“The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.” – Blaise Pascal
“One good way to end a conversation — or to start an argument — is to tell a group of well-educated professionals that you hold a political position … because it is required by your understanding of God’s will.” – Stephen Carter
The relation of religious faith to the public square, public discussion, politics, whatever you wish to call it, has varied throughout history, but one thing is fairly certain: it has almost always had some kind of influence on the decisions of governments and communities for the sake of the common good. The influence of religious faith in the public square has varied in its success. At times it has been a tremendous force for good, as seen in the efforts of William Wilberforce to abolish slavery, arguing on the grounds that colored people were equal in society due to the image of God in them. Or take Martin Luther King Jr., whose religious rhetoric drove the Civil Rights movement to great success. At other times, religious faith has been used to crush the citizens of government, as seen in the dark periods of the Medieval Ages, where the meshing of church and power led to rampant civil injustice all in the name of the Roman Catholic Church’s agenda. During times of oppressive church/state regimes, the way forward was reform or overthrow, and a renewed sense of justice, human rights and equality usually followed. These reform movements often came from within the church itself, as seen in the Protestant Reformation. But the solution to the problems religion created in the public square was never to shirk religion or religious language completely. Religion remained a powerful voice in public discussion and a motivation for just and merciful public policy up until the early 20th century. But things would soon change.
The dual rise of Secularization Theory and postmodern philosophy in the 20th century saw the beginning of a new suggestion for public policy: remove religious discourse and belief from public policy making completely. Those on the secularist side argued that the principles of reason and liberalism (not left-wing liberalism, but ideological or “Classical” liberalism) were enough to dictate public policy, and asserted that religion was soon to die out as a viable answer to the world’s needs and expansion. Those on the postmodern side, such as Richard Rorty, argued that religious discourse as a kind of “conversation stopper” in the public square, limiting discourse to unprovable, dogmatic assertions. For Rorty, a postmodernist of the finest kind, secular discourse was the most pragmatic form of doing public policy, as it avoided clashes of “metanarratives,” or overarching, cross-cultural statements about reality. Either way, the key to modern, intelligent public policy is to argue on secular grounds, and exclude religious belief as viable reason for making laws and promoting human flourishing. Arguing about real concerns such as legislation of economic policy, welfare, education guidelines and criminal punishment is all valid, as long as we’re not citing chapter and verse in the Bible, or insisting on a theological or metaphysical basis for our arguments.
Many intellectuals continue to argue for this concept, including John Rawls and Robert Audi. It all sounds so good. Value-free premises, reason as the ultimate arbitrator, and no religious divisiveness or controversy. Sure religion might have a place, but only when confined to the personal, private sphere. Only reason and non-religious dialogue can rule politics and the public sphere. But does this theory actually work? Can it? Christians have stood on the sidelines of this debate, many passively acknowledging the inevitability of a secular public square, and have found it better to join than to be beat. This is only one of the many secular/sacred dichotomies that demands attention from thoughtful Christians.
The point of this post is to address two main questions in regards to secularism and public policy. First, does secularism provide a basis for the construction and implementation of public policy? And second, does secularism actually provide a non-religious grounding for public policy, the kind of grounding it demands? If the answer to either of these questions is “no,” then secular public policy is invalid, even on its own terms, and we must seek a better path in the interaction between religion and state.
One thing should be clarified. This is a question of intellectual foundations, not of description. We are not asking the question, “Can secular people reason and make political decisions?” but rather “Can secularism provide us with the resources and motivation to make political decisions?” Public policy is contingent on questions of what is good for humanity, both individually and as a whole, what is ultimately good and evil in the world, what the purpose and meaning of human flourishing is, and how power and coercion should balance with personal freedom and individuality. We are not asking whether a secularist can have opinions about these things in the public square, but whether the worldview of secularism provides a basis for making these essential political values intelligible. If the anti-supernaturalistic assumptions of secularism cannot give us a basis for political concepts like freedom, rights and justice, then we should be open to allowing creative legislation that invokes the supernatural or the metaphysical to explain these values.
Upon reflection on these two vital questions, we will see that a secular public policy cannot work. First, secularism is incapable of making judgments about what kinds of things “ought” to be done in the public square. The magisterial principles of secular knowledge are empiricism and naturalism; knowledge can only be obtained through empirical, scientific means and the pursuit of knowledge, truth and ethics should only be confined to the closed system of nature. But secularists immediately run into problems with public policy when we consider what empiricism and naturalism can and cannot do. Empiricism is an inherently descriptive tool, only able to tell us what “is,” not what “ought” to be in any particular situation. It can help us pile up statistics, make observations about behaviors, numbers, cause and effect, but can never tell us what ought to be done with those figures. Empiricism may be able to explain in great detail what happens when an atom is split, but it has no ability to tell us whether that information ought to be used to construct atom bombs to destroy weak nations or promote study for safer nuclear power plants that promote humanity’s flourishing. Or it may tell us that there are some pretty quantitative biological differences between a human being and a tree, but it could never tell us that we therefore ought to treat only humans with such thing as “dignity,” or “mutual respect” in our legislation.
So secularism only leaves us with brute facts about the universe and physical material, with no particular reason to choose one course of action over another. The tools of empiricism and naturalism turn out to be not at all helpful in constructing or implementing any particular kind of public policy. Once the supernatural or metaphysical has been removed, all we are left with is a blind system of senseless atoms that collide and rebound, evolving into more complex formations, and such an impersonal system, no matter how accurately measured, will never give us a view into what is good, valuable and moral. Secularism can only reduce moral public policy down to pragmatism, subjectivism and statistics. But morality, and therefore just public policy, cannot be reduced to these elements. No matter how loudly secularists may cry for a just, compassionate and fair public policy, the uncaring universe stares back unmoved.
As to the second question, secularism in the public square is incapable of itself remaining free from faith-based, religious language and belief. We have already seen that secularism is unable to provide a “reason” for taking one course of action over another in public policy. How then, do secularists maintain their position? Steven D. Smith, Professor of Law at USD, has a forthcoming book entitled “The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse,” where he argues that secularists, in order to avoid an impotent public policy must smuggle in all kinds of metaphysical and religious ideals to even get off the ground:
. . . the secular vocabulary within which public discourse is constrained today is insufficient to convey our full set of normative convictions and commitments. We manage to debate normative matters anyway — but only by smuggling in notions that are formally inadmissible, and hence that cannot be openly acknowledged or adverted to.
The notions that Smith is referring to are common concepts such as, “liberty,” “justice,” or “self-realization,” that are insisted on by secularists. But these concepts have no inherent desirability or meaning except when aligned with bigger beliefs about human purpose, dignity and morality. In this sense, everyone, including the secularist, is religious. We must assume transcendent and supernatural values in order to make sense of what is “good” and “ultimate” for humanity and the world. Secularists silently smuggle these values in, but under the guise of neutral, rational ideals.
But justice for the weakest of the weak, equality, human rights, economic provision for the poor are not values that can be proved empirically. The “whys” behind these values (“Why show justice?” “Why value equality as opposed to oppression?”) are only provided under a supernatural view of the world, the very view that a secularist must assume without admitting. The secularist’s best policy director is what “works,” but what works is only derived from deeper religious commitments about what we humans are made for, how personal and communal happiness is achieved, and what is noble and right in the world. Therefore, secularists themselves are not void of religious language, and their claims begin to appear arrogant once we see that they are indeed forcing on society their own faith-based worldview and enacting public policy based on that worldview.
This post has not been an attempt to suggest a particular form of Christian interaction with government and politics, but to offer a rebuttal of the secular model of public policy. Christians should be encouraged that secular public policy is neither intellectually nor pragmatically sound, and it shows signs of already dying out. Secular theories are only one of the many spirits of the age, and Christians must form constructive and thoughtful responses to them, as well as move forward with just and virtuous suggestions to the public square.
Aaron, your argument has some fatal flaws.
“Empiricism is an inherently descriptive tool, only able to tell us what “is,” not what “ought” to be in any particular situation.”
This just violates common sense. Science has been so powerful because of it’s predictive power. If I hold a pen up and someone asked me what will happen when I let go I simply tell them the pen will drop. How can I be so confident? Well, there is this little theory we call gravity, but I don’t need to know anything about the theory or science to make such a prediction. This is what you hit on–that science is descriptive in it’s ability to explain why the pen falls–but you’re leaving out it’s ability to predict. We use this ability to send satellites into orbit and have them stay up there. That’s not guess work, but calculations based on hard science–the kind you say can be used to predict, or tell us what “ought” to be. That is just false.
And you might argue that prediction powers of science can’t tell us about “morals,” but they can. If you abuse a kid we can tell you what are the most likely outcomes and damage to that kid, and thus give a strong argument why it is bad. That is something religion really can’t do.
To your second point, I think it is mostly a word game. I don’t even know where to begin. Even if we can’t the public sphere can’t avoid religious language, as you claim, that is not a foundation to say it should be explicit the foundation for public discourse. If, in a society with multiple religions and lack of religion, we were to honor one then there really would be no public forum. As bad as you make out “secularism,” it no where compares with how bad the alternative would be. Where in the bible does it explain “why” we should strip people of the right to express their views regardless of their religion and respect them? It says to actually explicitly ignore them.
And the bible doesn’t give people a basis for ethics. It doesn’t explain the why. “Because God said so” only pushes the question to “why does God say so?” and adds “is he right?”
I like your writing style, but your arguments suffer from trying to hold onto to an idea that God and religion are somehow relevant. People are just off that because it just doesn’t work. They tried. They wanted it to work. They still do, but they know it has failed time and time again.
Curtis, thanks for joining in the discussion!
You stated the following:
“If you abuse a kid we can tell you what are the most likely outcomes and damage to that kid, and thus give a strong argument why it is bad. That is something religion really can’t do.”
I would argue that this argument is entirely invalid. It is true that science/empiricism can tell us that abusing the kid is likely to cause damage. It can even tell us what the long-term results of this damage are likely to be. However, there is nothing in science to tell us that damage is a bad thing. After all, we say that damaging a human child is “bad” and damaging cancerous cells is “good.” Science cannot make this moral judgment — it can only tell us that something is being damaged. I would argue that at least something outside of science is needed to make that moral judgment.