OPINION:
Out of the myriad of horrified responses to the monstrous terrorist carnage in Paris, very few have pointed the way forward for the world. But that surely is the supreme need of the hour. The core issue at stake for the world is simple: How do 7 billion people on a tiny blue ball of a planet live with their differences when the deepest of those differences are religious and ideological? And when diversity can be found not only between but within single societies? In short, how do we respect diversity, and still promote liberty and maintain harmony?
First, we must face up to the factors that have made the problem urgent: the global resurgence of religion, often with a political dimension; the countering of a sometimes aggressive secularism, often seeking to drive all religion from public life; the floundering of the traditional settlements for negotiating religion and public life; and the emergence of a rudimentary global public square created by the Internet. Today, even when we are not talking to the world, we can be heard by the world, and the world can organize its response, frequently violent.
Second, we must recognize the full dimensions of the challenge. The basic level is unquestionably one of security and taking the necessary steps to counter the violence that no civilized society can tolerate. That at least is being done. But the challenge must never be left at the level of the police, the military and the intelligence services alone. At a higher level, it raises the question of how we order our diverse societies to achieve the necessary unity, stability and justice — including questions of poverty, deprivation and alienation. And at the highest level of all, it raises the question of whether we are able to protect and expand political and social freedom for everybody, with all our rich human diversity. Too many well-meaning recent solutions, such as the European embrace of multiculturalism or the American fashion for speech codes, have only aggravated the problems and ended in constricting freedom rather than expanding it.
Third, and most importantly, we must set out and pursue a positive vision of the way in which religions and ideologies should relate constructively in the public square. It is surely time to recognize that there are two extremes that are deficient. One is the notion of the sacred public square, where one religion is preferred or established to the point where adherents of all other religions and ideologies are second class at best or severely persecuted at worst (such as the fate of the Bahai in Iran, Muslims in Myanmar, or Christians in Pakistan). The other extreme is the notion of the naked public square, where all religious believers are excluded from public life and secularist beliefs are actively or unwittingly promoted (harsh versions include China and North Korea, though a milder versions include the strict separationists in several Western countries).
The alternative to these extremes is the vision of a civil public square. This is a vision of public in which people of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, whether supernatural or secularist, but — and this is the key point — within a politically agreed framework of what is just and free for all other believers and citizens, too. Thus, a right for one citizen is a right for another and a responsibility for both. What is a right for a Christian is a right for an atheist, a right for a Jew, a Mormon, a Muslim, a Buddhist and the followers of all the faiths and ideologies in the country.
Essential to this vision, and what guards it against utopian idealism is civic education, or what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the habits of the heart.” Free societies not only need the structures of freedom, such as the Constitution and the law, but the spirit of freedom, which must be taught and handed down from one generation to the next, and from established citizens to new arrivals in the country. That is how new arrivals know how our country behaves when it comes to dealing with differences. Needless to say, robust civic education has long been missing from America and must be restored.
America’s crying need is not for more scholarly research, for longer or louder talk show debates, or for another presidential commission. It is certainly time to challenge the mindless pursuit of the culture wars that have bedeviled public life for fifty years. James Madison described the American way as the “true remedy” to the problems of religion and public life. As an admirer of this country, I would gladly agree that the American way has been “the most nearly perfect” so far. Yet hundreds of recent conflicts and misguided responses have clouded that success, and the United States can no longer claim easy exemption from problems troubling other parts of the world.
Can we hope to see a statesmanlike leader rising above the petty politicking and culture warring? Will there be a new Madison, Lincoln or Roosevelt who can cast a positive vision in the interest of all Americans? Will the world’s lead society regain its leadership in terms of its ideas and ideals? A few months before he died, President Kennedy put forward the stirring ideal of “a world safe for diversity.” Having lived in this country for more than 30 years, I am increasingly troubled by the high-octane, low-principle conflicts over these issues.
The truth is that the United States is squandering its proud heritage of both freedom and freedom of conscience. E Pluribus Unum was once not only America’s motto, but its greatest accomplishment. It could be so again, but where are the American champions of freedom and freedom of conscience who will speak up to make it so? That is the heart of the blood-red challenge raised by the Islamist slaughters in Paris. We must live together or die.
• Os Guinness is the author of “The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of a World Safe for Diversity” (IVP Books, 2013).
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