| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
02 Oct 2005 03:37:38 PM |
| Object: |
One Nation Divided by God |
WEB EXCLUSIVE:
One Nation Divided by God
September 30, 2005 Episode no. 905
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week905/exclusive.html
[excerpt]
One Nation Divided by God
by Benedicta Cipolla
Church-state issues are at the forefront of American political and cultural
debate as the Supreme Court begins a new session with a new chief justice
on October 3. New York University law professor Noah Feldman has stepped
into the fray with a book, DIVIDED BY GOD: AMERICA'S CHURCH-STATE PROBLEM
-- AND WHAT WE SHOULD DO ABOUT IT (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), that
tries to reconcile the two sides of the divide most vociferously opposed to
each other. He calls them "the legal secularists" and "the values
evangelicals."
Feldman offers a historical analysis of how both groups have failed to
ensure full inclusion of all citizens. He critiques legal secularists (who,
while they may be religious themselves, believe government should be
strictly secular) for excluding "citizens who draw heavily on their
religion for public guidance," and values evangelicals (who insist on the
direct relevance of traditional moral and religious values to political
life but who may or may not be evangelical Christians themselves) for
assuming an "acceptance of others' beliefs that many religious believers
cannot accept without sliding into relativism."
According to Feldman, legal secularists should allow greater latitude for
public religious discourse and symbolism, and values evangelicals should
abandon their support of state funding for religious institutions and
activities. "Such a solution would both recognize religious values and
respect the institutional separation of religion and government as an
American value in its own right," he writes.
Some legal scholars wonder how feasible Feldman's compromise would be.
"This is about power on a battlefield, and I don't see anyone giving up
that battlefield voluntarily," says Marci A. Hamilton, a church-state
scholar at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and the author
of GOD VS. THE GAVEL: RELIGION AND THE RULE OF LAW. "Government needs to be
restrained from joining forces with any particular religious group."
Feldman says believers have every right to influence political discourse,
although religious reasoning should never become a "conversation stopper."
While he suggests allowing more religious symbols in the public square,
such as Nativity scenes on a town green, he would prohibit the use of
government money to promote such displays. Individuals and groups have a
right, he says, to argue for their views as long as the state guarantees
all citizens an equal right to do so. "By contrast," he writes, "when the
state funds programs and institutions, it acts as a unified actor in
controlling limited resources."
His proposal rankles some who worry that allowing more religious symbols
amounts to endorsing a particular religion, a view that draws on a 1984
opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and advocated since then by
other justices. "Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are
outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying
message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the
political community. Disapproval sends the opposite message," O'Connor
wrote.
But Feldman believes that because everyone has the right to recognition of
their religious symbols, endorsement per se is not exclusionary -- a
position that raises some concerns about minority faith traditions.
"I worry pragmatically about its success," says Chuck McDaniel, visiting
assistant professor at the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies
at Baylor University. "He's advocating ensuring religious symbolism in the
public square, but how do you ensure religious pluralism, that the various
faith groups are accurately represented in that symbolism?"
For McDaniel, allowing government to promote religious symbols or religious
speech results in a dangerous intermingling of church and state, even if no
public funds are utilized. The average person walking by a plaque of the
Ten Commandments donated to the town hall by a church, for example, might
not realize that his tax dollars did not support the plaque.
Feldman responds that the only fundamental outcome for someone whose belief
system does not include the Ten Commandments would be a reminder of his
minority status. And for Feldman, minorities require no constitutional
shield from this fact, as long as they are subject to neither coercion nor
discrimination.
Raised an Orthodox Jew (he says he now considers himself
"post-denominational") in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Feldman attended a
nearby yeshiva day school for 12 years but lived in a neighborhood
dominated by Irish and Italian Catholics. "I was brought up to have a
certain sense of not feeling threatened by being a religious minority," he
says in an interview. "We didn't feel bad about it. Being reminded you are
a religious minority is not an inherently oppressive thing."
"I think he misunderstands the power of symbolism and the kinds of harm
religious minorities would indeed suffer," says Bette Novit Evans,
professor of political science at Creighton University. "It goes back to
[Justice] O'Connor's sense of exclusion, the sense that someone is less of
a citizen. It's an intangible discrimination. I think that's absolutely a
violation of the establishment clause."
Feldman is optimistic -- some say overly so -- about the effects of
immigration and religious diversity on Americans' acceptance of
non-Christian religious symbols. Minority religious groups, however, have
only begun to claim equal footing in the U.S. religious spectrum, and
outside of a diverse community like Boston, where Feldman grew up,
Americans may be less accepting. In a 2004 Auburn University poll, 69
percent of respondents supported Ten Commandments displays in schools and
other public settings, while only 29 percent supported displaying
non-Christian symbols.
Kathleen Moore, an associate law professor at the University of California
at Santa Barbara who has written on Muslim immigrants, says that because of
concerns over terrorism, Muslims are just beginning to make their presence
felt in the public square. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and
other Muslim organizations, for example, have donated Qur'ans to state
courts for Muslim witnesses and jurors to use when being sworn in. In late
July, the ACLU filed a suit in North Carolina after two judges said the
Christian Bible was the only religious text that could be used.
With more recognition of minority religious groups in American public life,
though, comes more scrutiny. "Once Muslim practices are put under the
microscope, then they also have to be subject to criticism from
nonmembers," Moore says.
As part of his faith in pluralism, Feldman believes such criticism and
free-flowing debate can only help the country. But what happens when that
debate moves from the public square into government offices?
"The things he finds troubling on the funding side I find equally troubling
on the expression side," says Melissa Rogers, visiting professor of
religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School.
[end of excerpt]
**************************************************************
Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
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