Church and State

The conflict over judicial nominees, along with many other contentious issues in our society, revolves around the role of religion in public life. One of the more thoughtful posts I've read on the role of religion in public life was posted by Marc Comtois at Anchors Rising. Comtois links to and quotes from a recent essay, the Deist Minimum, by the estimable Avery Cardinal Dulles, whose father was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

While the essay is too long to attempt any synopsis here, the Cardinal is concerned with demonstrating that Thomas Jefferson, whose Deism was the most pronounced of any of the Founders, still understood that religion was necessary for the preservation of the Republic. Beyond that, Cardinal Dulles understands that the Deism of Jefferson's day was imbued with a Christian metaphysics and lived out in a society formed by Christian norms.

Here are Cardinal Dulles's closing paragraphs. The essay appeared in the January issue of First Things.

Jefferson would probably have insisted on the positive articles of deism as a required minimum. For him and the other Founding Fathers, the good of society requires a people who believe in one almighty God, in providence, in a divinely given moral code, in a future life, and in divinely administered rewards and punishments. He and they expected that the example and teachings of Jesus, as known from the Gospels, would be accepted in principle by the great majority of citizens. Although Jefferson wanted the state to refrain from meddling in the particulars of religion, he counted on families, churches, and educational institutions to perpetuate and disseminate in more vivid and concrete forms the basic truths also taught in his moderate form of deism.

If he were alive today, Jefferson would doubtless ask himself whether the welfare of the republic can stand in the absence of the minimal consensus I have described. If pluralism goes unchecked, will the nation still have a corporate vision sufficient to sustain the sense of mission and collective purpose that have characterized it at its best? Will factionalism, corruption, violence, and aimlessness proliferate? Each of us must strive to answer these questions as best we can with the help of the Sage of Monticello.

To which we may add, in light of the discussion that Steve Bainbridge is having on the banning of some judicial candidates because of their religious beliefs, can a nation that prohibits religious people from participating fully in civic life hold itself together as a civil society?