December 30, 2005
Practical Atheists
By Charles R. Kesler
Scrooge rejected “Merry Christmas” as humbug—nonsense,
of the sort that encouraged the weak-minded to waste time on religion
and revelry. We could teach Scrooge a thing or two about despising
holidays.
Only in latter-day
America could a benevolent “Merry Christmas” be twisted
into a politically incorrect affront to polite norms, a sinister
and unconstitutional threat to establish religion, or both. As
a question of etiquette, the issue invites thought. To wish someone
the joy of the holiday is not automatically to presume that he
shares it. For example, it’s not impolite to say “Happy
St. Patrick’s Day” to someone who isn’t Irish.
By the same token, one can wish a Frenchman “Happy Bastille
Day” without being a Frenchman, or even approving of the
French Revolution. The important thing is that, in saying it,
you wish him well; imagining yourself in his shoes is a gracious
part of such friendliness.
But today’s
controversies have little to do with such delicate questions.
They turn not on individual character and circumstances, nor on
the mutual respect and civility possible between great religions,
but on identity rights and a growing hostility to religion as
such. This season’s dustup over “Happy Holidays”
is thus a mild case of a more serious disorder. The cutting edge
of aggressive secularism reveals itself in efforts to banish Biblical
religion altogether from public life: to remove “under God”
from the Pledge of Allegiance, to abrade the Ten Commandments
from public buildings, to discourage schoolchildren from filling
their moments of silence with a joyful noise unto the Lord.
In effect,
the secularists demand that the tone of public life must be made
to conform to atheistic standards. Everyone must be taught to
behave as “practical atheists,” in John Paul II’s
wonderful phrase. Even believers—especially believers—must
learn to speak and act, outside the sanctuary of their churches
and synagogues, as though God doesn’t exist. Anything else
would amount to persecution of non-believers. In all these efforts,
the Supreme Court by its egregious misinterpretations of the First
Amendment’s Establishment Clause has either fervently promoted
religion’s expulsion from the public square, or at best
preserved its place temporarily by minimizing religion’s
seriousness.
The Court’s
present course was set in 1947, when it ruled, for the first time,
that government may not “support any religious activities
or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form
they may adopt to teach or practice religion.” Before that,
an “establishment of religion” had been understood
narrowly, as the legislative designation of an official state
church (or churches), with tax money dedicated to the support
of its ministers, property, or both. The older understanding allowed
for many kinds of government support of religion short of establishing
it, and for a public square enriched by religion’s free
exercise.
There were
disagreements over where to draw the lines. But then, unlike now,
the disputes were over how, and to what extent, to accommodate
religion and public life—not over whether to do so. From
the beginning, the president and Congress called for national
days of prayer and thanksgiving. The House issued its first such
call on the same day that it passed the First Amendment. Congress
authorized chaplains for itself (God knows they needed them) and
for the armed forces. When Thomas Jefferson was president, the
largest church services in the United States took place in the
Capitol building, and he attended regularly.
Why did the
founders by and large support religion’s prominent but mostly
informal public role? In the first place, the free exercise of
religion (or the rights of conscience) was a vital part of man’s
natural rights. With its roots in the Bible, religion had also
an integral connection with morality. Self-government presumed
a self-controlled or moral people, and religion helped to shape
those mores. Moreover, religion and religious freedom helped to
shape politics by supporting limited government. There was something
divine in man, and an authority in heaven superior to human will,
which put permanent limits on government’s power.
Finally,
religion dignified civil society by making it the home of man’s
highest purpose, to know and worship God. Yet civil society was
also the site of man’s lower but urgent purpose, economic
exchange and moneymaking. The two were connected, so G. K. Chesterton
observed, by such merry occasions as holy days. “Rationally,”
he wrote, “there appears no reason why we should not sing
and give each other presents in honour of anything—the birth
of Michael Angelo or the opening of Euston Station. But it does
not work. As a fact, men only become greedily and gloriously material
about something spiritualistic.” In other words, if you
want to keep complaining about the commercialization of Christmas,
don’t turn it into a mere happy holiday.
Charles R. Kesler is editor
of the Claremont Review of Books.
Copyright
© 2005, The Claremont Institute.
Visit the Claremont Institute at www.claremont.org
