How to be secular: a call to arms for religious freedom

338 Pages·2013·2.72 MB·English

by  Jacques Berlinerblau

Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Introduction: Is Secularism Dead?
WHAT SECULARISM IS AND ISN’T
What Is Secularism? (The Basic Package)
Were the Founders Secular?
Does Secularism Equal Total Separation of Church and State?
Does Secularism Equal Atheism?
How Not to Be Secular
THE VERY PECULIAR “RISE” AND FALL OF
AMERICAN SECULARISM
The “Rise” of American Secularism and the Secularish
The Fall of American Secularism
Are Democrats Secularists?
The Christian Nation and the GOP
REVIVING AMERICAN SECULARISM
Who Could Be a Secularist?
How to Be Secularish (In Praise of “Secular Jews” and “Cafeteria
Catholics”)
Tough Love for American Secularism
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
Connect with HMH
First Mariner Books edition 2013
Copyright © 2012 by Jacques Berlinerblau
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write
to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Berlinerblau, Jacques.
How to be secular: a call to arms for religious freedom / Jacques Berlinerblau.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-547-47334-5
ISBN 978-0-544-10516-4 (pbk.)
1. Secularism—United States. 2. Freedom of religion—United States. 3. United
States—Religion. 4. Church and state—United States. I. Title.
BL2747.8.B477 2012
211'.6—dc23
2012014226
Cover design by Patrick Barry
eISBN 978-0-547-51828-2
v4.1017
To the memory of Pasquale Spadavecchia (1931–2008)
Country Doctor. Philosopher. Gentleman.
“You had religious education?”
“None that you could take seriously.”
“I pity you.” So flatly stated that he might as well have been telling
me the time.
“Yes, you feel sorry for me?”
“Secular don’t know what they are living for.”
“I can see how to you it might look that way.”
“Secular are coming back. Jews worse than you.”
“Really? How much worse?”
“I don’t like to say even.”
“What is it? Drugs? Sex? Money?”
“Worse. Come, mister. It’ll be mitzvah, mister.”
If I was correctly reading his persistence, my secularism represented
to him nothing more than a slightly ridiculous mistake.
—PHILIP ROTH, The Counterlife
Preface
A FEW DAYS BEFORE the commemoration at Ground Zero marking the tenth
anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy, an article appeared on the front
page of the New York Times titled “Omitting Clergy from 9/11 Ceremony
Prompts Protest.”1 The protesters in question were incensed over Mayor Michael
Bloomberg’s decision to prohibit religious officials from speaking at the
memorial honoring those who perished in the attacks.
Uproar aside, the decision was entirely consistent with the city’s usual
practice. In the past, services on this day of national mourning did not typically
feature official representatives of religious groups. That clerics were not invited
to participate on September 11, 2011, was neither unprecedented nor unusual.
But leaders of the Christian Right suddenly deemed this arrangement
unacceptable.
Richard Land, a major figure in the ultraconservative and highly influential
Southern Baptist Convention, was quoted in the article as saying, “We’re not
France . . . Mr. Bloomberg is pretending we’re a secular society, and we are
not.”2 Elsewhere, Land lamented that Bloomberg’s action “demonstrates the
mindless secularist prejudice of the political establishment on our nation’s
Eastern Seaboard.”3
Doing its own reporting on the growing controversy, the Christian Century
cited the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, who charged that
New York’s mayor was “ignoring most Americans and most New Yorkers by
pretending religion is unimportant.”4 The same article mentioned a right-wing
blogger who accused Bloomberg of launching a “de facto jihad” on religion.5
As the controversy crescendoed, the mayor’s detractors certainly had reason
to believe that they might prevail. After all, in recent decades the Christian Right
had been routing American secularism (a term that, as we shall see, has been
defined, derided, used, and abused in a bewildering variety of ways). The
growing influence of this movement was evident in the manner in which faith
and piety had come to permeate the rhetoric of politicians and, ultimately, law
and policy. Reproductive rights had been checked across the country—so much
so that legal abortions are extraordinarily difficult to procure in many states of
the Union. Science’s role in shaping national dialogue on questions such as the
teaching of evolution or the threat of climate change had been degraded.
American public education had been challenged by attempts to de-secularize the
curriculum or even remove students from its institutions via voucher programs
or homeschooling.
Now the conservative Christian “outrage machine” was revving and whirring
again.6 And in New York City, for the love of God! This must have seemed like
a heaven-sent opportunity for the assembled activists. If the Christian Right
could make it unsecular there, they could make it unsecular anywhere! Imagine
the mayor of the most secular city in America, and possibly the world, being
forced to bend to the will of a few Bible-thumpin’ pastors from the boonies!
That did not come to pass. In the face of a brutal battering from the media,
Bloomberg held his ground, often with truculence. The fact that he had always
maintained cordial relations with the city’s diverse communities of faith
certainly strengthened his position.7 Another explanation for his triumph was the
refusal of the Catholic Church to join the evangelical Protestants who had
initiated the scrum.8 The ceremony proceeded solemnly and without incident.
The critics quietly decamped from this theater of the culture wars. In all
likelihood they’ll be back for another go.
This book is about the recent crackup of American secularism and the
therapeutic steps required for its rehabilitation. In understanding how the patient
became institutionalized (or, more precisely, de-institutionalized) we will need
to make sense of its complex historical past. In order to secure the future of
secularism we will need to understand what secularism is and, more important,
what it is not. According to its enemies, secularism is akin to atheism, hatred of
religion, anti-Americanism, and—why not?—radical jihadism.
The stakes are very high. Were secularism to completely collapse, the country
might become the type of “Christian nation” that the New York protesters hope
(and pray) for. In the mid-twentieth century, the U.S. Supreme Court assiduously
labored to purge any such possibility from our political system. Yet the form of
secularism they abided by has fallen upon some very difficult times. New ideas,
new energy, and most of all new people are needed to resurrect it in America
today.
To a large extent, the ceremony of September 11, 2011, exemplified the
possibilities of a new vision for secular America, wherein both freedom of and
freedom from religion are granted as much space as possible. Under the
Bloomberg protocols, no state-sanctioned clergy or prayer was included during
the memorial. Yet those citizens who wished to express their faith were
completely at liberty to do so.