the government is allowing one large Muslim congregation that was blocking the streets to use a public fire station for prayers until the congregation can build a bigger mosque. — MLM

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Excluding Religion from NYC’s 9/11 Commemoration, cont.

A follow-up to last week’s post about excluding clergy from NYC’s official 9/11 commemoration.   The city explained that it was excluding clergy because the event was for victims’ families and there were limits to how many people the city could accommodate.  Some observers, though, believed that the city was in fact trying to avoid the “divisiveness” that clergy-led prayers would create.  Others argued the city’s decision reflected a basic hostility to religion; Mayor Bloomberg lent some credibility to that argument on Friday, when he remarked that a memorial service with prayers and religious leaders would be like the government forcing religion “down people’s throats.”

The commemoration took place yesterday.  Clergy were not present, but prayer and scripture readings were part of the program after all.  In fact, the religious references were even more sectarian than many clergy, who are accustomed to presiding at interfaith services like this, might have provided.  President Obama read Psalm 46, a hymn to “the God of Jacob,” in its entirety.  Former Mayor Giuliani read from Ecclesiastes, explaining that “we need” the perspective that comes from “the words of God” expressed in that book.  (Actually, they’re the words of “the Preacher,” but even so).  Were the President and the former mayor forcing faith on anyone?  The religious references, so much a part of the American tradition at events like these, appeared to cause no disturbance at all.   – MLM