Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host

Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III and Christian writer and thinker Os Guinness explore the problems of political, religious, and ideological polarization in America, and how civil discourse can help to overcome them.

Guinness describes the motto E pluribus unum, “one out of many,” as America’s greatest achievement. He cautions nonetheless, “The world is beginning to look at the U.S., and the U.S. is not doing so well. We’ve had forty years of culture wars, and religion clearly is the holy war front.”

Two factors interact to create this problem: tremendous increases in diversity since World War II, and ideas of the separation of church and state that depart from the Framers’ own ideas. Today, “Religion is inviolably private, and the public world should be inviolably secular; that’s new,” Guinness summarizes. In simple terms, the public has divided into proponents of the “naked public square” and the “sacred public square,” and each extreme viewpoint is litigated at every opportunity.

Contrarily, when Alexis de Tocqueville described America in the early 1800s, the nation had “habits of the heart” that ensured greater tranquility: a civil public square. In a civil public square, Guinness believes, various points of view can be debated and settled for the benefit of all—even if proponents of one argument believe that everyone else is wrong.

Education can help both to reunite a polarized society and strengthen religious rights, Guinness asserts. “The test of religious liberty is always when the smallest group, and the most unpopular community, knows that their rights are respected by everybody else,” in his view.

Guinness points to the ability of faith communities to restore civility in the United States. In all their diversity, faith communities undergirded American society in the nineteenth century, by providing schools, hospitals, and other crucial institutions.

Guinness recommends a revival of civic education—to promote understanding of the founding principle of liberty—that has fallen by the wayside in many American schools. “It’s increasingly difficult to know what it is to be American,” Guinness observes. In trying times, when the world is shrinking, that lack of rudimentary knowledge puts the United States at risk from within. Without civic education, people who take one viewpoint move towards extremism, believing that anyone with an opposing view is completely wrong.

Of course, strong viewpoints have tremendous public appeal. Guinness believes, however, that the stakes of political and social polarization are extremely high, placing the United States itself at risk. He expresses a hope that Americans will think more about the long-term future of the nation, and less about short-term victories.

About Os Guinness

Os Guinness is an expert in faith, public policy, and international relations. He has worked as a freelance journalist for the BBC and as a scholar at the Brookings Institute and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Affairs. He has written and edited more than 25 books, including The American Hour (1993), The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (1998), Invitation to the Classics (1998), Unspeakable: Facing up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror (2005), and The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It (2008). He was a drafter of “The Williamsburg Charter,” a bicentennial celebration of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.