Pagans and Christians in the City

by Steven D. Smith

  1. Mark Tushnet, “Abandoning Defensive Crouch Liberal Constitutionalism,” Balkinization (blog), May 6, 2016, http://balkin.blogspot.com/2016/05/abandoning-defensive-crouch-liberal.html.

  2. Writers of an apocalyptic bent foretold an imminent “theocracy.” See, e.g., Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Penguin, 2006). Ronald Dworkin reported that “many Americans are horrified”—it is not wholly clear whether Dworkin counted himself among the company of the horror-stricken—“by the prospect of a new dark age imposed by militant superstition; they fear a black, know-nothing night of ignorance in which America becomes an intellectually backward and stagnant theocracy.” Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 79.

  3. Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 50.

  4. See above, 9.

  5. Walker Percy, “The Coming Crisis in Psychology,” in Signposts in a Strange Land: Essays, ed. Patrick Samway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), 251, 252.

  6. See above, 115–16.

  7. See, e.g., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 155 (“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world’ ”).

  8. Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 104, 107.

  9. The criticism of Rawls from a communitarian direction is manifest in Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  10. Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel, “Introduction to John Rawls,” in John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, ed. Thomas Nagel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1, 5.

  11. Cohen and Nagel, “Introduction to John Rawls,” 1.

  12. John Rawls, “A Brief Inquiry,” in Rawls, A Brief Inquiry, 105 (written in 1942).

  13. Rawls, “A Brief Inquiry,” 111; Cohen and Nagel, “Introduction to John Rawls,” 6.

  14. Rawls, “A Brief Inquiry,” 242.

  15. Rawls, “A Brief Inquiry,” 108 (emphasis added).

  16. Robert Merrihew Adams, “The Theological Ethics of the Young Rawls and Its Background,” in Nagel, A Brief Inquiry, 24, 68.

  17. John Rawls, “On My Religion,” in Rawls, A Brief Inquiry, 259.

  18. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).

  19. Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxxix–xl.

  20. On the influence of an ideal of respect in Rawls’s theorizing, see Paul Weithman, Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  21. See above, 83–85, 108.

  22. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 133–72.

  23. This at least was the ideal, although the practical realities of modern pluralism forced Rawls to compromise by introducing various qualifications, such as the “wide view” of public reason, as he called it, and the “proviso.” Originally, Rawls debated whether political liberalism supported the “exclusive view” of public reason, which would categorically exclude invocation of comprehensive doctrines, or the “inclusive view,” which would “[allow] citizens, in certain situations, to present what they regard as the basis of political values rooted in their comprehensive doctrine, provided they do this in ways that strengthen the ideal of public reason itself” (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 247 [emphasis added]). He concluded that the proper view could vary with historical and social circumstances (247–54), while acknowledging (in what critics may take as a wry understatement) that “much more would have to be said to make this suggestion at all convincing” (251). Later, Rawls explicitly revised this position to adopt what he called the “wide view” elaborated by “the proviso,” which held that “[comprehensive] doctrines may be introduced in public reason at any time, provided that in due course public reasons, given by a reasonable political conception, are presented sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are introduced to support” (li–lii).

  24. See above, 335.

  25. Robin L. West, “Jurisprudence and Gender,” University of Chicago Law Review 55 (1988): 1.

  26. West, “Jurisprudence and Gender,” 64–66.

  27. Robin L. West, “Taking Freedom Seriously,” Harvard Law Review 104 (1990): 43, 60.

  28. Robin West, “Freedom of the Church and Our Endangered Civil Rights: Exiting the Social Contract,” in The Rise of Corporate Religious Liberty, ed. Micah Schwartzman et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 399; Robin West, “A Tale of Two Rights,” Boston University Law Review 94 (2014): 893.

  29. West, “Freedom,” 412. See also West, “Tale of Two Rights,” 911 (“The new generation of exit rights . . . have the potential to unravel civil society, depending on the extent to which they are embraced”).

  30. See, e.g., “Political Polarization in the American Public,” Pew Research Center, June 12, 2014, http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public.

  31. E.g., West, “Freedom,” 407, 409, 410, 412, 416.

  32. In a similar vein, see Jean L. Cohen, “Freedom of Religion, Inc.: Whose Sovereignty?” Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 44 (2015).

  33. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2 vols. (London: Penguin, [1776] 1995), 1:57.

  34. West, “Freedom,” 400.

  35. West, “Freedom,” 401.

  36. West, “Freedom,” 404.

  37. Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

  38. See above, 88.

  39. See, e.g., Frederick Mark Gedicks and Roger Hendrix, “Uncivil Religion,” West Virginia Law Review 110 (2007): 275.

  40. See, e.g., Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Random House, 2008); Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here?, 4.

  41. For further argument on this point, see Steven D. Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

  42. See Steven D. Smith, “Recovering (from) Enlightenment?” San Diego Law Review 41 (2004): 1263, 1297–1306.

  43. See United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013). For a manifestation by the US Commission on Civil Rights, see the commission’s ironically titled “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,” U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, September 2016, http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/Peaceful-Coexistence-09–07-16.PDF.

  44. For discussion, see Steven D. Smith, “Against Civil Rights Simplism” (San Diego Legal Studies Paper No. 17–294); Steven D. Smith, “The Jurisprudence of Denigration,” U.C. Davis Law Review 48 (2014): 675–701.

  45. See above, 175–76.

  46. Symmachus, Relation 3, para. 5, reproduced at https://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/sym-amb/symrel3f.html (introduction by J. Vanderspoel).

  47. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation; The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Norton, 1966), 127–203.

  48. Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish (New York: HarperCollins, 1973), 135–36.

  49. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 254.

  50. Gibbon, History of the Decline, 1:56.

  51. J. A. North, Roman Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 63.

  52. See above, 155–56.

  53. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 673 (1925).

  54. See Robert Bork, “Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems,” Indiana Law Journal 47 (1971): 1, 31; Carl A. Auerbach, “The Communist Control Act of 1954: A Proposed Legal-Political Theo
ry of Free Speech,” University of Chicago Law Review 23 (1956): 173, 188–89.

  55. For more detailed consideration of these questions, see Steven D. Smith, “Toleration and Liberal Commitments,” in Toleration and Its Limits, ed. Melissa S. Williams and Jeremy Waldron (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

  56. This irony is zestfully developed and exposed in Stanley Fish, “Mission Impossible: Setting the Just Bounds between Church and State,” Columbia Law Review 97 (1997): 2255.

  57. Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock, 2013-NMSC-040, 309 P.3d 53 (ruling that the application of accommodations laws to wedding photographer Elane Huguenin did not violate the first amendment). Judge Bosson concurred: “the Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people” (at ¶ 92 [Bosson, J., concurring]).

  58. In 2014, Kelvin Cochran, Atlanta City’s fire chief, was fired for publishing an “anti-gay” book on biblical and sexual morality for his Bible study group. Abby Ohlheiser, “Atlanta Fire Chief Suspended after Distributing His Religious Book to Employees,” Washington Post, November 26, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/11/26/atlanta-fire-chief-suspended-after-distributing-his-religious-book-to-employees.

  59. The California legislature, for example, proposed to limit religious exemptions from the discrimination provisions in California’s Equity in Higher Education Act. Alan Noble, “Keeping Faith without Hurting LGBT Students,” Atlantic, August 15, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/christian-colleges-lgbt/495815.

  60. See above, 108.

  61. Matt. 5:27–28.

  62. See above, 317–18.

  63. See Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 366–487.

  64. See, e.g., Douglas Laycock and Thomas C. Berg, “Protecting Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty,” Virginia Law Review in Brief 99 (2013): 1, 9.

  65. See Douglas NeJaime and Reva B. Siegel, “Conscience Wars: Complicity-Based Conscience Claims in Religion and Politics,” Yale Law Journal 124 (2015): 2516, 2566–78.

  66. In the much-publicized Arlene’s Flowers case, for example, the gay couple forced to find an alternate florist claimed $7.91 in monetary damages for this expense. See Warren Richey, “A Florist Caught between Faith and Financial Ruin,” Christian Science Monitor, July 12, 2016, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0712/A-florist-caught-between-faith-and-financial-ruin.

  67. See, e.g., Louise Melling, “Religious Refusals to Public Accommodation: Four Reasons to Say No,” Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 38 (2015): 177, 189–91; Marvin Lim and Louise Melling, “Inconvenience or Indignity? Religious Exemptions to Public Accommodations Laws,” Journal of Law and Policy 22 (2014): 705. Cf. Helen M. Alvare, “Religious Freedom versus Sexual Expression: A Guide,” Journal of Law and Religion 30 (2015): 475, 476 (“On the part of a person who identifies as LGBT, another’s refusal to recognize a state-recognized marriage is often interpreted as a rejection of his or her entire person, and an affront to dignity, equality, and social responsibility”).

  68. NeJaime and Siegel, “Conscience Wars,” 2576.

  69. See Richey, “A Florist Caught between Faith and Financial Ruin.”

  70. See Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443 (2011).

  71. Larry Alexander develops a similar argument with care regarding the dignitary harm inflicted by “hate speech.” See Larry Alexander, “Banning Hate Speech and the Sticks and Stones Defense,” Constitutional Commentary 13 (1996): 71, 76–78.

  72. Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921, 985 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (factual finding #77) (emphasis added).

  73. See above, 284–86.

  74. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 61.

  75. See above, 152.

  76. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Alburey Castell (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., Inc. [1859] 1947); Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1945] 1994).

  77. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964).

  78. Andrew Koppelman, “The Joys of Mutual Contempt,” in William N. Eskridge Jr. and Robin Fretwell Wilson, eds., Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

  79. John D. Inazu, Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving through Deep Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

  80. “For liberals, the question now is how to deal with the losers in the culture wars. That’s mostly a question of tactics. My own judgment is that taking a hard line (‘You lost, live with it’) is better than trying to accommodate the losers.” Tushnet, “Abandoning Defensive Crouch Liberal Constitutionalism.”

  81. See above, 171.

  82. Gibbon, History of the Decline, 1:908.

  83. A recent series of surveys by the American Culture and Faith Institute concluded that only about 10 percent of Americans maintain a biblical worldview for purposes of making practical decisions. Among younger Americans—the so-called millennials—the percentage was much lower. See “Groundbreaking ACFI Survey Reveals How Many Adults Have a Biblical Worldview,” American Culture and Faith Institute, accessed August 29, 2017, https://www.culturefaith.com/groundbreaking-survey-by-acfi-reveals-how-many-american-adults-have-a-biblical-worldview.

  84. Tushnet, “Abandoning Defensive Crouch Liberal Constitutionalism.”

  85. Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living, trans. Theo Cuffe (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 97.

  86. Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything (New York: Twelve, 2014), 213.

  87. R. T. Wallis, Neoplatonism, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), 130–37, here 137.

  88. See above, 30.

  89. On the concept of an “ontological inventory,” see Steven D. Smith, Law’s Quandary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 8–21.

  90. Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, ed. and trans. Albert Cook Outler, rev. ed. (New York: Dover, 2002), 1.7, p. 4.

  91. John Wisdom, “The Meanings of the Questions of Life,” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E. D. Klemke, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 257, 258–59.

  92. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2000), 183.

  93. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 154.

  94. Leo Tolstoy, “A Confession,” in A Confession and Other Religious Writings, trans. Jane Kentish (London: Penguin, 1987), 34–35.

  95. Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” 104, 107.

  96. See Ronald Dworkin, Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 88–89.

  97. Gibbon, History of the Decline, 1:80.

  98. Ferry, Brief History of Thought, 232–64.

  99. Ferry, Brief History of Thought, 236.

  100. Ferry, Brief History of Thought, 263.

  101. See above, 187.

  102. See Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 33–51.

  103. See Löwith, Meaning in History, 52–59.

  104. Quoted in Löwith, Meaning in History, 53.

  105. G. K. Chesterton, “The Sins of Prince Saradine,” in The Complete Father Brown Mysteries (Los Angeles: Enhanced Media Publishing, 2016), 97.

  106. E. L. Mascall, The Christian Universe (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), 42.

  107. Mascall, The Christian Universe, 39 (quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philisophicus, 6.41).

  108. Mascall, The Christian Universe, 45.

  109. Augustine, Confessions
1.1, p. 3.

  110. T. S. Eliot, “The Idea of a Christian Society,” in Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt/Harvest, 1948), 18–19.

  Index

  Alexander the Great, 150, 171

  Allegheny County v. American Civil Liberties Union, 277

  allegorical interpretation, 92–93, 180–82

  Altar of Victory, 175–76, 267, 355

  Ambrose, 106, 120, 174–76, 266

  Ammianus Marcellinus, 170

  Anderson, Benedict, 174, 176, 265

  Antony, Saint, 47, 116, 162

  Aristotle, 48, 53, 112, 256, 369

  Arnold, Matthew, 259, 303

  Assmann, Jan, 109–12, 114, 115, 125, 129, 148, 155, 204, 205

  atheism, 86, 95, 115, 214, 235, 237, 239–43, 245, 259, 280

  Athenagoras, 116, 137, 144, 153, 154, 180

  Augustine, Saint, 44, 45, 65, 66, 68, 88, 89, 92, 99, 100, 106, 117–21, 126–28, 143, 144, 147, 153, 154, 175, 180–82, 186, 187, 190, 192, 203, 206, 207, 256, 311, 313, 337, 338, 368, 369, 372, 378

  Augustus, 57–61, 65, 76, 78, 80, 139, 175

  Averroists, Latin, 96, 98, 100

  awe/wonder, 30–33, 39, 41, 79, 93, 168, 210, 236, 237, 242

  Balbus, Quintus Lucillius, 90–100, 109, 114, 145, 180, 244, 247

  beauty, and the sacred, 31, 32, 35, 37, 38, 40, 42, 64, 74, 80, 82, 91, 93, 94, 101, 115–17, 183, 184, 189–91, 194, 198, 200, 236–38, 240–45, 345, 367, 369, 370

  Beckett, Samuel, 238

  being “at home in the world,” 113–16, 347, 371

  Bellah, Robert, 261–63

  Berger, Peter, 230, 232

  biblical man, 32

  biblical religion, 33, 110, 112, 182, 204, 207, 244, 245, 261, 263–68, 270, 280–82, 284, 289, 291, 295, 353, 359, 366, 369

  Botticelli, 199, 200, 202–4

  Bowersock, G. W., 169

  Braaten, Carl, 247, 248

  Brown, Dan, 205

  Brown, Peter, 72, 75, 163, 175, 178, 183, 193

  Bulfinch, Thomas, 10

  Bultmann, Rudolf, 92

  Burckhardt, Jacob, 166, 197, 199, 201–3

  Burke, Edmund, 355

  Bush, George W., 344

  Cameron, Averil, 205

  Camus, Albert, 25, 26, 238, 276