Grappling with the Good: Talking about Religion and Morality in Public Schools

THE BIG(GER) TENT OF THE CIVIC SPHERE

is necessary, and such a skill must be learned. This seems especially true in the consideration of religious truth claims, many of which will be in opposition . Whereas the goal of imaginative engagement is to understand ethical difference, collective deliberation involves navigating the implications of these differences for our lives together. As will become clear, however, this deliberation involves far more than adversarial debate. It seeks to employ the understanding gained via imaginative engagement in a reasoned process supported by mutual goodwill and humility. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a pedagogic framework for deliberating across ethical differences. At its simplest level, such deliberation rests on two linked assertions: 1. Reasonable people will often disagree about the best way to live. 2. We can recognize that others’ views are reasonable (i.e., we can see why they could reasonably think the way they do) and still believe that they are wrong. The deliberation that emerges from these principles—particularly as it involves religious convictions—relies heavily on crucial distinctions between the realm of our private commitments and our lives together in the civic realm. THE BIG(GER) TENT OF THE CIVIC SPHERE To better appreciate the challenge of learning how to deliberate amidst wide ethical diversity, we need to take a brief step back into political theory . As a liberal democratic society, the United States places strong emphasis on both individual rights and collective decision making, and the balance between these two priorities is under constant negotiation. While “liberal” describes our political framework in a general sense, the arguments for weighting individual and communal concerns vary widely within that broad conception.1 At this point I need to introduce some key distinctions concerning the idea of the private and civic realms. These terms are used in a variety of ways in everyday language, but for the purposes of my argument, I offer very specific stipulations of their meaning. The private refers to the realm in which our own ethical perspectives, our own ideas about the good life, hold sway and are most often shared by others—the areas of 80 Grappling with the Good family, religious groups, communal associations, and so on. The civic is the setting where our various ethical frameworks interact with those who do not necessarily share our ethical outlook, where we work out how we are going to live together in society. Public schools are one of the key elements of this civic realm. Within this civic sphere we must identify an extremely important subset, the political realm. The broader civic realm is where we seek to express and explore the diversity of viewpoints in our society—the emphasis here is on understanding and evaluation rather than on making decisions that invoke the power of the state. This latter element is the purview of the political realm, which involves the use of state power in determining how we will live together.2 To illustrate these distinctions, consider the common urban issue of providing transitional housing for prison parolees. In the private realm, a local church or mosque community might discuss their ethical obligation to establish a support center for parolees. The reasons they give for helping parolees will likely include justifications drawn from their particular religious doctrines and theology. This private conversation will likely transition into a civic discussion with local community leaders, businesses, and neighborhood associations about the desirability and details of such a plan. Here, all parties need to make an effort to understand these private rationales of the others and hopefully identify at least some common ground. Finally, it may involve a more narrowly political dialogue in which governmental approval (zoning, funding, etc.) is sought, at which point certain limitations on reason-giving should be observed, a point I will expand on later in this chapter. Dialogue in each of these three realms has different purposes and requires different patterns of communication if mutual understanding and respect are to be achieved. Why do I emphasize the distinctions between these three realms? It’s important that we recognize that civic speech—how we talk together 81 Grappling in the Classroom I about our ethical differences and how to live together respectfully in spite of them—is a far broader realm than simply political. That is, decisions about the use of state power (perhaps to coerce those who disagree) are only a small part of the larger civic dialogue where we...