Transcript
E.J. DIONNE, JR.: I want to begin with the way the book begins, which is to ask, do prophets have useful things to say to politicians about appropriate policies toward the poor? Do social scientists reveal truths about the causes of poverty? Can religious sensibilities clarify our thinking about poverty? To all these questions, Mary Jo Bane and Larry Mead answered yes, and bless them for doing so because we wouldn't have had a book if they had actually answered all those questions no. The prophets have very much to teach us about poverty and so do policy specialists, and those policy specialists can even be informed by their religious sensibilities and convictions. And that's what Mary Jo and Larry have done, and that is why their project is so exciting.
Hugh Heclo once said, "Government policy and religious matters are not the same thing, but neither do they exist in isolation from each other. The two are distinct but not separate from each other. The two domains intertwine," Heclo went on, "because both claim to give authoritative answers to important questions about how people should live." Heclo's words apply especially to the issue of poverty, a matter on which all of the great religious traditions have a great deal to say.
This book and the series of which it is part are built on the idea that religion always has and always will play an important role in American public life. Religion is not the only factor in public policy debates. Many who come to the public square reach their conclusions on matters of import, including poverty, for practical and ethical reasons that have little or nothing to do with faith, yet religious and secular alike can agree, I think, that our public deliberations are more honest and more enlightening when the participants are open and reflective about the interactions between their religious convictions and their commitments in the secular realm.
And it's our view that this doesn't happen often enough. Some participants in the public debate feel they will be misunderstood if they talk about their faith. Many worry, understandably, that being explicit about their religious convictions and faith commitments will be misinterpreted as an attempt to impose their religious views on the unwilling.
So Mary Jo Bane and Larry Mead should therefore be saluted for being willing to bring their respective faith traditions, political commitments and academic and public policy commitments together in their moving and pointed discussion of one of the most important issues facing our nation. I think all who care about poverty and the prospects of the poor recognize Bane and Mead as two of the most brilliant voices in our national debate about poverty, but we suspect that few who know their work also knew of the importance of their religious faith to their understanding about society's obligations to the poor.
Their ability to combine rigorous policy analysis with serious theological reflection I think might serve as a model for those who believe that religious voices have much to contribute to our nation's public life. In wrestling with each other's positions, Bane and Mead allow all who enter their conversation the chance to sort out for themselves why they believe what they believe about poverty and its alleviation. Thus does the religious imagination offer a gift to secular discourse.
Read the complete event transcript. (PDF—198KB)
View Full Transcript »