Free Republic

The `naked public square,' twenty years later William F. Buckley, Jr., once wrote that "the moral curiosity of Richard John Neuhaus is one of the country's most important assets." A lot of the country became aware of that twenty years ago, when Neuhaus's seminal book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America, was first published. The book's title injected an enduring image into our national conversation about Church-and-state. Where stands that debate, twenty years on? The Naked Public Square brilliantly analyzed a discomfort that many Americans felt but couldn't quite identify precisely. Something seemed out-of-kilter in the matter...