Naked Private Square

Since the Enlightenment, the public square has become increasingly naked. That is to say, people in the West have sought to cleanse or purify public life of the political or other influence of religion and, more broadly, of those values which people hold most dearly. The public square in USAmerica is dominated by the vapid and the mindless. (See Alain Finkielkraut in his "The Defeat of the Mind," in which he describes the Western zombie unable to launch a cogent response to the faith of the fanatic he sees on the television.)

Evangelical Christians and some others do not accept the nakedness of the public square and seek to insert their faith into it. There is nothing inherently less democratic about "God" than about His negation. Be that as it may, many secularists cry foul as they perceive the hands of the "Christian Right" at work.

The same effort at work in the cleansing of the public square may be witnessed in the personal sphere as well, the private square. The private square is not limited to the personal. Suffice it to say in this posting that many of us, as individuals, create a sort of naked private square, a large place in our minds in which God is not allowed. Many of us live with bifurcated souls. In 19th c. Europe, many Jews saw themselves as "Frenchmen in the street and Jews at home." In our 21th c. context, many people of prior faith might think of themselves as "atheists in the street and at home, and theists only in our innermost recesses." The vacuum created by the inner banishment of God might yet pull God back out/in and save us from the cure originally sought for the public square.