Dionne on Faith and Politics

Thanks to Robert Cunningham for calling my attention to E.J. Dionne's essay on "Faith and Politics: After the Religious Right" in the current issue of Commonweal. Dionne makes some helpful observations about the history of church-state separation in this country. Here's a quote:

One example of successful renegotiation was reflected in the 1995 federal guidelines to school administrators. They were designed to make clear that while government cannot impose religion, neither can students be forced to be secular against their will; nor can their personal expressions of faith be silenced. Individual students were no longer to be stopped from praying. Jewish students could not be barred from wearing yarmulkes. Children who wanted to talk about religion on school grounds had the right to do so. A similar respect for individual expressions of faith has been extended to government workers.

This may have seemed like common sense, but it also reflected an awareness that the desire to preserve religious freedom entails keeping the government out of the way and protecting the free expression of believers. And it underscored the difference between an American approach to religious toleration aimed at accommodating religious expression and the French style of toleration (known as laïcité), which sought religious peace by clearing religion out of the public realm as much as possible. The conflicts that face France and other Western nations with large Muslim populations suggest that it is the American form of secularism that may, as the historian Wilfred McClay has written, provide "an essential basis for peaceful coexistence in a religiously pluralistic society." American-style secularism is rooted in a basic respect for religious traditions and not in hostility to religion. It has certainly eased the integration of new Muslim immigrants into the mainstream of American life. The American story suggests that despite the risks involved, respecting the public role of the many who believe, and who believe in diverse ways, is the more promising way to expand freedom's writ.