The driving force behind Feldman’s arguments seems to be the desire for national unity — the same driving force behind values evangelicals, which may not be a coincidence. The title of the book announces his concern that America has been “divided” by religious disagreement: he looks back fondly on times when we were supposedly less divided, and his proposed solution is designed to reduce the divisions, thus achieving greater unity. His book could probably have been given the subtitle “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”
I think he is wrong on all accounts — we can’t all just “get along,” at least not on the terms he proposes. We were never as unified as he seems to believe and it’s not justified to think that this proposal will lead to greater unity. There is no “common” national vision which is being destroyed by the difference between secularism and theocracy. Allowing the government to get involved with religious symbols will not eliminate the divide between “values evangelicals” and secularists, yet at the same time it will *increase conflicts between those religious groups with the political muscle to get government-endorsed symbols and those which can’t.
Feldman argues that the legal secularists want to keep religion in the private realm as part of an effort to achieve unity, but he’s reading his own goals into others actions. Secularists want to keep religion a private matter so as not to make religion a subject of political conflict, thus making what divisions do exist in America even worse. Keeping religion private isn’t designed to achieve national unity, just to keep religious divisions from being part of political divisions.
America isn’t like other nations where there is a background commonality of culture, history, language, religion, and/or ethnicity. Being German, French, or Chinese means something different from being an American. America is a “creedal” nation where people are unified, if at all, on the basis of accepting some basic political principles of liberty, equality, and opportunity.
Values evangelicals would replace this with a superficial unity that is defined by the religious values of conservative, evangelical Christianity. Although himself Jew, Noah Feldman appears to agree, at least in principle, with finding some broader basis for national unity and appears to be willing to go along with what the values evangelicals offer.
A much better solution is probably not to insist on artificial unity in the first place. This is the course adopted by Feldman’s legal secularists: the government doesn’t take sides in religious matters and therefore doesn’t even attempt to suggest that America should be united or defined by any one religion’s doctrines. Legal secularism allows that Americans can and perhaps even should be divided by religion, so long as there exists secular political principles we can agree on. We don’t even have to agree on them for the same reasons — just so long as we agree to work together on them for the betterment of the entire community.
This sort of unity may not be as broad or cover as many “values” as people like Feldman would like, but it’s deeper because it requires a genuine, practical commitment to our shared community. In the long run, it’s much better than a superficial “unity” that is more illusory than real, more coerced than voluntary.
Yes, coerced — Feldman’s criticisms of values evangelicals notwithstanding, his sympathies are clearly with them.
He insists, for example, that someone who doesn’t want to recite “under God” as part of the Pledge of Allegiance be allowed to step outside the classroom while everyone else does and if they feel discriminated against, that’s their “interpretive choice” which can be disregarded. At the same time, when values evangelicals feel discriminated against by absence of Ten Commandments monuments in the public square, that’s not an “interpretive choice” — or at least, it is one which should be respected and accommodated.
Feldman’s proposal doesn’t ensure that money won’t go to religious groups, but it does ensure that the government will take “symbolic” sides on behalf of some religious groups over others. In effect, then, it’s a means for achieving a “unity” that is defined by whatever religious groups have the majority and can use coercive political power to achieve social, political, and economic dominance over other groups. This is how Feldman proposes to “separate” church and state, to “protect” religion. We should respect his clever and insightful thinking, right before we dismiss his proposal for the nonsense that it is.
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