Religion has not been driven out of American public life. In every state priests, rabbis and ministers still simultaneously act as secular officers when performing marriages. People still say grace undisturbed in restaurants from San Juan to Anchorage. Religious signs and slogans appear on coin and currency. Congress pays for chaplains both for its own two Houses and for the armed forces. Law courts rule that students may organize private groups on campus to discuss religion and pray together. While refraining from either advocating or attacking dogmas or ceremonies, public school teachers increasingly accept that they may talk in class about religion as a living component of American history and culture.

Issues of public and personal practice are widely discussed in America. These great debates draw on traditions both of secular ethics and sacred Scriptures. The U.S. Government cannot attack Iraq from the air without philosophers and men of religion asking whether the President’s action meets criteria of “a just war.” Doctors cannot kill yet-to-be-born humans without someone, somewhere questioning their morality. Bombers of abortion clinics also flout standards higher than mere legal prohibitions. For someone, somewhere in America will hold up against their evil deeds the seamless sanctity of all human life at every stage. If mature, moral pro life activists cannot persuade lawmakers or courts to jail abortionists, then they  simply “leave them to heaven.”

Religious and ethical views shoulder themselves into debates about educating the young. Consensus is solidifying that parents are the rightful educators of their own children and may delegate but not abandon their primal right to whomever they choose as their agents. Whether a President of the United States can be removed from his high office for having lied under oath is hotly debated. An oath invites God to witness to the truth of what the person under oath is testifying to. An oath is, therefore, an act of religion in the public square, as Roger Williams noted in colonial New England.

A few, but not terribly many, more examples might be cited of religious and ethical insights prominently at work in today’s American politics, business and marketplaces. We are grateful that religion and ethics are still on their feet in the public arena, undefeated, holding their own against a world view that only man made law makes right, and that no man made law can ever be wrong, evil, or deserving to be disobeyed.
 

Yes, there is still some religion left in American public life. But there might be a lot more. For religion embraces vastly more than the few themes just mentioned. Religion, philosophy, ethics and theology  make truth-claims. Some of their truth-claims illuminate human reality and are at least partly falsifiable or verifiable through human experience. Even if a dogma’s truth or falsity can never change celestial mechanics, there was once a time when people cared passionately about that dogma. 

In the Fifth Century the barbers of Constantinople argued with customers about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. In 17th Century Carolina you could not be a freeman of the colony if you did not believe in life after death. In 17th Century France, Blaise Pascal in his PROVINCIAL LETTERS saw human nature as universally corrupted, with few destined to be saved. He wrote:

“We understand nothing of the works of God unless we accept the principle that He decided to blind some and open the eyes of others. There is enough brightness to enlighten the elect, and enough darkness to humble them. There is enough darkness to blind the outcasts and enough brightness to condemn them and set them beyond forgiveness.”

Some religious dogmas and views have explanatory and predictive value. Thus theories of  Original Sin and the Fall of Adam illuminate the persistent inclination of people mindlessly to harm themselves and others. On one view, human nature without continuous infusions of Divine grace is utterly corrupt, enfeebled and incapable of even trying to be good. On another view, God has given man inalienably a fair amount of autonomy and even the right to demand that God Himself be just (Book of JOB).

Will a believer elected to public office not behave differently depending on which theory of predestination, grace and salvation he or she embraces?  If, for instance, a President of the United States has experienced a conversion, might he not behave one way if he interprets that experience to mean he cannot possibly fall from grace no matter what he does and behave another way should he interpret his conversion to be but step one of a life-long convalescence ever open to backsliding?

Even outside the walls of churches, synagogues and mosques, religion remains a vital force in American life. Theories of grace formulated by Saint Augustine, John Calvin and Blaise Pascal are studied in divinity schools. They are even expounded from some mountain pulpits and mulled over within small private study groups. But the hard thinking side of religion and its handmaidens,--philosophy and ethics--are not yet much in evidence in our barber shops or beauty salons, around carp ponds, in bowling leagues, in casual conversations, at political rallies or over potluck suppers with friends. We are stuck in a rut. We need something even better. Deeper.

Americans may now, however, be poised to inject even deeper insights from their religions into American public life. Believers have defended themselves remarkably well so far with mere conceptual sticks and rocks against sophisticated well thought out secular efforts to confine their beliefs to church premises. Now is the hour for people of faith to drill with better weapons of self defense and self consciousness. For there are limits to what mere barbers can do to defend the kingdom of God without hard reading, deep thinking and systematic training. 

We can show those Fifth Century barbers of Constantinople that we too care passionately about religious truths! Do you yearn for someone to talk to even outside church about freedom and grace, nature and supernature, conversion and repentance? Whenever you choose to start, pull up a chair alongside a friend or two and lock horns with the truth claims about human nature made by the likes of Calvin and Pascal . 
 

-000-

for Asheville TRIBUNE