What is the place of religious expression in our society?

What are the rules that should govern how believers and non-believers deal with each other in shared institutions and in society at large? The issue was raised by reader David H., and he got a reply from me he may not have expected. He wrote:

I am most fortunate to have found your site, and very thankful for your efforts. I especially thank you for not participating in a recent (and not only ugly, but ultimately suicidal) phenomenon among “right-wing” bloggers and writers—rising hostility toward Christianity and Christians. Here is one of many recent examples. [The blog entry attacks a high school valedictorian whose speech was cut off when she began thanking Jesus for her good grades.]

How this “erudite, conservative intellectual” or one of his commenters (who professes to be Christian and says he/she would like “to slap that girl”!) plans to stave off the leftist/Islamic annihilation of Western Civilization is beyond me (although he must be a “good guy” as he says twice how “tolerant” he is of religious types). Have you noticed how chic the “right-wing atheist” has become? Or how aggressively anti-Christian? The desire to banish the Christian Right from politics (I’m Serbian Orthodox BTW) will result in the death of the “right” and the triumph of collectivism (yes, Ayn Rand, Christians have often fought and died for your right to hate us).

I apologize if that became a rant—it disgusts me to be expected to “toe the line” and then be attacked by the “right.” My main point here is, you have won me over when almost daily I cross off the name of yet another “right” wing website that insults my religion. Thank you for being a true intellectual and attacking the problems that will kill us and our great civilization, rather than assaulting a Christian girl who dares to profess her faith.

LA replies:

Thank you very much.

However, the issues raised in the blog entry you sent me by “Kim du Toit,” the atheist conservative, are tricky, and I can’t disagree with him entirely. (By the way, we know that “Kim” is a he despite his female name because he posts pictures of his ideal of female beauty.) He says he’s not an enemy of religion who seeks to remove all religious symbols from society. He says what specifically offends him is when people intrude their religious beliefs into a setting that is not a religious setting, for example, a high school valedictorian giving a speech attributing her good grades to Jesus. I think there’s something to be said for this. I don’t have this all worked out (and our society certainly doesn’t have it worked out), but it seems to me that there are ways of bringing religion into the common space that are acceptable, and ways that are intrusive.

When I say this I am not dealing with the liberal double standard whereby every kind of expression is permitted except religious expression. If that is the situation in this school, if witchcraft and homosexuality can be promoted by students, but religion cannot, then obviously that is wrong and religion must be allowed full expressive rights. But I am not assuming that radical liberal context. I am assuming a more or less sane school or society that that has reasonable common standards, and I’m asking, how would such a society deal with this problem? And it seems to me that in such a context “du Toit” would not be unreasonable in objecting to such a speech by a valedictorian.

At the same time, he takes his secularist position too far when he says:

“but I’m going to say this once, and once only: your faith is a personal issue. Faith is something which you may have in common with others, but which should not be talked about except with others who share your beliefs.”

That’s totally unacceptable. That would mean that religious people cannot bring their religious beliefs and perspective into the public square at all.

So, what is the dividing line between what I’m calling a reasonable position, that a valedictorian should not give a speech thanking Jesus for her good grades, and what I’m calling an unreasonable position, that religious people must not talk about religion except with others who share their beliefs?

Maybe it has to do with the idea of deference. Among the Rules Of Civility that George Washington copied down when he was a boy, is the rule that we should not speak in company without first giving some sign of respect for those present. Maybe this can be used as a general principle. When we’re in “mixed company,” consisting of people who share and people who don’t share our religious beliefs, we shouldn’t just sound off about our beliefs as though everyone in the room shares them; we show deference for our companions who do not believe. Once we acknowledge respectfully that our listeners don’t necessary share our beliefs, we can then talk about them in an appropriate way. Atheists are under the same rule. I have friends who are atheists. I have no problem with atheists as human beings, so long as they do not show hostility toward religion, specifically Christianity. If an atheist says, “I just don’t believe in God, I see no reason to believe in God,” I have no problem with that person. But an atheist who shows contempt for religion or God or Christianity is unacceptable to me.

For example, a couple of years ago I was talking with an older conservative I have known for years, who, when the subject of belief in God happened to come up, said, “Of course I don’t believe in God.” If he had said, “I don’t believe in God,” I would not have been offended. But when he said, “Of course, I don’t believe in God,” I was offended. The “of course“ implied that the very idea of God is ridiculous, and that everyone, including me and another conservative who was present, agreed with this. Astonishingly, this was a lifelong conservative who had to know that many of his fellow conservatives are religious; indeed the first time I met him socially it was at the home of a conservative religious Christian, whom he was personal friends with. So he had to know that many of his fellow conservatives were believing Christians. Yet he was so absorbed in his own atheism that he either did not take in this obvious fact or didn’t care. In brief, he showed no deference to others who are religious. He imperiously assumed that his own, atheistic view was the only possible acceptable view. I was so offended by this I had no wish to speak to him again.

Here’s another example: people, including “conservatives,” who in recent years have begun routinely referring to America as a “secular” society. Now this is just unacceptable. Secular means having nothing to do with God. But the common understanding of America from the beginning was that we are a nation under God. This doesn’t require non-believers to go around making obeisances to religion, but it does require they not seek to redefine America as a secular country per se. When they do that, they are obviously not showing deference to America’s religious dimension and to religious people. And when you get into discussions with such people, you find that they really do argue that America had nothing to do with religious from the start. Such people are enemies and must simply be opposed. That is why I opposed so strongly the secularist anti-Islam manifesto back in February, and why I criticized Robert Spencer’s comments describing our society as secular. (Note: Spencer insists this is something he only said on one or two occasions.)

Also please note that my above argument assumes that America is not simply a liberal “level playing field” where all beliefs are treated under exactly the same rules. I am assuming that pro-religious assumptions are favored, at least to a certain extent. Once they cease to be favored, then there is really nothing standing in the way of the atheist campaign to redefine our whole country and civilization as “secularist.”

At the same time, I am not for automatically favoring the religious over the irreligious. Our society has a religious basis and character, and that must be deferred to. But our society does not require religion, and that must also be deferred to. (Whether that should be the case is another question; I am dealing with America more or less as it has historically existed and still exists.) The bottom line is that the rule of deference goes both ways. If a high school student who is a devout Christian talks in her valedictorian speech about “Jesus did this for me,” and “Jesus did that for me,” she is assuming by her behavior that everyone in her audience shares her beliefs. There is something offensive in that. In “mixed company,” in an institution that is not specifically a religious institution, we need to find a way to express ourselves that does not assume that totally different views from our own don’t exist.

This is obviously not a complete treatment of how to deal with this very difficult problem, but perhaps it’s a beginning.

- end of initial entry -

Stewart W. writes:

I was just reading your entry on this topic, and I am reminded of that silly, but surprisingly conservative movie “Blast from the Past” starring Brendan Fraser. It strikes me that your description of the proper way to discuss religious beliefs in “mixed” settings can simply be summed up in one word: Manners. To quote,

“He said, good manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn’t know that, I thought it was just a way of acting all superior. Oh and you know what else he told me?…I know, I mean I thought a “gentleman” was somebody that owned horses. But it turns out, his short and simple definition of a lady or a gentleman is, someone who always tries to make sure the people around him or her are as comfortable as possible.”

Thanks for all of your very hard work and excellent insight.

LA replies:

Thank you for this. Yes. How many of our problems would be solved by something this simple. The trouble is, liberalism as a matter of principle bans manners, when it makes self-expression the ruling value.

Jan G. writes

Though I sympathize with the tendency of your entry on the place of religious expression in today’s society, I feel there is something dangerous in your position.

Of course I agree that we should try to be courteous and inoffensive towards each other’s sincere and fundamental beliefs. But I don’t think that that should mean that Christians (or other religious people) should not mention the Holy in the presence of a “mixed” public.

I leave out the mean insulting by atheists of Christians (and religious people in general) which they regard as OK, while they consider mere mentioning the transcendent (without willful insulting tone) offensive. This is just horrid and must be opposed in a straightforward way.

But here in Europe you see the dangerous tendency that atheists want to establish atheist or agnostic humanism as the common ground and religious belief as something private.

The thinking is: well, both of us belief in humanism, you add God, I don’t. So let us stick to what we have in common, when we are together in public places. And they try to enforce this legally.

But the problem is: I don’t belief in humanism. I don’t consider humanism as a common ground I share with atheists. I grant atheist humanists the right to belief in it and to express it in public, but I think their belief is deeply erroneous. And so I say to my atheist friends: I grant you your belief system, but I don’t share it. To me the belief in the Transcendent is essential, without it humanism has no core, will become meaningless and in the end become more debasing than uplifting. But we can agree to disagree, and try to go on with mutual respect. You from your belief, I from mine.

But in the public institutions Christians should not let themselves be intimidated by atheists by this way of thinking. In the end it would simply mean that atheism would become the only allowed publicly to be expressed belief. “Not mentioning God” is the way to go, and the love of God will again become “the love that dare not speak its Name,” just as it was under Communism and is becoming rapidly like that in contemporary Western Europe.

I never shrink from mentioning God as my fundamental source of inspiration on a public occasion with a mixed public. But I do say: “To me” or “for me” the fundamental inspiration is.. etc. In that way I acknowledge that not all will share this with me and that I don’t want to impose this on them.

But I certainly will never back down mentioning God as my ultimate source of trust and belief.

I claim the right to express publicly my fundamental beliefs, respectfully but wholeheartedly, just as I grant that right to others.

The moment the law forbids me to do this I will leave Holland.

Respectfully,
Jan G.

LA replies:

I don’t know where you disagree with me. I never said that Christians should not express their beliefs in public. The question is how they are to do this, and I laid out two paradigms. The first paradigm is a society under radical liberalism, such as today’s Netherlands, where there is no decent common order, where anti-God secular liberalism is the official public religion, and Christians are not supposed to avow their beliefs at all. I said that under those circumstance, Christians should insist on expressing themselves as freely as the secular humanists do.

The second paradigm is a more sane, more traditionalist society, as America was up to the 1960s. What should the rules for religious or secularist expression be in such a society? And I suggested deference and manners.

Notice that a situation guided by deference and manners only becomes possible in a society where there is a majority culture that, at least to some degree, has a substantive allegiance to religion. The authority given to religion is open and aboveboard, and so the power of religion can also be rationally contained, for example, in protecting the rights of non-believers. By contrast, in a radical liberal society that formally denies transcendent truth, the rule of deference becomes impossible. Why is this? Because the liberal dominant culture claims to exercise no authority or preferences as to different truth claims, while in reality it treats its favored, liberal truth claims as absolute and suppresses all expressions of the transcendent. Since the power of the radical liberal regime is hidden, that power cannot be contained within the ordinary operations of the society. Such a regime is in bad faith with its society. The only option is to wage cultural and religious war against it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 21, 2006 08:33 PM | Send