March 14, 2005

The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part IV

This posting builds on three previous ones about the Naked Public Square (I, II, III).

Greg Wallace, over at What Attitude Problem?, posted this story yesterday about yet another successful attempt to strip naked the public square. Read the story and follow the links.

This latest news story leads me back to a quote by Richard John Neuhaus found in the Part II posting:

When religion in any traditional or recognizable form is excluded from the public square, it does not mean that the public square is in fact naked...

The truly naked public square is at best a transitional phenomenon. It is a vacuum begging to be filled. When the democratically affirmed institutions that generate and transmit values are excluded, the vacuum will be filled by the agent left in control of the public square, the state. In this manner, a perverse notion of the disestablishment of religion leads to the establishment of the state as church...

Is this really the legacy we want for America? Is this really the legacy we want to leave for our children?