Public Reason and Holiday Displays

John Rawls has this idea of public reason. In a pluralistic society, says Rawls (also assuming that we are and always will be in a pluralistic society), people have lots and lots of different so-called "comprehensive doctrines," religious, political, or moral philosophies that inform the entirety of a person's worldview. If two people holding different comprehensive doctrines try to conduct a discussion with each other, each one making arguments based thoroughly on their comprehensive doctrines, they might as well be speaking different languages, and will end up talking past one another. So Rawls has his idea of the overlapping consensus, which is roughly speaking the set of values that can be endorsed by all reasonable comprehensive doctrines in a society. Any member of pluralistic society, then, can assume that any other member of that same society will share the values in the overlapping consensus. Public reason consists of arguments made in terms of those consensus values, i.e. public reasoning means arguing in terms that any random member of society who does not share your comprehensive doctrine could share.

Rawls' big idea (okay, one of Rawls' many big ideas) about the terms of public discourse in a pluralistic democracy is that, while it is perfectly acceptable to make arguments in the public discourse which are rooted in one's comprehensive doctrine (typically but not exclusively a religion), when you do so you have to make sure to back up your doctrinal arguments with some arguments at public reason. Otherwise, why should anyone else in the society listen to you, except those who happen to share your comprehensive doctrine? Martin Luther King's A Letter from Birmingham Jail is a masterpiece of this method, moving back and forth between explicitly religious arguments addressed to his nominal audience, a group of white clergy, and secular arguments that track the religious ones and tend toward the same conclusion.

So, here's my thought about this notion of public reason. An absurdly big deal in Establishment Clause litigation (I have a presentation to give on the Establishment Clause this week!) is what kinds of holiday displays by the government are acceptable. A Christmas tree? A menorah? A nativity scene? What's the limit? Well, I have a theory: the appropriate rule is that there should be a good public-reason argument for setting up any holiday display. A Christian wants to put up a nativity scene because of their comprehensive doctrine. I, an atheist, have no reason to want a creche on government property, and I have a hard time imagining an atheist who did want one. But I, a random member of society presumed to lack a comprehensive doctrine, have plenty of reason to want a Christmas tree put up. For one thing, Christmas trees are absurdly pretty. For another, look, maybe Christmas is in some sense an important religious holiday, but it's a much, much more holiday in its purely secular component. Hell, there has historically been a War on Christmas, but it has always been waged by zealous Christians who believed the holiday insufficiently religious. Likewise Hanukkah: the ratio of Americans who "celebrate" Hanukkah to American Jews who actually celebrate Hanukkah is quite large, simply because the number of American Jews is tiny while Hanukkah is a pretty big-deal secular holiday. So we have plenty of public reason to want trees (which are pagan anyway!) and menorahs, but as best I can tell it's hard to find a public reason for the nativity scene.

Oh, and there's always a public reason to celebrate any religion that lets you eat chocolate or give presents.