Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration of David Hume and Religious Establishment

2002 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will R. Jordan
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
Role Of Religion

While recent scholarship has attempted to clarify the Founders′ opposition to religious establishment, few pause to consider public establishment as a viable alternative. This study examines one of the eighteenth century's least likely proponents of religious establishment: David Hume. Despite his reputation as an avowed enemy of religion, Hume actually defends religion for its ability to strengthen society and to improve morality. These salutary qualities are lost, however, when society is indifferent about the character of the religion professed by its citizens. Hume's masterful History of England reveals that a tolerant established church is best equipped to reap the advantages of religion while avoiding the dangers of fanaticism. Hume's differences in this respect from Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville are explored.In the last few years, we have witnessed a remarkable increase in public discourse about the role of religion in American life. From the spirited campaign rhetoric of vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman to George W. Bush's faith-based initiative, our national leaders have demonstrated a growing willingness to bring religion into the public square. One result has been a renewed debate about the meaning of both the First Amendment and the Founders′ principle of nonestablishment. Often missing from this debate is a discussion of the deeper issues at play in the relationship between church and state. What exactly do individual citizens have to fear from a union of church and state?

scholarly journals ISLAM, AGAMA TOLERANSI DAN CINTA DAMAI : (TELAAH ATAS NOVEL AYAT-AYAT CINTA KARYA HABIBURRAHMAN EL SHIRAZY)

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-89
Author(s):  
Ahmad Yasid ◽  
Moh Juhdi
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Legal Rule ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
History Of ◽  
Data Collection Technique ◽  
Role Of Religion

Abstract   Islam, religion of tolerance and love of peace is one of Habiburrahman El Shirazy’s, it is a study indicating the values ​​of love and tolerance of Islam in the modern public space area. This study used the underlying theory of the values ​​of love and tolerance as well as the role of Islam in modern times that has been developing in the public discourse that in the history of human civilization there are several things that must be understood that humans have the sense to differentiate between humans and other creatures. From this reason humans can do something to explore and explain things that are not known by others. The method that is used in data collection technique is documentation technique, because this study is descriptive qualitative. This study examines several things including the values of love and tolerance because accepting differences is a distinct pleasure for each particular societies in other words, not seeing other people as deviants or enemies but as partner to complement each other by having an equal position and equally valid and valuable as a way of managing life and living life both individually and collectively. Acceptance of differences demands changes in the legal rule in people's lives so that the role of religion in the modern public space area becomes a middle way to build diversity and a nature that must both appreciate and respect one another, this diversity is seen in the portrait of everyday life which then creates peace, and harmony in interacting with all elements of society.    

New England Women Writers, Secularity, and the Federalist Politics of Church and State

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gretchen Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Judith Sargent Murray ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
Role Of Religion

Drawing on novels, poetry, correspondence, religious publications, and legal writing, this book offers a new account of women’s political participation in the process of religious disestablishment. Scholars have long known that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American women wrote pious, sentimental stories, but this book uses biographical and archival methods to understand their religious concerns as entry points into the era’s debates about democratic conditions of possibility and the role of religion in a republic. Beginning with the early republic’s constitutional and electoral debates about the end of religious establishment and extending through the nineteenth century, Murphy argues that Federalist women and Federalist daughters of the next generation adapted that party’s ideals and fears by promoting privatized Christianity with public purpose. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Sedgwick, Lydia Sigourney, Judith Sargent Murray, and Sally Sayward Wood authorized themselves as Federalism’s literary curators, and in doing so they imagined new configurations of religion and revolution, faith and rationality, public and private. They did so using literary form, writing in gothic, sentimental, and regionalist genres to update the Federalist concatenation of religion, morality, and government in response to changing conditions of secularity and religious privatization in the new republic. Their project is shown to complicate received historical narratives of separation of church and state and to illuminate problems of democracy and belief in postsecular America.

scholarly journals RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Blaikie ◽  
Diana Ginn
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Political Views

Full, open, and civilized discourse among citizens is fundamental to the life of a liberal democracy. It seems trite to assert that no discourse should be prohibited or excluded simply because it is grounded in religious faith or employs religious beliefs to justify a particular position.1 Yet there are those who contend that it is improper for citizens to use religious arguments when debating or deciding issues in the public square,2 that metaphorical arena where issues of public policy are discussed and contested. In this article we challenge this position, examining the various arguments that are put forward for keeping public discourse secular, arguments that when citizens explicitly ground their social and political views in their religious beliefs, this is divisive, exclusionary, and ultimately antithetical to the liberal democratic state. We maintain that none of these arguments are persuasive.

Using God-Talk in a Secular Society: Time for a New Conversation on Public Issues?

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
Andrew Bradstock
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Right ◽  
Michael Sandel

Abstract The role that religious language should play in the ‘public square’ has long been a matter of debate. As Rawls, Rorty, Audi and others have long argued, albeit with subtle variations, discussion on public issues must be truly ‘public’ and therefore employ vocabulary, principles and reasoning which are intelligible to any reasonable person and based on public canons of validity. But does this argument do justice to religious voices? Can the growing number of such voices clamouring for the right to be heard continue to be ignored? Does excluding conviction-based language from public debate lessen the quality of that debate and the potential to find effective solutions to policy challenges? Drawing upon recent work by Jonathan Chaplin, Rowan Williams, Roger Trigg and Michael Sandel, this article examines the current state of scholarship on the question of language in public discourse, and concludes that the case for ‘confessional candour’ to be accepted in such discourse is overwhelming and could have a positive effect on policy outcomes. A prerequisite to this, however—at least within the context of New Zealand—will be a fresh debate about the meaning and scope of the term ‘secularism’.

scholarly journals Essential Workers, Essential Services? Leitourgia in Light of Lockdown

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Bryan Cones
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Liturgical Studies ◽  
Essential Services ◽  
Church Workers ◽  
Church Work ◽  
Essential Service

Within days of the outbreak of COVID-19, the language of “essential work” and “essential workers” became commonplace in public discourse. “Church workers” and their in-person liturgical services were largely deemed “non-essential”, and most assemblies shifted worship to online platforms. While some reflection on this virtual “church work” has appeared in the intervening months, there has been less evaluation of the gathered assembly’s absence from the public square, along with the contribution its liturgical work might offer in interpreting the pandemic and its effects. This essay imagines a post-COVID-19 agenda for liturgical studies that focuses on a recovery of Christian liturgy as public, in-person, and “essential” service done for the sake of the polis—a public example of “church doing world”—that proposes a countersign to the inequalities of contemporary consumer culture laid bare in these last months. It begins by engaging in dialogue with the leitourgia of groups who insisted on the essential nature of their public service, in particular the public protests against police violence that marked the summer of 2020. In doing so, it seeks ways liturgical assemblies might better propose a “public theology” of God’s work in the world understood as the concursus Dei, the divine accompanying of creation and humanity within it.

Church and State in Ireland: Perspectives of Vatican II

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
Patrick Hannon
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
The Church

This paper argues that Irish Bishops’ Conference interventions in the public square since the Council have accorded well with the Declaration on Religious Freedom but have lacked an adequate awareness of key themes of the two Constitutions on the Church. It shows how attention to these themes may enrich the bishops’ future contributions to debate on socio-legal issues in the changed context in which Irish Catholicism now finds itself. It maintains that public discussion of secularization has been on the whole superficial and unhelpful, and in the light of observations by Owen Chadwick and a proposal by Charles Taylor it offers some suggestions for its improvement.

A Liberalism of Sincerity: The Role of Religion in the Public Square

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-241
Author(s):  
Michael A. Helfand
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Religious Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Role Of Religion

This article considers the extent to which the liberal nation-state ought to accommodate religious practices that contravene state law and to incorporate religious discourse into public debate. To address these questions, the article develops a liberalism of sincerity based on John Locke’s theory of toleration. On such an account, liberalism imposes a duty of sincerity to prevent individuals from consenting to a regime that exercises control over matters of core concern such as faith, religion, and conscience. Liberal theory grounds the legitimacy of the state in the consent of the governed, but consenting to an intolerant regime is illegitimate because it empowers government to demand insincere conduct. Thus, demanding that citizens pursue sincerity ensures that they do not consent away their individual liberties in exchange for promises of security and orderliness. The focus on sincerity also reorients the value that liberalism places on religious pluralism. Although many liberal theorists have proposed that religious pluralism is valuable because it provides individuals with a range of choices on how to live the good life, such theories provide little reason to promote and protect any particular religion. Indeed, if religions are important only because of the range of choice they provide, then the only concern of liberalism is to maintain enough religions so as to provide a meaningful range of options for how to live the good life; conversely, there is no reason to provide accommodations for any particular religion to aid its survival. By contrast, a liberalism of sincerity impels the liberal nation-state to widen the protections afforded to the expressions of sincerity, such as religious conduct and religious discourse. Because religious conduct and religious arguments flow from an individual’s commitment to sincerity, liberalism should provide broad protection for such religious activity in order to enable citizens to pursue sincerity.

Israeli Judaism: Introduction to the Major Patterns

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shlomo Deshen
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Specific Topic ◽  
Present Writing ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship

A great deal has been written on Israeli religious institutions, activities, and problems, but the treatment of the subject leaves much to be desired. Many studies focus primarily on a specific topic within the subject – the relationship between the polity and religion as reflected in institutional arrangements. But this problem is not coterminous with the subject as a whole. While the problem of relations between synagogue and state can be discussed as a formal constitutional problem, it cannot be understood sociologically, because it merely represents the tip of an iceberg, so to speak. The iceberg itself, still to be uncovered, consists of religious phenomena – the variegated activities of various groups whereby they relate to religious symbols. People engage in these activities in many ways, causing the emergence of various features of society, and the relationship between synagogue and state is only one of them. Another limitation of present writing on religion in Israel lies in the bias whereby the Israeli situation is often evaluated according to a model of separation of church and state of the American or French type. Many writers demonstrate impatience and lack of sympathy when discussing the religious establishment and the current role of religion in the Israeli state.

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