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PARTISAN REVIEW
the "questionable" act of refusing allegiance to the flag, or allows
conscientious objectors to serve in noncombative roles in wartime,
the motivation is not solicitude or concern for religion but an ex–
tension of the principle of no doctrine. It is fortunate that,
by and large, Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews are not op–
posed to all wars, and that the citizenry is not so eschatological as to
deny the privileges of the State to exact minimal obedience. It is clear
that traditionally the last thing the State should do is make religion
a promotional partner of public policy.
The democratic society, if it does not erect Comtean temples of
reason (which might at least be compatible), must be indifferent to
religion. The best that it can do is protect pluralism; that is, the
multiplicity of absolute claims, caring for none, while protecting
all.
Pluralism in its political and social form is, of course, an im–
possible doctrine. On grounds of reason it is shot through with in–
consistency. Presumably what one calls truth is not the fractured,
splintered, disorganized amalgam that pluralism maintains.
As
a
position pluralism in religion is possible only for the a-religious. The
positively anti-religious is committed, and cannot countenance the
acceptance of even a multiplicity of contradictory doctrines of trans–
cendence. The believer, whatever he may be, is either an indifferent
believer or a timorous believer if he accepts pluralism as theologically
viable doctrine. Only to the a-religious, who are not interested and
do not wish to be troubled, is pluralism a satisfactory solution, for it
guarantees their right to indifference. In medieval Catholic Europe
or Calvinist Switzerland indifference was as subject to punishment
as objective heresy. In our age pluralism is therefore expedient.
It
is
pragmatically adequate. It does not alter, to any significant extent,
the ultimate claim of Roman Catholics to represent the one Apostolic
Church, or deter Protestants from maintaining the absolute validity
of the principle of independent religious conscience, or Jews from
regarding Catholicism and Protestantism (and all other religions for
that matter) as, at best, "imitating creeds."
The virtue of democracy is that it has no theory of democracy.
It has no orthodoxy for which there is a comparable heresy.
It
pos–
sesses a
praxis,
an order of governing. It has no credal affirmations.
Its oath of allegiance is fundamentally negative but indubitably sig–
nificant: to obey the law and defend the country. These are ulti-
