The current criticism of the American judiciary by the reigning power brokers of the Republican Party and Christian conservatives reflects a particular view of the relationship between the state and religion in the United States.
Those within this group seem determined to pursue an agenda that, in its most extreme form, calls for the reinvigoration of "Biblical values" as the grounding for public policy. Those opposed to this increased influence often resort to what some would call alarmist predictions regarding the establishment of one group's set of values over values of other groups.
While such predictions may seem overwrought, at their core resides a legitimate point about the nature of American democracy. The fundamental danger of this effort on the part of conservative Christians is its attempt to overturn that which is truly formative of our political and constitutional experiment.
Contrary to their claims, America's uniqueness is not that our traditions come out of a Judeo-Christian ethic, for that also applies to European democracies. Rather, at the heart of the American experiment is the belief that all Americans - regardless of national origin, region, creed, race and, yes, religion - have something in common. This commonality could be called a humanistic liberalism or what American philosopher John Dewey called the "American religion," where government's role is to protect its people against arbitrary rule and to ensure that the values and beliefs of the entire population are equal contenders in the free market of ideas.
Aside from this democratic creed, to set one particular set of values and beliefs above all others is to betray what is at the heart of American freedom and to embrace, instead, what Alexis de Tocqueville called the "tyranny of the majority."
Consequently, the agenda of those focused on keeping church and state separate is not to remove religious discourse from the public realm; it is to prevent state structures from becoming wedded to Christian doctrine and thus dominating and perhaps eventually suppressing all other visions. The all too likely effect of such a usurpation would be the entrenchment, within the state, of an exclusive and potentially oppressive government based on only one group's world view.
Separationists do not claim that our Founding Fathers desired to institute a "public atheism," but that at the center of our government should be the civic principle - not the religious principle - of freedom and tolerance. Doubters can read the U.S. Constitution.
As the founding father of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel has remarked: "To establish the state on any other principle than the civic principle - on the principle of ideology, of nationality or religion, for instance - means making one aspect of home superior to all the others, and thus reduces us as a people. . . . And that hardly ever leads to anything good."
Roy E. Overmann is an adjunct professor in the department of history, politics and law at Webster University.
PUBLIC POLICY: Don't invite arbitrary rule
By ROY E. OVERMANN
05/16/2005
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