Public Christianity means working to rebuild and renew public mores founded on a Christian philosophy of societal order and cohesion. It informs actions with the goal of creating a public sphere capacious enough to handle pluralism, but robust enough to act as one dominant culture. Public Christianity will open the political sphere “to glimpse something higher than itself,” to co-opt a phrase from theologian Russell Hittinger.
The thing about Christianity and why only it can fit the role of being a regulating principle in the American political and public realm, is that it does not abolish or undermine the natural human quest for first truths.
The nihilistic philosophies of our age are spiritually suffocating, especially the nonreligious, leading them into a “moralism which ends up in terrorism.” (Observe what our Jewish brethren are suffering around the world under the threat of anti-Semitism.) One of the principal goals of Public Christianity is to create an atmosphere where people can act upon their natural quest for wisdom, while preserving the public square from extremist ideologies and terror movements.
Read the full essay at Providence Magazine.