Should separation advocates move toward an acceptance of certain government references to God? That was one of the church-state issues addressed by a panel at last week's Netroots Nation conference, a yearly gathering of Internet-based progressive activists. Bruce Ledewitz, law professor and author of Hallowed Secularism, believes that it's "time to time to give up on the principle of the purely secular state and try to find common ground between secularists and religious believers." He provided the resolution for debate in a discussion titled "How I Learned to Accept "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and Stop Losing Elections":
The old liberal vision of a total separation of religion from politics has been discredited. Despite growing secularization, a secular progressive majority is still impossible, and a new two-part approach is needed–one that first admits that there is no political wall of separation. Voters must be allowed, without criticism, to propose policies based on religious belief. But, when government speaks and acts, messages must be universal. The burden is on religious believers, therefore, to explain public references like 'under God' in universal terms. For example, the word 'God' can refer to the ceaseless creativity of the universe and the objective validity of human rights. Promoting and accepting religious images as universal will help heal culture-war divisions and promote the formation of a broad-based progressive coalition.
You can watch the panel's debate that followed at Bruce's Huffington Post recap here.
