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Volume 56 | Issue 2

Article 9

5-30-2019

Jews, Not Pagans

Richard Schragger

Micah Schwartzman

Follow this and additional works at:

https://digital.sandiego.edu/sdlr

Part of the

Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons

,

Law Commons

, and the

Legal Theory

Commons

Recommended Citation

Richard Schragger & Micah Schwartzman,Jews, Not Pagans, 56 San Diego L. Rev. 497 (2019).

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Jews, Not Pagans

RICHARD SCHRAGGER* MICAH SCHWARTZMAN**

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION... 497

II. ELIOT AND THE JEWS... 499

III. SMITH AND THEJEWS... 505

IV. JEWS,EQUALITY, AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM... 510

V. THE IDEA OF AJEWISHSOCIETY... 517

VI. CONCLUSION... 520

I. INTRODUCTION

It has become increasingly common in recent years for conservative Christian thinkers to describe culturalconflicts in terms of abattlebetween Christianity and what they call the “paganism”of secular liberals.1 This wayof framing things raises some troubling questionsfor Jewish readers, even if we arenot necessarily the intended audience for such polemics.

* ©2019 Richard Schragger. Perre Bowen ProfessorofLawand JosephC. Carter, Jr. ResearchProfessor of Law, Universityof Virginia School of Law.

** ©2019 MicahSchwartzman. JosephW.DornResearchProfessor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law. For helpful comments and discussion, we thank Kimberly Ferzan, Fred Gedicks, Leslie Kendrick, Fred Schauer, Paul Stephan, Nelson Tebbe, Rip Verkerke, and participants of a conference hosted by the Institute for Law and Philosophy and the Institute for Law and Religion at the University of San Diego.

1. See, e.g.,R.R.RENO,RESURRECTING THE IDEA OFACHRISTIAN SOCIETY3–7(2016);

Adrian Vermeule,A Christian Strategy, 277 FIRST THINGS 41 (2017); Charles J. Caput,

(Re)Building the Kingdom: Secularism, Christianity, and Cultural Renewal,PUB.DISCOURSE

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We cannothelpbut ask questions like: Whatis theroleof Jewsandof other religious minorities in these conflicts? How do Jews fit into the relevant categories of Christianityand paganism? And how would Jews betreated in a society in which either Christianity or paganism prevails?

Theideathat Western democraticsocietiesfacean existentialchoice between Christianity and paganismbelongs initially toT. S.Eliot.2 And Eliot had some answers to our questions. In his Page-Barbour Lectures, deliveredat the University of Virginia in 1933, Eliot argued that Christianity in theWest was under attackby whathecalled “Liberalism,” which elevated the values of individualityand originalityover the traditional moralityof the Church.3 He called for a return to religious orthodoxyin order to “re-establish avital connexion betweenthe individual and the race; the struggle, in a word, against Liberalism.”4 Pursuingthatstruggle,Eliotmade clear that he associated Jews with the subversion of the cultural, racial,and religious conditions necessary for maintaining and developing a stable Christian society. In the fight between secular liberalismand Christianity,the Jews were a decidedly negative influence, to be marginalized and contained.5

In later work,Eliot continued his Christian attack on liberalism, while muting, though never renouncing, his anti-Semitism. In The Idea of a Christian Society, he claimed that Western democracies faceachoicebetween accepting the “Idea of a Christian Society” or acquiescing in a culture of secular liberalism,or“modernpaganism,” as he called it.6 Indeed,he asserted that England wassteadily slouching toward such paganism,if it was not already there.7 Eliot then made thecase for aChristian society, which might tolerate religiousminoritiesor at leastthose thatdid not threaten itscultural and religious traditions.8

Eliot’s two primaryclaims—that the West faces a choice between Christianity and paganism and that it should choose Christianity—are now the subject of amost extensive,sophisticated, andsympathetic treatment in Steven Smith’sbook, Pagans and Christians in the City.9 Smith develops and advancesboth of Eliot’s claims. He argues thatour culture is riven by Christian andpaganforces. And over a wide range of social and political

2. T.S.ELIOT, The Idea of a Christian Society, in CHRISTIANITY ANDCULTURE 1, 10 (1949).

3. See generally T.S.ELIOT,AFTERSTRANGE GODS:APRIMER ON MODERNHERESY

(1934).

4. Id. at 48. 5. See id. at 19–20. 6. ELIOT, supra note2, at 48.

7. See id. at 9–10. 8. See id. at 37–41.

9. See generally STEVEN D.SMITH,PAGANS ANDCHRISTIANS IN THECITY:CULTURE

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controversies, he defends the view that a Christian societyisnormatively preferable to a pagan one.10

Thisclaimshouldbedisquieting toreligious minorities,aswell as to nondenominational believers and nonorthodox Christians in any given society. For Jews, in particular, the division of theworld intoChristian and pagan has particular historical resonance, leading us to ask: What are Jews supposed to make of all this? Although Smith recognizes his intellectual debt to Eliot, he does notdiscuss Eliot’s anti-Semitism. And while Smith mentions various Jewish thinkers throughouthis work, he does not take up theJewish question directly: What is the place of the Jew in a Christian or,forthat matter, a pagan city? IstheJew a Christian orapagan? Can the Jewbeboth or neither? And which kind of society should aJew prefer, a Christian one or a paganone?

Herewe focus on the place of the Jews in Smith’sschemain part because antiliberals throughout historyhave alreadydone so. The “wandering” or “cosmopolitan” Jew has been attacked as a symbol of liberalism. We also emphasizethe category of the Jew—which includes all those believers who do not fit in aworld bifurcated between orthodox Christians and nonbelievingpagans—as a waytochallengethe notionthatsociety isfaced with onlytwo possible choices.

In what follows, we argue that Jews are neither Christians nor pagans. The contrast between thesetwo categories isfalselypresented. The Jew, or at least a certain conception of theJewin the American experience, provides a powerful counter-example to the categories that Smith uses to construct his conception of a Christian society. But once the Jewishidea becomes clear, it is possible to reframe the choice posed by Eliotand by Smith. The choice of society isnot binary: Christian or pagan? Itis ternary: Christian or pagan or Jew?

II. ELIOT AND THE JEWS

For Jews, amessagethat we can beeitherChristians or pagans and that we have tochoose is disconcerting, even if Smith defines “Christian” ecumenically in terms of those who believe in a“transcendent God.”11 Smith’s concept of the two cities is borrowed from Eliot,12so perhaps we

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should start there, with Eliot’sconception of the place of theJews in an otherwise pitched battle between Christianity and paganism.

The view from Eliot is not reassuring. The Idea of a Christian Society, fromwhich Smith derives his grand clash of civilizations, is a critique of creeping paganismand anaccount of a Christian state.13 Eliot explicitly calls for the “Christianisation of England” throughtheAnglican Church, which will have a“hierarchical organisation in direct and official relation to the State” and “an organisation, such as the parochial system,in direct contact with the smallest units of the communityand their individual members.”14 Eliot’sChristian establishmentisintended to reflect, support, and direct aChristian society. Thealternativeisto “merely sink into apathetic decline” or becomea “totalitarian democracy.”15 To those “repelled by[] such aprospect, onecan assert that theonly possibility of control and balance is areligious control andbalance; that the only hopeful course for a society which wouldthriveandcontinueitscreative activity intheartsofcivilisation, is to become Christian.”16

Eliot’s use of “Christian” isnot ecumenical. He does admit atone point that “there will be roomfor aproportion of other persons professing other faiths than Christianity,”17butonlythose who bring special talents required bythe state. Although Eliot makes clear that he is notadvocating “the forcible suppression, or the complete disappearance of dissident sects,”he observes that a Christian society “canonly berealised when thegreat majority ofthe sheep belong to one fold” and that “dissentients must remain marginal.”18 A Christian commonwealthisnotoneinwhicheveryoneis necessarilya devout Christian, but it is “a religious-social community, a societywith a political philosophyfounded upon the Christian faith” and “[t]he national faith must have an official recognition by the State.”19

What about theJews? Eliot’s views are bynow well-known. He didnot hide his anti-Semitism,either in his poetryor prose.20 What is important

13. See ELIOT, supra note 2, at 20. 14. Id. at 37–38.

15. Id. at 18. 16. Id. at 18–19.

17. Id. at 29.Eliot makes this commentinthecontext of describing who can be part of the educational system in a Christian society, but as the remaining notes in the paragraph above make clear, he favored the marginalization and exclusion of non-Christians more generally.

18. Id. at 36–37. 19. Id. at 40–41.

20. See, e.g., ANTHONY JULIUS,T.S.ELIOT,ANTI-SEMITISM,AND LITERARY FORM

32–40 (Thames & Hudson Ltd. rev. ed. 2003) (1995); CHRISTOPHER RICKS,T.S.ELIOT AND PREJUDICE28 (1988); Walter A. Strauss,The Merchant of Venom? T.S. Eliot and

Anti-Semitism, 14S.CENT.REV. 31, 32 (1997); Louis Menand, Eliot and the Jews, N.Y. REV.BOOKS(June 6, 1996),

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for our purposes is the relationship between Eliot’s views on Jews and his attack on liberalism. For Eliot,paganismis Liberalism(with a capital “L”).21 And in theanti-Semitic milieu in which Eliot wrote, liberalismwasdirectly associated with the Jew.22

Consider After Strange Gods,23 which set thestage for The Idea of a Christian Society.24 Presented to asegregated audienceat the University of Virginia, the lectures were a paean to traditional Christian morality—a disquisition onthe necessityof a commonreligiousculture.25 Eliot praised the Southern Agrarians,26areactionaryliterarymovement that defended the agrarian virtues and genteel traditions of the Old South, shrouding its racial brutality in the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.27

Eliot felt welcome in Virginia, which could still recall somesemblance of a“tradition”and waslessaffectedbythe “influx offoreignpopulations” that diluted and corrupted the Anglo-Saxon majorityin the North.28 “You are farther awayfromNew York; you have been less industrialised and less invaded by foreign races; and you have more opulent soil.”29 Eliot embraced racial purityat the moment Hitler came to power and when the Jews of Europe were in most need of protection.30 Oblivious to eventsunfoldingacross the Atlantic and comfortable in themidst of JimCrow, he proceeded to explain the conditions for developing a Christian tradition:

The populationshould be homogeneous; where two or more cultures exist in the sameplacethey arelikely eitherto befiercely self-conscious orboth tobecome adulterate. Whatis stillmoreimportant is unityofreligiousbackground; and reasons of race and religion combine to make anylarge number of free-thinkingJews undesirable.31

21. See ELIOT, supra note 2, at 11–13.

22. See Strauss, supra note 20, at 36. 23. ELIOT, supra note3.

24. ELIOT, supra note2.

25. See ELIOT, supra note 3, at 19–21.

26. See id. at 15–16.

27. See generally PAULV.MURPHY,THEREBUKEOF HISTORY:THESOUTHERN

AGRARIANS AND AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT (2001); THE MYTH OF THE LOST

CAUSE AND CIVIL WAR HISTORY (Gary W. Gallagher & Alan T. Nolan eds., 2000).

28. ELIOT, supra note3, at 15.

29. Id. at 17.

30. See JULIUS, supra note 20, at 163.

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The reactionarysensibilityinthese sentences is expressed so compactly that it is possible to miss what is happening here. Eliot is arguingthat a political communitymust be unified in terms of culture, race, and religion. The Jews are anathemato this formof unity because theyintroduce aforeign presence that is racially distinctand religiouslyheterodox. Theimplication is that wherethereare too many“free-thinking Jews,”it will not be possible to sustain a Christian society.32

Eliot’s anti-Semitic comments in After Strange Gods were condemned bysome of his contemporaries.33 It is notable that Eliot did not allow the lectures toberepublished,althoughhealso never repudiated his statements.34 Defenders of Eliot have asserted that “free-thinking Jews” should not be readasa condemnation of Jews, but rather asacriticismof “secularhumanism,” or liberalism, or paganism—practiced by whatever religious or ethnicgroup.35 In Eliot’s case, however, this saving construction is belied byhisembrace of standard racialized images of the Jew elsewhere: “And the jew squats

32. See RICKS,supra note 20, at 50.

33. See JULIUS, supra note 20, at150; Francis Phillips, The Poet Who Confronted

T S Eliot over His Anti-Semitism, CATH.HERALD (Oct. 3,2011), http://catholicherald.co.uk/ commentandblogs/2011/10/03/the-poet-who-confronted-t-s-eliot-over-his-anti-semitism/ [https://perma.cc/V7T4-FN9K].

34. See RICKS,supra note 20, at 47.

35. See, e.g.,Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot on Literary Morals, TOUCHSTONE(1991), http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=04-03-023-v [http://perma.cc/U9SY-WCLR] (reviewing ELIOT, supra note3).In privatecorrespondence, Eliot purported todefend himself

along theselines against the accusation of anti-Semitism. He wrote:

Byfree-thinkingJewsImeanJewswhohavegivenup thepractice and belief of their ownreligion, without havingbecome Christians orattached themselvesto anyotherdogmatic religion.It shouldbe obviousthat Ithinkalargenumberof free-thinkersof anyrace to be undesirable, and the free-thinkingJewsare onlyaspecial case.

RICKS, supra note 20,at 44(quotingCorrespondence from T.S. Eliot toJ.V.Healy(May10,

1940) (on file with HarryRanson Humanities Research Center, Universityof Texas at Austin)). Why aspecial case? Eliot continued:

The Jewish religion is unfortunately not a very portable one, and shorn of its traditional practices . . . it tends to become a mild and colourless form of Unitarianism. The free-thinking European, or American of European race, retains for the most part a good many of the moral habits and conventions of Christianity. . . . The Jew who is separated from his religious faith is much more deracinated thereby than the descendent of Christians, and it is this deracination that I think dangerous and tending to irresponsibility.

Id. (quoting Correspondence from T.S. EliottoJ.V.Healy,supra). Apparently,Eliot’s defense is that Judaism does not wanderwell, and thatfree-thinking Jews are even more threateningto Christian orthodoxythantheir gentilecounterparts. Weagreewith Ricks thatEliot’sresponse is “instinct withanimus”—whysingle out the Jews asa specialcase? Id.

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onthewindow sill” inhis poem Gerontion,36or the “jew is underneath the lot” of “rats” in Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar.37 Other examples abound.38

The effort to separate theJewfromhis liberalismfails for another reason. As AnthonyJulius has well-described, the trope of the free-thinking Jew, and the association of theJew with liberalism,wasdominant throughout the nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies.39 Liberalismmeant therejection of the religious state, recognition ofrights of conscience, and, most of all, the political emancipation of the Jews. But for the dominant culture, the problemof the Jews was that they refused to recognize Christianity and thereforealso the Christian foundations of societyandthe state. There was no wayto bring Jews into thefold. As Isaiah Berlin observed in describing this line of thinking: “[T]otolerate them as an organised religion is a concession to that liberalismand rationalismthat constitutes a denial of what men are for, to serve the true God.”40

The “free-thinking Jew”sometimesappears as a distinct problem,independent from the pious or “devout” Jew. There is alwaysconcern with the secret Jew—the assimilating Jew—appearinginEuropean universities andgovernment offices and asserting liberal nostrums. But as Julius notes, “Eliot cannot imagine Jewsto be anything other than free-thinkers—liberals byanother name.”41 Other writers made the relationship between Jews and liberalism moreexplicit. Consider such assertions that “liberalism isnothing but secularised Judaism,” or “[e]very Jew isa liberal. Heisaliberalbynature.”42 To the Christian traditionalist, modern “Jews pose[d]adouble challenge, both tothe primaryneed of culture for religion, andto the subsidiary need for

36. T.S.ELIOT, Gerontion, in THE COMPLETEPOEMS AND PLAYS21, l.8, at 21 (1950).

37. T.S.ELIOT, Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar, in THECOMPLETE

POEMS ANDPLAYS,supra note 36, at 23, ll. 22–23, at 24.

38. See JULIUS, supra note 20, at 75–143; RICKS, supra note 20, at 25–76.

39. See JULIUS, supra note 20, at 157–59.

40. Id. at 159 (quoting ISAIAHBERLIN, THEMAGUSOF THENORTH:J.G.HAMANN AND THE ORIGINS OF MODERN IRRATIONALISM 126 (Henry Hardy ed., 1993)).

41. Id. at 157.

42. Id. at158(first quoting HUGO VALENTIN,ANTISEMITISM:HISTORICALLY AND

CRITICALLY EXAMINED 62 (A.G. Chater trans., Books for Libraries Press 1971) (1937);

then quoting ERNST NOLTE, THREE FACES OF FASCISM:ACTION FRANÇAISE, ITALIAN

FASCISM,NATIONAL SOCIALISM 70 (Leila Vennewitz trans., Mentor Publ’g Co. 1969)

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unity of religious background.”43 That is because modern Jews are “agents both of secularism and heterodoxy.”44

For Eliot, thismakes the Jew particularly dangerous. “[T]he scattering of the Jews amongst peoples holdingtheChristian Faith,” Eliotwrites in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture,

mayhavebeen unfortunate bothfor these peoples and for the Jews themselves, that the culture-contactbetween them has had tobe within those neutral zonesof culture in which religion couldbe ignored: and the effect mayhave been to strengthenthe illusion that there can be culture without religion.45

The ideathat there can be cultural contact, and perhaps commonality,outside ofreligionis afalsehood of liberalism. There is nosuch possibility. ForEliot, there is a binarychoice between Christianity and Jewish liberalism; there can beonly one or theother—Christian or pagan—in either case,areligious choice has to be made.

But whatevertheir choice, the Jews cannot win. Despised for being outside and apart fromChristianity, but also attacked for seeking equalrecognition through assimilation, Jews are incompatible with asociety grounded in a commonfaith and culture. Eliot’sJewsare all problematic. In hisChristian society, free-thinking Jewsmust belimited and marginalized, while“devout” Jews might have “culture-contact” withorthodox Christians, if onlyto reinforce their religious separateness andthus their cultural and political ghettoization.46

43. Id. at 165.

44. Id. (“Jews appearto contributeto a culturewithout sharing that culture’sreligion; they also have their own culture without benefit of adherence to Judaism. Free-thinking, they are attached neither to the religion of their birth nor to any other religion.”).

45. T.S.ELIOT,Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, in CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE,

supra note 2, at 79, 144 n.2.

46. The passagefromEliot’sNotes quotedinthe preceding paragraph,at id.,appeared in a footnote to the original edition published in 1948. In 1962, Eliot revised this footnote to read:

It seemsto mehighlydesirable that thereshould becloseculture-contact between devout and practicing Christiansand devout andpractising Jews. Much culture-contact inthe past hasbeenwithinthose neutral zonesofculture in whichreligion canbe ignored, and betweenJews and Gentilesboth more or less emancipated from their religioustraditions. Theeffect mayhave been to strengthen theillusion that therecan be culture without religion.

JULIUS, supra note 20, at 166–67 (quoting T.S.ELIOT,NOTES TOWARDS THEDEFINITION OF CULTURE 70 n.1 (2d ed. 1963) (1948)). For detailedcomparisons of the original

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III. SMITH AND THE JEWS

We are not suggesting thatanti-Semitismis necessarily part of a religious, cultural, or political theory that assumes only two choices: Christian or pagan. Steven Smith is clear that his use of the term“Christians” includes devout and practicing believers of all forms of transcendent religion and that his use ofthe term “pagan” includes all secularized persons regardless oftheirformal religiousaffiliation.47 And, of course, Smithdoes not partake of Eliot’s racialized imagery.

We nevertheless want to make severalpoints aboutthe role thatJews seem to play—or not to play—in Smith’s argument. Unlike Eliot,who condemned the Jews, Smith’s stark binarybetween Christians andpagans instead erases Jews as having any distinct identity. There areChristian Jews, who affirm transcendent religiosity, and paganJews, who accept immanentconceptions of value. Jews have no independent status; like everyoneelse,they areeitherChristiansorpagans oronthe waytobecoming one or the other.

Although Smith does not put things in this way,his theorydescribes two types of Jews: Good Jews and Bad Jews. The Good Jews are the“devout,” the pious; resisters of paganism. Smith cites a series of Jewish thinkers— AbrahamJoshua Heschel, Victor Frankl, and Jonathan Sacks—who seem to share his anti-pagan ethos.48 Theyemphasize God’s transcendence as the source of moral and ethical value and divine consecration as giving meaning and purpose tohuman life and tothenatural world. Bycontrast, the Bad Jewshave been “emancipated fromtheir religious traditions,”49 to borrow Eliot’s phrase. Theyare the assimilated, secularized, and paganized Jews. Notably, Smith’smain examples of paganthinkers—Ronald Dworkin and AnthonyKronman—are or wereassimilated, secular, and liberal or progressive Jews.50 (Smith also cites Barbara Ehrenreich, who camefrom a Scots-Irish, atheist familybut married asecular Jew.)51 Theyreject

“dissentientsmustremain marginal, tendingto makeonlymarginal contributions,” and that a Christian society “can only be realised when the great majority of the sheep belong to one fold.” ELIOT, supra note 2, at 36–37.

47. See SMITH, supra note 9, at 218, 248.

48. See generally id. ch. 2.

49. JULIUS, supra note 20, at 166 (quoting ELIOT, supra note 46, at 70 n.1).

50. See SMITH, supra note 9, at 232–56.

51. See id. at 240–41; BarbaraEhrenreich,HERS; Cultural Baggage,N.Y.TIMES

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transcendent religion, including biblicalethical morals, in favor of non-natural but immanent conceptions of the good.52 Theirunderstandings of sacred value are either subjectivelygiven or perhaps objectivebut without anyindependent, nonmoral foundation.

Forallof these thinkers,however,their Jewishbackgroundsor affiliations are irrelevantfor Smith’spurposes. All that mattersis that theyline up ononeside ofhisChristian-pagandivideorthe other. Thiserasureof Jewish identity allows Smith to conscript these Jewish thinkers into his larger conception of our culture wars, which focuses mainly on issues of sexual and religious freedom.53

In this story, whichSmith acknowledgesis familiarfromJames Davison Hunter,54“Christians” are traditional, conservative, or orthodox believers, who hold acertain constellation ofnormative views about sex and religious liberty.55 Generallyspeaking,they believe thatsexual relationships should take place within marriageor not at all, and theybelieve the state should generallysupport transcendent religion, at least in noncoercive ways, and should accommodate traditional believersexcept when thereareextremely weighty reasons to limit their freedom.56 These Christian views are opposed bypagans,whose skepticismabout transcendent religion leads to rejection of traditional sexual mores and to opposition to state supportfor religion, including legal exemptions for religious believers.57

Smith’s theory ofthe culture wars is admittedly notentirely novel, and indeed some Jewish thinkers have made similar arguments. For example, morethan two decades ago,Milton Himmelfarb wrote, “The trouble is not that religion ingeneral has too small a role in American public life. The trouble is that a particular religion has too great a role—paganism, the de facto established religion.”58 Himmelfarb then went on to attack liberalism:

[https://perma.cc/VF6Y-MJF2] (providing a briefautobiographicaldescriptionofherethnic background and life history).

52. See generally RONALD DWORKIN,RELIGION WITHOUT GOD (2013);BARBARA

EHRENREICH,LIVING WITH A WILD GOD:ANONBELIEVER’S SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH ABOUT

EVERYTHING (2014);ANTHONY T.KRONMAN, CONFESSIONS OF A BORN-AGAINPAGAN

(2016).

53. See SMITH, supra note 9, ch. 10–11.

54. See generally JAMES DAVISONHUNTER,CULTURE WARS:THE STRUGGLETODEFINE

AMERICA (1991).

55. SMITH, supra note 9, at 263–66.

56. Id. at 282–84(discussing sexual morality), 310–15 (discussingreligious accommodations).

57. See id. at 286–89 (discussing opposition to traditional sexual morality), 315–18 (discussing opposition to religious accommodations).

58. MiltonHimmelfarb,in AMERICAN JEWSAND THE SEPARATIONIST FAITH:THE

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The Enlightenment’s project was liberal—to liberate us for the pursuit of our happiness.But much of whatbegan asliberalhasturnedlibertine,and libertinism has brought notliberationand happiness somuch asenslavementandmisery: AIDS,kidswho have kids, the absent father. First theFrenchRevolutiondevoured its children,thentheBolshevikRevolution,and now the sexual revolution.59 Smith’scritiqueisnotablysimilar toHimmelfarb’s, even ifmoreelegantly stated. First, like Himmelfarb, Smith ispreoccupied with pagan sexual mores. Smith gives considerableattention to thesexual proclivitiesof ancient and modern pagans,60presumably to make the largerpoint that Himmelfarb also makes—that sexual freedomis the product of areligious orientation and, more specifically, a degenerate one. Religion, andtheculture it produces, does all the work of explaining social practices. Transcendentreligion servesto develop and reinforce traditional social mores; immanent religion produces the opposite. There areno other causes. Little credit is given to women’s economic and social liberation. Little blame is placedon an economic systemthat generates shocking levels of material inequality.61 Paganismencompasses everything: AIDS, abortion, sex, drugs, and, most recently, same-sex marriage.62

Second, like Himmelfarb, Smith is waging a culture war, though Smith follows Eliot in framinghisargumentpartlyin diagnostic terms, asan effort to explain how we have arrived at the current cultural and political stand-off.63 But whatis thepurpose of giving the social controversies of the late twentieth and earlytwenty-first centuries the heft of an ancient struggle between paganismand Christianity? As he has done before, Smith seeks to present the historical arc of Western cultural and politicaldevelopment as a struggle for religiousdomination. He argues that modern liberalism is a “religion,” pursued with as much religious fervor as paganismwas in ancient Rome.64 Clearlythisrhetoricaltropehas never gone out offashion. Eliot invokes it at mid-century; Himmelfarb, in the early1990s. Religious conservatives ineveryerabemoan culturaldecline,andtheyregularlyplace

59. Id. at 66.

60. SMITH, supra note 9, at 71–78.

61. Although, here, contemporaryconservatives may part wayswith Eliot, who took a dimmer view of capitalist, industrial economies. See ELIOT,supra note 2, at 48–49.

62. See SMITH, supra note9, at 282(“[T]hestruggle [is]over a variety ofissues

connectedinvarious wayswithsexuality:contraception, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage.”).

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such decline at the feetof anirreligious culture, presumably aided and abetted by a too-emphatic constitutional emphasis on church-state separation.

It takes a certain chutzpah to suggest that the SupremeCourt’s modern religious freedomjurisprudence, whichis onlyaboutseventy-fiveyears old, is reallyan instantiation of a millennial battle for the soul of Western civilization. ButSmith hasbeen dogged in hiseffortsto reorientthe origins of modern religious freedom to someplace other than the Enlightenment. Most recently, he has argued that the foundations of religious freedom lie in the medieval doctrine ofthe freedomof the church,which established a principle of deferenceto church sovereignty.65 In this book, he goes back further still to ancient Rome.66

In both these eras, theJews are erased fromthe story—they have no presence. Smith mentions Christian persecution of Jews in passing67 but devotes little time to the depredations of the Inquisition, theCrusades, the long historyofforced conversions and expulsions, pogroms in every age, or the Holocaust.68 It would appear fromhis narration that the Christians were more often persecuted than persecutors. Yet the historyof Western civilization is soaked with the blood of Jews, a tinyminority, andyet one of the most despised on earth. Smith’s account of the battle between transcendent and immanent formsof religion cannot account for thishatred or its history. Jews had nothing at all to do with paganism inancient Rome or medieval Europe. Itis onlythe Enlightenment and the rise of liberalism that brings the Jews some relief, and that relief is frankly short-lived.

So, too, in both ancient Rome and medieval Europe the existence ofa state religion was taken for granted, as was the absence ofanything approaching a moral or political principle of religiousliberty. The medieval principle of freedomof the church was not aprinciple of religious liberty, but rather one of jurisdictional sovereignty.69 The Catholic Church did not embrace religious free exercise until the twentieth century.70 And why would it?

65. See StevenD.Smith,Freedom of Religion or Freedom of the Church?, in LEGAL

RESPONSES TO RELIGIOUS PRACTICES IN THE UNITED STATES:ACCOMMODATION AND ITS

LIMITS 249, 266–69 (Austin Sarat ed., 2012) [hereinafter Smith, Freedom of Religion];

Steven D. Smith, The Jurisdictional Conception of Church Autonomy, in THE RISE OF

CORPORATE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 19,29–31(Micah Schwartzman, Chad Flanders & Zoë Robinson eds., 2016) [hereinafter Smith, Jurisdictional Conception].

66. See SMITH, supra note 9, at 56–57.

67. Id. at 206, 214–15.

68. See SamuelC. Rickless,Paganism is Dead, Long Live Secularism, 56 SAN DIEGO

L.REV. 451, app. at 482–84 (2019).

69. Smith, Jurisdictional Conception, supra note 65, at 19.

70. For a helpful overviewof the Church’s position onreligiousfreedom in the half-century or so leading up to Vatican II, see Anna Su, Catholic Constitutionalism from the Americanist Controversy to Dignitatis Humanae, 91 NOTRE DAMEL.REV. 1445, 1445–57

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Either one’s religion is true or it isn’t—and if it is true, then there is good reason to impose it even on an unwilling populace.71 AsSmith explains, theRomansthought this too, even if theysometimes tolerated minority religions.72 Their state religion was pagan first, and thenit wasChristian.73 Jews, historically, watched as statereligionscame and went. For them, and despiteSmith’sstory, all too often the specificsof theregime could not have mattered less. Religious control of the state wasnever apossibility fortheJews;indeed,itonly broughtmisery andsorrow. AsThe Who sang, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”74

Smith’s advocacyof a Christian society,however, raises the obvious question of whether he ought, like Eliot, to favor a Christian state. In the battle of religious regimes—transcendent versus immanent—the former is clearlysuperior to the latter. The pagans cannot account for life’s meaning.75 Pagan existence is desiccated, sad, and impoverished. Christianity,in the broad, ecumenical sense, is necessaryto give life meaning and purpose, and acting on that purpose is presumablynecessaryfor leading a good life. And so, at the veryleast, pagans should allow Christians free exercise of religion. Moreprofoundly,perhaps, we shouldall become Christians, and following Eliot, we shouldall prefer to live in a Christian society.76

Unlike Eliot, however, Smith does not endorse a Christian state,77 even if that seems like anaturalextension of hisargument. After all, whywouldn’t we favor aChristian commonwealth if it supports themoral and spiritual goods that are so valuable to meaningful human existence? And why wouldn’t we reject the various formsof paganism—and then whynot also liberal Protestant or Enlightenment beliefs that slouch toward paganism— that undermine those goods and, ifpossible, enlistthe state’spowerin support of our efforts?

For Jewsand other religiousminorities these questionsare disconcerting, evenifweareostensiblyincluded in a capacious “Christian” or, in the supercessionist phrase, “Judeo-Christian”society. Jewshavefor centuries been the targets of Christian reformist zeal. And when that has failed, we

71. See LarryAlexander, Good God, Garvey! The Inevitability and Impossibility of a Religious Justification of Free Exercise Exemptions, 47 DRAKE L.REV. 35, 41 (1998).

72. See SMITH,supra note 9, at 154–55. 73. See id. at 158–59.

74. PETE TOWNSHEND, We Won’t Get Fooled Again, on WHO’S NEXT (Olympic Studios

1971).

75. See SMITH,supra note 9, at 370–77.

76. See id. at 379 (quoting ELIOT, supra note 2, at 18–19).

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have been persecuted, ostracized, ghettoized, terrorized, and slaughtered.78 And so Jews, especiallyin America, often adopt adifferenthistorical narrative, not one in which pagans square off against Christians—as there is nothing novel toJews about murderous pagans, whether Roman or otherwise79 butoneinwhich religion ceases to define our standing in thepolitical community. The Jews’quest for emancipation and eventuallyfor social and political equality emerges as a commitment to what Eliot recognized as “political Liberalism.”80 Jews embraceliberalismnot because theyare pagans but because, unlike anyChristian politics they have known, it has guaranteed their free and equal citizenship.

IV. JEWS,EQUALITY,AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

There is athirdJew, neitherChristian norpagan. Remember that for Smith, thedistinctionbetween Christian and pagan is mainly creedalordoxastic. Christians—in Smith’s ecumenical sense—believe in transcendent religion, with all the spiritual, moral, and politicalcommitments that follow from thatorientation to the world. If wefocus on mattersof religious freedom, Christians favor publicrecognitionofbelief in God andChristianity (or the “Judeo-Christian” tradition), the inclusion of religiousreasons as a basis for political decision-making, government religiousspeech intheform of passivesymbols and school prayer, and public funding of religious institutions.81 They alsosupportreligiousaccommodations out ofdeference to transcendent authority,which mayimpose duties that take priorityover those imposed bythe state.82

According to Smith’s story,pagans repudiate all of these commitments. Theyreject transcendent authorityin favor of an immanent religion,inwhich

78. The literature documenting the historyof anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism is depressinglyvast. See, e.g., JAMES CARROLL,CONSTANTINE’S SWORD:THE CHURCH AND

THE JEWS:AHISTORY (2001);WALTER LAQUEUR,THE CHANGINGFACE OFANTISEMITISM:

FROM ANCIENT TIMESTO THE PRESENT DAY (2006); ROBERT S.WISTRICH,ALETHAL

OBSESSION:ANTI-SEMITISM FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE GLOBAL JIHAD (2010).

79. Normust Jewsrelyon Christianmorals tocondemn pagan or Christianatrocities. For the ideathat moderncriticsofChristianityrely implicitlyon Christian values, seeSMITH,

supra note 9, at 214–15. Thisclaim seemsto rest on a narrowerconception of Christianity, rather than the broad ecumenical one that embracesall transcendent religion. But either way, Jewishvalues,includingideasabout justice, were andremainperfectlysufficient for purposes of condemningpagan and Christian atrocities.

80. ELIOT, supra note 2, at 13.

81. See SMITH, supra note9,at267–75(discussingreligioussymbols); see also

Steven D.Smith,Constitutional Divide: The Transformative Significance of the School Prayer Decisions, 38 PEPP.L.REV. 945, 947 (2011).

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the sources ofnormativityexist within this world, rather thanbeyond it.83 And giventheir immanent orientation toward the world,theyfavor the de-Christianization of thepublic sphere. They oppose civic religion in its Christianforms.84 They reject reliance on religion as justifications for state policy.85Theyoppose state-sponsored religious symbols and school prayer.86 They take a skeptical view toward state fundingof religious institutions, especially schools, and they tend to oppose religious accommodations.87

The difficulty for Smith is that the Jew does not fall easilywithineither of these categories. Jewsarenot pagans because theybelieve in atranscendent religious power. Smith recognizes this fact about the Jews, althoughusually his discussion is limited to “devout” Jews.88 We are not entirelyclear on what “devout” means here, but thesuggestion seems to be that politically conservative, Orthodox Jews believe in transcendent religion,while politicallyliberal, ReformJews are partly(or mostly?)pagan. But this claim is unsubstantiated and, even if Smith means to assertit, almost certainly false.89 Even if many liberal Jews have assimilated and becomesecular,

83. Id. at 111–12(“Pagan religion locates thesacred within this world. . . .[I]t is religiosityrelative toanimmanent sacred. Judaism and Christianity,bycontrast, reflect a

transcendent religiosity; they placed the sacred, ultimately,outside the world . . . .”), 211 (“[T]he pagan orientation . . . beatifiesand sacralizesthe goods of this world—that holdsthat ‘the sacred’ exists, and that it existsin this world and this life.”).

84. See id. at367. 85. See id. at 334–39. 86. See id. at 267–82. 87. See id. at 316–28. 88. Id. at 13, 248, 276.

89. Indeed, manyReform Jews might be surprisedand offended at the suggestion that theyare not “devout” inthe sensethat theydo not accept beliefin a transcendent God. The Reform Jewish movement has always affirmed monotheism as acentral tenet ofbelief. Thisisclearfromsuccessiveplatforms adoptedbythe movement since thenineteenthcentury.

See MICHAEL A.MEYER &W.GUNTHER PLAUT,THE REFORM JUDAISM READER:NORTH

AMERICAN DOCUMENTS 195–212 (2001); see also SYLVAN D.SCHWARTZMAN,REFORM

JUDAISM IN THEMAKING3–11 (Emanuel Gamoran ed., 2d ed. 1959) (1955) (discussing

Reform platforms from the nineteenththroughthemid-twentieth century). According to the 1937 statement, “The heart of Judaism and its chief contribution to religionis the doctrine ofthe One, livingGod, who rules the world through law and love.” MEYER & PLAUT,supra, at 200. The 1976 platform, the first since the Holocaust, declared that“[t]he

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or pagan in Smith’sterms, manyhave and continue to affirm beliefin God.90

If Jews are not pagans, nor are theyChristians in Smith’ssense, at least not in the context of debates about religious freedom. For much of the past century, most American Jews—and here wearetalking about millions of worshipping monotheists—have favored a separationist approach to church and state.91 Theyhave sought preciselythe de-Christianization of the “public square” that Smith, and Eliot before him, decries.92 American Jews generallyhave opposedstate support ofChristian symbols and prayer in public schools.93 They have been vocal opponents of state funding for religious schools.94 And theyhave argued public policyought tobe conducted mainlyin terms of public reasons.95 Atthesame time, while workingto roll back state support for Christianity, Jews have supportedreligious

and affirms “thatthe Jewish people is bound to Godbyaneternal . . . covenant, asreflected in our varied understandings of Creation, Revelation and Redemption.” Id.at 209.

90. Accordingto recent pollingbythe Pew ResearchCenter,approximately76% of Reform Jews report that theybelieve in God, with 29%reporting suchbelief as“absolutely certain” and 47% reporting “belie[f],but less certain.” LUIS LUGO ETAL., PEWRESEARCH

CTR.,APORTRAIT OF JEWISH AMERICANS:FINDINGS FROMAPEWRESEARCH CENTER SURVEY OF U.S.JEWS74 (2013), http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2013/10/

jewish-american-full-report-for-web.pdf [https://perma.cc/S8EB-QBSH]; see also ROBERT

P.JONES &DANIELCOX,PUB.RELIGION RESEARCH INST.,CHOSEN FOR WHAT?JEWISH

VALUES IN 2012:FINDINGS FROM THE 2012JEWISHVALUES SURVEY26 (2012), https://w

ww.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Jewish-Values-Report.compressed.pdf [https:// perma.cc/Y5UH-Y3VL].

91. See generally NAOMI W.COHEN,JEWS INCHRISTIAN AMERICA:THEPURSUITOF

RELIGIOUS EQUALITY(1992); GREGG IVERS,TO BUILD AWALL:AMERICAN JEWS AND THE

SEPARATION OFCHURCH AND STATE (1995). In the last half-centuryespecially,there

have been dissenting voices among Conservative andOrthodox Jews, who reject separationism. See David G. Dalin,Jewish Critics of Strict Separationism, in JEWS AND THE

AMERICAN PUBLIC SQUARE:DEBATING RELIGION AND REPUBLIC 291, 291–309 (Alan

Mittleman,RobertLicht&Jonathan D.Sarnaeds.,2002). Fordiscussion ofthesignificance (or lack thereof) of these conflictingviews,seeinfra text accompanying notes 110–14.

92. SMITH, supra note9,at275,303(“[Pagans] seek, in other words, torepudiate the

generically,implicitly Christian citythat Americans have inherited—the one the Supreme Court recognized when in1892 it declaredthat ‘we are a Christian nation’ . . . .” (quoting ChurchoftheHolyTrinityv.UnitedStates, 143U.S. 457, 470–71 (1892))).

93. See, e.g., U.S. Jewish Groups Laud Supreme Court Ban on Prayers in Public Schools, JEWISHTELEGRAPHIC AGENCY 1 (June 27, 1962), https://www.jta.org/1962/06/

27/archive/u-s-jewish-groups-laud-supreme-court-ban-on-prayers-in-public-schools [https:// perma.cc/3KRC-J4W2].

94. See, e.g., American Jews and the Current Challenges of Church-State Separation, PEWRES.CTR.(Oct. 19, 2004,10:00 AM), http://www.pewforum.org/2004/10/19/american-

jews-and-the-current-challenges-of-church-state-separation/ [https://perma.cc/HS7U-MMEX]. 95. See JONATHAN D.SARNA &DAVID G.DALIN,RELIGION AND STATE IN THE

AMERICAN JEWISH EXPERIENCE172–74 (1997) (discussing Jewish opposition to“religious

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accommodations, especially fromlaws that reflect the preferences of Christian majorities,as with Sunday closing laws and prohibitions on religious dress.96

TheJew,like manyin American society, whether formallyaffiliated with aparticular religion or not, is both a transcendent believer and aseparationist, and thus represents aproblemfor Smith’sdiagnosis of the culture wars, especiallywith respect to religious freedom. Smith’s claim is that the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment, is agnostic about religion. It does not favor Christianityover paganism or viceversa.97 Instead, it provides a framework forpolitics within which Christians and pagans can compete for influence. Christians can argue for subconstitutional laws that reflect their religious commitments through public expression of religiousvalues,prayerin school, statesupportofreligiousinstitutions, and religious accommodations. And pagans can resistthese efforts. The Constitution does not takesides. But according to Smith, sometime starting in the 1950s and 1960s, liberals and progressives moved aggressively to work arevolution in the meaning of the Constitution, converting it from a common set of religiouslyagnostic principles into apartisan sword used tospread the pagan faith. Ashe writes, their“struggle hasnot been to transforma Christian element into apagan one, but rather to capture what had previously been amore neutral framework . . .and turn it to the cause ofsecularism or immanentreligion.”98 Ofcourse,legal actors did not advance their views in the name of paganismor immanent religion. They argued on behalf of liberalismor secularism. But,Smith contends, courts went along and “implicitly embraced, wittinglyor unwittingly, aconception of the political communityformed in immanently religious terms.”99

TheJewsinconvenientlycontradict this storyof pagan constitutional capture. It is true that American Jews sought to diminish state support for Christianity, but their purpose was not to supplant Christianitywithimmanent religion. After all, those Jews who opposed Sunday closing laws, school prayer, and state support of religiousschoolswere themselvesbelievers ina transcendentGod. Smith’s diagnosis of the culture wars simplycannot account for why Jews—andforthatmatter,mainlineProtestants, liberal

96. See generally Michael A.Helfand,Jews and the Culture Wars: Consensus and Dissensus in Jewish Religious Liberty Advocacy, 56SAN DIEGO L.REV. 305(2019)(surveying

the historyof various American Jewish organizations’ positions on religious accommodation). 97. SMITH, supra note 9, at 266–67.

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Catholics, or others100—would object toliving ina“Christian” society. His view cannot make sense of theirpurposes or why they believed that the Constitution warrants stronger protections for religious minorities. After all, if all religious believers are “Christians,” the onlypossible minoritiesareChristiansorpagans. Thereisnospacefortheidea thatsome believers might reject a Christian society without accepting paganism.

That, however, is precisely what the Jews did. And theydid itopenly, publicly—withoutmystery, secrecy, or anyulteriormotive—andfor a straightforward reason, namely,to secure the legal conditions of their emancipationand equal citizenship. Consider, in this regard, the views of Leo Pfeffer,whowas theson ofanOrthodoxrabbi,a practicingJew, counsel for the American Jewish Congress for nearly three decades after World WarII,andthemost influential church-state litigator and scholar of his generation.101 Pfeffer describedhimself as an “absolutist” about the separation ofchurch and state.102 Heinterpreted the First Amendment’s religion clauses as a unified guarantee of religious freedom, one that required “neutrality not only as amongcompeting faiths, butbetween religion and non-religion.”103 This principle of religious neutrality meant that the government could act onlyfor secular purposes. Religiousends were notwithin thestate’s jurisdiction; theywere amatter for private choice and voluntary association.104

100. See TED G.JELEN &CLYDE WILCOX,PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD CHURCH AND

STATE 94–95 (1995); JohnC. Jeffries,Jr. &JamesE. Ryan,A Political History of the

Establishment Clause, 100 MICH. L. REV. 279, 282 (2001).

101. See SamuelKrislov,Alternatives to Separation of Church and State in Countries Outside the United States, in RELIGION AND THE STATE:ESSAYSIN HONOR OF LEOPFEFFER421,

421 (JamesE. Wood, Jr. ed., 1985) (“No one comesto mind . . .torivalPfeffer’sintellectual dominance overso vital an areaof constitutional law for so extensive a period . . . .”); RichardJohn Neuhaus, The Pfefferian Inversion, NAT’L REV., May13, 1988, at 44, 44

(“Leo Pfeffer . . . hasdone more thananyone else toshape thelawregardingreligion and stateinAmerica.”);Smith,supra note 81, at 950(describingPfeffer as“themostlearned and active separationist litigator-scholarof his time (and, arguably, ever)”). Pfeffer was counsel innumerous landmarkcases involvingthe ReligionClauses, includingMeek v. Pittenger,421U.S. 349 (1975); Comm.for Pub. Educ. & Religious Libertyv. Nyquist, 413 U.S.756(1973);Lemonv.Kurtzman,403 U.S. 602 (1971);Tiltonv.Richardson,403 U.S. 672(1971); Flast v.Cohen, 392 U.S. 83(1968); Torcasov.Watkins, 367U.S. 488(1961); Zorachv. Clausen, 343U.S. 306 (1952). For Pfeffer’s role in litigating these and other cases, see Leo Pfeffer,An Autobiographical Sketch, in RELIGION AND THE STATE:ESSAYS IN HONOR OF LEO PFEFFER, supra,at 487, 487–533. Pfeffer’s major scholarly works

include: CHURCH,STATE,ANDFREEDOM (1953); GOD,CAESER,AND THE CONSTITUTION

(1975); andRELIGION,STATE AND THE BURGER COURT (1984).

102. LeoPfeffer,The Establishment Clause: An Absolutist’s Defense, 4NOTRE DAME J.L.

ETHICS &PUB.POL’Y 699, 700 (1990).

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Notably, in remarks addressed to an audience at Princeton Theological Seminary, Pfeffer describedhis separationism as a “Jew’s approach” to church-state relations in the United States.105 Pfeffer claimed that “American Judaismis perhapsthemost vigorous, articulate,andunyielding champion of that principle of separation of church and state and religious freedom.”106 In explaining whyJews are so attached to separationism, Pfeffer pointed to their experience of freedomand equality in America. He noted that although“nothingin ancient Jewish tradition . . . would indicatea sympathy either with separation of church and state or with religious freedom,” American Jews “would be less than human, and we are not[,] . . . if we did not feel a great debt of gratitude towards asystemwhich, after almost two thousand years of persecution, has given us a real haven and a real equality.”107

Following Pfeffer, we can say that a Jew’sapproach to matters of religious freedomis motivated by the historical consciousness and long experience of social and political exclusion. The initial acceptanceof a principle of religious freedommaybe instrumental, in service of attempts to gain socialrecognition and politicalequality. Butover time, assuccessive generationsofJews have grown up under governmental institutions that treat themwith equal respect, they have developed amoral commitment to the constitutional principles that structure those institutions.

This is a story aboutwhythe Jews—or at least the majority ofAmerican Jews—have been strongsupporters ofthe separation of churchand state. (It is not exclusivelytheir story,of course. Inthe Foundinggeneration, Baptists and other Christian minorities spearheaded disestablishment.108) Jews are not pagans who have captured the Constitution or “weaponized” it inorder to spreadtheir immanent religious beliefs. Instead, theyare a small religiousminority that has benefited tremendously fromthe riseof a secular state, one in which religious status does notdeterminerights of citizenship or, more generally, a person’s life chances.

AsPfefferput it, “American Jewry has finallyachieved a position of equality.”109 For those with asense of history, that fact is a source of some amazement, perhaps a measure ofpride, but alsoof understandable anxiety.

105. LeoPfeffer,Church and State, 53 PRINCETON SEMINARY BULL. 37, 38–39 (1959). 106. Id. at 39.

107. Id.

108. See, e.g., THOMAS J.CURRY,THE FIRST FREEDOMS:CHURCH AND STATE IN AMERICA TO THE PASSAGE OF THEFIRST AMENDMENT 13(1986);LEONARD W.LEVY,THE ESTABLISHMENT

CLAUSE:RELIGION AND THEFIRST AMENDMENT 58, 60–61 (1986).

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As Jews have learned painfullyover the last two millennia, theconditions of emancipation and political equalitycan be reversed. There are many threats. Pagan assimilation maybe one, as it may lull Jews into a false sense of security; romanticism for the resurrection of aChristian societymaybe another, as it invites anti-Semitism and the exclusion of non-Christian minorities.

Thereis,ofcourse, disagreementamongJews about how todealwith thesethreats.110 Many American Jewscontinue to favor separationism. They see the risks of assimilation as less dangerous than the risks posed bya state that supports the majorityreligion,which is invariably Christianity— not Smith’s ecumenical version, but arather more sectarian, ifnot full-throated, conception. The result of greater state involvement with religion is, in Suzanna Sherry’smemorable phrase, “Jews lose.”111 A minorityof American Jews, however, take adifferent view.112 Theyfavor state support ofreligion,inpart becausethey share Smith’s fearofasecularor pagan societymore than theydo social and political exclusion withinaChristian one. Himmelfarb’s is an extreme expression of this view, but it has more learned and thoughtful supporters.113

It should be clear, however, that the existence of Jewish opposition to separationism does not undermine our claim, which is that most American Jews are neither pagans nor Christians. To sustain our argument, what matters isthatthedisagreementwithinAmericanJewryistakingplace among religious believers. There are Jews withtranscendent commitments on both sidesof the culture wars.114 Theyhave different understandings ofthe demandsof Judaism,thepoliticaland cultural threatsit faces, and how best to respond sociallyand politically. Butthose are mainlymattersofconcern for Jews, rather than for Christians or pagans.

110. See JonathanD. Sarna,Church-State Dilemmas of American Jews, in JEWS AND THEAMERICAN PUBLIC SQUARE:DEBATING RELIGIONANDREPUBLIC,supra note91,at

47,47–68; NoahPickus, “Before I Built a Wall”—Jews, Religion and American Public Life, 15THIS WORLD28, 31 (1986); see also AMERICAN JEWS AND THE SEPARATIONIST FAITH:

THE NEW DEBATE ON RELIGION IN PUBLIC LIFE, supra note 58 (collecting Jewish perspectives on separationof church and state).

111. Suzanna Sherry, Religion and the Public Square: Making Democracy Safe for Religious Minorities, 47 DEPAUL L.REV. 499, 503 (1998).

112. See Dalin,supra note91, at 294–96; Jack Wertheimer, The Jewish Debate over State Aid to Religious Schools, in JEWSANDTHEAMERICAN PUBLIC SQUARE:DEBATING

RELIGION AND REPUBLIC,supra note 91, at 217, 223–28.

113. See, e.g.,DAVID NOVAK,THE JEWISH SOCIALCONTRACT:AN ESSAY IN POLITICAL

THEOLOGY chs. 7–8 (2005).

114. Thesame istrue,of course, for manyotherreligiousdenominations. See HUNTER,

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V. THE IDEAOF AJEWISH SOCIETY

Smith beginshisbook by asking aquestion thatisfamiliar to Jews:Why do theyhate us so much? The question,for Smith, is about whypagans persecute Christians, and the answer is that theyhave competing moral values, bornof conflictingconceptions of normative authority.115 And so Smith, following Eliot, argues that modern democratic societies face a choice between incompatible moral traditions. They can either renew, or perhaps recover, theirChristianity, orthey can continuethe process of sliding into modern paganism. Smith’s preference is clear: a Christian society is better thana paganone, and, like Eliot, he hopes to persuadethose with transcendent religious beliefs by drawing out the contrasts between the two types of societies.

Up to this point, we have followed Smith’s practice of generalizing and simplifying grand conceptslikeChristianityand paganism. Hereweallow ourselves onemore such conceptual indulgence, despite our reservations andambivalence about the use of such categories. ForSmith,apagan societyis one that recognizes and promotes immanent religious values. A Christiansociety,bycontrast,isculturallyaligned with transcendent religion. But it should beclear that these are not theonly alternatives. We can imagine athirdtypeof society,oneinwhichthe publicculturedoes not demand that thestatepromoteeitherimmanent or transcendent religion. In this society, citizenswith a wide diversity of religious views, both immanent and transcendent, acknowledge thefact of their religious differences and, to the extent possible, refrain from seeking state support for one religious conceptionover the other. Insuch a society,aperson’sreligious identity,whetherChristianor pagan, is irrelevant to that person’s rights as a citizen, which are secured in virtue of asetof political andlegal institutions that do not presuppose a particular religious view.

Withalittlechutzpah ofour own, letuscallthe society we aredescribing here aJewish society, not because it supports Judaismbut because the Jew represents areligious minoritywho seeks political equalityand religious freedomonfairtermswithother religiousbelievers,immanent ortranscendent. The category of the Jew, in this conceptualization, is contrasted with Eliot’sandSmith’scategories of theChristianandthe pagan. Both Christians and pagans want societyto embodytheir religious values, and theywould prefer, if possible, for the state to reflect and support those values. In this

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way,as Eliot argued, societytransforms a religious culture into politics and law.116 But, perhaps ironically, the Jewresiststhisultimately theocratic political conception. Aftertwomillenniaoflivinginexile, persecution, and ghettoization, Jews have discovered a noveltyin democratic political life. Withoutanyhopeto dominate politically, and with an eye toward survival and an aspiration for political equalityand social recognition, the Jewsaccept a moral ideal according to which the state is limited in its purposes to promote goods that do not rest on anyparticular religious doctrine, immanent ortranscendent. Under this ideal,the exerciseof politicalpower is justified,notby theambitionsofatriumphalorresurgentreligiousdoctrine, but by the reciprocal claims of citizenswho conceiveof themselvesas free and equal members of a democratic society.

The “idea of aJewish society” that we are describing is, of course, familiar as aform of political liberalism, which can beunderstood as extending principles of religious toleration, disestablishment, and emancipation.117 Our aimhereis not to offer a defense of such a society,118 butratherto note its possibilityand its historical appeal for Jews and perhaps other religious minorities.

We are aware of the ironyof proposing the idea of aJewish societyin response to aschema that alreadyoffends byseeking to assimilate avast arrayof believers and nonbelievers into two religious groups—pagan and Christian—that are, as a socialand psychological matter, likely unrecognizable to most people. Moreover, we are aware that associating American Jewry with liberalismfeeds into the criticismthat Jews are agents of secularism or modern paganism.

We,ofcourse,rejecttheidentificationoftheJewwith“subversive” liberalismboth because we reject the explicit anti-Semitismofthat claim and because we reject the vilification of liberalism in any case. More importantly, we think the claimof Jewish paganismis doubly mistaken. First, as we have argued above, it assumes incorrectly that liberal Jews— or liberal Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, etc.—lack transcendent religious values, that theyhave no ethical or moral commitments independentof their liberal political morality. And second, it assumes, again incorrectly, thatpoliticalliberalismis aformof paganismorimmanent religion. Smith makes this mistake when he argues that political liberals who favor an ideal of publicreason would not exclude reasons drawn from an immanent religious conception, such as Ronald Dworkin’s conception

116. See ELIOT,supra note 2, at 20–23.

117. See JOHN RAWLS,POLITICAL LIBERALISM 1,5 (1993).

118. Thoughwe are encouragedbythe recent workofothers. See generally CÉCILE

LABORDE,LIBERALISM’S RELIGION(2017);JONATHANQUONG,LIBERALISM WITHOUTPERFECTION

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of “sacred” or “impersonal” values.119 But thisviewrests onamisunderstanding of liberal public reason, which iscommitted topublic justification based onreasonsthat are,in principle,acceptableto citizens solelyinvirtue of their status asfree and equal membersof ademocratic society.120 Tothe extent immanent religious values cannot serve as the basis for political agreementamong citizens withadiversityoftranscendent andimmanent conceptions of the good,those values are not sufficient grounds for the public justification of state action.121

In a“Jewish society,” as we areconceiving it here, the state would be called upon toprovide justifications for its treatment of citizens in terms that do not rest on anyparticular religious tradition or doctrine. In this way,the state would maintain acore principle of separation and thereby respect the equal citizenship of religious believers and nonbelievers, alike. A Jewish societywould be one in which Christians and pagans (as Smith understands those categories) and Jews (as we understand that category) have equal standing as citizens, where the political culture and the state thatisresponsiveto it are not conceived primarilyin terms of religious conflict but rather as fostering a system of fair social cooperation among citizens with a diversity of religious views.

119. See SMITH, supra note 9, at 335. For Dworkin’s conception of“impersonal”

values, which he argued could serve as the basis for justifying state action, seeRONALD

DWORKIN,IS DEMOCRACY POSSIBLE HERE?PRINCIPLES FOR ANEWPOLITICAL DEBATE 70– 71(2006); DWORKIN,supra note 52, at 130–31.

120. For this idea ofpublic reason, see generallyJOHN RAWLS, The Idea of Public

Reason Revisited, in JOHN RAWLS:COLLECTED PAPERS573 (Samuel Freeman ed., 1999);

Jonathan Quong,On the Idea of Public Reason, in ACOMPANION TO RAWLS265(Jon Mandle &David A. Reidyeds., 2014); Micah Schwartzman, The Sincerity of Public Reason, 19 J.POL.PHIL.375 (2011).

121. Dworkin also criticized the idea of publicreason, butina sense, his objection was the opposite of Smith’s. Dworkin’s concern was that publicreason is too restrictive, that it would exclude some reasons that he thought ought to bepermittedas grounds for public justification—reasons based on impersonal values. See DWORKIN, supra note119,

at 64–69. Bycontrast, Smith’sargument is, in part, that publicreason isunfair becauseitwould permitreasons based on immanent or “impersonal” values, whileexcludingreasonsthat appeal to transcendent sources. SMITH, supra note 9, at 334–35. Inour view, both ofthese

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VI. CONCLUSION

The answer toSmith’s question—whydo theyhate us?—isthat they feel entitled to live in a society, and under the governance of a state, that represents their central religious commitments. And “we”—whether Christians, pagans, or Jews—pose a threat to therealization of that entitlement. And at least with respect to the Jews, the threat is real. As Eliot understood, ifyou have enough “free-thinking”Jews inasociety, they will starttodemand politicalrecognition, civilrights, and eventuallyevenequal treatment. They will argue thatstate power should be justified by public purposes, rather than the pursuit of religious ends. If theycan build successful political coalitions, they will seek to secularize the state,to dismantle support for themajority or dominantreligion, and to entrench the social and political emancipationand equalityof religious minorities.

When Nazis and white supremacists marched through Charlottesville in August 2017, they shouted, “Jews will not replace us.”122 Thisanti-Semitic slogan expresses the anxiety of cultural displacement and a profound sense of religious entitlement. White Christianityis the natural order, and how dare the Jews subvert it. AJew in Charlottesville might be forgiven for thinking of Eliot’s admonition about the need forracial and religious homogeneity to sustain atraditional Christian society. It is aprofoundlyugly vision,one thatwe donot impute toSmith’scritique ofmodern paganism.But in erasing the concept ofthe Jew, in assimilating the Jew to Christianity ortopaganism, Smith leaves us wonderingaboutthe place of Jews—and of allreligious minorities, nonorthodox believers,andnonbelievers—in aChristiansociety. The Jewish question is not whydo theyhate us—to which we know the answers—but what will they do with us? It is a question that Jews in this countryhave not hadto ask for the last several generations, althoughothers will certainly haveaskedit withrespectto their owncommunities. Any proposal that raises the question anew, even one offered in good faith, is troubling andproperlythe subject of skepticismon the part ofJews and other religious minorities.

122. See Asher D. Biemann, “Vae Victis!”: Antisemitism as Self-Victimization (and What Spinoza Knew About It), in CHARLOTTESVILLE 2017:THE LEGACY OF RACE AND

INEQUITY44,52(Louis P. Nelson & Claudrena N.Haroldeds., 2018); Emma Green,

References

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