The great sociologist Peter Berger has posted a provocative reflection
on the interfaith services that took place in Boston after the bombings. Those services, he observes, were carefully
tailored by the clergy who spoke there to avoid any specific religious content
– even though only by reference to that content could they respond to the most
pressing question of the day, “How could God have allowed this to happen?”
Berger observes:
“This is a very distinctive American version of the
separation of church and state, a quite strict legal separation, yet with
diverse religious groups noisily present in public life. I think that, by and
large, this has been a very successful arrangement. It presupposes that a
religious group, when it enters public space, must translate its commentaries
into terms that can be understood and debated by all citizens, most of whom
will not be members of the particular group. Put differently, if one wants to
persuade fellow-citizens in public space, one must employ a secular discourse.
That discourse does have a moral foundation, the value system of the “American
Creed”. Adherents of this or that specific faith may find these values more
vague, even superficial, than the ones derived directly from faith, and they
themselves may understand their allegiance to the Creed in terms specific to
their faith. Thus the secular discourse of the public space coexists with the
plurality of specific (if you will, “sectarian”) religious discourses.”
What’s fascinating about this particular variety of
secularism is that the religious groups participated precisely because they
were religious: the service avoids
matters of theological disagreement, but nonetheless the churches function as
official mourners for the nation. They
were invited; the Harvard Philosophy Department was not, and neither were any
of the many other institutions of civil society.
Marc DiGirolami worries
about Berger’s formulation, “which reminds me a little bit of Rawls's proviso.
It may be more accurate to say that the specific religious discourses not
only coexist with the civil religion, but themselves also somehow constitute
it.” DiGirolami doesn’t want to purge
those specific discourses from the public sphere. But what’s peculiar about the American
practice is that they are simultaneously in and out of it: their specific theological differences are
integral to their identities, but they are expected not to discuss them in this
context. What
happened in Boston wasn’t Rawlsian, because the operative category isn’t “comprehensive
view,” but “religion.” The clergy avoided discussing theological niceties, but
their function was specifically religious.
All of this I take to be further confirmation of my
description of American law in action in my new book, Defending American Religious Neutrality. American law treats religion as a good thing,
but insists that the state take no position on any controversial theological
question. What Berger shows is that
religious speakers understand and respect that constraint when they are acting
in a quasi-official capacity. We can and
doubtless will continue to argue about whether American norms about public
religion are appropriate. Those
arguments should be based on an accurate description of those norms – in this
case, of the peculiarly religion-friendly character of American secularism. We keep bumping into evidence of that
character, so it is puzzling that it is so little understood.