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The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America
By Richard John Neuhaus
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1984. 280 pp. $16.95.

Lutheran pastor Richard John Neuhaus was an activist in the American civil rights movement and in the subsequent protest against his government's Vietnam War policy. Today he is director of the conservative Center for Society and Religion in New York City and a chief voice of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. His latest book deals with the fact that religion and especially Christianity have been closely related to the American democratic experience. His detailed discussion of these simple and complex relationships is instructive in terms of our life as a people and our ongoing work and nurture. Borrowing a phrase from G. K. Chesterton, he looks upon America positively as a kind of "signal community," a "nation with the soul of a church," a remarkable embodiment of democratic freedom's past and future.

From a theological perspective, Neuhaus upholds democracy as the way a fallen creation ought to operate. Because its basic presupposition is that humans and their institutions "are held accountable to transcendent purpose imperfectly discerned," democracy is built upon a foundation which consists of humility and hope. It "is the product not of a vision of perfection but of the knowledge of imperfection." Thus, democracy is very compatible with the Judeo-Christian doctrine of human nature. It includes within itself patterns and systems that check and balance individuals and groups. This is healthy because we and our institutions need to be checked and balanced in terms of our power and self-interest. Curiously, we have a close relationship both to the dove and the serpent. We thrive in democratic settings, and we need democratic settings.

Neuhaus vigorously challenges social theorists, secular historians, the media, and centers of higher learning who, in his mind, are perpetrators of a myth that America is now a secular society, having moved beyond the need for religious grounding that once provided a cohesive function. These elitist power groups, he argues, seek to define the real world apart from the values and traditions of religion, which they view with "callous indifference" and which they assume have no significant role on our public square of moral debate.

Since the American experiment is grounded in biblical religion and continues to be fed by its values, it is irresponsible and contrary to the public welfare to try to keep these perspectives out of the public square.

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America, Neuhaus points out, has over 400,000 local churches and hundreds of denominations. Although the 1970s saw more immigrants come to our shores than any previous decade, our pluralism has not delivered us into a post-Christian or secular phase of existence. More than ninety percent of our people profess belief in God and value the Judeo-Christian tradition as a provider of moral norms for personal and public life. Moreover, Neuhaus thinks the notion that we are a secular society is a precondition for totalitarianism. For us as a people, the categories of family, work, and religion are among our most revered values. Failure to recognize the importance of such values constitutes a posture that is rather non-democratic and robs the public square of the creative leaven of religious insight and moral language. Rendered empty and naked, the public square becomes an arena susceptible to totalitarianism and state-fostered civil religion.

The religious community enters the public square as persons and groups shaped by a transcendent frame of reference without which our conflict of values cannot be resolved. Thus, we should not deprive our I value-bearing" institutions of their "public status." For the health of America, the public square should welcome the contentions, conversations, and compromises of the religious community, which has much to offer when it comes to the shaping of our public virtue. Although Neuhaus does not give sufficient credit to America's mainline Protestant bodies for having made this point across the past few decades, his thesis is nevertheless important. Religion's greatest gift to America is a transcendent frame of reference, belief in God who is above both state and nation.

The new Christian right is here today, says Neuhaus, because there is great need for the presence of religiously grounded moral discourse in American public debate. The new Christian right seeks to aid this process by helping the public square to be more inclusive and by holding the American political system accountable to a transcendent truth. Religion should have an impact on the public square because politics is an inevitably moral exercise that engages critical issues dealing with right and wrong, good and evil. The state should not be divorced from culture and therefore from religious factors that are such an integral part of culture. Politics is very much a function of our culture, and religion is at the heart of our culture.

Among Neuhaus' most hard-hitting passages are those dealing with America's "mainline" churches, such as the United Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Episcopalian. While churches of the mainline used to serve as a religious legitimizer of America's world role, they can no longer be counted on to do so. Soft on totalitarianism and insensitive to their own constituencies, they are not issuing moral leadership in a vital manner. They have become disestablished forces, increasingly marginalized by siding in a non-critical and kneejerk way "with what is deemed to be liberal, progressive, avant-garde." These mainline supporters of the National Council of Churches and World

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Council of Churches have ceased serving as positive shapers of the American culture. As church leaders who have been alienated from our democratic social experiment, these arrogant liberals, leftists, and church and society bureaucrats are not offended by Marxism's historic persecution of Christian truth. They are, says Neuhaus, the nonreforming protectors of self-interest and their careers. In the meantime, America's fundamentalist and evangelical communities are being much more aggressive in providing moral leadership.

Neuhaus' conviction that the religious community should be included in the moral discourse that occurs on the public square seems appropriate. As he puts it, religiously based values can stimulate and sharpen a critical brand of patriotism in America. He presents a healthy plea for American religious forces to foster dialogue about our nation's future by using language which blends both "prophecy and patriotism," both "love and criticism." Neuhaus, however, has come up with a "litmus test" or a loyalty bond for judging who deserves to engage in the legitimizing debate about America's posture in the world. If you want to be in the debate, you should agree that "on the balance and considering the alternatives, the influence of the United States is a force for good in the world."

Perhaps here is the book's most unfortunate aspect. Neuhaus' accusation, without documentation, is that "much of mainline leadership answers No" to his litmus test, while many others are indecisive. The mainline leadership response to his proposition, he contends, "is at best equivocal." Maybe not more than one fourth of our church and society bureaucrats who relate religion to politics could say Yes. Therefore they should not have a role in redefining the American experiment. Neuhaus judges these officials to be bitter people who are no longer able to love the land they seek to change and reform.

As Neuhaus acknowledges, litmus tests, regardless of how "carefully nuanced," have their limitations. American Christians who cherish democratic systems should support visions of government that, in faith, we consider to be closer to the truth. Yet we who err and survive by forgiveness would be prudent in trying to be modest enough not to deal with the tensions created by divergent opinions on political matters by means of a loyalty oath that grants some permission to debate on the public square and relegates others less worthy to the sidelines.

The tensions caused by some Christians and even Marxists who criticize American policy both at home and abroad should be accepted as part of what it means to debate on a democratic public square. Does Neuhaus's loyalty oath serve to undermine a major tenet of "the 'vital center' of liberal democracy," to which he is pleased to be "politically devoted"? That tenet is the Reformation principle of toleration, what Reinhold Niebuhr once described as our "willingness to entertain views which oppose our own without rancor and without the effort to suppress them."

What is the role of religion on our public square? Anyone seriously

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concerned with this question must deal with Neuhaus' substantive, stimulating, and somewhat hyperbolic analysis. Whether readers support or oppose his major contentions, Neuhaus has skillfully produced a lively forum for our moral discourse regarding church-state relations and democratic values.

Dean K. Thompson
Pasadena Presbyterian Church
Pasadena, California