The Decline of Secularism

...It is hard to imagine similar reactions had either of these decisions come down in, say, 1985...

...ayatollah...

...In a speech to several hundred clergymen in Dallas the day after the Republican convention ended, Ronald Reagan urged people of faith to become politically active, to avoid defensiveness about their right to bring a religious perspective to the national political debate...

...The dominant figure in that year's Reagan campaign, White House chief of staff James Baker, was reportedly aghast that a seemingly innocuous speech to Dallas clergymen had turned into the central issue, diverting attention from the accelerating economic expansion...

...Gore did endorse it, and while the faith-based initiative has seen its share of controversy, it has largely retained the bipartisan cast achieved in 2000...

...The subject of religion made strategists in both camps uneasy...

...Tocqueville noticed that the triumph of democratic equal-ity—which encourages a degree of separation and independence for religion—went hand in hand with a popular religious vitality not possible in the stultifying European state churches of his day...

...such jurisprudence is of a piece with the strict secularism that appeared headed for triumph in American politics a couple of decades ago, but is now in clear retreat...

...He believed Reagan's position needed a vigorous, unapologetic defense, but was only too happy to leave the issue behind when the Democrats decided, some time in september, to move on to other matters...

...The debate in the House was undeniably partisan, but the Senate version of the bill, the CARE Act, was revised after September 11 to achieve bipartisan support and is moving through the Senate with the backing, so far, of Senate majority leader Thomas Daschle...

...these regions already favored Reagan, almost certainly because of the early bicoastal benefits of the Reagan economic boom...

...The secularism that has been so powerful in Western culture for the past century—and whose heirs are still on top in France and among America's social liberals—has always seen things very differently...

...Galston recently recalled how in the 2000 Gore campaign he was responsible for arguing the case for endorsing the religion-friendly faith-based initiative already being pushed by Governor Bush...

...In the same time frame, the Northeast and West had no net vote shifts of consequence...

...The Midwest, in 1984, had benefited hardly at all from Reaganomics...

...The decision was quickly and universally criticized as untenable and unsustainable by elected officials and legal commentators alike...

...He likened Reagan to an Jeffrey Bell is a principal of Capital City Partners, a Washington consultingfirm...

...The Clinton-Gore era in Democratic politics was a time of transition for the issue of religion in public life...

...Today's reaction in part reflects a national upsurge of patriotism since September 11, but it also reflects the longer-term sea change in the politics of religion...

...The two men who have headed President Bush's faith-based office, John DiIulio and James Towey, are both Democrats...

...Secularism believes that religion must be systematically excluded from the public domain, with a thoroughness not applied to any other belief system...

...Democratic nominee Walter Mon-dale instantly jumped on the speech with both feet, accusing Reagan of intolerance...

...But by September, he had taken a solid lead in the region that he never relinquished...

...Even more remarkable is the Democrats' reaction to the "under God" and Cleveland voucher decisions...

...For a sense of how far the political debate on religion has come, recall the "religion in politics" controversy of the 1984 presidential campaign...

...By almost any measure, this brand of secularism is in political decline in the United States...

...American soil was never that amenable to secularism...

...But gone are the days when the religious club is the only one not allowed to use school property after hours—or, in the wake of the Cleveland decision, when religious schools are the only schools parents are discouraged from looking to for alternatives to public education...

...Reagan's gains in the South, the most religious part of the country, made his already solid lead overwhelming...

...Reagan was running no better than even in most midwestern states in August...

...The larger part of the region was still known as the Rust Belt, and the rest of it had been hammered by a farm deflation...

...supreme Court's 5-4 decision upholding Cleveland's voucher plan...

...Nor does such vitality seem possible amid today's secularized European elitism...

...By contrast, the Cleveland decision, closely divided as the vote was, has the feel of a watershed moment in a broad shift toward a different, more favorable vision of religion's place in the public square...

...This sounded the gun on a debate that would rage between the two parties for a solid month and dominate the first weeks of the general election campaign...

...It is certainly the most persistent...

...Circuit Court of Appeals' attempted deletion of God from the Pledge of Allegiance was eclipsed the next day by the U.s...

...The reason is not some higher spirituality, peculiar to our climate...

...In particular, the indignation of most Democratic officeholders at the idea of removing "under God" shows how far the party has come since 1988, when its standard-bearer proudly defended his belief that requiring students to say any part of the Pledge was unconstitutional...

...Democratic strategists would experience more post-election pangs relating to religion in politics after the Dukakis campaign of 1988...

...There was, for example, a protracted exchange over the obligations of Catholic politicians on the abortion issue between Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro and recently appointed New York archbishop (not yet cardinal) John O'Connor...

...Yale law professor Akhil Amar argues that the pro-religious trend in the courts in recent years is due to an application of the idea of equality to religion's place in the world of ideas...

...New Democratic strategists such as Al From, William Galston, and Will Marshall succeeded at removing the issue from partisan politics...

...While the "religion in politics" controversy was in the saddle, Democrats hemorrhaged votes in the South and Midwest...

...The reason, as Amar suggests, is our founding commitment to equality...

...Religious schools and religious denominations are not being offered (nor do they seek) elevation above competing ideas, as in the bad old days of the established church...

...But even more striking was the increased support he found in the Midwest...

...The Massachusetts governor lost a substantial lead over Vice President Bush when the campaign was dominated by such subjects as prison furloughs, ACLU membership, and (yes) the rights and wrongs of requiring students to say the Pledge of Allegiance...

...And while less dramatic, the relative mildness of liberal and Democratic reactions to the Cleveland decision is equally interesting...

...The debate ranged far beyond the merits and shortcomings of Reagan's Dallas speech...

...The idea of equality has transformed the world, and the collapse of Marxism has underlined the simple fact that American-style democratic equality may be the most radical and most transformative idea of all...

...The finding of unconstitutionality for the words "under God," by a three-judge panel of the liberal California court, has an almost antique ring to it...

...Though they may tolerate religion as a purely private phenomenon, secularists believe any mixture of religious life and public life is by definition toxic...

...The secularists' worst nightmare is to be found not in any house of worship, but in the continued life and dynamism of our founding documents...

...And perhaps the biggest reason for its persistence is that beginning with the Declaration of Independence, most Americans at most times, and national leaders as different as George Washington and George W. Bush, seem to have believed equality was ordained not by us, but by God...