PBS: Think Tank: Transcript for "Is America Becoming Anti-Religious?"

« Back to Is America Becoming Anti-Religious? main page

Transcript for:

Is America Becoming Anti-Religious?

Think Tank Transcripts: Is America becoming Anti-Religious

ANNOUNCER:'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, bringingbetter, healthier lives to people worldwide through biotechnology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theWilliam H. Donner Foundation, the Randolph Foundation, and the JMFoundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I'm Ben Wattenberg. Are we moving from anation based on freedom of religion to one based on freedom fromreligion? Has the separation of church and state gone too far?

Joining us to sort through the conflict and the consensus areStephen Carter, professor of law at Yale University and author of thebestselling book, 'The Culture of Disbelief'; Michael Novak of theAmerican Enterprise Institute, winner of the 1994 Templeton prize forprogress in religion; Glenn Loury, professor of economics at BostonUniversity; and Father Robert Drinan, professor of law at GeorgetownUniversity and author of 'The Fractured Dream: America's DivisiveMoral Choices.'

The question before this house: Is America becoming antireligious? This week on 'Think Tank.'

'In God We Trust' that's what it says right here and on everypiece of U.S. currency. The Pledge of Allegiance declares America'one nation under God,' and every American child still learns 'GodBless America.' What would someone visiting from another planet makeof this country?

Well, based on our coinage, our Pledge of Allegiance and on someof our habits and views, such a visitor might conclude that theUnited States is a near theocracy. Six out of 10 Americans say theyregularly go to church or synagogue. According to a recent poll, 93percent say they believe in God. And every president since GeorgeWashington has ended his oath of office with the same four words.

PRESIDENT CLINTON (on videotape, January 20, 1993): So help meGod.

MR. WATTENBERG: But it's not so simple. Closer inspection wouldreveal that America is a mosaic of different religious beliefs andpractices, with everyone free to come up with his own idea of who Godis, what he wants and, for that matter, whether God exists at all.

While the U.S. government may place its trust in God, it doesn'tplace much trust in God's representatives here on earth. The SupremeCourt has decided that on issues ranging from school prayer to thedisplay of religious symbols on public property, religion andgovernment just don't mix. And if our man from another planet took alook at our movies, at our television programs, at our newspapers, hemight well conclude that America is a thoroughly secular society,perhaps indeed one actively opposed to organized religion.

Panel, gentlemen Stephen Carter, sir, your book, a remarkablebook, 'The Culture of Disbelief,' has a subtitle on it that says 'HowAmerican Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion.' Let me turnthat into just put a question mark at the end of that subtitle. Howdo American law and politics trivialize American religious devotion?

MR. CARTER: We live with an interesting paradox. On the one hand,as you said, we are perhaps the most religious nation in the world,certainly in the Western world. But at the same time, while we havethis broad religious diversity and deep religious sentiment among ourpeople, we have a political culture and a legal culture, in a sense,if you like, an elite culture that too often treats religiousarguments, say, in favor of or against particular governmentpolicies, as some sort of foreign pollutant in the pure waters of ourpolitics.

We have a popular media culture that too often on television andin films either ignores the deep religiosity of millions, tens ofmillions of Americans or treats it as something to be mocked or atbest a subplot that shows someone's inner zealotry or viciousness.And when politicians talk openly and publicly about their religiousviews, the media too often treats this as either a subterfuge, thatis, something that's not sincere, or indeed as a reason to fear them.

MR. WATTENBERG: Father Drinan, do you agree with that?

FATHER DRINAN: No. I think that's overextended. After all, thishas always been a secular country. In the 5500 words of theConstitution, God is not mentioned. We have, furthermore, a guaranteeof free exercise.

And if people think that the Congress is alienated from religion,they should look at the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed lastyear overwhelmingly. That reverses at least one Supreme Courtdecision and says that if there is any burden on the religious faithof an individual, the moment he enters his objection, the burdenshifts so that the government has to demonstrate a compellinginterest. I think that's a landmark in the history of religiousfreedom.

I don't think that the churches, including my own, the Catholicchurch, should say, well, we need the state more and more to supportus. That's not the American way. The American way is that churchesare on their own.

MR. WATTENBERG: Michael, what do you think?

MR. NOVAK: Well, I'd like to make another distinction here. It'snot just the state and the church. There's also the people. Thepeople of this country, by every sociological study, are the mostreligious on earth or one of the top two and three out of 160 somenations in their belief and in their practice. But our elite isn't,as Professor Carter was saying.

Our elite is different, not just the political and legal elite,but the movie elite and the symbolic elite, and so forth. MoreAmericans go to church over the weekend on any Sunday Saturday,Sunday of the year than will watch all the football games, even ontelevision, that weekend, or all the baseball games. That is the onething Americans do more than anything else.

But as my friend, the sociologist Peter Berger, puts it, we're anation with the faith of the people of India led by an elite ofSwedes. And I think that puts it very succinctly.

MR. WATTENBERG: Glenn Loury.

MR. LOURY: Well, I agree with that, actually. I think the classdimension of this subject is too little investigated and that much ofthe tension that I see and the antagonism to the Catholic church thatI often see projected under cover of a debate about abortion or theposition of women in the church, or whatever, and the contempt forfundamentalist, evangelical, conservative Christians that I see is,in my judgment, is not really public debate about religion at all,but rather is a conflict of people who have different class andpolitical and cultural positions in the society.

And I mean we can overplay this thing. I don't think we put allthese people in a football stadium somewhere, these elites who gettogether and, you know, conspire against the masses, butnevertheless, I think the religiosity of our newsrooms and ouruniversity faculties and our other elite institutions is dramaticallydifferent from that of the rank and file.

MR. WATTENBERG: Father Drinan, your three colleagues here are nottalking about freedom of religion, that the government is notallowing certain things to happen. But if you listen to some of thewords that are coming out here, that they're 'mocking' it, that they'show contempt,' not they the government, but we the culture, thoseare pretty tough words.

FATHER DRINAN: They're getting a little bit hysterical, Ben.

MR. WATTENBERG: They are?

FATHER DRINAN: Yeah, and a lot of other people like that in thatthey feel oppressed and they're whining. I've been in public life allmy life, and no one has ever mocked me. And they had the highestregard for me when I ran and won for Congress and I was there for 10years. And they are anxious to listen. What they don't like is whenpeople oversimplify things. And with all due respect to thefundamentalists, they narrow the Gospel down to four or five littleprinciples, and they scream at you, if you don't believe this, thatyou're going to go to hell.

And I don't think that this inferiority complex, or whatever itis, that now besets some people, not all, in the religious community,I don't think that it's very healthy.

MR. WATTENBERG: Steve, are you whining?

MR. CARTER: Well, I think it's important, I agree, not to push thecase too far. But at the same time, you shouldn't minimize what is avery dangerous situation. After all, through most of our history, onvirtually every public issue that was debated in the United States,the religious voice had an honored place on both sides of thatdebate.

Nowadays, unfortunately, I think, all too often you hear peoplewho are defending a variety of programs or a variety of ideassuggesting that the religious voice doesn't actually belong in ourpublic debates. And in contemporary political and legal philosophy,you have a growing trend trying to find how we can develop a publicconversation carried on by rules that would exclude the religiousvoice entirely. I consider this a dangerous thing.

FATHER DRINAN: All right, but I think that the so called elitehave been very aggravated by some people in the religious community,such as Reverend Falwell, who have oversimplified everything. 'And ifyou don't believe this, if you are not pro life, then you're going togo to hell, and I condemn you.' They have politicized their religion,and people detest that. That's really fundamentally against theAmerican spirit.

MR. CARTER: I agree with you.

MR. WATTENBERG: If they detested, say, Jerry Falwell or PatRobertson for participating in politics, did they detest ReverendJesse Jackson for participating in politics?

FATHER DRINAN: No. They tend to agree with

MR. WATTENBERG: And if not, why not?

FATHER DRINAN: Because I think that Jesse Jackson doesn't use theScriptures to conclude that blacks are equal. He has the law on hisside. And when the fundamentalists go to the Scriptures and say thatI say right here that sodomy and homosexuality are against the law ofGod, we can't tolerate this at all, and that we have to do terriblethings to the homosexuals, they are misusing religion as they see itto come about with a political objective.

MR. NOVAK: But I think you're falling into what is the mostacceptable bigotry in American life right now. You are criticizingvery unfairly fundamentalists and evangelicals, and most people inthe elite think they can get away with that.

I saw a cartoon in the paper in Florida recently that showedmonkeys in a tree, underneath it evangelicals. That's the sort ofthing that greeted our grandparents when they came here asimmigrants. It's the sort of thing that greeted blacks 75 years ago.It's just wrong. And I don't think you should oversimplify theirviews as you're doing.

FATHER DRINAN: I'm not getting on a guilt trip, Mike, though,because I've heard this before. And I say that this is all validatedby American history. The moment that people use a Scripture argumentto reach a political conclusion, we have the right to say the Bibledoes not justify your political connectedness with

MR. NOVAK: Well, you can argue all you want, but you shouldn'tmock and make fun of and downgrade as you were doing. I think thatwas quite wrong. You don't have to have a guilt trip about it, but itwould be all right if you admitted you're

FATHER DRINAN: I'm not downgrading them, no.

MR. NOVAK: No, you were.

FATHER DRINAN: I'm just saying that they're in error, profounderror.

MR. NOVAK: You were. You were explaining detestation of people. Idon't think that's the right thing to do. I don't think people shouldbe detested because they think the connection between religion andpolitics is more scriptural than you do.

MR. WATTENBERG: Michael Novak, I mean shouldn't religion beprivate?

MR. NOVAK: No.

MR. WATTENBERG: It should not be private?

MR. NOVAK: Absolutely not.

MR. WATTENBERG: I mean in our schools, we should have publicprayer? In our public schools. MR. NOVAK: Well, there is a differencebetween meanings of 'public' here and meanings of 'private.' I don'tthink religion ought to be locked up inside us because that's not thekind of animal we are. As Aristotle said a long time ago, we'repolitical animals; we're public animals, we have a public role toplay. And our religion has just as much to do with that as withanything else in our lives.

I think it's really quite wrong to I'll give you an example of howthis argument works badly. Take the abortion question, which I thinkis the front line religious question today, the one with the mostfatal consequences for the whole republic and for the very idea ofthe social contract.

It's a curious thing. People say to me, well, this should be aprivate decision, but then the same people want me to pay for it.That is, they want to use tax dollars to pay for abortions forcertain categories of people and want to make me complicit in that.That's a long that's a very long step which they don't even seethey're doing. They want a public policy to back their particularview of conscience. So even they are not consistent on the issue ofprivacy.

We're just not private, lonely, autonomous individuals. That'sjust not what we are. We're a republic, and we have to decide thingsin common, especially crucial issues. And I think the difficulty is,that issue was taken out of the public decisionmaking and put in thehands of the courts. That was a terrible, terrible political errorand we're still suffering for it.

FATHER DRINAN: But, Mike, what do you think of Ben's question?Should there be public religious exercises in the public schools?

MR. NOVAK: There always were and I think we were

FATHER DRINAN: Answer the question.

MR. NOVAK: I'm coming to it, but I want to put it in a contextdifferent from the context your tone of voice implied. We always didhave public religious exercise, as we do in Congress, as we do when apresident is inaugurated. We are a religious people. And it does notattach to the state to any establishment of religion to permit thatpublic expression of religion in the schools and elsewhere.

FATHER DRINAN: Well, if I may

MR. NOVAK: We've gone way too far in the last

FATHER DRINAN: you haven't answered.

MR. WATTENBERG: But I have a 10 year old daughter who is Jewish,and if she goes to a public school, which, as it happens, she doesnot, should she be forced to say a public Christian prayer?

MR. NOVAK: No, but the real issue on the prayer in the schools hascome down to a moment of silence, of due respect to the pluralism ofthe American people.

MR. WATTENBERG: That I can live with fine. I have no problem withthat.

MR. NOVAK: Well, I do think that's where there's a very largeconsensus, but somehow elites certain parts of elites still rebelagainst that.

FATHER DRINAN: Mike, that's been corrected by the Religious AccessAct that went through Congress, and that says that wherever studentsorganize for a prayer session in a public school under certainconditions, they can have it. So that is the federal law.

MR. NOVAK: But we are also one people, and there should sometimesbe liturgical expressions of that oneness

FATHER DRINAN: There's a hundred million people who arenonbelievers.

MR. NOVAK: that we are a people under God in the way in which Benused the little coin expression, 'In God We Trust.' There is a quitevalid traditional way of understanding that, even if you're not abeliever in God, in the light of conscience, in the light of honesty.

MR. WATTENBERG: Glenn Loury let me just move the topic a littlebit. Insofar as Professor Carter's book is correct, that we have atleast gone somewhat down the road toward trivializing religiousdevotion in this country, what have been the social consequences, inyour judgment?

MR. LOURY: Well, that's a large question.

MR. WATTENBERG: We specialize in large questions, sir.

MR. LOURY: My view is that they have been substantial and negativein the main. The question of license, of the elevation of freedom todo what one wants over responsibility, is deeply troubling to me. Wedon't talk about responsibility, we only talk about the rights, and Ithink we're headed for trouble. I think when we look across oursociety, whether it's at teen pregnancy or it's at violence, whetherit's the alienation and nihilism in our youth or whatever, we see theprice that we're paying in numerous ways.

And I believe that some of the excesses that we see on theChristian right and other places in the society is a reaction againstthat, people sensing that something profound is being lost and, insome cases, desperately trying to fight for a ground, the place thatthey can preserve in which their way of life as they understand it,perhaps in some instances nostalgically so, can be preserved.

MR. CARTER: I think there's a lot to that, and if you look atschool prayer for a moment, you see some evidence of this. There is agreat groundswell of support for organized classroom prayer in recentyears. I am against it, but that puts me in a minority, especially inthe inner cities and the black community. The leaders of the schoolprayer movement in Washington, D.C., are Marion Barry and recentlyMayor Sharon Pratt Kelly. And this is being explained and justifiedin the inner cities as a way of helping to bring some kind of moralcompass to our youth.

Now, I don't think school prayer is going to do that, but I dothink that what one sees here is a desperate yearning by very deeplyspiritual people for spiritual and moral conversation in America.It's a conversation we desperately need, and I don't see how we canhave that open, public affirmation of important values without theparticipation of the religious voice.

MR. NOVAK: Well, you know, our second president, John Adams, saidonce that what the world owes more to the Hebrew people than to anyother is the idea that there is a judge of all, and that no matterhow powerful or how rich a nation or its people may become, all areunder judgment.

He said that concept is what makes civilization possible, that is,that we all have to persuade each other, we can't coerce each otherbecause we're going to be judged for how we behave toward oneanother. And he said that opens up the whole path of republicangovernment, of self rule, of rule by a kind of self governance. And Ithink he's profoundly right about that.

FATHER DRINAN: But, Mike, that's a long time ago and in a totallydifferent society.

MR. NOVAK: But we live by those same institutions, and I believefirmly that our institutions presuppose such a notion and that allargument and persuasion back and forth among us depends on ourstanding underneath a standard of truth and evidence.

FATHER DRINAN: But in 42 cases before the Supreme Court, you'velost the argument, since 1947. So you're opposed to that whole lineof cases.

MR. NOVAK: I am opposed to that line of cases. I think they'vegone

FATHER DRINAN: All right, well, let's you want to go way back,then, when the First Amendment really doesn't apply to most of thecases in America. MR. NOVAK: No. What I want to argue is that thesecond part of the First Amendment, the free exercise of religion,has been lost sight of in an attempt to interpret the nonestablishment clause as if it meant this must be not a pluralisticcountry, not a religious people, but a secular society. That's amisinterpretation.

FATHER DRINAN: Yeah, but Justice Scalia really fouled that up andthe Congress reversed him, as I just mentioned, in the ReligiousFreedom Restoration Act.

MR. NOVAK: Well, there is a lot of confusion in the court. If youjust look at the way our court deals with the word 'religion,' theyalmost always surround it with pejorative words, like 'divisive' and'dangerous.' They treat it like a disease that has to be quarantined.

The court should be much more scrupulous about the way itinterprets history. It is foisting a one sided view of history on therest of us in a way that I think is contributing to the growing senseof discomfort at even illegitimacy.

MR. CARTER: Well, I think I was with you up to a point, Michael.That is, I am not sure that it's true that we can't have publicdeliberation unless there's a shared sense that we, in effect, standbefore judgment. But I do agree with you that it's vitally importantthat that sense be admitted to public debate as long as onerecognizes that there are people who don't share that sense andcertainly have as much right of access to the public square as anyoneelse.

MR. NOVAK: If they have the sense that we need to be judged underthe light of evidence, under the light of honesty or candor. Thepicture of the eye on the seal of the United States I think expressesthat very well. You don't have to believe that's the eye of God, butyou do have to believe that's the eye of conscience or honesty.Otherwise, I'm afraid what we're down to is it's your opinion, it'smy opinion, and let the one with the most force win.

MR. CARTER: That's why I think we need public conversation aboutwhat values we do share in common in the effort to promote a strongerprominent agenda of good, positive values.

MR. NOVAK: But Stephen wait, one second.

MR. WATTENBERG: I want to add a parentheses to this because youmentioned the dollar bill, and the Templeton prize that you recentlywon carried an award of one million dollars, and I am not going tolet myself or you get out of this program without telling us how itfeels to win a million dollars.

MR. NOVAK: I said afterwards, 'Thanks a million.' (Laughter.) Ididn't mean to, but that's the way it came out. As I was tellingFather Drinan, I've received at least a million suggestions on whatto do with that million dollars. (Laughter.)

MR. WATTENBERG: Congratulations, and let us continue thediscussion.

MR. LOURY: I think that there is an interesting paradox here, to acertain degree, because as we become a more diverse society, which weare, we need all the more, it seems to me, a transcendent commonunderstanding of our humanity and of our mutual obligation to eachother, which it seems to me is necessarily in some sense spiritual.

I think we focus too much on what the state does. I don't thinkthe state needs to be the primary venue within which we talk aboutthis stuff.

But what disturbs me is not necessarily what public schools do,but what the attitudes of the press, the media and all the rest, thetrivialization that Stephen talks about, which I think deprives us ofsomething quite valuable for the working out of our common

MR. NOVAK: Not only discover it, but celebrate it sometimes. Imean there has to be a public expression of it, I think, too.

FATHER DRINAN: Maybe the religious groups don't have enoughcredibility. You dump on the media and other people like that. MotherTeresa is universally revered. And if we were more Christian, if weloved each other more, if we did more charity, we'd be getting a muchbetter press. Let's turn to the churches. Maybe they're the negativeones.

MR. CARTER: I'd like to believe that that's right. I was at aconference a couple of years ago at which a Jewish scholar said thatmany people are complaining about calls for the U.S. to be aChristian nation; I just wish it would act like a Christian nationmore often.

MR. NOVAK: Yeah, but, you know, let's all meet that test. I wishmy secular friends would be more reasonable, too, and more humane. Imean if we're going to set a high standard for religious people tojump, let's make it the same standard for everybody.

MR. CARTER: But I do think it's correct, though, that religiousgroups themselves are responsible for some of this, often through aprocess of self censorship. I know a lot of religious people who willnot tell their friends that they're religious because they're afraidof what their friends will say.

I talked to a minister in Boston who was trying to get somepeople, some religious figures to join in a hunger project, and theywouldn't join. And he thought it was because they didn't agree withthe project. When he talked to them, they thought if there were toomany ministers involved, the project would get a bad name.

MR. WATTENBERG: Is there a religious answer in politics?

MR. CARTER: When you say, 'Is there a religious answer inpolitics?' I simply would like our culture, especially the courtswhich in spite of Bob's assurances, I'm not sure are going to backoff in light of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act the courts,pundits and various commentators and a lot of political activists tostop suggesting the sky is falling every time an individual suggeststhat his or her religious beliefs may have some bearing on a questionof public policy.

If that were our view, then the letter from Birmingham city jailby Martin Luther King, a profoundly religious document, the 'God ismarching on' speech of Martin Luther King, these would be seen asdocuments that should not have an honored place in American history.And yet they do precisely because of King's willingness and thewillingness of others to say sometimes religion and spiritual valueshave an inescapable connection to public affairs.

MR. NOVAK: Well, they also came under the rubric of 'In God WeTrust.' And so when he says that God looks at our behavior and seesit this way, and you look at it, yeah, it's plausible, a lot ofpeople changed their minds. And I think that's I want to argue, thosepublic symbols are very important.

And I celebrate Stephen Carter for raising it in a crucial book onthis issue. Then President Clinton I praise for making religiousspeech more public and in a reasonably intelligent and flexible way,I think. You know, I think we're making some progress in getting theargument into the public square.

MR. LOURY: I want to say something else, too, about the innercity. There are profound questions of values. I mean, the issue hasto do with sexual behavior. It has to do with telling little girlsand little boys how it is that they conduct themselves and what theydo with their bodies. You know, your body is the temple of the holyspirit whom you have received from God, right? That's what it says inthe Bible.

We've got to reach these youngsters, not throw condoms at them,right? I agree, if the churches were more effective at bringing thatmessage in a way that it could be understood and internalized bythese young people, they would have rightly earned a greater respectfrom the American public. But that's not necessarily a popularagenda. When I say it's a spiritual issue, when I say it's a valuesissue, people want to give me an economic critique. They want to tellme that the reason youngsters fornicate when they're 15 years old isbecause they're poor. That denies the humanity and the possibility ofthose young people.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Thank you, Father Drinan, Professor Loury,Professor Carter, Professor Novak.

And thank you. We enjoy hearing from our audience very much.Please send your comments to: New River Media, 1150 17th Street,N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. Or we can be reached via E-mail atthinktv@aol.com.

For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg.

ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content.

'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, bringing better,healthier lives to people worldwide through biotechnology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theWilliam H. Donner Foundation, the Randolph Foundation, and the JMFoundation.

BEN WATTENBERG

Return toThinkTank Online Home Page

Think Tank ® is a Registered Trademark of BJW, Inc. All Content © Copyright 1995 New River Media, Inc.

Back to top

Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc.

©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved.

Web development by Bean Creative.