AN ALLIANCE WITH LIBERAL RELIGION?
By David A. Hollinger
Central to my perspective on the issues at hand is my sense that for all the variations on
secular outlooks and on faith-based outlooks visible in the United States today, there is a
great potential for a political and cultural alliance between secular liberals and religious
liberals. Yet this potential alliance is often obscured by two widespread assumptions, one
among religious liberals and one among secular liberals.
Many liberal Protestants and liberal Catholics continue to believe that their big enemy is
secularism, and that the evangelicals and fundamentalists, however frustrating, are their
deep allies. The community of faith, in this view, is the salient solidarity, and within it all
are united against secularism.
On the other hand, many persons who identify as secular are
slow to recognize differences among their religion-affirming
neighbors, and tend to dismiss liberal Protestants and liberal
Catholics as part of the problem rather than as part of a
solution.
I wish more secularists would realize that most of the religious
ideas actually espoused and defended by liberal Protestants and
liberal
Catholics
have
accommodated
with
the
postEnlightenment way of knowing that is still resisted by more
conservative religious styles. And I wish more of the enlightened
faithful would recognize that a vast proportion of secularists are
operating under the same basic value structure that they, the
religious liberals, operate under.
But even when such a breakthrough is achieved, those of us
who have been speaking these past few years about the
potential for such an alliance have been divided about a
strategic issue. Some believe that the best way to consolidate
and act upon this alliance is to avoid all discussion of religious
ideas as such, and to concentrate on issues in public policy such
as poverty, the environment, foreign policy, social welfare,
education, etc. In this view, we should accept our differences
about religion, appreciate the fact that faith as well as a secular outlook can be a
foundation for the same liberal politics, and go forward together.
But there is another view. In this alternate view, we should openly debate religious issues
as such in the hope that more of the unenlightened will move from conservative and
obscurantist religious ideas to the kind of religious ideas characteristic of the liberal
Protestants and the liberal Catholics. Those who are attracted to this approach believe
that conservative politics are actually sustained by conservative theological views (not
always, but often enough to be a part of the problem).
In fact, religious ideas get a curious pass in American society. They are protected from the
same kind of scrutiny that we normally give ideas about gender, the economy, race, and
any number of other important matters.
If religious ideas had no impact on how people dealt with public policy issues, they could
indeed be ignored. But we are nowadays constantly told that religious ideas are a vital
ground for action in the public square. If religion is relevant to public affairs, then should
not it be open for the same kind of critical discussion we offer to other kinds of publicly
relevant ideas?
Interestingly, many who urge more acceptance of religion in the public square want
skeptics to keep quiet, and in fact if you actually go after someone’s religious ideas you
are quickly accused of anti-religious bias. I find this stance highly problematic. If the
faithful are willing to say that we should shut up about their ideas because, after all, they
are private, then the faithful should not proclaim the relevance of those ideas to public
affairs.
As I imply above, I incline toward the second of these strategic directions; that is, I favor
a robust, open, critical discussion of such things as the status of the Bible as a source of
knowledge, the sorts of warrant we might develop for the idea of the Atonement, etc.
Not all religious ideas are equally obscurantist. Many of the ideas of liberal Protestants and
liberal Catholics can stand up to the same canons of evidence and reasoning that
secularists use in their daily lives. An open discussion of religious ideas might reveal that
religious liberals have a lot more in common with many secularists than they do with the
bulk of evangelicals and fundamentalists.
We need to remember that 80 percent of Americans declare themselves to be Christians.
It is a matter of some importance just what kind of Christian-ity they espouse. All
Americans have an interest in this question. Religion is too important to be left in the
hands of people who believe in it.
David A. Hollinger is department chair and Preston Hotchkiss Professor of History at the
University of California at Berkeley. His books include Cosmopol-itanism and Solidarity:
Group Affiliation in the United States and Science, Jews and Secular Culture.