Audi argues that citizens in a free democracy should distinguish religious and secular considerations and give them separate though related roles.

This vigorous debate between two distinguished philosophers presents two views on a topic of worldwide importance: the role of religion in politics. Audi argues that citizens in a free democracy should distinguish religious and secular considerations and give them separate though related roles. Wolterstorff argues that religious elements are both appropriate in politics and indispensable to the vitality of a pluralistic democracy. Each philosopher first states his position in detail, then responds to and criticizes the opposing viewpoint.

As bioethics gains more prominence in public policy debates, it is time to more fully reflect on the following: what is its role in the public square, and what limitations relate to and barriers impede its fulfilment of this role? I contend we should consider the how of bioethics (as a policy influencer) rather than simply focus on the who or what of bioethical enquiry. This is not to suggest considerations of latter categories are not important, only (...) that too little attention has been paid to parallel or resulting policy involvement—involvement that will require specialised skills and knowledge that we can develop with a proactive (vs reactive) stance. Moreover, and equally critically, this how of public policy involvement will require more transparency regarding influences (eg, philosophical, ideological, cultural, socio-political) on what bioethicists bring to the table and what constituency base each represents—a humility as to the scope of one's role. In this vision, bioethics is not one single person or belief system for a policymaker to call to guide or give support to a position; rather, it offers tools—formed and utilised by a diverse disciplinary range of individuals—to help guide ethical analysis of biomedical endeavours, with the goal of infusion and diffusion of ethical enquiry and prioritisation in health policymaking, and greater humility among bioethicists who inform this discussion. (shrink)

This paper employs Hannah Arendt’s characterization of the social, which lacks location and mandates conformity, to evaluate social media’s: a) challenge to the polis, b) relationship to the social, b) influence on private space, d) impact on public space, and e) virus-like capacity to capture, mimic, and replicate the agonistic polis, where “everything [is] decided through words and persuasion and not through force and violence.” Using Arendt’s exact language, this paper begins by discussing how she differentiated the political, private, (...) social, and public realms. After explaining how online activities resemble (or not) her notion of the social, I demonstrate how the rise of the social, which she characterized as dominated by behavior (not action), ruled by nobody and occurring nowhere, continues to eclipse both private and public space at an alarming pace. Finally, I discuss the ramifications of social media’s setting the stage for worldlessness to spin out of control, as the public square becomes an intangible web. Unlike an Arendtian web of worldly human relationships that fosters individuality and enables excellence to be publicly tested, social media feeds a craving for kinship and connection, however remotely. Leaving such needs unfulfilled, social media risks to trump bios politicos. (shrink)

These matched essays constitute an extremely valuable contribution on the place of religious ideas in our country’s political life. Robert Audi defends an “exclusivist” position: participants in political life fulfill the responsibilities of liberal citizenship best if they support only measures justified on secular grounds. Nicholas Wolterstorff argues for an “inclusivist” position: citizens and legislators are encouraged to rely on whatever sources, including religious ones, they find convincing.

This article gives an overview of the debate about the “restraint principle” that political liberals urge on those who are inclined to use distinctive moral and theological doctrines in public square debates about politics. It clarifies such central concepts as “public reason” while surveying the main arguments and highlighting three different proposals for possible convergence in this conflict.

This article seeks to map out the future of Christian mission in the city context. African cities like Tshwane are not only expanding, but also present the church with a new frontier that needs to be crossed without crossing geographical boundaries. This article indicates that life in the City of Tshwane is paradoxically placed. Whilst life in the valleys of Tshwane is like walking in the valley of the shadow of death, those on the high hills continue with their dominance (...) and pretence as solution providers, whilst hiding the presence of those who are marginalised. This article proposes that the future of the Christian mission lies not only in identifying those powers, but also in engaging them in a transformative way so as to usher the justice and shalom of God into this highly contested space. (shrink)

This paper develops some foundations for an Aristotelian ethics of the built environment by combining the formal elements of Aristotelian justice with the design theory of Christopher Alexander. The resulting ordered set of human actions and their corresponding built environments require social deliberation about the integration of activities. This deliberation is required at all levels of human action, is characterized by local and step-wise decision making, and in important ways makes it possible for us to know if and how we (...) are harming others. On the political level this is embodied in the “public square,” whose essential purpose as integrative and moral-epistemological has deep and provocative implications for our built environment. For example, walkable human communities should be the default ethical choice for our built environment. I conclude by discussing a two-fold challenge to the New Urbanism movement for the light this sheds on the overall argument. (shrink)

Monuments commemorating racists are theoretically and practically controversial. Just what these monuments represent is interpreted, in part, on grounds of identity. Since the public nature of such monuments renders them polysemous, ways of reasonably thinking about the relevant identity-based claims are needed. A distinction between an individualistic, psychological notion of identity and an interpersonal, way-of-living notion of identity is drawn. The former notion is illegitimate as a basis of claims about how to interpret public symbols, but the latter (...) notion is conceptually defensible and politically admissible. Use of ways of living to frame discourse about identity and racist monuments generates four sorts of question. These questions raise issues that are respectively a) internal to particular ways of living, b) pertinent to relations between particular ways of living, or c) objective with regard to ways of living, or d) the product of political discussion among ways of living. Such examples as the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia and the (now-removed) statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Victoria, British Columbia are examined to show how polysemy can be recognized and navigated by focusing on ways of living rather than on narrowly psychological aspects of identity. Although in principle both preservationist and removalist positions can be defensible with regard to particular statues, there is reason to think that a general removalist position is prima facie attractive. (shrink)

The nature of the Catholic faith often places practitioners at odds with established order and the specificity of our values may cause us to run afoul of secular sensibilities. What follows is a collection of writings by National Catholic Bioethics Center President, Dr. Joseph Meaney, exploring our place in the public square, the proper way to respond to government driven injustice, and some specific instances in which the current administration has infringed or threatened to infringe upon the conscience (...) and religious rights of not just faithful Catholics, but faithful members of many other religions as well. (shrink)

Argues for the necessary link between philosophy and theology and, by extension, between Judaism and the multicultural society and, finally, between religion and the public square. Original.

It has been proposed in South Africa and other sites that forgiveness is a political necessity if social reconstruction is to be effective following regimes of terror and torture. By placing the spotlight on forgiveness, these claims raise questions about the realism and relevance of forgiveness to public life. This paper interrogates the moral realism of forgiveness in public life by identifying some of its defining features, by comparing it to forgiveness in therapeutic and interpersonal settings, and by (...) examining proposed reasons and motivations for forgiveness in the face of moral atrocities inflicted, tolerated, or ignored by an apartheid governance in South Africa. The author argues that the South African experience displays forgiveness as a realistic, though difficult moral choice, when forgiveness in the public square is construed as a feature of the common good. (shrink)

This paper examines Cornel West’s attempt to offer an alternative to the dominant liberal view concerning the proper role of religion in the democratic public square. Whereas mainstream liberals seek strategies to keep religion and public life separate, West seeks to dissolve the apparent tension between religion and democratic citizenship by reconstructing religion pragmatically such that it can be rendered compatible with democracy. I argue that West’s proposal fails to be a viable alternative precisely because the “prophetic (...) pragmatism” underwriting his view is unethical to the extent that it relies upon manipulative relationships with traditional religious believers in African-American churches. (shrink)

This paper is, in part, a report on the conclusions reached at a retreat on Part One of Kant's Conflict of the Faculties, held at the Center for Insight into Philosophic Health, Education, and Renewal, in Mendocino, California. It argues that Kant's distinction between the public and private spheres does not remove but intensifies the philosopher's duty to influence the general public. I conclude with some reflections on how a Kantian philosopher might have a positive influence on religious (...) communities. Includes an appendix coauthored by Richard W. Mapplebeckpalmer. (shrink)

This paper is, in part, a report on the conclusions reached at a retreat on Part One of Kant's Conflict of the Faculties, held at the Center for Insight into Philosophic Health, Education, and Renewal, in Mendocino, California. It argues that Kant's distinction between the public and private spheres does not remove but intensifies the philosopher's duty to influence the general public. I conclude with some reflections on how a Kantian philosopher might have a positive influence on religious (...) communities. Includes an appendix coauthored by Richard W. Mapplebeckpalmer. (shrink)

This volume seeks to explore the intersection of theology, philosophy and the public sphere not by referring the social and political to ethics and deontology as is often the case, but rather to ontology itself, to the very nature of beings. The meaning of history and historicity is most pertinent to this enquiry and is approached here both from the perspective of social reality and from the perspective of ontology. Joining together contributions focusing on theory of the public (...) sphere and metaphysics, chapters explore subjects as diverse as the political implications of the Incarnation, the paradox between ontology and history, politically left and right appropriations of Christianity, the fecundity of Maximus the Confessor’s insights for a contemporary political philosophy, modern Orthodox political theology focusing on Christos Yannaras and numerous thematic areas that together form the mosaic of the enquiry in question. (shrink)

This article grows out of and hopes to remain a part of a conversation in which Jews and Christians ponder over the manner in which they can contribute to the public good from the richness of their Scriptures and traditions. It suggests a thoughtful hermeneutic that is simultaneously faithful to ancestral traditions and open to the contributions of all thoughtful individuals and groups within a diverse society.

This essay surveys some of the problems facing theories of public deliberation that are “exclusivist” insofar as they account for good participation in terms of a citizen’s refusal to use certain kinds of reasons. It then argues for a more promising alternative: one that focuses on citizens’ character rather than the content of their reasons. More specifically, it is possible to distinguish good participation from bad by considering the extent to which the citizen possesses and demonstrates the virtue of (...) reasonableness. This virtue-based account avoids the problems facing exclusivism, while still providing a basis for evaluating civic participation. (shrink)

Responding to Rawls’ pleas in Political Liberalism against appeals to comprehensive doctrines, be they religious or metaphysical, I argue that such constraints are inherently illiberal—and unworkable. Rawls deems political proposals inherently coercive and judges everyone in a democracy a participant in governance—thus, in effect, complicit in state coercion. He seeks to limit the sweep of his exclusionary rule to core questions of rights. But in an individualistic and litigious society like ours it proves hard to draw a firm boundary around (...) issues that raise core (constitutional) questions. The standards Rawls proposes seem oppressive in effect, their likeliest yield, a kind of doublethink, encouraging many citizens to cloak their deepest normative concerns in neutered language. I worry about the means by which Rawls’ ‘overlapping consensus’ might be attained, and about the exclusion (as metaphysical) of policy proposals in behalf of broadly conceived human goods. I find it suppositious in Rawls to presume the innocence of seemingly secular arguments while placing in the stocks the religious appeals critical to many, along with old and new metaphysical arguments that may seek to bridge the gap between religious and secular appeals. (shrink)

This volume is an entry in the Point/counterpoint Series edited by James P. Sterba and Rosemarie Tong. In it Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff debate the place of religious convictions in politics. First, each of them presents an initial statement of his own views. Next, each of them responds critically to the views of the other. And, finally, Audi provides a brief summary of the chief points of agreement and disagreement. The two initial statements are expanded versions of papers Audi (...) and Wolterstorff presented at a conference on religion and liberalism at the University of Notre Dame. Those papers are included in a recently published volume of conference proceedings. (shrink)

Wallace, Max It is an often-heard claim, expressed in newspaper articles, academia, and on-line public forums, that religion is being banished from the public square.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square by Cathleen KavenyKyle LambeletProphecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square Cathleen Kaveny CAMBRIDGE, MA: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 464 PP. $49.95"The American public square is not a seminar room" (419). This being the case, Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy without Contempt challenges ethicists, among others, to reconsider the rhetoric of moral address. Rather (...) than a narrow focus on deliberation, Kaveny commends attention to the genre of indictment, and particularly the American jeremiad, as a significant mode of moral address that deserves normative analysis. Kaveny is no partisan of prophecy. But she offers moral and rhetorical criteria of prophetic speech that allow the genre to do its indispensable work.Kaveny's book proceeds in four parts. In the first part she sets the stage for her argument by surveying three prominent accounts of the status of public moral discourse, critiquing each yet drafting them all into a more global [End Page 195] critique of the failure to take into account the central significance of the rhetoric of prophetic indictment. Correcting this neglect in the second part, Kaveny executes a historical retrieval of the American jeremiad, beginning with early Puritan preachers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The point of her at times plodding historical reconstruction is that the jeremiad was not originally socially divisive but rather served to build up the community by calling listeners back to a commonly agreed-on covenant. This uniting function of the jeremiad fails in later generations. Some readers will worry that Kaveny's retrieval risks nostalgia insofar as it conforms to a MacIntyrian declension narrative in which golden origins were irreplaceably fractured.This risk, however, is mitigated by the third and fourth parts of the book, in which Kaveny turns to constructive ethics. She argues that the forensic rhetoric of prophetic indictment should be understood as a chemotherapy. It should not be confused with deliberation, the normal form of moral address. Yet, like chemotherapy, used in the right amount it can restore an ailing patient to health. As we have come to expect, Kaveny is especially adept at taking the moral frameworks developed in one sphere and applying them to another. Trading medical analogies for military, Kaveny argues that best practices of ius bellum verborum can be developed from just war criteria. She adds to these rhetorical constraints that prophetic critique be offered against one's own people with whom one identifies through lamentation and hope. Kaveny concludes with advocacy of prophetic humility and irony as necessary elements of prophetic speech in our pluralistic contemporary context.Although written in accessible prose, Kaveny's book deserves rigorous scholarly engagement. She constructs her argument with the gracious interdisciplinarity of a leading scholar of law and theology at the height of her powers. She is methodologically promiscuous but never shallow, drawing on scholarly fields of moral philosophy, biblical studies, American religious history, in-depth case analysis of contemporary arguments about abortion and torture, and historical paradigms of prophetic virtue (and vice). While scholars in each of these fields will find claims worth engaging in Kaveny's text, ethicists will be particularly interested in her argument for a constrained, continuing need for prophetic indictment.My one critique is that her account of prophetic rhetoric is too conservative. Based on her historical retrieval, Kaveny argues that indictment should serve only to call listeners back to an already agreed-on covenant. It is undoubtedly the case, however, that Kaveny's exemplars of indictment such as Jonah, Lincoln, and King innovated and developed the covenant, even as they invoked it. This complaint aside, Kaveny's book is a major contribution to contemporary conceptualizations of the public square, and stands poised to open new directions for moral analysis of religious actors in pluralistic publics. [End Page 196]Kyle LambeletNotre Dame UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Next SectionBecause of the radically incarnational nature of the Christian understanding of ethics and bioethics, according to Kierkegaard, there has always been an infinite gulf between Christian bioethics and secular bioethics. However, the process of the secularization of the public square has made this gulf more apparent and salient for the current ethical debates in biomedicine and the culture more generally.

It is the central argument of this essay that the profile of persons as ordered and affirmed by the difference between the divine and the human presents a different conception of power than that presupposed by multiculturalism.

“Hence it is necessary for a Prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong and to make use of it according to necessity.”—Machiavelli“Every state is a community of some kind and every community is established with a view to some good…”—Aristotle.

This article explores decision making about social-ethical values issues by members of the public in the context of the recent Canadian federal election, held in late June 2004. All of these issues are sensitive and controversial, and I hesitated to address them in an article that I dedicate, with respect and admiration, to my friend and fellow medical lawyer-ethicist, Bernard Dickens. Over the years Bernie and I have discussed, debated and disagreed on many of them. It speaks to his (...) tolerance, reasonableness and wisdom that those occasions were for me always ones of learning and respect, colored by his inimitable sense of humor. I hope that Bernie feels that, in some small measure, this article reflects those same characteristics, ones that he has modeled for so many of us over the years of his distinguished career. (shrink)

Presents a convincing argument as to why religion should be mixed with politics, ascertaining that certain religious beliefs should be made public and ...

For the last several decades, philosophers have wrestled with the proper place of religion in liberal societies. Usually, the debates among these philosophers have started with the articulation of various conceptions of liberalism and then proceeded to locate religion in the context of these conceptions. In the process, however, too little attention has been paid to the way religion is conceived. Drawing on the work of Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff, two scholars who are often read as holding opposing views (...) on these issues, I argue that, for the purposes of their argument about liberalism, both have implicitly accepted a concept of religion that has come under severe attack in recent work on the subject. Namely, they have accepted a concept of religion that identifies religion primarily with belief, ritual practice, and ecclesial institutions. Following recent scholarship, I suggest that religion is better conceived as a kind of culture. To conclude the essay, I gesture toward what the beginnings of a re-visioned debate about religion and liberal society might look like if one started from this revised conception of religion. (shrink)

_Human Dignity in Bioethics _brings together a collection of essays that rigorously examine the concept of human dignity from its metaphysical foundations to its polemical deployment in bioethical controversies. The volume falls into three parts, beginning with meta-level perspectives and moving to concrete applications. Part 1 analyzes human dignity through a worldview lens, exploring the source and meaning of human dignity from naturalist, postmodernist, Protestant, and Catholic vantages, respectively, letting each side explain and defend its own conception. Part 2 moves (...) from metaphysical moorings to key areas of macro-level influence: international politics, American law, and biological science. These chapters examine the legitimacy of the concept of dignity in documents by international political bodies, the role of dignity in American jurisprudence, and the implications—and challenges—for dignity posed by Darwinism. Part 3 shifts from macro-level topics to concrete applications by examining the rhetoric of human dignity in specific controversies: embryonic stem cell research, abortion, human-animal chimeras, euthanasia and palliative care, psychotropic drugs, and assisted reproductive technologies. Each chapter analyzes the rhetorical use of ‘human dignity’ by opposing camps, assessing the utility of the concept and whether a different concept or approach can be a _more_ productive means of framing or guiding the debate. (shrink)

This book addresses heated debate among political thinkers concerned with the role of religious reasoning in the deliberation and justification of public policy and voting. The author critically examines various arguments drawn from mainstream liberal political theory, political theology, and American pragmatism, and offers a unique proposal for thinking through this issue.

While most people may initially agree that justice is fairness, as an evangelical Protestant I argue that, for many religious comprehensive doctrines, the Rawlsean model does not possess the resources necessary to sustain tolerance in moral decision making. The weakness of Rawls's model centers on the reasonable priority of convictions that arise from private comprehensive doctrines. To attain a free and pluralistic society, people need resources sufficient to provide reasons to tolerate actions that are otherwise intolerable. In addition to arguing (...) for the deficiency of the Rawlsean political model, I sketch out a preliminary model of ambassadorship that offers religious communities, and in particular Protestant evangelicals, the necessary resources to engage the broader society tolerantly while maintaining their religious convictions. As a citizen of the church and a member of another kingdom, Christians serve as ambassadors to those who are not of the heavenly kingdom. I take this model to be more ambitious than that of a sojourner who lives in the land but is isolated as much as possible from society, while more modest than that of reconstructionists who seek to implement their own sacred law on all others. (shrink)

Paul Rasor’s thoughtful book attempts to show how liberal religion can regain its prophetic role in America. A key theme is that religious liberals must be clear about the religious principles that support and guide their basic social-justice work. This is not easy for religious liberals, because of their commitment to religious freedom. For Rasor, liberal religion seeks to be in tune with modern knowledge and culture and has a commitment to free religious inquiry. Religious liberals are found in all (...) religious traditions. Religious liberals are not identical with but overlap the religious left, that is, religious people who hold progressive political and social views. Examining three recent surveys, he .. (shrink)