Religion in the Public Square

Of all the weeks to be grading 40 papers on top of my own work! I could be spending the entire week on a close reading of Crowley, and could already have posted about five times on here in response to what I am reading. THIS is what I study! Why did I not know about this book yet? Last year I did a lit review for my final paper in Political Communication, in anticipation of what will likely be my focus area for my dissertation. In the lit review I examined the intersection of public church and public square, with a particular eye to the public participation of religious voices in the political process, especially NON-fundamentalist voices. With that lit review in my head, I already have a couple of concerns about the binaries Crowley is drawing.

First, I want to take a step back and remember Tannen's insight that binaries sometimes exclude perspectives that do not fit the two "sides" in an argument. Certainly, mainline and progressive voices (despite Crowley's brief nod to Sojourners (p. 9) ) are left out of a binary between liberalism and fundamentalism. I realize that Crowley is intentional in her focus on fundamentalists/apocalypticism (p. 7), but one of my ongoing frustrations with the current framing of religion in the political process is the seeming assumption that mainline voices do not have the power to be persuasive or of interest to scholars. As the junior political comm faculty person said when I told him I want to study progressive religious voices in the political process: "what, all two of them?" !!

More importantly, however, is that in drawing this binary, Crowley seems to be accepting (so far - I'm on the second chapter) a deeper binary that assumes liberals want to confine religion to the private sphere. She notes that fundamentalists do not like this confining (p. 11), and speaks of the fights over the ten commandments monument (what one scholar (Clement, 2009) has called "public displays of affection for God" but this misses the fact that there are liberal religious voices who also seek a public witness (and in fact are already pursuing that witness through their Washington lobbying offices, among other means). It is just that the public witness of liberal/mainline religious voices is going to do things like ask "how is this legislation going to affect the poor and marginalized?" or "what will that initiative do to the environment?" rather than try to get public displays of affection for God put up as part of a culture war.

Speaking from my own tradition, here is a brief section that I included in my paper last year: Lutherans do not believe that the Christian voice is due special treatment in the public square, but do believe that the church has a vital role to play in reminding the state of its primary obligation to serve the public good. Ultimately, “Lutherans are committed to the integrity of church and state, to their practical interaction, indeed cooperation for the common good in a constitutional order that guarantees religious freedom for all” (Stumme & Tuttle, 2003, p. 69).

It is my hope to focus my dissertation on how mainline and progressive voices can be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove in getting our message out there (how we can argue differently, perhaps?). I look forward to continuing to wrestle with Crowley's work as I move towards that goal.