Why Religion Enjoys Special Privileges
Religion & Liberty Online

Why Religion Enjoys Special Privileges

In the latest issue of Christianity Today, Wilfred McClay offers six reasons why religion in America really does—and should—enjoy ‘special privileges’:

A third argument for religion’s special place is anthropological: Human beings are naturally inclined toward religion. We are driven to relate our understanding of the highest things to our lives lived in community with others. Whether our “theotropic” impulses derive from in-built endowment, evolutionary adaptation, or some other source, the secular order ought not to inhibit their expression.

If believers sense a general willingness to acknowledge their legitimate role in public life, they will likely feel a stronger and deeper loyalty to the American experiment. But if they encounter instead a rigid insistence upon a rigorously secularist public square, the result could very well alienate religious subcultures, whose sectarian disaffection could become so profound as to threaten the very cohesion of the nation. Secularists who worry about religion taking an outsized role in public life would be better advised to give a little strategic ground on that issue, and acknowledge the spiritual dimension in our makeup, even if they think it an all-too-human shortcoming.

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Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).