Religion in the Public Square by James M. Patterson (review)

The title of James Patterson's book Religion in the Public Square is both timely and highly evocative; timely because, despite the prognostications of some in the mid- to late twentieth century, religion has not disappeared from public life in the United States but has continued to wield (some would say) an outsized influence in many arenas simultaneously. Religious adherence helps predict large swaths of voting blocs; public policy continues to be debated in terms that are often drawn from religious language if not theology and praxis themselves; the Supreme Court's docket contains cases dealing directly with the role of religion in American democracy as well as cases in which religion plays at least an ancillary role. And while white evangelicals' support for Donald Trump continues apace, former Democratic presidential hopefuls such as Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren frame their public policy proposals in language drawn directly from their Episcopal and Methodist faith traditions, respectively.

Yet there are those in every religious community who resist the politicization of their most deeply cherished beliefs, trying as best they can to separate their faith commitments from their public actions and public responsibilities. Nevertheless, the fact that religious beliefs do have real implications for the lives their adherents live in community with others is inescapable. James Patterson's contribution deftly weaves through the potential minefield of writing about the intersection of religion and politics by focusing on the specific question of how American religious life interacts with the persuasion of the masses toward particular political positions. In particular, he writes about figures who were able to maintain their public and private posture as deeply religious individuals while at the same time communicating the relevance, influence, and urgency of a shared religious narrative for specific strategic goals: in other words, Patterson avoids cynicism about the relationship of public life to the private lives of religious leaders–no mean feat in today's religious environment.

In the process of doing so, his work also gives profound insight into the differences between early- to mid-twentieth century attitudes toward religion and public life and those shaped by the last forty years. His choice of three representative figures may seem slightly odd at first, but by the end of his argument, those specific choices emerge as inspired characters to use in his own story of the de-evolution of religion in the public square.

Patterson's thesis is that, until the 1980s, American religion neither baptized the state unreflectively nor sequestered itself from the state and its various operations; rather, he argues, over time, a broad ecumenical consensus emerged that "sought to limit the power of the state and redirect it to what [clergy] regarded as its proper moral ends and its proper limits in achieving those ends" (3). This "Judeo-Christian" consensus found expression in the humanitarian movements of the early twentieth century and found its apex in the Civil Rights Movement (15). However, it rapidly declined in the late twentieth century with the rise of the "moral majority," which presumed that the prophetic role of speaking truth to power was less effective in achieving legislative ends than speaking truth from a position of power and privilege. In thus ceding the foundational assumption of the Judeo-Christian consensus, Patterson argues, the Religious Right effectively killed off the possibility of religious leaders having a truly effective rhetorical posture in American political life.

To prove this thesis, Patterson sets up an intriguing trio of figures: Fulton Sheen, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jerry Falwell Sr. Fulton Sheen was an academic theologian who popularized Catholicism in the early twentieth century through the use of mass media, first in radio and then on television. Patterson is able to trace Sheen's career in a way that effectively demonstrates what appears now to be a lost art: the ability to walk the tightrope between a belief that the spiritual values of Catholics impel them to act on those values in particular ways in the...