The Wisdom of Serpents: Why Religious Groups Use Secular Language

Abstract

Civil religion, the use of religious symbolism and ceremony to pro mote secular political ends, has long been a field of serious inquiry, dating at least to Plato's The Laws.1 However, its opposite, the promo tion of religiously inspired agendas through secular means has not re ceived much attention. Two recent developments, however, make addressing this scholarly neglect more urgent. The first is the articula tion of liberal theories of public reason that forbid the use of religious language in public discourse. The second is the shift of strategy in re cent decades of religious groups, most notably the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, of abandoning explicitly religious language in favor of secular language to advance their goals. The main body of this essay is empirical in nature, an attempt to chart and document the reasons why religious groups have employed secular language in promoting religiously inspired political ends. In deed, I argue that religious groups employ secular language to promote their political ends for four broad reasons: theological, prudential, le gal, and liberal.2 As I hope to show in a brief examination of the Relig ious Right, these motivations are difficult to distinguish in practice and more than one motivation may be at work simultaneously. However, I hope to take the discussion beyond a mere description of events and reflect upon the dilemma of simultaneously encouraging secular politi