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The Pew Charitable Trusts, since their founding in 1948, have been vitally interested in "the close
connection between political prosperity and religious principles," out of a conviction that "a civic
culture nourished by deep religious-moral impulses is absolutely necessary to sustain the American
experiment in ordered liberty." (All quotes from "Religion and the Public Square" by Luis E. Lugo,
Pew Charitable Trusts). To this end, the Trusts' Religion in Public Life programs seek "to foster a
greater public understanding of the religious voice in the ongoing conversation concerning the
renewal of American democracy," and to support "projects that help educate the academic community
as well as the American public at large about the various ways in which people of faith participate in
American civic life, and of the important role religion continues to play in shaping our public square."
The Center for Jewish Community Studies, with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, has established
a program of research and community dialogue to explore the theme of religion and the public square
in the context of the
American Jewish experience, and to disseminate its findings.
The Jewish Experience in the American Republic
The Jewish experience in important ways is distinctive in the context of religion and the American
public square. Judaism has a special historical relationship, historically usually hostile, with
Christianity. The Jewish experience in America, however, where the the dominant and founding
religion was by and large Protestantism, has been unique in the degree of toleration and, ultimately,
under the Constitution, equality. The United States Constitution makes no special mention of Jews,
whether to express special exceptions or liabilities. As a fundamental principle, the Constitution, "unlike
some colonial and early state constitutions," refused both a religious test for office and religion as a
condition of citizenship. This was the principle of individual rights, "natural rights" as it was called
in the eighteenth century, and, taking into account subsequent developments, "human rights" in the
twentieth century. Such rights are held to be common to, and to bind together, all humanity, over and
against the paraticular human loyalties that divide. Thus, the Constitution, while giving religious
advantage to none, permits all to flourish. This unique character of the American constitutional polity,
for the Jews, has resulted in a remarkable degree of confidence that, individually and as a group,
in the United States, they could not only participate fully in the public square but be a force in shaping
it as well. Unlike their counterparts in many European states, American Jews did not think of themselves
as sheltered clients of powerful political interests upon whom they depended for their security
and their lives.
The "Ordering Faith" of American Civil Society
The tradition of natural rights was paired with another tradition claiming universal moral authority that
was present at the Founding. Although not explicit in the Constitution, it underlay the moral universe of
the Founders. This was biblical religion, which was also the unique heritage of the Jews. The beliefs
and values that nurtured American civil society, prior to the Constitution and down to the present, were
drawn from the Bible as read by American Protestants in all their variety. That "variety," what James
Madison in The Federalist Papers called a "multiplicity of sects," was a source of strength
for American self-government in three precise senses: Jealous of their religious liberty, religious
denominations had a vital interest in the political liberty that is the indispensable support of religious
liberty. Further, the Protestant belief in the primacy of what came to be called "the natural right of
liberty of conscience," disposed them to be jealous for individual rights. Lastly, their restoration of
the primacy of the Bible led them to adopt its covenantalism, that is, to create compacts and alliances
in which common allegiances protect differences. This is an indispensable source of both the habits
of republican self-government and of the institutions of federalism that, together with the political science
of natural rights, gave rise to the Constitution. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that Americans of faith at
the time of the Founding would have consented to the Constitution had they believed that its intention
was to create a "secular society," that is, to weaken religion.
The Jewish Opportunity: Jewish Activism in the Public Square
In this deep reservoir of religious and political liberty, Jews found in America a way to participate
rather than be excluded, and a source of confidence that their unique heritage was not a disability.
George Washington's letter
to the Jews of Newport acknowledged this common biblical heritage. This common, or "ordering" faith
came to be called
our "civic religion." Although this term has been rejected by some because it suggests a surrogate
or competitor to the primary "saving faiths," we think it wise to retain it as a vivid description of the
common beliefs and values by which Americans once understood themselves.
Within the context of the ordering faith, Jews, in the nineteenth century, vigorously pursued
their particular or "saving" faith, and their constitutional rights under the First
Amendment's free exercise clause in the interest of equality of religious practice in the face of issues
like Sunday Sabbath laws that treated Jewish interests unequally. In the twentieth century, the
constitutional focus under the First Amendment shifted to the establishment clause because of the
perceived threat to Jewish interests of Christian religious indoctrination and hegemony in public
education
and other public settings. Indeed, the Jewish view of what the Constitution requires as regards the
proper relation of religion and state, namely a strict, and "high wall" of separation, has come to
predominate in twentieth century constitutional jurisprudence. Of course, Jews were not alone in
the argument for strict separation, or it would not have prevailed in elite opinion.
Jewish Acculturation
Over the same time, and under the influence of American institutions and the opportunities they
created, the Jews themselves changed. American Jewry long ago ceased to define itself by religious
orthodoxy. Because of the impact of modernity, many Jews, although a minority, now define their
Jewishness in a secular or cultural way. Jewish religious opinions and practice, far from being
predominantly orthodox, are extremely heterodox. The civil religion of a common biblical heritage
has given way, among Jews, to defining America as a "secular society" (and the debatable
insistence that this was
the "intention" of the Framers), in which an undiscriminating tolerance supplants the "common faith."
Although this position seems comfortable and "right" to most American Jews, many other Americans
are neither comfortable with it nor believe it to be right or good for American society. To empty the
"public square" of religion, they argue, leaves American society prey to a moral latitudinarianism
and competing irreconcilable claims that are harmful to American society
and institutions. Moreover, they contend, the empty public square seems to restrict people of faith
in their ability to
participate in shaping American society in a way that reflects their vital interests, as if their interests
did not also have a public legitimacy.
The Empty Public Square and the Jewish Dilemma
The problem, at the end of the twentieth century, is that civil religion is in steep decline. The "ordering
faith" of Americanism, of the democratic ethos, no longer provides a protective umbrella for
fundamental values. Some embrace the obsolescence of the civil religion in favor of the open-ended
pluralism that has replaced it. Others bemoan the collapse of a shared, if not always sincere,
deference to biblical or, as they came to be called, "Judea-Christian" values. Political theorists,
often not taking note of categories such as "civil religion" or the transformation of American religious
life, have been vigorously debating whether a republic such as ours requires common understandings
at all. Some believe that minimal agreement about the "rules of the game" will suffice. Others believe
that liberalism has its own "thick" and distinctive commitments. For these thinkers the presence
of religion in the public discourse can only be an intrusion. Yet others believe that a good community,
whether local or national, must draw from the deepest moral convictions of its members and that
these have, inevitably, a religious coloration. Thus, many now argue
that the view that America is a "secular" society
is not without costs, for the nation, for society at large, but also, ironically, for Jews as well. Secular
society, they contend, has a particular meaning today quite beyond tolerance of a variety of
religious and
non-religious beliefs; they argue that it also means that a "pagan" public morality has
emerged that is endorsed in the public square over against the claims of a common moral heritage,
and as the very meaning of American tolerance.
The Jewish Future in a Secular America
How do Jews fit into these circumstances? Although American Jews have achieved the equality and
acceptance that have been the primary focus of their public activism for more than two centuries, they
are also haunted by their success: full acceptance has meant a decline of Jewish distinctiveness and
sense of purpose; a rampant assimilation. Is it really in the interests of Jews in America to live in a
secular society? A negative "perhaps deeply instinctive" answer seems to be emerging in response.
The Jewish public agenda has increasingly turned from ensuring Jewish equality to ensuring Jewish
survival, what is called "continuity." As such, Jews find themselves stressing their particularities as
the most important cultural factors to pass on to their children. American Judaism is undergoing a
dramatic transformation, and an attempt to reconstruct a more "Jewish," less civil, religious faith is
in the works. From the point of view of Jewish continuity that is, possibly, a good thing. But from the
point of view of an active Jewish contribution to our civil religion, of defining the sacred and ordering
aspects of the public world, it represents a retreat and a problem.
The task before American Jews today is not simply to cultivate their own religious and social garden,
their "saving faith," but also to contribute to the new and perplexed discussion about the "ordering
faith" by which Americans should live. It is the focus of this project to help American Jewry once again
to consider seriously the meaning of its own heritage in the public square and to explore, with other
biblical religions, a sense of common purpose that does not empty the public square of the heritage
of biblical religion.
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