GOD'S NAME IN VAIN: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics. - Review - book review

GOD'S NAME IN VAIN: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics by Stephen L. Carter Basic Books, $26.00

The Preacher

FOR THE LAST DECADE, YALE Law School professor Stephen L. Carter has admirably played the role of the eloquent scold, the solemn prophet in the wilderness, shaking his staff at a nation that has forgotten God. In his widely praised The Culture of Disbelief, Carter attacked a devoutly secular political and media elite that, he claimed, discounted religious conviction and openly mocked faith. But what does the prophet do when the wilderness shows signs of blooming, and when presidential candidates offer Augustinian spiritual confessions on the stump? Well, he revises his thesis. So in his new book, God's Name in Vain, Carter addresses both "the wrongs and rights of religion in politics," paying special attention to the damage done to religion by too close a proximity to the grimy, compromising dictates of the electoral machinery.

Carter now advocates a mm to a "principled and prophetic religious activism," a ministry engaged in the public sphere, but not of it. Among his several role models for this activism is the biblical prophet Nathan, who chastised King David for his indiscretions but didn't go yammering for impeachment. The biblical prophets, suggests Carter, "were not calling for new rulers--they were calling upon the current rulers to role differently." One could object, of course, that this restraint makes more sense in a theocracy than in a democracy, where it is the task of citizens, and not of God, to elect their leaders. Moreover, as the recent furor over "issue ads" has shown, it has become increasingly difficult to disentangle the positions held by various interest groups (pro-life or pro-choice organizations, for example) from an implicit partisanship.

Carter's few practical prescriptions to encourage this modern-day prophetic activism are relatively uninspiring--he suggests consumer boycotts of morally-corrupting institutions and the need for more time spent "thinking." In fact, for all his revisions, Carter still saves much of his sermonic exuberance for a detailed analysis of contemporary society's arrogant underestimation of religion. Simply put, the American political establishment does not understand faith's primary essence: its totality. The establishment believes religion can be sequestered in a "private sphere," but as Carter writes, "religion has no sphere ... it sneaks through cracks, creeps through half-open doors."

This fallacy, argues Carter, has corrupted the nation's understanding of the church-state divide. The liberal establishment views that separation from the side of the state, "subdu[ing] the power of religion, to twist it to the ends preferred by the state." But that approach needs to be reoriented toward the prerogatives of the believer--only then will religion's totality be respected. The state must recognize the existence of "religious interest[s] ... so vital that no state interest--not even a compelling one--can overcome them," even if those interests run contrary to the interests of the state. Therefore, the government should actively accommodate religious freedom, pushing aside legal obstacles so that a variety of religions can flourish (however, Carter does not make clear the stands by which a belief system becomes religion; ironically, when it comes to faith, Carter is a relativist). For government to remain neutrally supportive of religion, as it is now, is to countenance the unofficial establishment of religion by the state, the sanctioning of those faiths most easily "domesticated," and the weeding out of those more subversive. Thus, writes Carter, the state becomes the "evangelist" for religions favor the status quo.

But it is possible to argue that contemporary liberalisms understanding of the necessary separations between church and state is based not on an ignorance of religion's totality but on a disciplined understanding of totality's implications. For tucked within the idea of totality, and within all totalizing ideologies, is the impulse toward coercion. This was the idea that Isaiah Berlin appreciated so finely, and which he articulated by distinguishing two forms of liberty, negative and positive, which have developed in historically conflicting directions. Negative liberty, which he defined as the "maximum degree of non-interference compatible with the minimum demands of social life," liberalism should endorse wholeheartedly. Positive liberty, based on the need to be "one's own master," has led to the belief that individuals remain unfree when they are enslaved by certain passions or delusions, and has encouraged the conviction that it is worthwhile to forcibly extract them from these bonds. This belief, suggests Berlin, liberalism must suspect and restrain. In other words, Carter is not wrong to imagine an antagonism between universalizing religions and the liberal state; he just errs in assigning it purely to liberalism's totalitarian "moral arrogance."

In fact, perhaps due to his evangelical background, Carter seems unable to understand religious freedom without the concept of positive liberty. For Carter, the man of faith is not only transformed by the Word of God, but filled with the need to transform the world as well. And if he is kept from his efforts to change the world, his religious freedom is impeded. Undoubtedly, sometimes this mission is a good thing. For instance, Carter makes frequent references to the abolitionists, arguing that their activism was based on a desire to cultivate "a rich soil in which the Word could take root." Would we have wanted them to keep God out of the public sphere? To do so would be to stop America of its moral conscience.

Perhaps, though there are many secular moralists who would disagree. Moreover, Carter underestimates the danger of a universalizing religion grasping the mechanisms of coercion held by the state and "subduing" citizens to fit its own interests. A respect for "genuine diversity," which Carter believes is "the strongest argument in favor of the accommodation of religion," might actually require the restraining of those religions which seek to impose their views on others. There are historical precedents for this idea, but Carter does not seem to pay them much heed. He deftly passes over the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, writing that in neither case was violence motivated by a proselytizing zeal. This does not seem right to me--the choice of conversion or death was not an unfamiliar one to Jews and "heretics" of the Middle Ages--and it is a bit surprising to see Carter make such bold assessments in such a slim book.

In many ways, God's Name in Vain is like well-delivered sermon; its strength derives less from the soundness of its logic or the Fineness of its historical insights, than from the intensity of the speaker's convictions and from the sense of his own rightness. And no doubt he'll get some "Amens" from the pews. But, this time, he'll win few converts.

BEN SOSKIS is assistant editor at The New Republic.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Washington Monthly Company
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group