The goal of the American political order, wrote Father John Courtney Murray, is to maintain a circumstance in which citizens are “locked in civil argument.” My argument in the 1984 book The Naked Public Square has frequently been misunderstood on this score, especially by those whose political activity is religiously motivated. The alternative to the naked public square – meaning public life stripped of religion and religiously grounded argument – is not of the sacred public square, but of the civil public square. The sacred public square is located in the New Jerusalem. The best that can be done in Babylon is to maintain, usually with great difficulty, a civil public square.
The best in Babylon
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