MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe American comedian Jon Stewart once said that religion is what gives people hope in a world torn apart by religion. And one could say that America's current relationship with faith is defined by such a paradox. Religion is at the heart of matters shaping the United States from the outside and from within, whether it's the violent protests consuming our embassies and consulates in the Muslim world or the social issues that dominate the attention of our candidates on the campaign trail here at home.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut Jacques Berlinerblau says that America was born out of a secular, not atheist tradition, that protects both religious freedom and diversity. And he joins us in this hour to explore the delicate, yet inextricable relationship Americans have with religion. Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor and program director for Jewish Civilization at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is titled, "How To Be Secular: A Call To Arms For Religious Freedom." Jacques Berlinerblau, thank you so much for joining us.

MR. JACQUES BERLINERBLAUThank you so much, Kojo.

NNAMDIAt one point in the presidential election this year, you declared that American secularism was near death. It was when Republican candidate Rick Santorum said John F. Kennedy's famous speech on separation of church and state made him want to throw up. Before asking you to comment on that I'd like to take a listen to a clip from that ever-so-famous speech.

SENATOR JOHN F. KENNEDYI believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. Where no Catholic prelate would tell the president, should he be Catholic, how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote. Where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. And where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

NNAMDIHow have things changed since the days Kennedy gave that speech, which you call the glory days of secularism?

BERLINERBLAUYeah, what a great speech. Let me give you a little context on that. And this way we can figure out how much things have really changed. He gave that speech to a ministerial association down in Texas. And the back story was that they wanted him to say that. These were mostly Protestant ministers who, because of long-festering anti-Catholic biases in the United States, were under the fear that if you elected a Catholic president he'd be taking his orders from the Vatican in Rome and you'd have the Swiss Guard in front of the West Wing and so on and so forth.

BERLINERBLAUSo what they wanted, they wanted to hear him say that he believed in an America where separation of church and state was absolute. That's the irony of that speech.

NNAMDISo that when candidate Rick Santorum said that that speech made him want to throw up, you say that we have gone far beyond the glory days of secularism.

BERLINERBLAURight.

NNAMDIAt the same time, that you say secularism is near death, some leaders are claiming that America is entering an ultra secular age. In January, the Pope warned American bishops of threats to the Catholic faith by radical secularism. Can you explain these opposing views of the state of secularism in the United States?

BERLINERBLAUYeah, I think there may be a connection between secularism and atheism. Now, in Europe, what the Pope sees is a far larger, let's say, cohort of Europeans that are either irreligious or antireligious. I don't think the same equation holds muster in the United States.

NNAMDITalk a little bit about the differences between secularism and atheism.

BERLINERBLAUWell, secularism is a political doctrine. It's a long-time-coming political doctrine. I'm sure we'll get into that. And what secularism looks at -- I don't wanna say what its policy is -- but it looks at very, very carefully, the relationship between government and religion. That's secularisms beat. That's what it does. It's smaller than liberalism. Liberalism is the big brother. Secularism is the little brother that looks at that particular issue.

BERLINERBLAUAtheism is a meditation or the study of the non-existence of God. It's anti-metaphysics, if you will. So one is a political doctrine, one is a metaphysical doctrine. They have political commonalities in terms of their goals, but they're clearly not the same thing.

NNAMDIYou say that the Democratic Party has in recent history been a backer of secularism, but the party shrugged the idea off in the 2006 midterm elections. And by the 2008 elections had abandoned it entirely. What happened?

BERLINERBLAUOkay. So I won't say it's a great story, but it's a really interesting story. So the high-water mark is the 1960 speech by John F. Kennedy. In the interim there are some Democrats who kind of espouse a soft secularism, Jimmy Carter, who is of course a liberal evangelical, Bill Clinton, who's very, very good at gathering up religious followers and extolling religious themes. But then you have the following candidates -- and, Kojo, you'll tell me what's similar about the three.

BERLINERBLAUWalter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. They all shared a similar fate. And what was that, Kojo?

BERLINERBLAUThey all shared a similar faith?

BERLINERBLAUFate, fate.

NNAMDIOh, they all shared -- they all lost.

BERLINERBLAUThey all lost. They all lost. With the exception of Kerry they lost pretty badly. So I think what the Democrats realized after the 2004 election, which really John Kerry should have won. He should have won that election. You have an incumbent presiding over a sluggish economy -- though what we would give to have that economy now -- presiding over an unpopular war. He should have lost that one, right? He won that one.

BERLINERBLAUAnd what the pundits realized -- and I think they're correct -- was the difference maker was the so-called values voters. And these would be conservative Christian voters, mostly evangelical Christians, traditionalist Catholics, Mormons and a smattering of Orthodox Jews who especially in Ohio managed to push George W. Bush over the finish line. This is when the Democratic Party had a long night of the soul, if you will. They started doing some soul searching and in 2006 they found something new.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Jacques Berlinerblau. he is a professor and program director of Jewish Civilization at Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, at Georgetown University. His most recent book is titled, "How To Be Secular: A Call To Arms For Religious Freedom." You can join the conversation by calling 800-433-8850. Does religious freedom, in your view, for one religious group mean less freedom for others? How big a role should religion play in American politics? Should religious values shape party platforms or policies in the U.S.? 800-433-8850.

NNAMDIYou drove home the distinction between secularism and atheism, saying it's essential to distance the two ideas in order to revive secularism in American politics. This does bring up the point though, that non-believers or atheists seem to be in a position of, well, tough love with American politics. Do you think non-believers are adequately represented in today's political environment?

BERLINERBLAUNo. And I think this is a very, very big problem. And I don't want to give the impression that the fact that secularism and atheism are different, I don't want to any way condone or justify a lot of the tough luck that atheists are experiencing presently today in the United States. Secularism, as I understand it, has a couple of platforms. And here are two interrelated platforms.

BERLINERBLAUFreedom of religion, which is clearly there at our founding, right? Freedom of religion, one of the great kind of themes in the American experiment in liberty. But then there's a theme that doesn't appear early on. And we're really going to need to engineer this or sew it into the fabric. And that's freedom from religion. And that to me is as much a part of secularism as is freedom from religion. They're inextricably bound. And we're having a very hard time in this country, as opposed to let's say France, of working in that idea, that freedom from religion is an American value and people who don't believe are good people and they are moral people and we should not judge them either way on their lack of belief.

NNAMDILet's dive into one of the stories dominating the headlines right now, those violent protests across the Muslim world following the anti-Islamic film. Of course the film was created in the United States where we celebrate freedom of expression, freedom of religion. What do you think this episode broadly reveals about the relationship between freedom of religion and freedom of expression?

BERLINERBLAUThey're in a very tense hour relationship, those two. And this is why you need a good, strong secular government to point out to the good religious folk everywhere 'cause secularism loves religious people that expressive liberties are part and parcel of what we do as Americans. And you can't just yank that out of the equation. It also says something about the current state of the Democratic Party vis-a-vis their relation to secularism.

NNAMDIWhat does it say about the current state of the Democratic Party vis-à-vis its relationship to secularism?

BERLINERBLAUWell, I was -- funny, you should ask that, Kojo. I was very disappointed as I read Secretary Clinton's statements over the past week. And it seemed like she was almost apologizing for our glorious tradition of freedom of speech. She spoke a lot about religious freedom and a lot about religious toleration, again and again and again, as well she should. And then she kept saying, yeah, we have this thing, you know, we value freedom of speech and it's really terrible and it's a disgusting film and we deplore it and it has nothing to do with America.

BERLINERBLAUNewsflash, it has everything to do with America. This is a fundamental right. We have fought so hard in the Western world to achieve this right. So I don't think you can just decuple or prioritize one of these values over the other. Secularism works under the kind of ground rule that freedom of religion, freedom from religion, the expressive liberties, there are a couple of others that maybe we'll get to, they all work together. And you can't lift one or elevate one over the other.

NNAMDIWell, let's take it to the other extreme because even though American officials have condemned the video, one has Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah called for the U.S. to ban the film and remove it from the internet completely. How do you think the government should have responded?

BERLINERBLAUWell, if I'm not mistaken, I believe the Obama administration asked YouTube to take it down. This is above and beyond the call of duty. I mean why are we Americans? This is really something we believe in. It's part of what a great journalist, such as yourself, Kojo, this is the operating base, the default platform, right, for journalism -- that we can say what we believe. As a professor in a classroom I have to be able to say things that some people might not like.

BERLINERBLAUSo what on earth are these Obama Democrats doing to this tradition of secularism? It's not all bad, by the way, they do a lot of good things. But on this score I do think there's need to be a little pushback, as we say in Washington. Yeah, we need some pushback.

NNAMDIWell, it seems as if what they were trying to do was to explain to people who apparently they felt did not understand that there is a distinction between what the government says and what the government acknowledges and tolerates. The government, in the case of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was denouncing the video and at the same time trying to say, but we have freedom of expression in this country and so we acknowledge and tolerate this kind of video. You think that only one part of that message may have gotten across?

BERLINERBLAUYou know, it came across as we like freedom of expression, but we're so much more into religious freedom and not upsetting the sensitivities of religious citizens and it's not true. We like them both. They're equal values for us and we can't just disarticulate them or pull one out.

NNAMDIHere is Carl, in Crystal City, Va. Please, don your headphones, Jacques, so you can hear Carl. Carl, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

CARLHi. Good afternoon. I wanted to -- I'm glad that you brought up the idea of religious violence, but I wanted to look at it from a bit of a different angle. So we hear all the time about, you know, keeping the terrorists out of the country and all the things that we're doing to do that, but what it seems to me is that the majority of the religious violence being perpetrated in this country is actually being done by Christians against other Christians and non-Christians. And examples of that would be murder of abortion doctors, bombing of clinics, phoning in bomb threats, things like that. And I'll take the answer off the air.

NNAMDIWhat is your specific question?

CARLOh, well, I was just wondering why it is that the focus is on Islamic extremists or terrorists coming in when the religious violence in this country seems to be perpetrated by Christians. And there's really no discussion about that.

NNAMDIJacques.

BERLINERBLAUWell, there's ample blame for all traditions here, in domestic Christianity and in the Islamic world as well. Let me try to bring this to a theme that I explored in the book. I think one of the big problems we have, Kojo, when we talk about religion in the United States is we have a sort of always sunshine approach to it, that it's just an unambiguous good and it's always positive. And if you're religious it's great. And I, who am not even a believer but in a strange way a religious person will say, yeah it's probably true. There're a lot of great advantages to religion.

BERLINERBLAUHowever, there is a dark side. All right? They all have their dark sides and I don't think a government can be oblivious to this. So there are Christian extremists who have in fact, Carl, just as you said, engaged in these illegal, violent murderous, homicidal activities towards abortion clinics. And there are Islamic extremists and there are Jewish extremists and we'll know about atheist extremists.

BERLINERBLAUSo I think a good secular government doesn't say religion under all circumstances is good. It takes a much more intelligent and nuanced approach to the question of religion and says, but every now and then it gets out of control and we need the FBI to monitor that and we need to watch it very, very carefully.

NNAMDIGlad you mentioned extremists because something you address in your book that seems particularly relevant to these protests, your praise for the religious moderate. You say if they had a motto it would be, don't get over wrought. Do you think that religious moderates are common in mainstream religions? And if so where is their voice today?

BERLINERBLAUWhere are the religious moderates? As I say in the book, right, the motto of the religious moderate is keep it cool. God is great. Relax. No need to anathematize or suicide bomb, if we can make that into a verb. What happened to religious moderates, Kojo? Wow, what a question. I think, and I don't have very sophisticated thoughts on this -- I think the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior wasn't just the assassination of a man. It wasn't just the assassination of a symbol, an icon. It was like the assassination of an entire civilizational trajectory, right.

BERLINERBLAUWhat emerged in the aftermath amongst the religious moderates and the progressive religious left was this immense vacuum. Like, if we were to count up the great leaders that the conservative Christian rightist had, the Falwells, the Robertsons, the Dobsons, the Billy Grahams, we could go on and on. I can't make a similar list in the aftermath of Dr. King's death. I can't think of who those leaders were who brought religious progressives and religious moderates together and unified them and created coalitions and helped them articulate their issues.

BERLINERBLAUSo I think we do have a crisis of religious moderation but there are lots of religious moderates in the United States. I think they're the majority.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. There are a lot of people who'd like to address this issue who have called. So if you have a question or comment you might want to go to our website kojoshow.org and ask it there or simply send us a Tweet at kojoshow or email to kojo@wamu.org. Our topic secularism. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation on secularism. We're talking with Jacques Berlinerblau. He is a professor and program director for Jewish civilization at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is titled "How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom." We're taking your calls at 800-433-8850. I'd like to go back to the telephone. Here now is David in Leesburg, Va. David, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DAVIDYes. I just want to point out that I think that the Secretary of State's comment with regards to the film was on the film not on the right of any American to go ahead and somehow not have the ability of free speech. But I also want to point out that I do think that with free speech there should be some sort of consequence too. I mean, if you have a person that yells fire in the middle of a theater you can be prosecuted. And I believe that a government should be able to at least ask YouTube or any other organization to refrain from going ahead and keeping a video that insights potential violence.

DAVIDWhat are the costs to the taxpayer here on all the costs that are going to go in now to beef up all our embassies? I mean, there are consequences with free speech and I think one of the things that is outrageous is that we are not seeing anyone suffering consequences for the free speech that actually they exuded. In other words, maybe there needs to be some sort of civil penalty. Yes, you have the right to go ahead and say whatever you want but if it causes the death of an ambassador be expected to be sued. It's something like that. Thank you.

NNAMDIHere is Jacques Berlinerblau.

BERLINERBLAUYeah, Mr. Basseley did not -- and I'm not defending him, I don't think it's a very good film and I never speak that way about religious traditions or people of faith or people who lack faith. Mr. Bacile, his pseudonym, did not kill the American ambassador to Libya. Let's be very, very clear. I mean, we have to establish causation here, right. Those folks who killed him had an interest in doing that. And as a person who teaches in a school of foreign service, I don't think people understand the magnitude of killing an American ambassador.

BERLINERBLAUAnyhow, back to some of the points that David made, in this country, we've really been at this question of free speech, especially in the high courts, for about really more than a century. And if you look at some of the blasphemy trials from the '20s going to the '60s where you'd have really serious writers of fiction who all of a sudden would find themselves or their agents or purveyors of books who sold their books just chucked into jail, right, by the local DA, usually in cahoots, I regret to say, with a kind of Catholic moral activist of the extreme right.

BERLINERBLAUI think one would grow to appreciate the delicacy of expressive literaries. And we simply can't get into a situation where we start monitoring everything that Americans say. I agree with you, fighting words, screaming fire in a theater, to use the famous example, that is not protected speech. But in this country we have a pretty good idea of what is protected speech. And I regret to say what this person did and his protected speech -- one other point, if you were to go on YouTube five weeks before this video came out, there are thousands of videos that say terrible things about Islam.

BERLINERBLAUThey're all over the place, terrible things about women, terrible things about Jews, terrible things about African Americans.

NNAMDITerrible things about Christianity, terrible things about furious sects of Muslims, one against the other. You'll find all of those on YouTube.

BERLINERBLAUAnd you can't have the United States government referring this like a football referee with a yellow flag. We simply can't do this. Talk about a burden on the taxpayers.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, David. In some national extremism has grown popular among young people. And the older generation calls for moderation. The Taliban, for example, rose to power with the support of young people. Why is it that extreme religious conservatisms flourishes among young people in those countries while in the United States we tend to expect the older generation to be the ones who embrace more conservative ideas?

BERLINERBLAUSo why is it abroad that the younger generation is radicalized? Is that the question, Kojo?

NNAMDIYes.

BERLINERBLAUYeah, it's a good -- I mean, it's a big geopolitical question. There's some that would argue -- I'm not an expert on this -- some would argue it's pure economic factors that where there are no jobs, there is no future, there's no access to education or there is education and there are no jobs, which I think was part of the Egyptian problem, than you have the sort of soil that permits radicalization.

BERLINERBLAUAnother approach is, radical ideas tend, I think, to repeal to less formed minds. And younger men in particular are very susceptible at age 15, 16, 17 and 18 to things that older folks such as ourselves, Kojo, might not be willing to just accept.

NNAMDIBoth parties dedicated time during their conventions to recognize the religions that are most prominent in the U.S. But less expected was an awkward effort by Democrats to remove a reference to God from the party platform. In the end that effort was defeated. Are party leaders reluctant to exclude religion from the political conversation?

BERLINERBLAUYeah, that was the single strangest thing that happened this entire election cycle, the god Jerusalem coupling, the debacle that the Democrats pulled off. The second strangest thing was the Faith in Freedom Coalition held their first debate in Iowa. And some of the strangest things I've ever heard were said there. We can talk about that after. At the Democratic Convention though I honestly think this was a mistake. I mean, the Democrats have been moving in a complete opposite direction for a good six years now. God is everywhere in the rhetoric, in the campaign planning, in the strategizing, right. Even in some of the policy, I regret to say.

BERLINERBLAUSo what do they do? They done went and somehow cut and then pasted and then cut the term God or God-given out of the platform. And then to compound the error, they filmed -- 'cause they wanted to give this to the Republicans, I guess -- they filmed a floor vote in which they brought two votes to the floor at exactly the same time about two completely different divisive issues, one Israel, one God. So all the Republicans have now, and they must be very, very thankful, is a video of Mr. Villaraigosa saying, who wants to bring God back? And then you hear this like chorus, right, of kind of booing and jeering. So that doesn’t look very good.

BERLINERBLAUI do think however, Kojo, I think it was an error. I mean that. I think it was an oversight.

NNAMDIUntil the conventions we heard little from the two candidates about their religious backgrounds. But that silence seems to be over since the convention that Romney has expressed the importance of God in the public sphere. Why do you think the Romney campaign decided to break the silence and bring religions back into the conversation?

BERLINERBLAUPanic. Panic. We were hearing the economy, the economy, the economy for months. And then all of a sudden he started wobbling off message. And you had Paul Ryan talking about every state should decide on its own whether people should pray in the schoolhouse. I've mentioned this in -- I think it was in CNN, they asked me about this on the Belief blog and they said, well why is Romney doing this now?

BERLINERBLAUAnd what I pointed out is when Republicans get nervous, as they did in 2008, they go into this psychological stage which I call basewhipup -- it's one word -- basewhipup, right. And they go right back to their base and they hammer out the themes that make the base very happy. The problem is that the Republicans don't really have a mechanism to reach to the middle, especially in terms of religious terminology. So I would interpret Romney right now as being very, very nervous and sensing he needs to do something, anything to reanimate and reignite those voters.

NNAMDIMitt Romney has attacked Barack Obama claiming that Obama's promoting a secularist agenda. Is it possible that as a Mormon Romney's candidacy would actually benefit from voters adopting a secular approach to politics?

BERLINERBLAUYeah, one of the things I like about Mitt Romney, and I've gone on record saying this, as a Mormon he has a very, very good understanding of the plight of religious minorities. Here's an example. Herman Cain -- I'm sure you recall this -- about a year ago, a little more than that.

NNAMDIThe name sounds vaguely familiar. But go ahead.

BERLINERBLAUHe was asked in a Cain Administration, what would it look like? And out of the blue he said, well I don't think I'd be very comfortable having Muslims there, right. And on CNN they asked Romney about this and Romney did the good secular thing. He said, nope, our country, we don't look at those things. We respect all religions. We're tolerant. I would never make such a decision personally.

BERLINERBLAUSo I think as a minority Romney can really understand that sort of secular mind frame, right, that wants to make America as great an America as it is for the, let's say, conservative Protestant majority as it is for the Sikh as it is for the Muslim American. So there's a lot to like about Mitt Romney actually, one of those Mitt Romney's anyhow.

NNAMDIAnd the fact of the matter is that we ran into Herman Cain at the Republican National Convention surrounded by admiring supporters on the concourse. But that's another story. Back to the telephone. Here is Bob in Woodmine, Md. Bob, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BOBGood afternoon, gentlemen. How are you?

NNAMDIWe're well.

BERLINERBLAUGreat.

BOBI have kind of a quick comment observation about atheism slash agnosticism. It seems to me that atheists and agnostics who make it a point to act in ethical fashion in their lives are more to be lauded than those who do so based on a sense of religious morality. Because those people who act on a sense of religious morality are acting out of either fear of punishment or promise of reward, whereas those who act ethically and are agnostics or atheists do so simply because they believe that doing the right thing is the right thing. It's to be done for its own sake, not out of a sense of personal reward or punishment. And that's all.

NNAMDITo which you say what, Jacques.

BERLINERBLAUOh, I don't know. I mean, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Remember atheism is such a fascinating ism. There's so many ways to be an atheist and we still haven't had our national discussion about this. I mean, I notice a big difference between atheists who are kind of refugees from severely religious homes, fundamentalist homes. And they come to atheism legitimately, very angry, very upset, really wanting to stop the religious right in its tracks.

BERLINERBLAUAnd compare that to like your garden variety secular Jew -- I've often referred to myself as a garden variety secular Jew -- we great up, there were atheists everywhere, right. And we grew up in religious communities where half the people were atheists and everyone was happy to be a Jew. And that branch of atheism grew up and had no real problem with most forms of moderate religion and held on to their atheism. And I think they have different world views or different motivations than the atheists that come from the previous situation I mentioned.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Bob. And on the same theme for a few minutes is Chris in Washington, D.C. Chris, your turn.

CHRISHi. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to touch back on a point that your guest mentioned earlier about how there's -- you have Muslim extremists, Christina extremists and atheistic extremists. But I wanted to disagree with that because I just -- I don't think that, you know, the atheist, he's not doing his extreme act in the name of atheism. He's doing it for some other purpose, egotism or whatever. Whereas in the religious extremists they're doing it in the name of their religion. So I wanted to...

NNAMDIWell, let me just ask you a question. How do you know that an atheist who commits an extreme act is not doing it as a result of or in the name of his or her atheism?

CHRIS'Cause atheism is not a philosophy. It's just an absence of belief. It's not a world view. It's just an absence of belief. It's not a coherent world view like religion is. They're doing it for other sociological reasons. It's not in the name of atheism. Atheism has no coherent structure to it. It's just absence of belief ,like you...

NNAMDII do understand that theoretically, but before Jacques intervenes, because he is the guest, what happens if an atheist is found to be deliberately burning down churches and mosques?

CHRISWell, he's a sociopath. I mean, you know, he's not doing it in the name of...

NNAMDIOkay. Well, here is Jacques Berlinerblau.

BERLINERBLAUI think it's interesting between Bob and Chris. You see -- I think Bob was the caller before Chris -- two very different understandings of atheism and it's all good. One who argues it's the complete absence of belief, and I've heard that and there's warrant for that. And the other who argues the atheist who acts morally is doing so from real understanding of a world view not based on fear. So there's a lot for atheists to kind of mull over and think about.

BERLINERBLAUI do want to kind of defend Chris and say atheist extremists engaging in acts of violence, that's really rare and I'm trying to think of some examples stateside. I can't think of it. I could go to the Soviet Union and I could point out to some really catastrophic decisions made by official government atheists, but I think that is actually a little different. So I do think we have to acknowledge that the small atheist movement in the United States has, to the best of my knowledge, Kojo, never been associated with this type of violent extremism.

NNAMDIChris, thank you very much for your call. In 2008, Jacques, then Senator Obama and Senator John McCain first shared the stage as presidential nominees in a conversation with Pastor Rick Warren. The fact that we have not seen any similar events this election season, what does that fact say about politics today?

BERLINERBLAUWow, August 16, 2008, I remember it well with John McCain and the cone of silence. What a -- the day American secularism died. That was very, very difficult for me to observe. Why? Because you literally had Pastor Warren religious testing McCain and Obama. It almost destroyed Obama's campaign. People forget how his approval ratings sunk after he gave a very poor answer on abortion, right, in front of a House that was really stacked against him.

BERLINERBLAUWhy didn't it happen this year? Here's an interesting footnote. Pastor Warren wanted it to happen this year, all right. Around July -- late July he was talking about this forum. He was going to do a redo and then both campaigns told Politico, if I'm not mistaken, nope we're not doing it this year. So the question is why did both not want to do the forum in 2012. I think the answer is this. Obama does have a religion liability on his right flank, especially with Catholic voters.

BERLINERBLAUAnd I think the Obama strategy was not to talk religion in any way until November 6 because it was a small weakness for him and a very dangerous weakness for him because of the HHS contraception mandates, which we might want to get into. And Romney, he was back in his economy, economy, economy phase and he didn't want to speak about religion either. And that's why I think you had this joint decision not to redo in 2012 what you did in 2008.

NNAMDIBut the broader question is, do American voters require presidential candidates to be publicly religious? Could a candidate who kept his or her beliefs private be elected president of the United States, or for that matter, probably to congress today?

BERLINERBLAUI regret to say no because a candidate that keeps coming up as somebody that would have a lot of street cred amongst a lot of different Americans is Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And Bloomberg has been almost cagey about what his religion is and what his actual beliefs are, though we know that he's a reformed Jew. And I was one of the ones who said in 2008, the problem with a Bloomberg candidacy is when they force him -- and I do mean force him to do god talk on the campaign trail.

BERLINERBLAUWhat is he going to say, right? What is that stump speech going to be, right, where he praises the eternal and the creator and talks about Bible classes when he was a kid. So I think it really is a disadvantage and it's an indice or a metric of some of the difficulties that secular America is experiencing today.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back, we will continue this conversation with Jacques Berlinerblau about secularism. His latest book is called "How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom." You can call us at 800-433-8850. Do you believe that American Christianity is threatened by secularism? Or you can go to our website kojoshow.org., join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. Our guest is Jacques Berlinerblau. He is a professor and program director for Jewish civilization at the Edmond Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, author of several books the most recent of which is titled "How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom." Let's go to Moez in Hyattsville, Md. Moez, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MOEZHey thank you, Kojo, for taking my call. Well, I've been waiting 'til a lot of answers was done for a lot of point I want to talk about it. So I go to my last point nobody mention it is in Europe there is a law against anybody who say any anti-Semitic things and all deny the Holocaust. And lately I heard the Obama Administration, they sign some law not to that extreme like in Europe but some law against any anti-Semitic rhetoric or anybody can do anything -- I mean, anti-Semitic -- I mean, it has to do with the anti-Semitic law.

MOEZSo I want your host to comment if that's necessary to do it in United States. And if it is so, why we choose which group to protect. Thank you and I will take my comment off...

NNAMDI...off the air. Thank you Moez, for your call. Go ahead, please, Jacques.

BERLINERBLAUThank you, Moez. This is something I've learned about secularisms. They're very different in every country. French secularism is very different from American secularism is very different from German secularism. Why do I raise that point? I raise that point because we don't have a history in this country of fanatical Judaea-phobia. So I would be cautious about universalizing speech codes. I'm very, very opposed to speech codes however, I do think in certain cases they may be warranted.

BERLINERBLAUI think in the United States our problems would be more along racial lines. And there are racial words which I wouldn't want to outlaw but I would be very, very concerned about from a freedom-of-speech perspective. So a quick answer to your question, no I don't think we should bring those anti-Semitic hate laws or Holocaust denial laws to the United States. Nope. We're too robust and too healthy a democracy. We're relatively free of that scourge of anti-Semitism.

BERLINERBLAUBut it is something to think about. There are some groups that get just pummeled in public space and we do have to think about them. We have to at least think about them and think about what the responsibilities of a true secular state might be towards these groups.

NNAMDIThere are laws in some predominantly Muslim countries that prohibit the, I guess, slandering of the name of the prophet Mohammad or the name of the religion. And one wonders if there is a thin line between slandering religions, the leaders of religions and hate speech. Is there a thin line between them?

BERLINERBLAUYeah, I mean, what's interesting about those countries is I think it's very important that we as Americans not tell those countries what their speech codes should be. If Indonesia or Pakistan wants to make it a punishable offense to slander the name of the prophet than I really feel that's absolutely their right to do so. What I'm finding complicated and problematic is we're being told by other countries, well, this is really the way you guys should set your speech policies because they upset us across the way in our country that doesn't have a similar history to your own.

BERLINERBLAUOne thing about religion -- I really want to get to your question though -- sorry.

NNAMDIIt's coming from Helen in Annandale, Va. so we'll be able to continue this conversation. Helen, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

HELENHi. I'm referring back to the video. I really think that we have to think about the motive of the people who were doing that. I believe that their motive was to cause trouble in the Middle East, to cause the uprising in the Middle East. And I think that's prosecutable because it is a hate crime. They wanted to cause that trouble. They wanted to have an uprising hoping that some people in the Muslim world would be killed.

NNAMDIHow do we parse hate speech in a context like this, Jacques?

BERLINERBLAUWell, you see, the problem is what do we do moving forward because now we know that if you do in fact make a movie like this, right, it's like a stimulus response -- a Pavlov-ian response, all right. So yeah, we're going to have this response. So I think the point, Helen, now is well taken. The cat's out of the bag. We know that anyone who does this is endangering the life of a United States Foreign Service member. I mean, this is what it's come to.

BERLINERBLAUI'm still going to say we have to hold fast on this because what's going to happen -- and I don't want to sound like that 1st Amendment purist, but we are going to degrade our civil liberties at home. And we've been doing a lot of that over the past decade. We are going to degrade them if we start getting our government involved in monitoring speech that is critical of religion.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Helen. When talking about separation of church and state it's hard not to talk about the 1st Amendment. In your book you call efforts to interpret the absolute meaning of that essential amendment constitutional ventriloquism. How does the 1st Amendment support secularism?

BERLINERBLAUSo congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Count them up, 16 words. How on earth are we supposed to regulate relations between 300 million Americans and their government on the basis of these 16 words? This was ambiguous 16 words in the English language. I'm not the only person, by the way, who believes that, many legal scholars have pointed out to the word and thought defining ambiguity of those words.

BERLINERBLAUThe 1st Amendment is great. God bless the 1st Amendment. It needs to be interpreted. We're never going to get inside the head of Mr. Madison. We're never going to get inside of the head of Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Washington, Mr. Franklin. We're going to have to live and breathe and grow with those words and figure out what they can mean to us today. In other words, what I'm saying -- and I feel many legal scholars agree with me on this, is we actually don't know what those words mean or suggest. There's so many different interpretations.

NNAMDIEvangelical Christians make up a quarter of the American electorate. How do you think secularism could gain support among those groups? According to a Pew Research poll 71 percent of Evangelical Christian leaders saw the influence of secularism as the biggest threat to American Christianity. Why do you think those leaders fear a secular movement?

BERLINERBLAUYou know, that was actually a global poll. I fear that in the United States, it's even higher. It might be 80, 90 percent. Here's one way. There are these really great scriptures in the New Testament that tell Christians to stay far away from government, to not be interested in it, to render unto Caesar what is his and to be obedient to the authorities that exist.

BERLINERBLAUAnd if you look at Jerry Falwell, for example, prior to Jerry Falwell entering the American political arena and just, you know, realigning everything, I mean, he really had a huge influence on American history, he used to give sermons about not getting into politics. Because he recalled -- he was worried about the civil rights movement. It was upsetting him as a segregationist. He didn't like the idea that other pastors were politicizing on behalf of civil rights. So he said, pastors gets out of politics, get back into your churches and preach. Preach the Gospel of the Lord. Isn't that interesting?

BERLINERBLAUSo all Christians in their DNA know the verses I'm referring to, Romans 13:1 thru -- they know those verses very, very well. So one way to get our good Christian Evangelical friends back into secularism is to ask them to look at some of the passages which they know very well in their own scriptures.

NNAMDISomeone else would like to answer that question is Steven in Washington, D.C. Steven, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

STEVENHi. You've finished your middle half, as click and clack would say. We have a question about secularism and Christianity, want to root for the other. And I think that you can go to Roger Williams for an answer on that. He was considered even by his enemies to be one of the most spiritual men in the world and yet for 20 of his last years, he never went into a church. He felt that religions ideally were of God and that government was of man and that government could only corrupt religion. And I think in many ways, he could be considered to be a founding father and an original source of the 1st Amendment.

NNAMDIOkay. Thank you very much for your call. Care to comment, Jacques?

BERLINERBLAUYeah, fortuitously in my book, I have him as one of the founding fathers and sources of the 1st Amendment. But more importantly, back to Kojo's earlier questions about Evangelical Christianity, this is the great Baptist contribution to our secular America. No Baptists, no secular America. No Jews, no secular America. Certain groups have made larger contributions than others. So I would remind conservative Christians today, in particular the Baptists, to go back to their glorious heritage on these church state issues.

NNAMDIOn to Jenna in Manassas, Va. Jenna, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. This is something that Jacques wanted to talk about, Jenna.

JENNAHi. Yes, thanks for having me on. I really do feel that the HHS mandate is going to affect religious freedom in the country. For me -- I'm Catholic -- and it is actually a great sin for me to provide an abortion-inducing drug, sterilization and yes, contraception as well to other people. I was frustrated watching the Democratic Convention because I saw that the narrative was that somehow we wanted to block people from getting contraception. And that is not at all the case.

JENNAThe problem is that we cannot provide it for free. Other people will have plenty of opportunity to still get contraception. They would just have to pay for it themselves as it always has been. And I'm curious if your -- what your guest thinks about that.

NNAMDIAs I said, this is something he wanted to discuss. Jacques.

BERLINERBLAUYeah, it's a very complicated question. This is not a night and day black and white question and I can clearly understand the Church's concerns here, all right. As I've thought it through this is something that keeps coming to my mind. All right. So you have the U.S. government, you have the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which for moral reasons is opposed to making contraception and abortifacients providable in the insurance coverage. I get it.

BERLINERBLAUBut you also have Catholic and non-Catholic employees. Now, let's drill down into the data. As far as we can tell, 90 percent of Catholics have used or are using contraception. So let's go back to the tripartite scheme I just gave you, Jenna. The U.S. government is being told by the Catholic Bishops not to provide something which most Catholics actually seem to want. How is the government supposed to puzzle that one through?

BERLINERBLAUIf 90 percent of Catholics are actually using something that the Bishops say they shouldn't be using, should a Democratic government be listening to the majority of Catholics, if it actually came down to that, or to the UCSSB? That, I think, is a very, very big problem here, that the Bishops are not walking in lockstep with their own flock and they are morally serious. And I don't think they're politicizing this as much as maybe some of my comments in the past have indicated. It's a very, very grave concern for them.

BERLINERBLAUBut they have to represent the flock on this issue. If not the government is quite literally ignoring the Democratic will of the majority there.

NNAMDIIf they represent the flock on this issue, would they not be, in a way, walking away from and betraying their fundamental religious commitment?

BERLINERBLAUYeah, somebody's commitments are going to be trampled over here. That's the problem and that's why it's a very complex question. And I want to say again, I want to stress, I don't think this is black and white. I mean, I see what the church's point is. But let me try to end this off on a feel-good note, this very complicated issue.

BERLINERBLAUThe Catholic Church is lawful and peaceful. When they disagree they protest peacefully. They did the Fortnight for Freedom, they write petitions, they lobby in congress, right. They play by the rules of the secular game as opposed to groups who don't like what the government does and riot in the street or murder ambassadors or engage in all sorts of disorderly activity. So I think the Catholic Church's response to this has been dignified and it's been completely within the parameters of what we would call American secularism.

NNAMDIRunning out of time very quickly, in about the minute or so we have left, during the 2008 elections you participated in a blog at the Post called the god vote. How do you see value voters influencing the campaigns and the outcome of the current presidential election?

BERLINERBLAUYep, the value voters are still there except maybe they're so important that they're not important. They're completely locked in to the Republican camp and they don't seem to waiver these value voters. And by that we mean conservative Evangelicals. So I think the African American community at a certain point in the '70s and '80s looked around and they were giving their support to Democrats again and again and again. And they asked themselves what are the Democrats giving us?

BERLINERBLAUI think in the next election cycle, the so called value voters within the GOP are going to ask that question of the GOP.

NNAMDIWell, what do you mean by values voters?

BERLINERBLAUValues are conservative -- white conservative Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Catholics.

NNAMDIJacques Berlinerblau is a professor and program director for Jewish civilization at the Edmond Walsh School of Foreign Services at Georgetown University. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is titled "How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom." Jacques Berlinerblau, thank you so much for joining us.

BERLINERBLAUThank you, Kojo. This was so fun.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.