Religious Talk in Public Places

Our Government Must Be Impartial in Matters of Religion

 The place of religion in politics is controversial in the United States. We Americans stand firmly against established religions. We have always been a nation of many religions, and religious freedom has always been important to us. Most of us agree that our government cannot favor one religion over another and that we should not describe ourselves as a “Christian nation.”

We also understand that our public schools should not teach religion or proselytize for any particular religion, and we have come to see that public institutions should not sponsor programs based on religious events. For example, most people today agree that a public school should not sponsor a Christmas Concert, although it may sponsor a Winter Holiday Concert. We know that public, religious observances violate the separation of church and state, and most of us also agree that a church that is exempt from taxes should not take positions for or against candidates for public office.

May Individuals Express Religious Convictions in Public, Political Contexts?

 We Americans differ strongly on the role of religious speech by individuals in the public arena. Is it acceptable for a religious person to take a public stand based on his/her religious beliefs? We are deeply divided over questions like these:

• ·         May a Catholic openly support a candidate because his/her stand on abortion agrees with that of the Catholic teachings on this subject?
• ·         Is it acceptable for ministers or rabbis to refer openly to the teachings of their religions when they support programs to help the poor?
• ·         Is a public official allowed to declare his/her religious faith openly in a public setting?

Questions like these are particularly difficult for progressives because many of us are uncomfortable with religious talk.  Many of us say that religious talk has no place in the public sphere. We say that people should engage in religious talk only in church.  

Religious People Express Their Moral Convictions in Religious Terms

 The notion of banning religious talk from the public sphere causes problems for religious people because public policy decisions are always moral decisions. They are about what we ought to do in a particular situation. We support or oppose policies because we believe deeply that they are right or that they are wrong. 

Religious people’s moral views are rooted in their religious convictions, which are at the core of their identities. Such people find it difficult to talk about moral issues without referring to their religious roots.  If we progressives say that such references are unacceptable, we are saying to those people that their whole world view is unacceptable. Worse, we appear to them to be saying that their identities are unacceptable, and when we do that, we inevitably drive them away. They cannot join us to support specific policies because we do not accept them for who they are.

We Do Not Have to Drive People Away

 We do not have to drive people away. We can position ourselves to take advantage of the split among religious Christians to build support for progressive politics in the United States, but to do that, we will have to learn to be comfortable with the way that such people talk. We will have to accept religious talk in the public arena. Doing that will inevitably lead to conflicts over boundaries. Some religious speech may be inappropriate, and some settings may be inappropriate for it, but we will be able to resolve those conflicts if we do not reject religious speech entirely.

We must also accept that a person who talks religiously does so in the context of his/her specific religious tradition. A Jew speaks of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. A Christian speaks of the gospel that Jesus Christ has come to save the world. A Muslim speaks of Allah the Gracious and Merciful.  These specific references inspire people, and we cannot really ask religious people to denature their religious speech by eliminating all references to the doctrines they hold dear.  We must take seriously our commitment to inclusiveness, which requires us to accept people whose views are very different from our own. If we want them to work with us, we must allow them to speak from their hearts and to express their commitment to our common goals in ways that seem strange to us.