Two items of interest to my recent ruminations about church/state relations have appeared on the Washington Post website. First is a commentary by Asima T. Uddin, an attorney specializing in religious liberty issues. She tackles the Swiss ban on minarets, citing it as an instance of the French concept, laïcité (alas, diacritical marks don't come easily to this blog, so the term will likely appear as laicite here on out). Distinct from our "separation of church and state," laicite positions religion as not just different than public state functions but actively dangerous, meant to be contained in private spheres and invisible/undetectable outside of such spheres. It is laicite that fuels conflicts in France currently about whether young women may wear Muslim head coverings at school.
Uddin argues that laicite backfires, producing more rather than less religious-based influence/presence in public life. From the piece:
"When faith and the faithful are denied full participation in civic life, they don't fade from it: instead, they seek alternative means to influence it. At its best, this takes the form of faith-inspired peaceful protest. At its worst, it takes the form of faith-inspired terror."
Religious right commentators (some of them, anyway) often point to countries that practice laicite as evidence of the dire ends that church/state separation policies create. Actually, I get the sense at times that some of these commentators look forward to such a faith-hostile government, awaiting with grim eagerness the day when they can martyr themselves in the name of their faith. Consider, for instance, the success of the Left Behind series and its imitators. There's an almost romantic fascination with the idea of the underground church that holds its prayer meetings on the sly or keeps its cross-shaped jewelry hidden.
Of course (and this is the point most religious right commentators gloss over), the US's tradition of church and state diverges from that of France. Any country with "In God we trust" printed on its coins or where Judeo-Christian professions of faith are obligatory for major politicians is a long way from laicite.
Laicite, Uddin notes, arose in France during the 1700s and 1800s as a means of checking the percieved influence of Roman Catholicism. Coincidentally, the other piece that caught my attention dealt precisely with the Catholic church's influence on Catholic politicians. Specifically, Joseph A. Califano, Jr. (a former cabinet member in the Johnson and Carter administrations) argues against what he calls "a sort of nuclear option"--the denial of the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who are pro-choice. Such an option was unthinkable, he insists, in previous decades.
Why, he asks, do Catholic Bishops so keen on denying Eucharist to pro-life politicians not also deny the Eucharist to pro-death penalty politicians or pro-Iraqi War politicians? Califano takes no stance on abortion himself in the piece. Rather, he contends, no politician can be expected to kowtow to any particular brand of faith-based ideological purity. To insist that politicians only make or vote for policy utterly consonant with one faith's doctrines is wrong. Yes, he concedes, politicians can and should allow their faith convictions to influence their policies, but he qualifies this concession nicely:
"But to have convictions of conscience and be guided by them is not a license to impose such convictions indiscriminately on others by uncompromisingly translating them into policy. If public policy is to serve the common good of a fundamentally just and free, pluralistic society, it must brew in a cauldron of competing values such as freedom, order, equity, justice and mercy. Public officials who fail to weigh these competing values serve neither private conscience nor public morality. Indeed, they offend both."
Nicely put, I think.
More tomorrow,
JF
No comments:
Post a Comment