Religion und Moderne: Der amerikanische Weg
So let me begin with two propositions. The first one is that in the American experience, the separation of church and state, which by and large we acknowledge as a rough-and-ready principle, does not necessarily mean the separation of religion from public life. Another way of saying this is that America has a strong commitment to secularism, but it is secularism of a particular kind, understood in a particular way.
Second, that the United States has achieved in practice what seemed impossible in theory: a reconciliation of religion with modernity, in contrast, as I say, to the Western European pattern. In the United States religious belief has proven amazingly persistent even as the culture has been more and more willing to embrace enthusiastically all or most of the scientific and technological agenda of modernity.
… so Wilfred McClay (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) auf dem “Pew Forum’s biannual conference on religion, politics and public life”. Sehr lesenswert und zugleich problematisch: McClay leitet den Säkularismus aus dem Christentum ab:
The ability of the United States, then, to reconcile religion and modernity depended in part on its ability to hold groups and ideas in competition with one another, and this ability has roots that go even deeper than the country’s actual beginnings. Ultimately, they are grounded in certain characteristic features of Christianity itself (…)
You’ll recall, that Jesus of the Christian scriptures surprised his followers by declining to be a political leader and declaring that his kingdom was not of this world (…) Two kingdoms, two cities, two spheres — this feature of Christianity is one of the chief resources it has always brought to the problem of the organization of political life in a religious society, and it’s one of its chief resources now. [It is] something I’m not as knowledgeable about, but Islam seems to me to have a problem in this department.
Säkularismus i.S. einer Trennung von Staat und Religion existiert entweder als eigenständiger Wert oder gar nicht. Hervorragend finde ich den Text dennoch, weil er deutlich macht, dass Glaube und Moderne sich nicht widersprechen müssen. Wie die amerikanische Historikerin Gertrude Himmelfarb schreibt:
The American Founders deliberately attempted to “people-proof” the new republic’s government, so that it would be – in Alexander Hamilton’s much quoted phrase – “a machine that would go of itself.” As a result, and to this day, Americans celebrate virtue, but remain skeptical of its value as a reliable check on governmental power.
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Siehe auch:
- Vernunft, Freiheit, Verfassung und Religion in den USA, 23. April 2007,
- Die Geburt Amerikas, 1. Mai 2006.