Religion in the Public Square: Sheen, King, Falwell by James M. Patterson (review)

In the first sentence of Religion in the Public Square: Sheen, King, Falwell, James M. Patterson encloses the phrase Judeo-Christian consensus in quotation marks. By page 15, the quotation marks around the phrase are gone, and Patterson sketches a brief historical trajectory in which "[t]he Judeo-Christian consensus slowly replaced Protestant hegemony" and ultimately "transform[ed] into the Religious Right" (pp. 15, 16). Patterson calls this transformation a "fatal blow," with the Judeo-Christian consensus now "a spent force" (pp. 16, 19); and he sets out to uncover how such a development came to pass. His argument leans heavily on two important claims about religion's role in twentieth-century American democracy: first, "ideas make their way to the public by way of popularizers, and these popularizers have very often been clergy"; and second, "to remain persuasive … clergy must focus their efforts on moral and religious education rather than direct participation in government or political parties" (p. 3). (Hence his criticism of the Religious Right.) Patterson then takes the reader on an in-depth exploration of three public figures who exemplify both the promise and the peril of clergy in American public life: Fulton J. Sheen, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jerry Falwell. Patterson skillfully places each man's life and career into their political and theological milieus, making creative use of existing frameworks like the American jeremiad, civil religion, and Hugh Heclo's "Great Denouement."

The book's three substantive chapters are lucidly argued and clearly organized, and they shed a great deal of light on both the individual figures and their broader cultural and political contexts. That said, only a truncated definition of religion justifies describing Sheen's career as "primarily religious in nature" (p. 43). Sheen never held elected office, but he vocally sought to prevent American support for Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s; preached countless sermons against communism and totalitarianism; and appeared at parades and rallies with a U.S. secretary of state and vice president. Patterson rightly emphasizes how King premised social transformation on individual spiritual transformation, but the author surely understates King's radical political and institutional vision. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963) does posit divine law as a standard for human justice, but it also offers democratic, political definitions of injustice—majority-enacted laws that bind only minorities; laws inflicted on minorities denied the franchise; laws that are prima facie just but applied to political ends—about which Patterson is silent. And his view of King's later career as a stark departure from what preceded it overlooks the deep continuities between King's lifelong denunciations of poverty and militarism. Patterson's explication of Falwell's use of the jeremiad and nehemiad is enlightening and accurately views the two rhetorical forms as useful in, respectively, diagnosing problems and exhorting followers to engagement. (The chapter's tantalizing final paragraph fast-forwards to Donald J. Trump and Robert Jeffress in 2017). Falwell's ultimate role in this narrative lies in his explicit alliance with the Republican Party, which, for Patterson, delegitimized the public role of clergy and led to an exodus of Americans from organized religion.

After so much careful parsing of these three complex and nuanced careers, the book's nine-page conclusion is brief and disappointing, with a quick summary of similarities and differences followed by a series of sweeping, pseudo-Tocquevillian generalizations ("Unlike the Americans of the 1830s, Americans today mostly lack the habits of self-government"; "Citizens who once shared a dogma that facilitated public participation now dispute everything" [p. 167]). The decline in Americans' religious affiliation in recent decades has apparently "unleashed" the American people, who "grab onto whatever beliefs provide them with access to powerful factions"—a situation that can only be rectified if churches once again take it upon themselves to "provide the indirect influence that once preserved the republic...