The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America

Rating:
Summary: Strong Medicine
Review: I do not agree with everything that Neuhaus says, but when you read what he writes you will see his perspective laid out clearly and can make up your own mind.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but ultimately flawed and propagandistic
Review: John Richard Neuhaus is one of the leading intellectuals in the United States today, specially concerning issues of religion and state. The argument he makes in this book is the one he has been defending since the 90's in the journal he edits, First Things. This argument has become the mainstream in the agenda of the neoconservative movement and the Republican Party, as much as it has been adopted by the religious right.

That argument can be synthesized as it follows: the secular state has pushed religion out of the public square, depraving it of the only element capable of giving meaning and morality to what he calls "the American experiment". While the founders of the nation were for this separation between religion and politics, Neuhaus contends, they also expected that government role was limited, and that religion itself could work to provide that sense of morality (or what is called the "republican virtue"). But since the state has grown and invaded spheres where it had no jurisdiction initially (like education or courts), to promote a secular view of morality - which Neuhaus claims is incompatible with the will of most of the American people-, it is necessary to rethink the state of things concerning the debate of Church and State in the US. This new "civic religion" based on pure secular principles not only goes against the will of the people, not also is an attempt to purge religions from the public square (living it "naked"), but at the end will push the state to become totalitarian (since Neuhaus claims that the essence of totalitarism, resides in the absolute power of the state, which is the result of removing religion out of the competing powers in a society, and creating a government based on pure utilitarian reason, without the support of transcendent based morality).

In this context, the appearance of the new religious right in the US must not surprise us. Only certain aspects of the secular elite - the media, the academia and the politicians- can be surprised with this, because they have become elitist and learned to despise the importance of popular movements. Nor the furious rhetoric of the religious right should scare us: it may have horrible anti-intellectual anti democratic tone but the essence of their demands is what we should look. And that is, the demand that religion is included back into the discussion in the public square, that religion is part of citizens more cherished convictions and that it cannot be ignored by the elites that rule the country; it is anti democratic. To illustrate his point, Neuhaus uses the cases of slavery, civil rights and abortion. All of this disputes that are political, are disputes about distinct moral positions that require the discussion of religious values mixed in the debates. In this sense, Neuhaus call is not only a criticism of the "secularists" that want to imagine a country is a secular country when it is not, but also of the members of the religious right, who have voiced their demands in a language that is essentially private, when those demands demand that they are made in a language that must be public (since they are made in the public square).

The criticism of Neuhaus in this instance is very sharp, since it goes around to see the way the church has assumed church and state relations. It finds that many churches have decided to simply go into exile to show their repulsion of the world, or when they try to participate in politics, they do it with the conviction of imposing their own view of Christianity to others (theocracy). Nuehaus calls for a more "modest" approach, based on an amillenialist understanding of the coming back of the kingdom of God. The idea is that while it is true that Christians now for a fact that the kingdom of God will be set on earth, and thus a Christian order of the world, Christians don't know when this is going to happen; and not only they don't know, but the imperfection of the church prior to the advent of the Kingdom of God, sure make em more humble. They know the truth, but they should not have the right to impose it on others. For that reason Neuhaus calls to Christians to participate in the political world, in the sense of compromise with the "American experiment", which was initially a Christian intend to create a new community of believers. For this Nuehaus revises Christian thought on the matter, and finds that while it is true that Christians are right to be suspicious of the state - it was the state that killed Jesus- and there are biblical references to the state as a source of evil - Revelations 13-, there is also a tradition of Christian thinking that gives legitimacy to the "terrene powers". From Paul (Romans 13) to Origins and Eusebius, there is a line of thought to the church to compromise with earthly affairs.

My main objection to Neuhaus is, as an atheist, the validity of his claim that "moral claims require the existence of God in which to base them". If this premise does not hold water, and thinkers since Plato (see the Eutrypho) don't think it holds, the whole building of the argument father Neuhaus is making crumbles. That is the main problem, but there are others. If it is true that the church makes authoritive claims about the world, which are believed to be true, then there is no true space for the compromise a democracy demands. True cannot be negotiated: it is or it is not. Despise all the efforts of Neuhaus, I don't see how he can resolve this problem. Finally, one of the things that bothers me most, is the way Neuhaus tries to excuse the rhetoric of the religious right, that is not simply offensive or not polite, but simply it's a call for aggression with anybody who disagrees with their agenda.

Rating:
Summary: Buyer Beware
Review: Neuhaus is the ideological equivalent of a Pat Buckhanan, or a Jesse Helms.
It's unfortunate that such personages attain perpetually sponsored platforms to make comfortable careers perched on soapboxes pontificating arrogant, narrow, bigoted, disrespectful, negative commentary on those they choose to target--and are afforded with consistent respect and never personally challenged all the while.

Buyer beware: Neuhaus is not a benevolent, spiritual personage. He is calculated social mover aligned with various neo-conservative organizations. He leads a think tank which which serves as a ruthless pro-Vatican (and anti-anyone-else-who-should-happen-to-cross-my-path) propaganda machine. He routinely publishes rabidly hompohobic articles, and demonstrates little respect or toleration for religious or human diversity.

This isn't the work of a wise, gratious spiritual person, or a great intellectual: It's neo-conservative agenda pushing. Just be aware of this before buying...

Rating:
Summary: Deeply Perceptive
Review: No one writes like Neuhaus on current issues of religion and politics. A former Lutheran minister and now a Catholic priest, he has been on both sides of the Protestant/Catholic divide. This gives him a unique perspective on issues of common concern to all, and has placed him in the forefront of ecumenical efforts. I highly recomend this book as an investigation of how religion has been marginalized by the modern misinterpretation of the First Amendment's "no establishment" clause, thus leaving our Public Square bereft of foundational values