The spirited discussion pitted Dr David Hollinger, a University of California professor with expertise in religion and politics in relations to US history, against Dr Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core and an expert on the sociology of religion.
Panellists and moderator EJ Dionne Jr,author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics After the Religious Right, readily agreed that religion has an important place in the public square. What they disagreed on was how to integrate diverse religious identities into a common civic life.
Hollinger argued that anyone who proclaims personal faith as justification for public policy decisions should be ready to defend their religious ideas in public democratic debates.
The UC Berkeley Preston Hotchkis Professor of American History adamantly believes the public has the right to scrutinise and question someone’s religion if they claim it influences choices that affect the public.
“So proclaim your faith, assert its relevance to your political leadership, and then suffer no questions about its soundness,” Hollinger said, referencing former Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney’s speech on his Mormon faith. “Tell but don’t ask? This seems to be our motto today in the public discussion of religious ideas – tell but don’t ask.
“It will not do to offer religious faith as reason to vote for someone or to support a public policy and then take offense if somebody asks skeptical questions about the basis for it,” he argued.
Hollinger called for “robust public debate” on religious ideas of politicians who invoke their faith to assert public policy decisions.
“One thing that might happen if we did that is that differences would emerge about which religious ideas deserve[d] respect and which did not,” the scholar speculated. “And there might be a quarrel over which religious idea has cognitive plausibility and which did not.”
