The Naked Public Square
The Weirdness of Biblical Metaphor
A practical argument for classical liberalism is that it’s a way of managing diversity, a way of helping people live together despite severe differences. Liberalism came to prominence in the wake of the European religious wars of the 17th century. But does liberal co-existence require that we stop talking to each other about religion, or does it mean that we find common ways to share an ecumenical religiosity, without getting bogged down by heresy hunting?
Francis Fukuyama argues that liberalism itself would not have come about without an origin in the Biblical concept of universal dignity. And yet, he’s skeptical that the religious origins of liberalism destine us to remain religious. Liberalism can and should exist today, he argues, without recourse to Biblical faith, even if it’s true that the American founders were all animated by a religious passion.
In his 1984 bestseller, The Naked Public Square, Richard John Neuhaus, argued against the liberal ideal of the separation of Church and State. Here, I want to explore the metaphor on which his still influential book is staked.
The goal of the first amendment, Neuhaus claims—controversially—is not to protect the public from religious expression, but to open a space for various forms of religious expression to co-exist. Damon Linker describes Neuhaus as a chief visionary of the “theoconservative” movement. Yet as Linker notes, many of the “theocons” started off as revolutionary leftists; some even marched with Dr. King. The sentiment behind their desire to bring a common religious language to the public square should not be conflated with their political positions on social issues of the day. It is possible that in a parallel world, we might imagine theolibs, thinkers urging left-wing politicians to lead the nation in prayers before signing stimulus bills in support of expanded welfare and social security. Transcendence knows nothing of right and left.
What does it mean that the public square is naked?
Genesis offers us two sets of characters who were found naked, Adam and Eve, and Noah.
When we first meet Adam and Eve they are naked and unashamed. After eating from the tree of knowledge their nakedness becomes a source of shame and self-consciousness.
If Neuhaus thinks that religious language and expression are garments that adorn the public square, it’s a strange image. For it suggests a post-Edenic need for religion as a way of evading shame. The naked public square, by contrast, might be a longing to return to a state before the Fall, a way of being in which we don’t need to cover ourselves with the fig leaf of tradition and ritual. Secularism—on this read—would be a longing for utopia; a way of saying that what is shameful is not our nakedness, but our shame that we are naked. Though Neuhaus himself does not say this, one can deconstruct his book to arrive at the conclusion that secularism, far from being opposed to religion, is simply an alternative form of religious expression.
The second image of nakedness in the Torah is Noah. Ham is cursed for revealing Noah’s nakedness, i.e., for revealing Noah’s flaws. Tradition is a cover-up. Religion, in this conception, is an evasion of the shame of the patriarch. But the Torah admits to this shame. We don’t see Noah naked, but the text doesn’t cover it up entirely.
If the Enlightenment is centered around pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes, the counter-Enlightenment is about pretending that he does. In contrast to Shem and Yafet who really do manage to re-clothe Noah, in Andersen’s tale, the best we can hope for is the ability to look away.
So if you read Neuhaus through the lens of Noah and Andersen, the public square is naked. We can pretend otherwise, we can look away, and maybe this is noble, but there is no re-clothing.
The secular Enlightenment is not about the denial of transcendence or religiosity, but about the suspicion of authority.
At issue in most cultural debates today is the question of shame. Should we be ashamed of things that were once acceptable? Should we find acceptable things that were once shameful? No religious group has a monopoly on these questions; and no set of answers will satisfy skeptics. Morals change, included in this is the meta- question of whether Ham was wrong for exposing his father’s vulnerabilities. Maybe today Ham deserves a Pulitzer. Meanwhile, Adam and Eve—if they had access to the internet—would not have been ashamed of their nakedness. They would have found a support group of others who had also eaten from the tree of knowledge and formed their identity as members of a new group. We’re fruit eaters, and proud. God is an epistemephobe.
You don’t have to be a conservative or even a “religious” person to find Neuhaus’s fundamental metaphor compelling. If anything the metaphor raises more questions than answers.
What is Called Thinking? is a practice of asking a daily question on the belief that self-reflection brings awe, joy, and enrichment to one’s life. Consider becoming a paying subscriber to support this project and access subscriber-only content.
You can read my weekly Torah commentary here.