Written by Don Byrd
Christianity Today interviews author Os Guinness regarding his new book, “The Global Public Square: Religious Freedom and the Making of World Safe for Diversity.” Here is a clip in which he explains what he means by diversity, and the role religious freedom plays in maintaining it.
Many conservatives misunderstand and then twist the term “diversity.” Diversity is simply a social fact. We are in a world where it is now said, because of the media, easy travel, and migration, that “everyone is now everywhere.” What is dangerous is not diversity per se, but relativism—the claim that there is no such thing as truth. Freedom itself cannot be defended on the basis of relativism. So conservatives are wrong to dismiss diversity, just as liberals are foolish to celebrate it without working out its implications. E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many One) was once not just America’s motto, but its greatest achievement. But today America is stressing the pluribus at the expense of the unum. The result can only be disastrous. The real question is, “How do we live with our deepest differences” when those differences are stronger and deeper than ever before? The answer, I believe, is to recover a principled vision of religious freedom for all and forge a civil public square in which it can flourish.
Religious freedom, or “soul freedom,” which he suggests elsewhere is a better descriptor, as a foundation of civic unity is a powerful American idea, if we are willing to embrace it. Guinness takes on more controversial topics, however, while suggesting that “both liberals and conservatives make crucial mistakes in the way they think they are defending religious freedom.” Conservatives, he says, depend too completely on “law and lawsuits” to advance their beliefs, while liberals promote equality at the expense of liberty.
This is not an endorsement of the book, which I have not yet read. Many of his ideas are provocative. The interview is at least worth a read.
