Conclusion: “This Nation, Under God”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
I began this book by recalling the speech that vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman delivered to the congregation of the Fellowship Chapel on August 27, 2000 – the speech in which, as the New York Times reported the next morning, Lieberman “bluntly made the case for allowing faith into politics.” Although “the Constitution wisely separates church from state,” said Lieberman, “the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” Senator Lieberman's speech was an uncompromising rejection of the exclusionist position that religious faith has little if any legitimate role to play in American politics. Lieberman was on target, in my judgment. The exclusionist position does not survive careful scrutiny. As I explained in Part One of this book, neither the American constitutional ideal of nonestablishment nor the morality of liberal democracy calls for fencing religious faith out of American politics. This does not mean, however, that when religious believers participate in politics, whether as policymakers or just as citizens, they should rely uncritically on religiously grounded moral belief; religious believers sometimes have good reasons, including reasons internal to their own religious traditions, to moderate or even to forgo political reliance on religiously grounded moral belief. I developed this point in Part Two.
I said that the exclusionist position doesn't survive careful scrutiny; there is even a sense in which the position is – dare I say it? – un-American. Consider the Declaration of Independence, which marks the first formative moment in the emergence of the United States of America.
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- Under God?Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy, pp. 124 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003