期刊名称:Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies
印刷版ISSN:1583-0039
出版年度:2006
卷号:5
期号:13
页码:68-77
语种:English
出版社:SACRI
摘要:Over recent years religious conservatives in the United States have fervently contested the idea of a liberal, secular public sphere. This article urges scholars to consider that contest in light of the history of the New Christian Right (NCR) of the late 1970s and 1980s. NCR activists, intellectuals, lawyers, and government officials advanced a critique of Rawlsian political liberalism, one charging that public institutions were not the bastions of neutrality supposed by American liberals. Contrary to the U.S. Constitution’s ban on an establishment of religion, this critique alleged, cultural elites and judges had lifted the “religion” of secular humanism up to a preferred status while attempting to purge the public sphere of Christianity. Focusing on a pair of federal court cases from the 1980s, this article considers one of the NCR‘s most fascinating strategies––defining as a “religion” the very secularism meant to contain religion to private life.
关键词:New Christian Right; Secularism; political liberalism; U. S. Constitution