A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original review appears below. David Jennings is a lawyer in Vancouver and an elder at Fairview Presbyterian Church there.
The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, by Stephen L. Carter, Basic Books, 328 pp.
During the recent federal election campaign opponents of the Reform Party openly questioned Preston Manning’s ability to lead the country because he was a devout Christian. In an interview on CBC Prime Time Mr. Manning stated that he was a Christian but he did not think his private beliefs would affect his public actions. Reassured that a Christian would not attempt to disrupt our society, much of the Canadian public gave its vote of confidence (and its vote of frustration) to Mr. Manning and his party.
Less than a month before that interview, a book was published that denounced the manner by which the religiously faithful are trivialized in American politics and law. The book, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, attracted a lot of attention, including television interviews with its author, Stephen Carter, discussions in several political columns and an endorsement by President Clinton. Mr. Carter, a professor of law at Yale Law School, argues that the separation of Church and State has resulted in a “political and legal culture that pressures the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them.” The separation of Church and State was never intended to yield such an absurd result, Mr. Carter argues. Instead, the separation was meant to prevent the State from neither endorsing or hindering any particular religion, and not to prevent religions from influencing the State. The role of religion and the religious faithful have an important positive role in the State as independent moral forces that resist the majoritarian values and activities of the State. The role of religion is essential to keep democracy from becoming a tyranny and to provide full debate of societal issues.
Alexis de Tocqueville held the same views almost two centuries earlier when he wrote Democracy in America and for the past two hundred years religions have been greatly involved in the politics and law of the United States. Carter refers to the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement and the twentieth-century civil rights movement as being examples of religion’s positive influence on political and legal issues. So when was religion’s role in the State rejected? Carter argues convincingly that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Roe v. Wade in 1973 created the present isolation of religion from the State. The liberal establishment, which had relied on the role of religion during the civil rights and anti-war movements rejected religion’s role in the pro-life movement. Since that time, the role of religion in the State has increasingly been viewed as the imposition of intolerant beliefs on a pluralistic society.
Carter discusses several issues such as abortion, euthanasia, punishment, blood transfusions, teaching of creationism in public schools and education vouchers to reinforce his view that modem politics and law treat “religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant” and expects religion to be nothing more than a “quietly irrelevant moralizer, never heard, rarely seen.” Modem society hides behind a mask of “neutrality” and “tolerance” to ignore, ridicule and debase religious beliefs. Carter calls for a new spirit of public debate that does not require religious citizens to hide their religious convictions behind secular statements. Instead, society should treat religion with the same respect it treats other dissenting voices. Carter also calls on religious citizens to stop acting as if their beliefs were mere passing whims “rather than the fundaments upon which the devout build their lives.”
It is the last point that I believe is particularly relevant to all Canadian citizens – including Mr. Manning – who are professing Christians. Mr. Carter’s book assumes that there are religious people who are trying to be involved in the State and are not afraid to contribute their religious beliefs to public debate. In the United States there is ample evidence to support Mr. Carter’s assumption. But in Canada, the voices of religious citizens are noticeably absent in public debate. Until Christians start speaking in the public square, they cannot criticize anyone for not listening. John Calvin never shied from being involved in politics and making his religious views part of the public debate. The Presbyterian Church in Canada holds a similar position. The “Declaration of Faith Concerning Church and Nation” adopted by the General Assembly in 1954 states that “no citizen is… relieved of his constant responsibility to work for the remedy of any unjust statute, or iniquitous assessment, or violation of conscience.”
Perhaps this fine book of Mr. Carter’s will encourage more Canadian Christians to accept that such a responsibility requires more than visiting a ballot box every four years.