Religion is in the news more today than it has been for years. This thanks to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, television's Joan of Arcadia, and Pamela Anderson's "Jesus is my homeboy" T-shirt. And thanks to George W. Bush, whose references to the "wonder-working power in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people," are alternately interpreted as orthodox evangelicalism, idolatrous civil religion, or just a calculating cast for conservative Christian votes. The relationship between religion and public life is one of the many topics that Chesterton House helps students navigate.

During the last week of March, Cornell's Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy (CRESP) TheocracyWatch program, along with several academic departments, sponsored a symposium entitled "Church and State: The Rise of the Radical Religious Right in US Government." TheocracyWatch fashions itself after national "watchdog" organizations such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way.

"Please don't misunderstand the title: the Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party," reads the TheocracyWatch website. "This site is not about religion, nor about Christianity, nor about Republicans. This site is about how a small group of Republican strategists targeted a religious constituency to expand the base of their party, and how a small group of religious extremists targeted the Republican Party to bring the United States government under religious control."

The TheocracyWatch website provides extensive documentation, including quotes from Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, and George W. Bush, to back up its general claim that the religious right is a threat to democracy and the separation of church and state. That conservative Christians have moved from separatist disengagement to triumphalistic activism in recent decades is undisputed. TheocracyWatch is also correct that Pat Robertson's shallow and inflammatory rhetoric is disgraceful.

As if he were an observer of this symposium at Cornell, Wheaton College Professor Alan Jacobs published an article in the Boston Globe the very next week entitled "Apocalyptic president? How the left's fear of a right-wing Christian conspiracy gets George Bush--and today's evangelical Christians--all wrong." "The atmosphere of conspiracy," Jacobs writes, commenting on those who suggest Bush is unduly influenced by Tim LaHaye's apocalypticism and Howard Ahmanson's reconstructionism, is "rather unreal. I don't think that arguments like these capture the way that ideas get translated into policies by evangelical Christians--or by any other group. The sociology seems wrong to me."

"Someone outside the Christian orbit will likely see the LaHayes and Ahmansons as parts of a unitary phenomenon called 'the religious right.'" (TheocracyWatch director Joan Bokaer says that she spoke extensively with fundamentalists until she felt she "understood their way of thinking.") The problem with this lack of sociological nuance is that the likes of LaHaye and Ahmanson differ drastically in matters of eschatology (how history will end), and, according to Jacobs, "those differences lead to very different ideas about how politics works and what it is for." Whereas premillenialists believe that human societies will decline until the Second Coming of Jesus, postmillenial reconstructionists believe in using Biblical law to "reconstruct" Christian civilization. Although Bush could "scarcely be a premillennialist and a Reconstructionist at the same time," what is feared is precisely that he is "a premillennialist in foreign policy and a Reconstructionist on the domestic front."

Jacobs concludes: "The likelihood that [Bush's] thinking and his policies are shaped by a single, coherent, radical ideology is virtually nil. Bush may be a bad president--he may pursue bad policies on the domestic front and abroad--but if so, his Christianity has little or nothing to do with it."

Exactly how Christian faith ought to relate to public policy is no small topic; nor is it a new topic. Two views, however, are clearly wrongheaded--the reactionary rhetoric of Robertson and his ilk, and the conspiracy theories of TheocracyWatch.

Although I take Bokaer at her word that her intent is to criticize only a few and not the many, the effect is otherwise. One need need not be a fan of Robertson or even Bush to see that there is some serious semantic slippage between "a small group of religious extremists" and "the Republican Party." If religious "extremists," for example, are those who oppose partial birth abortion, then these "extremists" apparently include not only most Republicans, but most Americans--a mathematically magic marriage of extremism and populism. In the end, reassurances that this is "not about religion" are not all that reassuring.

The upshot, once again, is that religion is tolerable so long as it has no public significance. Religious discourse in the academy has a long way to go, and unfortunately, TheocracyWatch's lack of nuance and ad hominem dismissals contribute to making religious discourse in the academy more, not less, coarse.

As for Chesterton House, we believe the best alternative to shallow religious discourse is thoughtful religious discourse. It is toward this end that we labor, sponsoring lectures, conferences, discussion groups, and movie nights.

Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne gave three talks during his recent visit to Cornell, including a public lecture attended by a diverse audience of over 400 members of the Cornell community. His lecture, entitled "The Interaction of Science with Theology," focused on six similarities between religious and scientific knowledge: "that it is possible to understand the world, that the world has a deeper meaning, the world is deeply related in structure, we are agents in the world--that we have freedom of action, there is a moral dimension to our world, and finally that we live in a world subject to mortality." The lecture and the lively 30-minute Q&A session that followed are now available in audio format on our webpage: http://www.chestertonhouse.org.

Some months ago, while I was browsing films in Ithaca's Collegetown Video, an international student entered the store and asked me if I could recommend an American movie that "isn't &$%#." Well, there are indeed a lot of movies not worth watching, I acknowledged. I was then pleased to recommend Spitfire Grill, an independent film and wonderful tale of redemption. If you have ever felt like this student--interested in watching a movie but not sure how to find one actually worth watching--you may be interested in seeing the movies section of our webpage. Ably reviewed by Steve Froehlich, the selection of films is diverse and thoughtful. In order to encourage and stimulate thoughtful discussion beyond our own gatherings, we are now posting discussion questions in addition to the reviews. Films watched this past year include About a Boy, Blue, Bruce Almighty, Hard Day's Night, 13 Conversations About One Thing, and The Royal Tenenbaums. Links are also provided to three other sites providing excellent movie reviews from thoughtful Christian perspectives.

For a thoughtful treatment of the concept of America as a Christian nation from three of America's best religious historians, see Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, & George Marsden, The Search for Christian America (Helmers & Howard, 1989).

Friends of Chesterton House may be interested to know that Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God: A Memoir (Random House, 2003), will speak at Cornell on the evening of July 14th. From the flap: "The child of a Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, Lauren F. Winner chose to become an Orthodox Jew. But even as she was observing Sabbath rituals and studying Jewish law, Lauren was increasingly drawn to Christianity. Courageously leaving what she loved, she eventually converted. In Girl Meets God, this appealing woman takes us through a year in her Christian life as she attempts to reconcile both sides of her religious identity." Winner is widely published and has degrees from Columbia and Cambridge. More information regarding time and location will be coming shortly from Cornell's School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions: http://www.sce.cornell.edu