Religion, Civil Society & Governance: The American Experience

Mr. Akram Elias

Lt. General, Dr. Robinson, ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed an honour for me to be here with you this afternoon and participate in this discussion of an extraordinarily important topic given what is happening around the world.

Starting with the word religion, we in the United States speak of a secular tradition. We don't have an official religion. In the early days, twelve of the thirteen states did have an official religion and only Rhode Island didn't. Then the founding fathers came up with this revolutionary concept of separating Church and State. You know our French friends speak of separating Church and State as well and they speak of a secular tradition as well. Do we really mean the same thing? How can we speak of a secular tradition in the United States and then have public officials including the President of the United States invoking God in official speeches? How can we have a statement like "In God We Trust" on our currency? How is it that when you go into public office buildings in the United States - whether regular office buildings or departments under the executive branch - you may find rooms set aside for prayer, a mosque, a chapel, a temple?

Let me just start by highlighting one very simple thing - what is the most important holiday in France? It is July 14th - the birth of the Republican form of government, the modern state of France. What is the most important holiday in the United States? Before you say anything, there is not one, there are two of them, Thanksgiving and July 4th. On July 4th, we celebrate our freedom and on Thanksgiving, we give thanks to the Deity, whichever the Deity that one believes in, that has given us a spiritual spark. It tells us already a lot about what we mean in the United States when we speak of separation of Church and State.

As the Consul General mentioned earlier, in founding the United States, people from overseas who were prosecuted because of their religious beliefs came to the new world seeking religious freedom. It is important to have that context in mind. In Europe given the history of the Church, given the history of the clergy in power for centuries, the perceived or real abuse of power and corruption by the clergy led republican revolutionaries to demand the separation of Church and State and their main objective was to protect the State from the clergy. As a result of that certain things emerged, certain traditions and specifically the French example because French secularism and the French secular tradition influenced more secular traditions around the world than the American one, given the importance of the French Revolution, and also the fact that France was a major colonial power. So, in France, an elected official is not permitted to speak of God in official speeches. He doesn't take an oath on the Holy Bible or a volume of a Sacred Law. It became an issue when for example a Muslim girl wanted to wear the veil and go to public school. This was considered a religious symbol violating the concept of separating Church and State. You are not supposed as a Jew to wear a yarmulka. That is because of the tradition. In the United States the exact opposite took place and that is because people were coming to the new world seeking religious freedom. The founding fathers in separating Church and State were really trying to strike a balance so that on the one hand there would be no official religion, but on the other hand the individual should never be deprived from expressing his or her religious perspective. It is more of coexistence rather than a clear-cut separation as defined in the French concept.

This was because fundamentally in the United States the most important cultural value is individualism. It explains a lot of things about who we are as Americans; by individualism we mean something that is very positive. I know often individualism may be explained as selfishness, something negative. I know when translated in many languages culturally it has that negative connotation. In the American context individualism is a very powerful, positive value and it simply means that there is a philosophical recognition that as human beings we come into this world as individuals. We are not manufactured in a plant; this is not a mass production like a Ford in an assembly plant. As human beings we come into this world as individuals, each one of us having his or her own unique personality. I have a fingerprint that is mine, no one ever had it, no one has it today, and no one will ever have it in the future. It defines me physically. I have an intellectual imprint that is mine. That explains partially why we give so much importance to intellectual property rights in the United States. I do have my own spiritual imprint and how I choose to relate to the deity, to that Supreme Being, whoever, whatever it is, is my business. In other words, each one of us has his or her own unique personality and because of that in the United States we have, in designing the system, brought the individual at the centre of everything - not the family, not the tribe, not society, not the state but the individual. Freedom of religion is part of expressing one's individuality. So a government official in the United States is not permitted to impose his or her religious perspective on others but he or she should not be deprived from expressing his or her religious beliefs on the other hand.

This explains why it is absolutely acceptable in the United States for public officials including the President to mention God in official speeches and not be accused of violating the separation of Church and State, and why we have "In God We Trust" on our currency. On July 31st 1956, "In God we Trust" became the second official national motto of the United States. It has been used for a couple of centuries in fact but it came to be officially recognized as our national motto in 1956. Our first national motto is in Latin, "E Pluribus Unum", which means "out of many, one" to highlight the diversity within the unity of the country.

"In God, We Trust" is a very powerful statement. Firstly the word "God" is used here in the proper English meaning and that is Supreme Being. It is up to the individual to really define who that Supreme Being is. But the key word is "trust." Note that it is not "believe", it is "trust". Why? Because we grow up believing in some things but if I say I trust you, it is an individual free choice. Nobody can force me to trust you. If I say I trust you, I am making that free individual choice and the idea behind that concept is that the relationship between the individual and that deity, the Supreme Being, whoever or whatever that is, should not be imposed but it should be based on trust. We have this in our currency, and you can find it right in the middle of the Chamber of the House of Representatives, carved on the marble wall above the Chair of the Speaker of the House. As I mentioned earlier, if you go to government buildings, you can find rooms set aside for prayer. It doesn't mean you go out in the hall and tell people, "Hey guys, time to go to pray", obviously that is imposing on others. But if you want to go and pray yourself because that is what your tradition tells you there is a place for you to do it. So please keep that in mind and because of that, religion has always played an important role in the evolution of the United States.

Now I come to civil society, the second point. Civil society is the key to the policy making process because in the United States from the beginning the founding fathers decided to limit the power of the government. That has to do with the fact that the founding fathers of the United States were immigrants or sons of immigrants. It is the key to understand why one immigrates. I am an immigrant. I was born somewhere else and I became an American by choice. So why does one immigrate? It is usually in pursuit of happiness. If somebody is not happy where they were born for whatever reasons, they seek that happiness elsewhere. This explains to you why the founding fathers referred to one of the most important documents that we have in the United States, the document called the Declaration of Independence, as the promise, because it is that document that articulates the basic ideals that became the foundation of the constitution thirteen years later. In the declaration, we are talking about three rights - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. One cannot fully understand the importance given to pursuit of happiness if one doesn't understand that they were immigrants. Because of that it was decided that the government should have limited powers and give the individual more freedom to go after what he or she wants. Therefore, as a result of that, civil society became very important in the United States. We let civil society take care of so many things.

For example, just to give you some idea, we have in the United States more than 150,000 private non-profit non-governmental organizations. They cover everything you can imagine, from education, scientific research, religious activities and charitable works; to every type of advocacy issue you can think of, whether it is women's rights, immigrants' issues, and fairness in the judicial system or US-India relations. As long as the objective is to educate, raise the level of awareness, sensitize people, or provide services, you can organize yourself as a non-profit NGO and you can benefit from the tax system that provides individuals and corporations with the benefit of contributing to these NGOs and deducting those contributions from their incomes, lowering the amount of taxes. That is how financially we are able to sustain the support of these 150,000 NGOs. We use NGOs and associations in the United States for self-governance. In other words we govern ourselves to a certain degree outside the government, which is very important. It explains why for example in the United States we don't have a Ministry of Religion, a Ministry of Information, or a Ministry of Culture. We let civil society do a lot of the stuff; we let the private sector be the leader in these kinds of activities. The same applies to the economy by the way - we have no Ministry of Economy, no Ministry of Industry, no Ministry of Planning, no Ministry of Development, no five-year, ten-year strategic economic development plans that the government puts together expecting the private sector to fulfil and implement. It is within the private sector that this strategizing takes place - competition, cooperation - and then influence and pressure are levied on the government to extract favourable policies.

Civil society became really important to accomplish two major goals - self-governance, and influencing the policymaking process. Let me give you a couple of examples about self-governance. Obviously in the area of religion it is quite clear that religious groups organize themselves as they want as long as they are not breaking the law. You find in the United States practically all religious, spiritual, philosophical traditions that exist around the world. Typically in the United States each city is made up of neighbourhoods and people living in a neighbourhood create their own association. The right to associate is guaranteed by the constitution. We don't need the permission of the government to create the association. Since we have decided to limit the power of the government therefore its citizens should have the ability through associations to do things their own way. We decide on all kinds of things within the neighbourhood without necessarily having to go to the municipal government to change laws. In other words, consensus building has shifted to civil society. In the city where I work, Washington DC, in the neighbourhood of Georgetown, these associations work like town halls. They organize meetings on a regular basis; people may pay dues to these associations if they want to empower them to take care of certain projects on behalf of the community. In the case of Georgetown, after holding a number of debates the consensus of the association was not to have a metro. That is why there is no subway station in Washington DC. We have for example associations like PTA (Parents and Teachers Association) and some of my friends who are teachers are always complaining about these associations where parents are telling teachers what to do when it comes to the education of their kids. They always say, when you go to the doctor and he gives you his diagnosis, you don't argue with the doctor, he is the expert. You go to a lawyer to seek advice, the same thing, you don't argue with him. But with teachers, who are supposed to be experts in education, parents simply tell teachers what to do and they use these associations to do that on a regular basis across the country. Of course we have professional associations for all kinds of things in the United States. In other words we use associations to govern ourselves outside of the government.

The second thing that we use these associations for is to influence the policymaking process. The centre of gravity for consensus building in the American system is located in civil society, not in government. In the traditional classical concept of government, the government plans, thinks through the challenges facing society and tries to identify the solutions that would please the majority of the people. That concept of government was rejected by the founding fathers in the United States. Instead it is citizens through civil society, using NGOs and associations, who conduct the debate and the consensus building and then exert pressure through advocacy and lobbying the government in order to extract policies in one direction or another. So by empowering civil society and by guaranteeing freedom of religion you can see automatically why religious groups and institutions through civil society have always played an important role in American history. Take for example the Civil Rights movement - one cannot really fully understand the importance of that movement and how finally we were able, under the law, to have equality between blacks and whites in the United States without truly understanding the role of religion. The principal leaders of the Civil Rights movement, African-American leaders, came from religious movements, many of them preachers.

When George Washington was asked to take the oath as President, he looked around and said, "How am I going to take the oath, I need a Bible?" And they looked around and said, "What Bible?" That was the only time in the history of the American Presidency where the inauguration was 32 minutes late. The President of the United States always takes the oath exactly at high noon, which has some symbolism in it. For George Washington the first inauguration was at 12.32 because it took 32 minutes to get a Bible from somewhere. That is what we call the Volume of the Sacred Law. The President-elect chooses what Holy Book he or she will take the oath on. His individualism in the area of religion must be respected. Although it is not part of the law or part of the constitution, it has become ever since the tradition in the United States. The same goes for the words, "so help me God," which the President-elect ends with. So you cannot separate the role of religion and spirituality in general from the evolutionary process of the United States.

Among industrialized nations the United States is considered one of the more spiritually oriented - by that we mean that a very large percentage of Americans claim a certain faith and attend on a regular basis a place of worship. The numbers vary between 70-80% depending on the poll you are looking at, which is amazing. So it is part of the fabric of the United States; by that we mean you cannot impose religious views on others but you can try to influence the policy making process by electing people who can be considered of good moral standards depending on whatever religious perspective you have. If you look at American history, every generation had its own different religious perspective in one form or another; some having more prominence than others in influencing the policymaking process not by imposing a religious view but by electing individuals whom they feel more comfortable with. This doesn't come without controversy, without disputes. However, we have managed so far in the United States to deal with these issues because we have kept the government out of it as much as possible. That is why I keep emphasizing that the centre of gravity has shifted to civil society.