November 23, 2010 I spoke at the a function sponsored by the Segelberg Trust of Dalhousie University.  The trust was set up to honor Eric Segelberg a Lutheran Minister and a Classics Professor at Dalhousie University.

Eric Segelberg

This year’s theme was Religion, Public Policy and Conflict.

I spoke from notes which follow:

Should Religion have a Public Voice?

This is the question I put to myself to answer for this afternoon.

It is not exactly question before us today but I claim the privilege of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty who stated in scornful tone “when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Only, of course, substituting “question” for “word.”

I do have an excuse for doing so arising out my political background as a Nova Scotia Cabinet Minister where we were taught not to answer the question that was asked us but the question we wanted to be asked to us.

The range of responses to my question is limited:

1.     Yes

2.     No

3.     Maybe in a very limited and controlled form

I will dismiss the third response of “maybe” right away, at least in the form it is normally articulated, which is that of a modernistic secular humanism. Because modernistic secular humanism has never understood religion. It tolerates those of religious faith as one might tolerate a small child who is to be seen and not heard, except for times such as Remembrance or Christmas Day when, like Tiny Tim, he or she is trotted out to say “God bless us everyone,” be patted paternalistically on the head, and then relegated to silence.

The religious person cannot so easily silence the demands of their faith. They cannot become the spiritual schizophrenic that secular humanism tolerates, confining faith to an increasingly smaller and smaller private sphere.

The cultural historian, Christopher Lasch is one scholar who has pointed this out in his direct and powerful way in his many writings. As has the theologian, Paul Tillich who defines religious as that which is of “ultimate concern.”

To use a quote from the religious tradition I belong to, attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

That leaves the first two responses – “yes” or “no.”

And here we have an intriguing cast of characters.

On the “yes” side are conservative Evangelical Christians most recently exemplified by the Tea Party movement in the United States, some orthodox Roman Catholics who still long for the glory of  the medieval past, and a host of Christian and non-Christian  religious fundamentalists. Ironically, the “yes” of many of the groups mentioned is “yes for us” but “no for the other.”

On the “no” side you have fundamentalists atheists such as Christopher Hichens who has never met a religious person he does not dislike. Supposedly broad minded intellectuals such as John Ralston Saul who, when I asked him what he thought of Tillich’s celebrated quote that “religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion,” looked a me in amazement that I could be so dumb and then proceeded to lay at Christianity’s feet a litany of ever sin which the western world has every committed.

But you also have committed religious groups such as some branches of the Mennonite community who feel that faith is bastardized whenever it speaks to or has any contact with the public, political realm.

At this point, I need to outline the historical context in which we are situated because this will help, I hope, to support which of these two responses I choose to support.

The historical context is both Western and Christian.

One could spend much more time than I have allotted to define these terms but, in the interests of brevity, let me state that for the first thousand years of western history the storyline is that of the institution of the Christian Church (in its Roman Catholic form) dominating over the state as the institution which provided hope and comfort to the majority of people. One can see this in the Emperor Theodosius’s decree that Christianity would from his time on be the only legal religion within the Roman Empire or in the two-sword theory articulated by Pope Gelasius and his successors.

However, in the second millennium this begins to change not, I hasten to add, because the institution of the Christian church was unsuccessful in its efforts but because it was successful, horribly successful (which brings to mind Ivan Illich’s celebrated phrase – the corruption of the best is the worst).

The second millennium then is the story of the domination of the secular state over the Christian church as the primary institution in which people placed their hope and allegiance.

This brings us to today when, since the great western wars in 1914 and 1939, the state has begun to lose its hold over people. This can be seen in the declining voter turnout in western democracies and the rise of cantankerous cynics of both popular and intellectual garb who condemn politics and politicians. Moreover, it has, I would claim, received increased impetus as a result of the global financial crisis which we are still experiencing.

In this context of the decay of hope, first in the Christian Church, and then, in the democratic state, it is not a question of whether religious voices will speak publically because they will whether secular humanists like it or not. Nature abhors a vacuum and into the vacuum created by the decay of hope in the state as that institution which will provide for us from cradle to grave and beyond will rush many different voices, religious ones included and perhaps predominating.

This weakness and demise of the power of the modern state, one of the pillars of modern secularity, lends greater urgency and stridency to those who wish to silence religious voices since in a democracy which prides itself on fairness, one cannot silence one religious voice without silencing all (as evidenced by the Swedish Feminist Cabinet minister who out of abhorrence as female genital mutilation as practiced by some Muslim believers, primarily of Somalian background, has called for the state to examine all young girls of a certain age to make sure their genetialia have not been tampered with).

But as I have already stated with the growing decay and collapse of hope in the western state such a response is tantamount to sticking one’s finger in the dyke in the hope that this will stop the on rousing flood of water. But baldly, it will not work and will simply lead to support for ever increasing fundamentalist forms of religious faith to grow and flourish.

We are left then with the response of “yes” but this “yes” must be qualified. It is not a carte blanche “yes” but a “yes” which insists that religious voices like non-religious voices must compete in the public square on fair and even terms, using reason, logic, and the compulsion of love rather than that of power. The power of religion must always be the power of love not the power of force.

When this happens, when secular humanists support and listen to voices of religion in this manner, and with this proviso, it is then, and only then, I would submit, that we may find our way out the vacuum created by the collapse of the state, as traditionally defined, to some new allegiance and hope which is life affirming in the sense in which Albert Schweitzer alluded to with his ethic of “reverence for life.”

I could go on for hours on the shape and form of this “yes” but time does not permit and so I close with eager anticipation of the discussion which is to follow.