Prophets and Kings.

God's Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics, by Stephen L. Carter (Basic, 288 pp., $26)

Stephen Carter used to irritate conservatives. In the early 1990s, Carter, a black professor at Yale Law School, wrote Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, in which he admitted that his status as an affirmative-action hire meant that others would always doubt his abilities as a professional, that he would be the object of resentment by those who did not qualify for affirmative-action programs, and that he would always know that such doubts and resentment were, at least partly, justified. Since this case had been advanced and refined for decades by conservatives, Carter proved his colors as a liberal by criticizing (and often caricaturing) the conservatives who had blazed the trail for him. His second book, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, again addressed a controversial topic-the exclusion of religion from public life-with arguments developed by conservatives, but Carter was again at pains to distance himself from those on "the Christian Right": He took an entire chapter to accuse Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition of engaging in "Religious Fascism." This triangulation strategy avant la lettre worked perfectly-President Clinton, early in his first term, would often mention the book in speeches.

That was the old Stephen Carter. In his new book, a sequel to The Culture of Disbelief, Carter comes out as a feisty, almost libertarian opponent of the secular state in nearly all of its manifestations. Carter now proudly identifies himself as an evangelical Christian, and, somewhat less proudly, declines to identify himself as a liberal. He apologizes for the "Religious Fascism" crack, and even admits to "a sneaking admiration for the Christian racists of Bob Jones University" for their steadfastness in the face of government pressure. If one examines the trajectory of Carter's books, from the overcautious liberal of Reflections to the bold antistatism of God's Name in Vain, it is clear that he has moved to the right. His political journey, though, is but a reluctant consequence of his growing conviction that all human actions, public and political as well as private, derive their meaning from man's relation to God.

The timing of this book is flawless, coming as it does just after the spat regarding Sen. Joseph Lieberman's speeches on the importance of faith for public life. Carter's argument is that religious believers should engage in political debate, that they have every right to do so, and that if the state tries to prevent them it will meet with stiff resistance. "I write, not only as a Christian," Carter declares, "but as one who is far more devoted to the survival of my faith-and of religion generally-than to the survival of any state in particular, including the United States of America."

Carter wants believers to engage in-to quote one of his chapter headings- "politics, not elections." Religion is subversive, Carter insists, because it acknowledges a justice above human law. Thus, religious citizens have a vantage point from which to question the legitimacy of the regime, a vantage the regime does its best to compromise. Because believers passionately hold ideas about how all people should live, they are especially susceptible to the call of politics; they see how much good it can do, especially if the right sort of person is in charge.

If they want to preserve their distinctive perspective and contribution to public life, believers have to be on guard against this secular temptation, and, according to Carter, be especially careful about involvement in electoral politics. They should argue publicly for goals and principles inspired by their religious outlook, but they should "put not [their] faith in princes," as the psalm goes, by publicly supporting one side in partisan politics. Carter worries that the state will overawe and seduce believers, coopting religious language and symbols to dress up the bargaining with special interests and the spinning of the truth that is the stuff of political campaigns. Religion involves eternal truths, while politics involves prudential compromises; the impulse to win now can lead believers to betray their duty of eschatological witness.

Most observers point to the Christian Right when illustrating the perils of politicized religion, but Carter draws from examples of impeccably progressive religious activism, such as the civil-rights movement. For instance, he argues that black evangelical preachers have been corrupted by their involvement with the Democratic party, so that they persuade people who are basically pro-life, pro-vouchers, and pro-school prayer to vote for candidates who never take these views seriously. He reminds us that Martin Luther King Jr. presented a religious challenge to Americans-that they reform society based on the commandment to love one another-and that this subversive message was coopted and de-Christianized by the state in order to "invent affirmative action and buy people off."

The title of the book, Carter explains, was suggested (most proximately) by "Meditation on the Third Commandment," an essay by C. S. Lewis arguing against the foundation of a Christian political party in England. If such a party were actually Christian it would be too small and radical to get far in politics, Lewis argued, and if it were Christian only in name it would misrepresent Christianity as it entered into alliances with "un-Christian" parties to achieve its political ends. In seconding Lewis's concern, Carter wants believers to enter politics as the Biblical prophets did, calling our leaders to account in God's name. Anything less is to use God's name in vain.

Carter presents the conflict between church and state in near apocalyptic terms. The state is naturally totalitarian and worldly, a cunning beast always seeking to extend its dominion. Believers "at their best" are prophetic and otherworldly, but need to inhabit a "cocoon" or, in Roger Williams's metaphor, a "garden" protected from the "wilderness" (the worldly culture) by a "wall." A century later, Thomas Jefferson would write of a "wall of separation" between church and state, but Williams's metaphor better describes the Founders' intent, Carter thinks. (After all, it was the example of Williams's Rhode Island colony, the first to guarantee religious liberty and not have an established church, which ultimately inspired the First Amendment.) The last 50 years of American jurisprudence have seen this image turned on its ear, as if the Founders had really wanted to protect the unruly wilderness from the delicate order of the garden, the coercive state from the pious citizen. "No serious historian believes this," Carter observes exasperatedly. "The religion clause of the First Amendment is designed to limit what the state can do, not what the church can do."

Carter is especially effective in pointing out the absurdity, given the Founders' wishes, that today the wall is patrolled by the state. Through court decisions and the tax code, the government "doles out benefits to those churches that preach the right messages, and denies benefits to churches that preach the wrong ones." Thus the federal government has considered revoking the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church for fighting abortion and that of conservative Christian groups for endorsing candidates or distributing voter guides, while in African-American churches these commonplace activities go unchallenged. According to Carter, this is "the stuff of the old Communist empire."

The problem is with what Carter calls our "statism": our tendency, when discussing religious freedom, always to focus on the state and its needs. The idea of religious neutrality treats believers as just another special-interest group because, in effect, it ignores their religion-so that Episcopalians, who are rich and well-connected, feel little pressure from the state, while Native American religions are frequently harassed by allegedly neutral legislation. Attempting to improve this situation, many legal theorists have advanced the doctrine that when passing a law the state should accommodate religious beliefs and practices unless they conflict with a "compelling state interest." The first problem with this is that the state (in the person of a judge) arbitrarily decides what is "compelling"; the second is that even when the interest of the believer is clear, the state's interest always prevails.

This asymmetry leads Carter to oppose the "poison" of statism in many forms. For example, he criticizes compulsory public education for removing a child from the family context, where religion is taught, and placing him in a new moral environment approved by the state. He also reminds us that the current public-school year, in which children spend the vast majority of time away from home, was the outcome of a 19th-century movement by "nativist Protestants" to "Americanize" the children of Catholic immigrants, which meant ridding them of their Catholicism.

Carter emerges as a passionate defender of religion in the broadest sense, vigorously refuting those who advocate the culture of disbelief. Yet in the end there is something unsatisfying about his portrayal of the culture of belief, which shows only one side of the believer's relationship with the world.

For Carter, religion is always outside of society, never inside building it up. It is always prophetic, like John the Baptist in the desert, calling those in the world to remember their duty to God. The believer is always wrong to get involved in the realm of political give-and-take. Carter never envisions him engaged in civil society, trying to change the culture by changing the people and institutions that create culture. This smacks of the separatist evangelicalism of yesteryear, before Roe v. Wade and the culture wars awakened conservative Christians to the consequences of political disengagement. Carter often forgets that in a democracy the state and the church have substantially overlapping membership-we are churchgoers and citizens, prophets and kings.

Carter follows Roger Williams in depicting religion as a thing apart, when its true nature is to be in the thick of things, preaching in the worldly cities, accommodating any custom or belief not incompatible with its transcendent vision. It would be a shame if this theological error were to lead Carter to turn down an appointment to the judiciary, for example, where he could do much good. It would be a disaster if his arguments were to persuade other religious citizens that civic engagement puts their souls at risk.

Nonetheless, such a concern is not reason enough to end on a negative note. God's Name in Vain is as intelligent and compelling a defense of faith in public life as has been written in some time. It has an edge, missing from Carter's earlier works, that makes for engaging reading; one hopes that this new Carter is here to stay.