In his response to my post, “Nothing Special about Religion,” Evan Kuehn inspires the following question: If my favored model (Public Landscape as Varied Topography) does not treat religion as a special case, why place constraints on government funding for religious organizations? Does my model allow the religious to have merely a voice in public, but not an active body and agency? But my earlier point about not treating religion initially as a special case was to emphasize that the religious voice should be welcomed and treated like all other public voices that may or may not be associated with comprehensive views. There is nothing “mere” or trivial about speaking publicly: it is a vital democratic practice. Moreover, as I went on to note in my post, religion in some ways is a special case. It is, for example, addressed by the U.S. Constitution. The establishment clause in the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from establishing—officially funding or otherwise sponsoring—religion; it also guarantees the free exercise of religion. Government, in short, can neither espouse religion nor prohibit citizens’ religious activity. This is a salient aspect of our local history and culture—our particular socio-historical circumstances—as Americans.

Although there is no detailed blueprint for how to apply the prohibition of the First Amendment, its spirit is clear: government is to refrain from explicit religious endorsement and from supporting religious proselytism. Historically, this prohibition has not automatically disallowed government from funding religious charitable organizations, providing that the delivery of services was free of proselytism and government endorsement. My model would support this historical precedent; it would not, however, support President George W. Bush’s “Faith-based and Community Initiatives.”

This multi-billion dollar set of initiatives is not about welcoming the religious voice to participate in ongoing civic conversations (as I think the religious voice should be welcomed). Rather, it is about aggressively wooing and funding religious organizations to administer public social services in the very manner that makes many religious and nonreligious citizens alike justifiably nervous about religion in government and government in religion. The White House’s publication, “Partnering with the Federal Government,” assures religious organizations seeking funding that they need not be anxious about Constitutional issues pertaining to church and state. It comforts them, “Don’t be put off by the term ‘inherently religious’” in the Supreme Court’s prohibition of government funding for inherently religious activities. It promises that if religious organizations receive government funding, they may invite their social service clients to their religious services and events; they may even conduct such religious activities as prayer in the presence of those whom they are serving, for example, offering prayers before a meal at a soup kitchen. Moreover, those offering the prayers, who are employed with tax-payers’ dollars, may even be deemed qualified for their employment on the basis of their religious beliefs. By executive order, President Bush has sidestepped the Civil Rights Act, allowing federally funded, faith-based organizations to hire on the basis of religion. The clients in these social service programs are often subjected to proselytizing, for the few prohibitions against proselytism that do exist are not enforced by the government.

Given that over 95 percent of these federally funded religious organizations are Christian, and in many cases the same organizations that have supported the Bush presidency, some have argued that their political support is being rewarded by Bush’s “initiatives.” Yet many Christian leaders, including leaders from such conservative Christian denominations as the Southern Baptists, are opposed to the initiatives. As concerned citizens, they oppose them on Constitutional grounds; as believers, they oppose them on religious grounds, maintaining that religion should not be closely identified with government, and, moreover, that religion in the U.S. is strong precisely due to the twin clauses of the First Amendment. My favored model is largely in agreement with these religious voices that object to Bush’s faith-based initiatives. My model would support faith-based, federally supported programs that vigorously prohibit all forms of proselytism and discrimination in hiring. Such support is consistent with the model’s basic principle, namely, to welcome religious voices in public and political life while disallowing state funding and action that promote religion.

What, then, is my response to Kuehn’s claim that I “should recognize that [I am] setting up the language (or the language rules) of secular public discourse as ‘special,’ when it is in reality nothing of the sort”? I would reply by saying that I am attempting to offer a nuanced account of the ways that religion both is and is not a “special case” in the U.S., and that this account must take seriously, among other things, the cultural and legal significance of the Constitution.

As much as Cladis attempts to offer his model as a successful alternative to religious domination or marginalization, I’m not convinced that the “variegated” public landscape he maps out takes religion seriously enough, or is self-critical enough concerning “the public sphere.”

As an example, here are two assertions made by Cladis, each of which seems to put the other in question:

“A working assumption in this model is that public voices will usually be varied in form and content. Some voices may be explicitly religious; others may be explicitly non-religious. But these distinctions do not matter, according to this model, because no voice is treated as a special case. Or, to say the same thing differently, liberty of conscience and freedom of speech deem that each voice is a special case worthy of a hearing.”

…but then:

“The Evangelical Environmental Network, for example—which is concerned about the relation between hurricanes, climate change, and the poor—is lobbying Congress to enact laws to stem global warming.

The proposed model would allow into the public realm these evangelical voices and their religious arguments that address environmental policy. It would not, however, permit government funding for evangelical groups to administer environmental programs, insofar as these groups promote a distinctively theological point of view in the delivery of services.”

Cladis’s point in arguing that “religion is not special” is that religion is not categorically special, but rather shares a place in a variegated public with other voices. This is clear enough in his description of free exercise, but when he moves to the question of establishment it appears that religion is quite “special,” and not in a way that can be approved for public consumption. Does Cladis’s change of policy stem from the fact that we’re not dealing with religious “voices” now, but rather a “delivery of services”? Such justification seems rather weak to me. Presumably (in this model), a public investment in public religion (via its services) accepts such services on the basis of a religion that has already been deemed “not a special case” as regards its public voice… that is, on the basis of the public argument made by this religious voice for public programs without particular reference to the religion as a public good itself. What, then, prevents government funding for religious programs that have not been proposed by a special religious voice, not been accepted by special religious criteria, and not been enforced for special religious reasons?

In other words, what changes between the “initial” case that Cladis speaks of and the eventual exclusion of religion from the public sphere? He writes, “this model goes on to acknowledge that, in some sense, religion is a special subject (in light of particular socio-historical circumstances).” Does this mean that its special status is circumstantial? If so, how strong an argument can he really make? Does this model then offer any prescriptive word to situations of Shari’a tradition or secularist regimes? It doesn’t seek to alter an American form of separation, but would it try to impose one in a different societal situation? I don’t think it could, if it tried.

So the model seems stuck between being a) incoherent because of its leap from public religious voice to disallowance of religious sponsorship, or else b) impotent before custom and historical circumstance in modeling anything about whether and how religion is a “special subject” in public life. I think this results from the fact that it is still more or less rooted in a secularist framing of the public that cannot understand religion properly… rather than stopping at critiquing Habermas’s conception of religion as a “special language,” Cladis should recognize that he is setting up the language (or the language rules) of secular public discourse as “special,” when it is in reality nothing of the sort.