PBS’ Illiberal Ban
by Robert Barron
Issue 138 - August 26, 2009

All individuals and institutions are, to some degree, marked by inconsistency. Not all of our ducks -- conceptual and behavioral -- are ever quite in a row. But sometimes, an inconsistency is so sharp, so jarring, that it crosses the line into hypocrisy.

A case in point is the decision of the Public Broadcasting System to exclude any religious programming from its schedule. The usual reasons are trotted out: religion is divisive; it would be impossible to give equal time to all denominations; the public forum should not be the place for partisan speech but rather for objective exploration of issues, etc. etc.

Well, about three months ago, I was flipping through the cable channels and stumbled on a PBS program hosted by the British intellectual historian Jonathan Miller. I rather like Miller, having enjoyed his past programs on the history of science and the workings of cultures. But this show was part of a multi-episode presentation on atheism. It became increasingly clear that it wasn't an objective history of the phenomenon of non-belief, nor a balanced presentation on the relative merits of theism vs. atheism. Rather, it was an enthusiastic advocacy of the atheist position; I might even be tempted to call it evangelism on behalf of unbelief. Miller tried to show that religion is stupid, a holdover from a primitive age, and the enemy of intellectual progress. The episode concluded with Miller's interview of an elderly lady on her deathbed. At our kind host's prompting, she assured us that she looked forward to nothing at all after death.

Late on the evening of the day I read of PBS' decision to exclude religious programming, I came upon another interesting PBS offering, an episode in a series on homosexuality in America. Once again, it was not an objective study of same-sex attraction or a sober consideration of the history of the debate concerning gay marriage. It was outright and passionate advocacy.

What stayed particularly in my mind was a conversation between Larry Kramer, the well-known gay playwright and activist, and a man dressed as a woman, sporting a three-foot blond wig! Kramer laid out his familiar arguments in a relatively disciplined way, but his interlocutor at one point intervened to observe that while there is only one Gay Pride Sunday all year, there are 51 Sundays on which the churches attack gay people. I'll leave aside the laughable insinuation that the Christian churches attack homosexual people every week of the year (in fact, I can't remember even one sermon to that effect in nearly a half-century of hearing and giving sermons). But I will observe that this program amounted to a kind of evangelism on behalf of gay rights.

Now don't get me wrong: I love the fact that we live in a free society where practically all positions can be aired, debated and argued. I welcome passionate and public advocacy for points of view that I don't share. More precisely, I think it's fine that atheists and gay activists have a televised forum to present their cases. But come on PBS, you can't have it both ways!

You can't say that religious evangelism is dangerous and divisive, but other types of evangelism are just fine. You can't say that all voices should be heard in the marketplace of ideas -- except religious voices.

In his trenchant book Democracy and Tradition, Jeffrey Stout argues that there is a healthy construal of liberalism as the set of practices that allow for peaceable conversation and interaction in a society marked by differing understandings of ultimate meaning.

Here, tolerance, reason and open-ness of spirit are the great practical virtues. Hence it was in the context of a robust liberal American polity that Abraham Lincoln could interpret the Civil War in explicitly religious terms and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. could argue for civil rights on the basis of Old Testament prophecy. Both were permitted to speak religious language in the public forum, because both entered that arena with respect and nonviolence. However, Stout holds that there is a more destructive and ideological version of liberalism that sees religious belief as irrational and therefore advocates the exclusion of religion from the public discussion altogether. This mode of liberalism is hoisted on its own petard, precisely in the measure that it becomes deeply intolerant, totalitarian and exclusive.

So Jonathan Miller can have ten hours on public television to trumpet the value of atheism, but no religious voice can be raised in that forum to counter him. I'll let you decide which type of liberalism PBS is displaying.

The Rev. Robert Barron is the Francis Cardinal George Chair of Faith and Culture at University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein. He is also the brother of Sun-Times Publisher John Barron, where this first appeared.

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