Different Religions, Different Politics: Evaluating the Role of Competing Religious Traditions in American Politics and Law

Abstract

We are in the midst of a continuing debate about the role of religion in American politics and law. Advocates of a greater role for religion in public life—and I count myself among them—lament the privatization of religion and the secularization of public debate. Although some of the claims about privatization and secularization may be exaggerated, it seems undeniable that religion, despite its apparently robust private health, plays a relatively modest role in the public life of modern America. The public role that it does play, moreover, is under a hovering cloud of suspicion, with critics constantly suggesting that the separation of church and state is being threatened.In this essay, I advance a radical proposition: that privatization and secularization are the product, in part, of religious freedom run amuck. In particular, the concept of religious freedom has evolved to include not merely legal toleration, but also a strong commitment to religious equality. This principle of religious equality supports the protection and nurturing of religious diversity in the private realm. Ironically, however, it also suggests that the diversity among religions is irrelevant in determining the proper role for religion in the public sphere, for the equality principle implies that what is right for one is right for all. On this view, whatever the proper role for religion in politics and law, it must be no different for one religion than another. This public leveling of religion, moreover, tends to ensure that the “equal” role that religions play in American public life will be modest, if not inconsequential. Even as we continue to extol its private diversity, religion has become publicly generic and thereby largely insignificant.