The Naked Public Square by {author}: summary and why it matters

What it argues

Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor who later became a Catholic priest, said that American public life had been stripped of religious content, creating a naked public square. When religion is treated as purely private, the shared moral language needed for political argument disappears, and the state tends to occupy the space with its own claims.

He argued that this was neither what the Founders wanted nor what the Constitution requires. The First Amendment forbids an established church but does not demand that religious conviction be excluded from public reasoning. He criticized the secular elite for treating religious voices as threats to democracy and the religious right for ignoring the need for argument that all citizens can join.

The book calls for a public square that is, in his phrase, open to a plurality of convictions.

Why it matters

It became a founding text for the intellectual side of the religious conservative movement and for the idea of faith as a legitimate participant in democratic debate. The discussions of religious liberty, abortion and education that followed often draw on its argument.

About the author

Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) was a Lutheran pastor in a poor Brooklyn parish and a civil rights activist before he became a Catholic in 1990 and a priest in 1991. He founded the Institute on Religion and Public Life and the journal First Things in 1990.

Who should read it

Readers interested in church and state.