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ON STEPHEN CARTER In the following, I examine and discuss some of the main themes and arguments in The Culture of Disbelief.
A. THE TRIVIALIZATION OF RELIGION 1. THE FIRST WAY - According to Carter, religion is trivialized by treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant (6), as irrational (xiv, 13), as not to be taken seriously (7), as a flight from hard truth (21-2), as something to hold in private but not to parade in public (21-5); it is trivialized by dismissing creationists as backward, irrational, illiberal fanatics (159, 178) and know-nothing zealots (164). Who treats religion this way?
2. THE SECOND WAY - Can you draw the conclusion, then, that religion is not trivialized when it is taken seriously, or viewed as important, or paraded in public instead of kept in private? Not quite! It depends on how you construe "serious" and "important." According to Carter, sometimes the religious themselves trivialize religion. Preachers and politicians who invoke religion too casually (44-45), who claim to know God's mind (74), who call "upon the word of God in service of every known cause" (80) – all of these diminish religion, too. When your "theology always ends up squaring precisely with . . . [your] politics," writes Carter (70), when you let the "political tail wag the scriptural dog" (69), you are not treating religion seriously; you've lost grasp of its importance. Indeed, Carter poses the issue very sharply at p. 80:
Those who substitute their own will for the will of God, no matter how sincere and how convinced they are that they honor God's commands, trivialize religion. 3. Some questions. First, what is wrong with trivializing religion in the FIRST WAY, by deeming it irrational and the like? Here is one answer. A person's religion matters to her (37-8, 41); indeed, it is likely of "first importance" to her, the "fundament" upon which she builds her life (15, 14). Thus, to insult her faith is to insult her in a deep way. Now, gratuitously insulting her, or her faith, is wrong regardless of the character of her views. Many people, in fact, build their lives on silly and superstitious ideas. Carter himself admits that most Americans believe noxious or silly things (218). However, the fact that people's views are silly doesn't by itself license us to ridicule them. Moreover, these views need not be religious. People can build on "fundaments" that are philosophical and secular. Nor does the fact that a view is "religious" immunize it from being silly or superstitious. There are theologically substantial religions and there are theologically insubstantial ones. (Contrast Christianity with the Church of the Terrapin [made up of particularly fanatical supporters of Maryland basketball] or the Church of Elvis Everywhere [whose theologian is Mojo Nixon].) The first answer, then, to the question, "What's wrong with trivializing religion?" has no special connection to religion. Rather, it points to the wrongness of unnecessarily humiliating a person by ridiculing her fundamental beliefs, whether those beliefs are religious in character or not. A second answer to the question takes a different tack. It says, "Don't trivialize serious, substantial religions." Although Carter talks of religion generally, most of his claims are made in the context of Christian faith. Secular culture's ridicule of the beliefs of the Christian creationist and its disregard for the tenets of the Jehovah's Witness are what stir his ire. Moreover, his entire discussion of the SECOND WAY of trivialization is tied to the Christian context. Pat Buchanan and the Christian Right are among his principal targets. The theology of Christianity is not something to be dismissed as intellectually insubstantial, believes Carter, nor to be be appropriated for partisan ends. However, if we link immunity from ridicule to theological substantiality, we run into a difficulty. We introduce division within the Christian community itself. Some Christian denominations consider others to be mired in superstition, and worse: idolatry and blasphemy. (Check out the Bob Jones University web site for some old-fashioned denomination-bashing.) Indeed, as we have just seen, Carter himself lays the basis for the strongest kind of condemnation of a certain kind of Christianity, the kind that finds a cozy fit between our preexisting political inclinations and God's will. In other words, if we want to avoid trivializing Christianity in the SECOND WAY, might we not have to trash some religious beliefs in the FIRST WAY? Not quite. In talking about the FIRST WAY, Carter has in mind secular thinkers who ridicule the creationist, for example, because his views are rooted in a belief in God; these secularists think that is what's silly. This is distinct from ridiculing the creationist because his particular understanding of God is silly – as it might be from the vantage point of a particular theology. The matter of respect is more complicated than allowed for in Carter's initial typology. Some disrespect of some religious views may be founded on the utmost respect for theological premises. 4. Let's summarize: Here are several questions and the answers to them, some gleaned from or implied by Carter's words, and some I supply myself.
Notice a change of ground running through the four questions. In the fourth question, the basis of the answer is theological: from the perspective of some understandings of God, other understandings are corrupt and offensive, and ought to be combatted. This basis doesn't underwrite the answers to the first two questions. B. RESPECT 1. A crucial part of what Carter wants is respect from secular culture for Christian belief. He doesn't demand that liberals approve of school prayer (he opposes school prayer), or abandon support for abortion rights (he favors abortion rights), or cave in to "creation science" in the classroom (he opposes "creation science" in the classroom). Indeed, one point of his undertaking, he says, is to "defend the liberal position without resort to the antirelgious fervor that often characterizes the liberal case." (15) What Carter really wants is respect for his faith. He wants secular culture not to think of him – a religious believer –as "less rational than more 'normal' folks." (16) 2. But what counts as disrespect? What signifies "antireligious fervor?" Does every humiliation and estrangement felt by the believer count? Religious believers these days "sense in their everyday lives a cultural devaluation of their devotion," writes Carter (xvi). But what of it? What does this sense tell us? Here is one possible answer.
The important point about this answer is not whether it is true but what it implies about any answer, namely, that the answer must assume a particular baseline. For example:
Obviously, if Baseline 1 is correct, then the last fifty years have been an unwarranted cultural devaluing of religion. The disgruntled Christian is justified in feeling disgruntled. But if Baseline 2 is correct, the last fifty years look differently. They look like the withdrawal of unwarranted privileges and the restoration of a proper balance. The disgruntled Christian is unjustified in his disgruntlement. Just as we need some historical baselines for judgment, we need some theological ones as well. On the theme of estrangement, Carter writes, "[F]rom the point of view of religiously devout people whose consciences and visions of reality are influenced by faith, the public square can . . . seem a cold, suspicious, and hostile place." (53) Carter expects us automatically to count this as evidence that something is wrong in our cultural/political condition. But why should we? What are we to make of these feelings of estrangement? Should the Christian, in fact, ever feel comfortable and at home in the public square – the political arena – of a liberal democracy? Or shouldn't the public square always remain a somewhat alien and hostile place for the Christian? Shouldn't the public culture of a liberal state inevitably grate against Christian sensibilities? Carter, in fact, lays the basis for answering yes to these last two questions. The Christian, according to Carter, has "a separate allegiance" from the state (39); he views "the authority of God as superior to the authority of the state" (38). "A religion is, at its best, a way of denying the authority of the rest of the world; it is a way of saying to fellow human beings and to the state those fellow human beings have erected, 'No, I will not accede to your will.' This is a radically destabilizing proposition . . . . " (41). Indeed it is! It is bound to breed a most uneasy relation with those fellow humans who value the liberal state they have made. Furthermore, the separate allegiance of the Christian leads to conflict; churches are "autonomous communities of resistance" to the state (40; see 68). Nor should the Christian want an amelioration of this uneasy relationship. In fact, the church must deflect efforts to smooth relations with the state. It is "vital that the religious struggle to maintain the tension between the meanings and understandings propounded by the state and the very different set of meanings and understandings" internal to the Christian faith (273). Should the Christian feel disappointment that she is not easily accepted by the liberal state and its public culture, that she is an outsider? Not at all. On the contrary, the Christian finds triumph in "suffering rather than hegemony" (Carter quoting Kierkegaard) (273). Given all of these contentions by Carter, shouldn't the Christian always see the public square of even the most perfect liberal democracy as a cold, suspicious, and hostile place? Since Carter doesn't, in fact, tie together his concerns about the "humiliation" experienced by Christians at the hands of secular society with his theses about the "rejectionist" role of churches, it remains unclear in the end what level of "comfort" Carter thinks appropriate between the Christian community and the liberal state. But without a specification of an appropriate comfort-level baseline, we cannot assess the argument that the liberal state denies religion its proper place in the public square by making the latter a place too cool toward religious belief. C. EPISTEMOLOGY: RELIGION AND SCIENCE IN CONFLICT Let's turn back to respect. What clearly nettles Carter is the allegation that devout Christian believers are "less rational" than other folks. In particular, he bridles at the smearing of creationists as "irrational zealots." He insists that the creationists are just as rational as anyone else (174), so they don't merit the condemnation they get from secular culture. Although it takes us away from the "trivialization" theme, we need to dwell here on Carter's arguments about the rationality of religious belief. They will have an important bearing later, when we come back to the issue of proper "separation" of church and state. 1. There are three aspects to Carter's defense of the creationists that need attending to. The first concerns the relation between science and religion. Carter finds the "effort to foist upon the public an image of creationists as know-nothing zealots . . . profoundly disturbing" because it "implicitly endorses . . . [a] mistaken vision of the historical relationship between science and religion" (164) It endorses the image of a necessary conflict between them. But, insists Carter, "it is not true that science and religion are naturally enemies" (163). However, by Carter's own definitions, religion and science are always potentially, if not actually, at odds. To be religious, claims Carter, "is to believe in some aspect of the supernatural," to believe in "supernatural intervention in human affairs" (25; see also 160). By contrast, "science deals with knowledge about the natural world" (217); its method excludes appeal outside of nature. Consequently, religion and science are bound to conflict unless religion tempers its claims of supernatural intervention. Consider the range of possibilities. A religious believer might hold that the universe was created by an outside source, which then left the universe to develop according to its own internal laws. This kind of religion risks little conflict with science. More challenging is the belief of the Christian, who holds that God intervened in the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, an event that transgressed or set aside the laws of nature. Obviously, this event isn't explainable by natural processes. If the Christian confines her faith to this singular event, her conflict with science is limited; but if she believes God has continually intervened in the course of the world through other miracles, her faith generates many more conflicts with science. Finally, if – as the creationist does – she takes the Bible to establish not only supernatural truths but natural truths as well, then the conflict between religion and science is stark and thorough-going. The "creationist,' as Carter is using the word, is someone who takes the creation account in Genesis as literally true. The "creation science" position is committed to
2. Given the conflict between the creationist and secular science, how should we respond? Carter reacts in two different ways that ultimately prove incompatible with one another. One of Carter's strategies is to relativize science and religion as "alternative modes of cognition" (167), "competing systems for discerning the truth" (176). When secularists "relegate religious ways of knowing" to "inferior status," they merely express a snobbish preference for their own starting points. If liberals are to be true to their purported tolerance of difference, they should welcome epistemic diversity (174, 230). The creationist's rejection of evolution "rests on a nontrivial hermeneutic and a rational application of it to the evidence" (167). What is the hermeneutic (i.e., method of interpretation) in question? The interpretive approach, writes Carter,
Carter goes on: "To the extent that creationism is the result of the application of the hermeneutic of innerancy to the opening chapters of Genesis, it is certainly rational" (174). Thus, just as science is the rational (i. e., consistent) working out of its starting point, creationism is the rational (i. e., consistent) working out of its starting point. "Given its starting point and its methodology, creationism is as rational an explanation as any other," writes Carter. "The trouble is that both the starting point and the methodology reflect an essential axiom – literal inerrancy – that is not widely shared. In this sense, the wrongness of creationism becomes a matter of power: yes, it is wrong because it is proved wrong, but it is proved wrong only in a particular epistemological universe" (175-76; see also 182). The bottom line seems to be this: (i) there are different epistemological universes; (ii) from within each universe, its own beliefs look true and the beliefs in other universes look false; and (iii) the ascendancy or domination of a particular universe is merely a matter of power. 3. Carter's other response to the science/religion conflict embedded in the creationist controversy works at odds with his relativism. Carter doesn't want "scientific creationism" taught in the classroom because, he says, it is "shoddy science, not science at all, really" (161; see also 174). We should criticize the creationist's beliefs, but in doing so, we should not dismiss the views because they are religiously-motivated; we should criticize them "on their merits as good or bad ideas" (181). The creationists are "wrong" in their beliefs, not "irrational or fanatical" because they happen to draw their beliefs from religion (176). The problem: given Carter's relativizing of religion and science, above, what is the basis for his saying the creationist is "wrong" or mistaken in her beliefs? How can the creationist's beliefs be considered on their merits except from within the creationist framework? To judge them wrong on the basis of prevailing scientific accounts of the world imports an external and alien framework of judgment. It refuses to treat the creationist's framework as an "alternative mode of cognition." It proceeds on the basis of starting points the creationist rejects. Indeed, in the end Carter seems to confess his inability to show the creationist's beliefs to be wrong. Those beliefs rest on the innerancy of the Bible. Carter doesn't accept this creationist doctrine, but "in rejecting their cosmology," he writes, "I have no answer to give them, none that will satisfy" (180). 4. What are we to make of this problem in Carter's treatment of the creationists? I will venture this answer. Carter doesn't actually mean to endorse a thorough relativism. What he wants from us is some sympathy for the creationist. The creationist isn't a nut-case, he maintains. Just like us, she starts from certain initial premises and reasons outward from them, trying to make her starting-point, experience, and evidence cohere in one intelligible account. She starts from a religious premise endorsed by many others, not one she holds all alone. Given her starting point, where she ends up is not entirely fanciful; and it provides her with a sincere conviction that the schools, in teaching evolution, are teaching her children falsehoods (and pernicious ones, at that). Thus, we should not derisively dismiss her as an irrational kook; and we should entitle her "to broad rights to exempt . . . [her] children from educational programs to which . . . [she] raise[s] religious objections" (174). We need not hold her beliefs to be immune from criticism, but our criticism should be confined to the scientific merits of her beliefs rather than her religious motivation for holding them (181). In other words, Carter is engaged in descriptive relativism, to give it a name. He wants to remind us that the creationist works within a system of thought just as we do; and from within that system of thought, the moves she makes show the marks of intelligence and reason. Carter reminds us of all this in order to elicit our sympathy and respect for the creationist. He is not engaged in normative relativism, which contends that every claim is starting-point relative, and no starting point is better than any other. This kind of relativism would, indeed, preclude any consideration of the creationist's beliefs on their merits, except from within the creationist's own thought-system. We will return to epistemological issues again, but let us turn now to other matters. D. SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 1. "Separation" raises a host of complicated questions. Carter makes clear that he doesn't want to undo the current regime of "separation" in this country. However, he is very critical of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence in reaching its "separation" decisions. The basis of his criticism reaches also to his complaints about the way secularists trivialize religion. Let's see if we can understand Carter's view on the impermissible intrusion of religion into public life. I first set out a series of quotes.
What is Carter telling us here?
In short, Carter tells us -- Distinguish between motives. Don't look to motive, look to purpose. Purpose equals motive. Don't look to the source; that risks looking at motive. The source, not motive, is what counts. Can you make sense of this?!! [Oxford English Dictionary]
2. Carter is mired in equivocal and imprecise uses of "motivation" and "purpose." Yet, "motivation" plays a crucial role in his argument. From start to finish, he labors the theme that public positions are not invalid or improper just because they are motivated by religious considerations or religious beliefs. What, exactly, does he have in mind here? I think we can give a plausible gloss to Carter's claim by distinuishing between levels of purposes. Consider these three chains of reasoning and the policy involved – PERSON A A.1.
God is the Supreme Creator. PERSON B B.1.
God is the Supreme Creator. PERSON C C.1
There is no God. THE POLICY: mandated praying. THE IMMEDIATE PURPOSE: get students to acknowledge God. For Person A, the immediate purpose promotes a background purpose: to maximize acknowledgement of God; and this background purpose promotes a further, ultimate purpose (with respect to this chain): to do what is proper with respect to God. For Person C, the immediate purpose promotes a different background purpose: to maximize honest and peaceable citizens; and this background goal promotes a further, different ultimate purpose (with respect to this chain): to achieve a stable community. Persons A and C diverge in their background and ultimate purposes but converge on the particular policy and its immediate purpose. Person B shares the background and ultimate purposes of A but diverges from both A and C on the propriety of the policy and of its immediate purpose. Thus, starting from religious background premises, you might oppose government-mandated religious performances (as does B); and starting from secular background premises, you might favor government-mandated religious observances (as does C). There is no necessary connection between starting from religious premises and getting to a religious outcome, nor starting from secular premises and getting to a secular outcome. Consequently, you should avoid the knee-jerk reaction of thinking that religious background premises necessarily taint policy arguments. What counts is the actual nature of the policy and its immediate purpose. This seems to be Carter's point. We can see this, again, in the following example elaborated from one of Carter’s own references: SCHOOLBOARD MEMBER X supports adding calculus to the school curriculum. Her immediate purpose: to increase students' command of mathematics. Her background purpose: to prepare students for seeing the mathematical beauty of the universe and thus the image of God in it – since God's perfection is mirrored in the mathematical perfection of His creation. Her ultimate purpose: to promote belief in, and understanding, of God. SCHOOLBOARD MEMBER Z supports adding calculus to the school curriculum. His immediate purpose: to increase students' command of mathematics. His background purpose: to improve the career opportunities for students. His ultimate purpose: to promote general prosperity. With this example in place, let's put Carter's main point this way: it doesn't matter what Member X's motives (= background purposes) are for adding calculus to the curriculum; likewise it should not matter what the creationist's motives (= background purposes) are for adding "creation science" to the curriculum. What matters is the immediate purpose of a policy. Agreeing with the Supreme Court, Carter concludes that the immediate purpose of the Louisiana law contested in Edwards v. Aguillard was religious – to promote the Genesis account of creation. [For more on creationism and Edwards v. Aguillard, click here.] 3. This is just a first stab at getting a handle on Carter's point. The "immediate vs. background purpose"distinction may break down in particular cases. It may not be easy to apply. Particular policies may serve multiple immediate purposes. Moreover, we can't rule out the possibility that a particular background purpose might invalidate a policy. Nevertheless, to evaluate validity, we will have to proceed using a number of distinctions, only one of which I've discussed here: immediate vs. background purposes (or direct vs. indirect purposes), intended vs. unintended effects, side effects vs. direct effects, etc. E. LIBERALISM, RELIGION, AND THE PUBLIC SQUARE 1. Carter criticizes "liberalism" for both a general hostility to religion and a particular hostility to religion in the public square. But what is liberalism? Carter describes it in two different ways. At pp. 230 and 271f, he describes it as "a theory of politics." In other words, it is a theory that restricts itself to questions about the political realm. However, throughout Chapter 11 Carter typically treats liberalism as a general theory about fact and value. It derives, he says, from Enlightenment rationalism, the idea "that human reason, by observing and deducing, could resolve both moral and factual propositions without the need to resort to divine authority." (215) This puts liberalism at odds with religious ways of knowing the world. (216) For example, liberalism takes propositions to be factual only when they are tested against material experience. (223) Thus, "contemporary liberal epistemology" is "not capable of treating as a factual inquiry a question like 'Can the Jehovah's Witness achieve salvation after receiving a blood transfusion?' -- or, for that matter, a question like 'Is there life after death?' These questions, to liberal theory, involve matters of belief, not fact." (221) But the liberal is wrong in this, asserts Carter. 'Is there life after death?' is "a question designed to discover a fact." (221) [However, three pages later Carter contradicts himself on this last point: he asserts that the fact/value distinction deployed by liberals "turns the claims of the creationists into fact-claims" which they – the liberals – then reject as false. (224)] Similarly, liberalism rejects the religious way to moral knowledge, claims Carter. It offers several different answers to the question, "what does the validity of moral claims rest on?" (224-225) (These answers typically invoke social contracts or appeals to natural rights.) But, contends Carter, these answers are unconvincing. They leave us with intense moral disagreement. "[N]ot everyone agrees [with] . . . replacing divine moral authority . . . [by the authority of reason]." (225) Why? "Perhaps," speculates Carter, "most people are upset with the idea that morality is itself contingent, that ethical debates have no right answers." (225) "For many . . . the idea of moral authority itself implies the existence of an arbiter" (226) Why not, then, a divine rather than human arbiter?
Carter, on this rhetorical flourish, puts the liberal in his place. But let's back up. First of all, the liberals Carter talks about on p. 230 offer liberalism as a political doctrine (so acknowledges Carter), limiting itself to questions of political epistemology and political morality. "How shall we make and justify political decisions?" -- that is the question political liberalism tries to answer. Political liberalism doesn't put the Jehovah's Witness question on the table for public factual resolution – Why? Not because it supposes there is no way to answer but because it thinks the state should not be in the business of deciding theological truths. Likewise, in public contexts, political liberalism limits our appeal to the authority of God not because it takes a particular stand on God’s existence or authority but because it thinks the state should not be in the business of deciding theological truths. No liberal theorist has ever proposed that the citizen as citizen should be guided by the will of brilliant philosophers. Rather, liberal theorists propose that the citizen as citizen should be guided by a shared basis of argument and justification. Now, why can't that shared basis be God's will? Well, Carter, himself supposes it can't in Chapter 6 when he insists that "separation of church and state is essential to the success of a vibrant, pluralist democracy." (108) Separation is essential to religious liberty. To permit state policy to be premised on God's will means allowing one or another sectarian interpretation of God's will to be imposed on other religious believers. 2. Carter's treatment of liberalism is inadequate. In part, it collapses together different liberalisms. And in part, it is driven by some simple confusions. For example, the authority of reason as a basis of moral claims strikes Carter as wholly inadequate. Why? Because people don't agree about what reason dictates. We need a moral arbiter. We need a source of right answers. Thus, we need to invoke God. But, of course, people don't agree about God's word, either. Appeal to God as source of moral authority no more squelches disagreement than does appeal to reason. F. CIVIL RELIGION, NATURAL LAW, AND REVEALED RELIGION 1. It isn't simply Enlightenment liberalism that puts faith in reason to answer many of our questions. A long tradition of Christian belief does so as well. Indeed, Carter himself surfaces this fact when he alludes at one place to "classical natural law theology" (228). The idea of Natural Law holds that certain basic tenets of morality are discernible by reason alone. They are "written in the hearts" of men and women (Romans 2:15). Thus, even people who had never heard of the God of the Bible would nevertheless, if they were even minimally rational, be able to organize their lives in certain standard ways. They would proscribe cheating, lying, and murder in their societies. They would enjoin children to respect their parents. They would embrace ideas of justice. And so on. Why? Because these norms and ideas are the obvious preconditions of any flourishing organized life together. Thus, a long natural law tradition in the Catholic Church, for example, has argued that we can know many of God's laws by reason alone. If true, this means that the religious and the nonreligious will not be far apart on many of the essentials of morality and social order. There will be general agreement on a broad range of basic principles. There will be little conflict between important secular principles and key religious beliefs. This absence of conflict manifests itself in something else, as well, "civil religion." 2. Civil religion, according to Carter, is theologically vacuous, "atheological." (51) It consists of the common ways in which God gets officially invoked in our country. "In God We Trust" is printed on our money; "one nation, under God" is the object of our pledge of allegiance. Presidents call upon God to guide America in troubled times, they ask God's blessings, and they warn that we are under God's judgment (see Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address). Most of these invocations of God are so theologically empty they needn't disturb otherwise theologicaly divided believers. They needn't even disturb nonbelievers. How so? Because they represent little more than the personification of ideas and values with no specifically religious content. For example, the nonbeliever will assume that we humans are accountable to one another to live under a rule of justice. There is little added to this in saying we live under the rule of a just Judge. The nonbeliever will understand how our course as a nation is subject to the vagaries of fate and he will hope we have the wisdom to steer clear of trouble. There is little added to this in asking for the guidance of Divine Wisdom. 3. Even when religious views are more theologically freighted, they may track secular philosophy or "natural law" views quite closely. Thus, when Martin Luther King and others in the Civil Rights Movement invoked the image that we are all equal in the eyes of God, they didn't put forward a peculiar theological premise but a widely-shared egalitarian platform that has as many secular versions as religious. This is why liberals in the 1960s – and by this Carter means secular liberals, unbelievers – were receptive to Martin Luther King's rhetoric. The fact that King's movement rested on "classic natural law theology" meant that there would be no secular/religious tension to overcome. 4. In contrast to natural law, Christianity and Judaism also involve revelation. While you might figure out by unaided reason that no human is intrinsically better than another, or that it is not a good thing for people to kill each other, or that it is important for people to honor their word, you would never figure out by reason alone that you should refrain from eating shellfish, or avoid uncovering your uncle's nakedness, or keep the sabbath, or submit to the servant leadership of your husband; and you would never figure out that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and only in Him can you receive eternal life. These things you can know only from revelation. And this is why contemporary liberals don't feel very comfortable with some of the rhetoric of the Christian Right. It is not because liberals are inconsistent hypocrites -- favoring M. L. King but not Pat Buchanan though both appealed to religion -- but because so much of the Christian Right's platform seems (because it is frequently Biblically grounded) to derive from revelation, not natural theology. 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