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“Can Religion Save Politics? Can Politics Save Religion?”

A Roundtable with Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, Ph.D., Shari Cohen, Ph.D., and Michael Gottsegen, Ph.D

 

Introduction

The nomination of Joseph Lieberman for vice president and George Bush’s commitment to faith-based social services have provoked a new round of heated discussions over the role of religion in public life. These debates have revolved primarily around the long-standing divide over shoring up, versus tearing down, the legal wall of separation between church and state.  Secondarily, they have focused on the necessity of reinvigorating religious and political institutions, which many see as dangerously weakened.  

These essays emerged out of a pre-election roundtable discussion sponsored by the Jewish Public Forum at CLAL. This discussion sought to go beyond considering the battles over the First Amendment—such as those fought in court cases about school prayer or public menorahs—or making calls for increasing civic participation and membership in religious institutions.  The premise of the roundtable was that the issues at stake in thinking about the future of religion and public life are not merely legalistic or organizational.  Rather, it is necessary to frame the conversation in a broader context. We need to investigate how people are forming loyalties to purposes beyond themselves and their families in new ways, and how the functions and meanings of the political and religious realms are changing. A globalized economy, the pervasiveness of high-tech media, revolutions in biological and medical science, corporate influence over electoral politics: all of these change how we experience ourselves in relation to communities large and small.  All of these will change how American Jews experience themselves as Jews, as Americans, as voters and congregants, and, for that matter, as workers, consumers, family members, and so on.  

The essays that follow seek to offer insight into such issues. 

In “Markets and More,” Shari Cohen explores the extent to which the market has begun to take over some of the meaning-making functions of both religion and politics. What, she asks, are the implications when citizens and congregants seem to be transforming into customers and employees?

In “Language of Hope,” Tsvi Blanchard suggests that religious language might in fact provide a powerful tool for making political life more meaningful.  When it is “translated” into political discourse so as to be fully constitutional and inclusive, he argues, religious language can engender new kinds of conversations about social and political possibility.

In “After the Church-State Divide,” Michael Gottsegen asks, finally, whether we might be entering a period of “resynthesis” of religion and politics. We need to put the split between the religious and the political spheres into historical perspective, he argues, in order to understand the potential promise and pitfalls of keeping these arenas separate, as well as of letting them overlap. 

 

 

    

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