WHAT IS TO BE DONE…
IN THE PUBLIC
SQUARE? B Y R AY P E N N I N G S
’ve admitted in this space (“Learning from the journey,” Comment, V. 22, I. 9, November 2004) that my analysis of North American public life has changed significantly in the past twenty-five years. Christians who take their faith seriously, today, constitute a small minority. The liberal-democratic framework within which we live needs some tinkering, but actually works reasonably well. Our governments are reasonably representative of society. When mediocrity and hedonism shape the lives of the citizens, why should their governments look any different? I don’t like it. I believe we are on a path towards spiritual—and with it inevitably legal and social— suicide. But it doesn’t do us any good to deny the realities of our present environment. North American society is such that North American Christians in general are apathetic and hedonistic, and as such are generally satisfied to live in the culture as it is without seeking to effect cultural renewal.
I
A few terms require clarification. The term “public square” is used by some as a synonym for politics. In my understanding, politics is only a subset of the public square. Politics is concerned
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CARDUS coursepack: worldview
about the exercise of power and the mediation of conflict. The public square is concerned about the exchange of ideas. Ideas do matter, and they do have consequences. Already in this series, we have seen the implications of presumptions regarding the human person, the role of the state (and other social institutions) as well as our understandings of power and justice as they impinge on political theory. Vincent Bacote focused on creation, the church, the Holy Spirit, and the human person (dealing with race and ethnicity) as priorities for renewed theological enquiry and development (see “The Spirit and institution-building,” Comment, V. 23 I. 13, August 2005, and “What is to be done in theology?” Comment, V. 24, I. 4, September 2005). Both disciplines—while having an integrity and identity in their own right—also are part of the public square. We could stretch our definition of the public square so broadly that the term becomes practically meaningless and any suggested agenda unmanageable. My focus is those institutions which have as their mandate the communication of a message to the general public or to be adopted as public policy. This includes political parties, the media, think tanks, industry associations, and labour groups whose public agenda are broadly