JULY 2005

BEYOND THE NAKED PUBLIC SQUARE

It is July. Another hot, humid July in coastal Carolina. And the Fourth of July, the annual celebration of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, presents an excellent opportunity for Christians in America to consider our country.

In addition, St. Peter’s United Methodist Church is showing C-SPAN’s recent, three-hour interview with Reverend Richard John Neuhaus. (On the Sundays of July 3 and July 10 at 6:00 p.m., the second and the third hours of the Neuhaus interview will be shown. A brief discussion will follow each hour-long segment, and light refreshments will be served.) Rev. Neuhaus is a Roman Catholic priest who has been writing and speaking on Church-and-society issues for over 40 years. In 1984, his book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Eerdmans), was first published.

Given the time of the year and the current Sunday evening programs at St. Peter’s Church, this is a good time to discuss Neuhaus’ idea of "the naked public square."

First, a funny little story. After The Naked Public Square appeared, Duke Divinity School scheduled Rev. Neuhaus for a speaking engagement. Publicizing the speech, Duke ran an advertisement with all the details of the coming event. Duke’s ad mistakenly renamed Neuhaus’ book Naked in the Public Square. Needless to say, Rev. Neuhaus did not conform his appearance to the erroneous title. (Once again, the importance of proofreading is underlined...)

In 1984 and in 2005, Rev. Neuhaus sees the problem of the naked public square in American society. According to Neuhaus, the naked public square is what results when religion is denied free and full participation in the great conversations of American public life.

In contemporary American life, there are prestigious, well-known, and well-funded organizations that are attempting to silence the Church’s voice in public life. The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way are three such outfits. They are committed to building a wall of separation between the Church and the society that is high enough to keep religion out of public affairs and into only private matters. Before citizens enter the public arena for deliberation and debate, such organizations demand that they check their religion -- especially if it happens to be more traditional -- at the door. This creates the naked public square. And this is happening in a country that acknowledges, in its founding documents and principles, God and liberty.

Evidence of the naked public square is all over the place. Some public schools, elementary and secondary, are hostile to all forms of prayer and to all expressed interest religion. Some politicians attack any mention of God in public and any public policy proposal that is related to religion. The mainstream media routinely neglects or misinterprets important religion stories. Colleges and universities encourage the expression of the most outlandish opinions, but disallow the public statement of serious Christian perspectives. The courts seem to rule routinely in secularizing directions. And on and on it goes.

So, what is to be done about the naked public square? According to Rev. Neuhaus, the goal should not be to overwhelm the public square with religion. American democracy should not aim to become an American theocracy. Instead, the American experiment in ordered liberty should open itself anew to the voices of religion in the public arena. These religious voices, if they are wise, will state their cases in mostly moral terms. Since Scriptural quotations are not usually persuasive to non-believers, believers are most effective when staking out their public proposals in the language of morality. Everybody understands the moral claims of justice and injustice, right and wrong, truth and falsehood -- even if they do not agree with them.

Centuries ago Aristotle stated that politics, in its highest form, involves free people in deliberating and debating how they ought to order their life together. This Aristotelian understanding of politics includes religious voices and their moral claims in the great public conversations of our time and place. Therefore, this Aristotelian understanding of politics insists that society get beyond the naked public square -- and beyond its discrimination against religion, beyond its lack of freedom, beyond its injustice.

Again, the current challenge, according to Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, is to get beyond the naked public square.