The Church and citizenship

More from William Cavanaugh's Theopolitical Imagination:

Cavanaugh is looking at two Christian models of citizenship: 1) exemplified by John Courtney Murray/Neuhaus/Wiegel  (neo-conservative Catholics) 2) Public Achievement, which is a grassroots citizenship movement being taught in many Catholic schools whose goal is forming actively engaged citizens to renew democracy.  

"In both the Murrayite and the [Public Achievement] models, the price to the Church of admission to the 'public' is a submission of its particular truth claims to the bar of public reason, a self-discipline of Christian speech."  And while the Public Achievement model can have goals that are admirable, such as caring for the poor, it teaches Christian children that their public identities are citizens of the nation-state and their goal as citizens is the renewal of American democracy. 

In these models, "theology must submit to what 'the public' can consider reasonable, where 'the public' is understood in terms of the nation-state.  Christian symbols must be run through the sausage-grinder of social ethics before coming out on the other end as publicly digestible policy.  As Talad Asad has shown, however, religion as a symbol system theoretically detachable from communities of discipleship is a modern invention that facilitated the absorption of the Church into the modern secular state."

You cannot divorce Christian symbolism from the Christian community.  For example, you cannot say the cross is about solidarity with the suffering, thus we must work against policies that increase the suffering of the oppressed.  Doing this subjugates the Church to the state and feeds into the belief that religious symbols, bodily practices, and communities of discipleship are separable.  It turns the Church into "religion."   

"Religion is a universal essence detachable from particular ecclesial practices, and as such can provide the motivation necessary for all citizens of whatever creed to regard the nation-state as their primary community, and thus produce peaceful consensus.  As we have seen, religion as a trans-historical phenomenon separate from politics is a creation of Western modernity designed to tame the Church."

Tough stuff to swallow.  Let's digest this and then I'll move onto the "now what" question.  So what is the role of the Church in the public?  I'll give you a hint: The Church is the Public.