Good and Bad Ways 1

Robert Benne is the Director of the Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society who explores for a living the relationship of religion and politics. It’s a good time for his book to come out: Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics. He provides a sketch of how people relate religion and politics and then he will offer his own — a Lutheran — proposal.

He begins with The Separationists, and he approaches this stuff from the angle of one knows American history, American law, theology, and the confusing comments and ideologies at work among Americans today.

There are two kinds of Separationists, and he begins with those who adhere to this line: “To keep politics free of dangerous religion.” The stronger forms of this theory are nothing less than “liberal totalitarianism.” That’s strong language, but it’s appropriate because it’s accurate.

Do you think “liberal totalitarian” is too strong of language? What do you see as the biggest problem with The Separationist theory? Where have you seen inconsistency between the liberal separationist when it comes to what they think of conservatives but not when they think of their own ideas/plans?

The liberal totalitarian thinks the Founders were classical liberals who thought the political sphere should be guided only by secular, public reason. Thus, these folks today argue, religious-shaped language and beliefs ought to kept out of political life. They appeal, often enough, to the wall of separation or the separation of church and state. Benne thinks this contingent of public discourse is the “secular elite.” Though I tire personally of the populist jagged edge in this expression and though I also respect elite thinkers when they are thinking in an elite manner, there is a sense in which this is true — always has been.

What concerns Benne is that this is really “selective separationism.” His focus is that these folks want to exclude from the public sphere only the religious conservatives but not the religious progressives. They ignore, he contends, the ongoing powerful presence of religious progressives. His contention is that religious progressives are so similar to political progressives that they are indistinguishable.

He makes an important point: all laws are coercive, not just conservative laws.

And he points to the weaknesses of the progressive’s case, and again he sees the danger here of a liberal or progressive totalitarianism where only liberal or progressive ideas are tolerated; all other ideas are bigoted or fundamentalist.

First, the Founders established the free exercise of religion as the first right. It is the first freedom. The separation of church and state prevented the State from imposing religion; the first freedom promises its citizens to believe what they want to and to express their religion as they choose. Religiously grounded morality can find its way into the public life.

Second, free exercise has been a part of America’s history all along. Sometimes very good; sometimes not good.

Third, it is impractical and impossible to prevent religion from percolating into political life.

Fourth, the God of Americans, and here he focuses on Christianity and Judaism, is a God of all of life and not just the private, spiritual sphere.

Furthermore, the liberal totalitarians need not worry: Christians know their history of Christendom and coercion; and all Christians know the difference between the State’s mission and the Church’s mission. Christians don’t want a theocracy.

Next post: Benne examines the sectarian (anabaptist) form of separationism.