April 25, 2002-Vol33n26: >Defining religion's role

Defining religion's role
Stephen Carter says religious voice in public life is here to stay

By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor

With the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the "religious right" blasting the "liberal left" as morally ambiguous at best, and the liberal left's often blatant disregard for the articulation of religion in public life as anything other than right-wing election mongering, charting a path between the two might seem futile at best.

But in fact, allowing the obvious tension between these often-polarized opposites to exist publicly is "healthy and valuable," said Stephen Carter, professor of law at Yale University, renowned author and third lecturer in UB's Distinguished Speaker Series and 2001-02 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Speaker. While Carter may not agree with the extremes of either side—the right's now nearly defunct Christian Coalition or the left's belief that religion is divorced from reason—he defended the right of both sides to argue their positions publicly.

Carter spoke April 18 in the Center for the Arts Mainstage theater about the role of religion in politics and governance, and how the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as many early political and religious thinkers, brought powerful religious-based arguments into public and political arenas, forcing the country to grapple with the moral, political, spiritual and ethical dilemmas inherent in such critical debates as the Civil Rights and abolitionist movements.

The impact of such voices, Carter said, cannot be underestimated—voices that he said often are absent from public life today or eventually become weighed down with political agendas, diluting or destroying the importance of faith as a reconciler of communities, a foundational source of calm and renewal during national and private tragedy, and a great unifier in the face of oppressive governments.

By allowing these tensions to exist between religion and politics in the form of public discussion and debate, protection for the church and its role in public life is maintained and the all-important separation between church and state afforded by the First Amendment—which Carter argued was written to protect the church and religious groups from government interference, not the other way around, remains intact.

"We make a terrible mistake if we try to resolve them," Carter said of these tensions. "We have to learn to live with a bit of ambiguity."

Tracing the history of the role of religion and religious voices in public life, Carter said the importance of a wide variety of voices provided a powerful counterpoint to the irrationality of governmental encroachment on human rights, in the form of Jim Crow laws, for example.

He also delineated the role and voice of the prophet as opposed to the role and voice of the religious-turned-political insider, who loses both voice and faith in an effort to gain political clout. The importance of the prophetic voice and the role of prophet as radical outsider are often necessary to move the nation forward, especially in times of great struggle, Carter said.

"The civil rights movement was the high-water mark of religious action in public life," said Carter, noting that revisionists of history have tried to make King into a secular hero and ignore the truths inherent in the Bible-based arguments he used in his sermons.

His speeches and sermons are consistent arguments that embraced a religious vision of truth and justice and were drawn explicitly from Christian sources about what the nation ought to do—King's most famous speeches were almost uniformly sermons, Carter explained.

"The religious voice in public life is here to stay; it's not going to go anywhere," Carter said. "To do the hard work of actual public argument is the role of democracy," he said, and not the pro forma attention to religion or religious statements, such as the "God Bless America" our leaders make during times of crisis, but debate engendered on both sides by the recognition that the greatest truths in the nation's discourses on freedom and justice often have arisen out of articles of faith.