UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Challenging Christian Liberalism: Religious Minorities and the Public Sphere Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3mf3j1h1 Author Dick, Hannah Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Challenging Christian Liberalism: Religious Minorities and the Public Sphere A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Communication by Hannah Dick Committee in charge: Professor John McMurria, Chair Professor John Evans Professor Valerie Hartouni Professor Marcel Hénaff Professor Robert Horwitz 2016 Copyright Hannah Dick, 2016 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Hannah Caitlin Dick is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2016 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents............................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Vita..................................................................................................................................... iv Abstract of the Dissertation .............................................................................................. vii Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: From Habermas to Foucault: Expanding the Public Sphere........................................................................................20 Chapter 2: Secularization and Christian Liberalism ..........................................................69 Chapter 3: Mitt Romney, Mormonism, and the Media: How Culture Matters in the Public Sphere .................................................................121 Chapter 4: Québec’s Changing Public Sphere: Dissensus, Democratic Iterations, and Shifting Notions of Reasonable Accommodation ..........................................................................................................145 Chapter 5: Atheism as Church, Creed, and Counterpublic..............................................173 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................201 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................210 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS While writing a dissertation is a lengthy and protracted process, I am extremely privileged to have had the opportunity to do so. I would not have had this opportunity without the bizarrely uncompromising encouragement from my parents to follow my passion. Huge thanks to my incredible mother, Kathie Schutta, for her tremendous support, and for being excited about the opportunities (and nomadic lifestyle) that academia has provided. Thanks to my father, Edward Dick, for urging me to seek new experiences and unconventional ideas. John McMurria is the most patient and kind advisor a student could ask for, and his insightful, nuanced critiques have shaped this dissertation into something that I am incredibly proud of. The rest of my committee – John Evans, Val Hartouni, Marcel Hénaff, and Robert Horwitz – have contributed unique, indelible, and cogent feedback throughout the process. Special thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding my dissertation research. Others without whom this dissertation would not be in tangible form: the staff, faculty, and graduate community in the Department of Communication at UCSD; my San Diego family & foolish friends; Laura McIntire, whose yoga classes have kept me of sound mind; and Subterranean coffee in Hillcrest. Chapter 5 is a modified version of an article previously published in Culture and Religion, “Atheism in Religious Clothing?: Accounting for Atheist Interventions in the Public Sphere” (2015). I am the sole author on this paper. v VITA 2007 Bachelor of Arts (Honours), Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada 2008 Master of Arts, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada 2010-2015 Teaching Assistant, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego 2011-2016 Instructor, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego 2016 Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “Atheism in Religious Clothing?: Accounting for Atheist Interventions in the Public Sphere” Culture and Religion 16.4 (2015): 372-391. “Between Secularism and Pluralism: Religious Clubs on the Queen’s University Campus” Religion & Education 35.3 (2008): 66-94. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Challenging Christian Liberalism: Religious Minorities and the Public Sphere by Hannah Dick Doctor of Philosophy in Communication University of California, San Diego, 2016 Professor John McMurria, Chair The liberal democratic state does not have an adequate way of talking about, or engaging with, religion today. In this dissertation I argue that religious minorities are expanding the scope of the liberal democratic public sphere through a series of contestations. I draw on three case studies in Canada and the United States to argue that the framework of the liberal public sphere is decidedly Christian in orientation, and that religious minorities are making this evident through their interventions in public arenas. I develop a critical analytic based on Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, drawing on Habermas’s critics as well as the work of Foucault. I retain the notion of the public vii sphere but emphasize the role of dissensus, rather than consensus, in achieving the liberal goal of equality. I argue that the public sphere is not a neutral arena for public deliberation, because it has historically privileged Christian forms of expression. I then use my critical analytic of the public sphere in order to perform a close reading of three case studies in which religious minorities intervene in the public sphere. I look at cases of Mormons in the American spheres of politics and popular culture; changing notions of reasonable accommodation in the Canadian province of Québec, and legislative challenges by Muslims and Sikhs to uphold the right of religious expression; and atheists in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. who argue that their brand of atheism is either a church or a creed requiring accommodations from the state. Rather than dismissing religion as a matter of private concern, scholars seeking to understand the contemporary role of religion in the state ought to take seriously the public expressions of religious minorities. These interventions reverify the citizenship rights of religious minorities, on the one hand, and lay bare the Christian Liberalism of the public sphere on the other. viii Introduction We do not have a good way of talking about religion in the contemporary public sphere. Religion emerges in various forms in public debates, in popular culture, in court cases and legislation. When it does, however, the state, its residents, and the media alike seem to be at a loss for how to address it. A laundry list of recent public cases involving religion illustrates this problematic: • The 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared that a corporation has the right to deny certain forms of health care insurance coverage based on religious grounds. A corporate entity can therefore be said to have religious beliefs. • Islamophobic reactions from Europeans and Americans towards Syrian refugees fleeing the horrors of the so-called Islamic State in late 2015, and the concomitant support of the refugees from various conservative evangelical and Mormon groups fearful that banning Islam might lead to other retractions of religious freedom. • The early 2016 standoff between federal authorities and armed occupiers led by Ammon Bundy at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. The occupiers were motivated at least in part by Mormonism, and a number of them identified only as “Captain Moroni” (a significant military and theological figure in Mormon history). • Uproar over the attempt to erect an Islamic cultural center due to its proximity to the site of the former World Trade Center. When Park51 became redefined in 1 2 many media outlets as the ‘Ground Zero Mosque,’ it ultimately resulted in a much more modest design proposal at the site. Cases like these present an interesting challenge for both politicians and academics: how can we account for public expressions of religious claims when they come up against other forms of liberal discourse? I argue that when we see evidence of religion made public, which comes to us via media representations, we are forced