A Prophetic Voice
by Sean Clerget ‘09
Professor Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at the Yale Law School and was the first tenured African American faculty member. He was an undergraduate at Stanford University, went to the Yale Law School, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is one of the most respected law professors in the country. He has written numerous books including one called Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby. Considering his book’s title, one might be tempted to focus on affirmative action, race relations in America, or black conservatism in writing an article on him. That would, I think, be a mistake.
In this book, Professor Carter described several stories about being asked to comment publicly on race issues, whether it be for a book cover, testifying before Congress, or supporting various organizations; in response he says, “I usually say no. Law and race, I explain, is not my principal area of scholarly expertise (but try me, I suggest, on intellectual property or law and religion or separation of powers).” Professor Carter has a lot to say on race relations and affirmative action. However, if you are looking for more on these issues, I suggest you read the book mentioned above. This article will focus on issues that interest Professor Carter far more than does race: law, politics, and religion. On March 28, 2008, Carter visited Wabash to receive the David W. Peck Senior Medal, the College’s award for eminence in law.
While on campus Professor Carter delivered a lecture entitled “The Right to Religious Nurture,” which reflects his current interest regarding the way society views the relationship between itself and religion. Carter believes that this relationship derives from the properly understood American tradition of the separation of church and state.
The correct understanding of the separation between church and state, he explained in his lecture, comes from Roger Williams. Williams was a 17th century religious man who became a pastor in Salem, Massachusetts. Not long after arriving there, he was accused of spreading “dangerous” opinions and was eventually exiled from the community. After being exiled, Williams opened a colony in what is now Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Carter explained that Williams strongly believed religious people should be able to nurture their young without interference. Williams developed a metaphor using a garden and the wilderness, with the garden representing the religious community and the wilderness representing the rest of society. A “high hedge wall,” he said, should be created to separate the two, not to protect the wilderness from the garden, but to protect the garden from the wilderness.
The separation of church and state, as it was originally formulated, never intended to protect society from religion, nor does it suggest that religious people should involve themselves in political life. Professor Carter did caution, however, that while religious people can influence politics, the two should not be completely intertwined. He referenced the writing of C.S. Lewis, who opposed the creation of a specifically “Christian Democratic” party since such a party would either preach the entire gospel and lose elections or edit the gospel to win. Lewis saw the idea of such a party as a contradiction.
Religious people have played an important role in politics throughout history, and they have done so by pushing for change through dissent. Radical dissent is necessary for democracy, Carter said, and the best and most energetic dissenters have always been religious people. It is difficult to find a controversy in our history where the leading voices for change were not religious voices. Just a few examples would be the original immigration debate in the early 19th century, the Civil War debate, the women’s suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement. “At these times when religion dissented to effect change you saw religion in society and in politics at its best. Not so much trying to seize the levers of power but trying to stand outside the mainstream and speak in that prophetic voice about what is the right thing to do, in other words, to persuade, often by example, as opposed to coercing.”
What do Professor Carter’s words mean for the relationship between religion and society today? In his book A Culture of Disbelief he writes: “In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them.” More and more it seems that the separation of church and state is interpreted to mean that religion cannot and should not play any role in public life. Many treat religion as a completely private aspect of life and treat people who express their religious views publicly as if they are a bit crazy. Professor Carter tells the story of a friend who took a resume to a corporate job consultant. The consultant told him he should remove anything from the resume mentioning his involvement with a religious social welfare organization. Otherwise, an employer might think him a religious fanatic. This example and many more show that our culture treats religion as something from which to be protected.
It is clear that there was no intention in the founding era of our country to fence out religion, or to restrict what the people in the garden do or say when they go into the wilderness. Professor Carter’s idea about the “right to religious nurture” seeks to improve the relationship between the garden and the wilderness. Carter does not suggest that people who subscribe to a religion should isolate themselves from the rest of society, but he does say that they can if they want to. Citizens should be able, if they so choose, to once again establish a garden, with a “high hedge wall” of separation from the wilderness.
How does this idea manifest itself in practical terms? One way has to do with IRS policies for non-profit organizations (including churches). These groups are not allowed to influence elections, or else they could lose their tax-exempt status. Professor Carter argued in his lecture that Roger Williams and the Founders would have been appalled by this restriction. To them, a condition on religion in order to receive a benefit would be extremely unconstitutional. This again relates back to the intention of protecting religion from government and not the other way around.
Another practical application involves teaching in public schools. Carter argued that if we are going to create a positive and respectful relationship between church and state, we must allow families to dissent and in turn “create dissenting children.” Parents should have the absolute right to excuse their children from religiously objectionable instruction in the public schools. Some would say that our society will end up with a generation of uneducated people because parents will constantly have their children excused from school. Carter believes this to be unlikely. Children will not fail to get an education by missing a day or two of science class, for example. If it does turn out that a great number of people ask to be excused, then the problem is not with religion. It is with the way we are constructing the curriculum. Carter also thinks parents should have increasing control over their children’s education. Families, if they choose, should be able to resist the incursions of outside culture.
Another point Professor Carter stated has to do with the importance of dissent to the success of a democracy. It is important that instead of avoiding or resisting dissent, we start treating our fellow citizens with respect even if they sharply disagree with us. Whether one sees “the wall of separation of church and state as a means to protect the poor, helpless government from these vast armies of religionists who are going to conquer it” or as a “means to nurture religious belief in a multitude of gardens around the country,” Carter believes the difference is crucial.
Professor Carter is optimistic that respect between those holding either position is worth working towards even though it seems idealistic. His optimism comes from a story about Justice Marshall, who was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court. One day Carter asked Justice Marshall what he thought about John W. Davis. Davis, as an advocate for racial segregation, argued that South Carolina made progress in creating equality between black and white schools and should be able to maintain that segregation. To Carter’s surprise Justice Marshall responded that John W. Davis was “a good man…a great man who just happened to be wrong about segregation.” Justice Marshall did what Professor Carter hopes we can work towards in our society. He was able to “separate positions from humanity.” This was the example set by Justice Thurgood Marshall, and that example is still being set for us today by Professor Carter.
