Neuhaus on Pluralism

“One enters the democratic arena, then, as a moral actor. This must be insisted upon against those who view compromise as the antithesis of moral behavior. It must also be insisted upon against those who claim that moral judgment must be set aside before entering the public square. The first error is more common among Christians and others of high moral purpose. The second error is implicit, and sometimes explicit, in pervasive attitudes about ours being a secular society. In this second error, people are thought of as anonymous, deracinated ciphers seeking their own interests and striking a deal where it is in their interest to accommodate their interests to the interests of others. In this view, the assertion of a moral claim is an intrusion upon public space, a violation of the democratic rules. . . .

“. . . The conflict in American public life today, then, is not a conflict between morality and secularism. It is a conflict of moralities in which one moral system calls itself secular and insists that the other do likewise as the price of admission to the public arena. That insistence is in fact a demand that the other side capitulate. By divesting ourselves of authoritative moral referents that are external to ourselves, such as religion proposes, we have acquiesced in the judgment that there is no moral appeal beyond the individualistic pursuit of interests.”

-Richard John Neuhaus. The Naked Public Square. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's, 1984. (125-6)

A few observations:

1. The Naked Public Square really is a remarkable book. It was a genuine attempt to start a conversation about religion and political philosophy, and so Neuhaus was at his most diplomatic in almost every passage. (Have you ever seen the inclusive she in the pages of First Things? Because it's in the book.) But one also gets the feeling that too few people were interested in the project, and that the moment for compromise passed on by.

2. Halden's post today at Inhabitatio Dei called into question the entire idea of “translating” the Christian message into public language. His post is worth reading. I'm not sure that it is a direct contradiction: Neuhaus is speaking of practical compromise in a spirit of humility, not necessarily casting the Christian message in secular terminology. Or is that the secret point of natural law?

3. That Christians cannot simply set aside their identity for the sake of liberalism and the state is perhaps one of the reasons cultural theorists such as Zizek and Eagleton are turning their attention to theology. Tell me if I'm wrong on this.

4. Many liberalisms and all libertarianism come down to “the individualistic pursuit of interest,” and that is why we should at least carefully reexamine the republican strains of American political thought. Not the GOP, of course: rather, the Founders' ideas of republican virtue. Sandel goes into this at length, and I'll try to cover it briefly tomorrow.