The Dissent of the Governed : A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty [Hardcover]

Stephen L. Carter (Author)

Book Description

Series: William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization | Publication Date: April 12, 1998

Between loyalty and disobedience; between recognition of the law's authority and realization that the law is not always right: In America, this conflict is historic, with results as glorious as the mass protests of the civil rights movement and as inglorious as the armed violence of the militia movement. In an impassioned defense of dissent, Stephen L. Carter argues for the dialogue that negotiates this conflict and keeps democracy alive. His book portrays an America dying from a refusal to engage in such a dialogue, a polity where everybody speaks, but nobody listens.

The Dissent of the Governed is an eloquent diagnosis of what ails the American body politic--the unwillingness of people in power to hear disagreement unless forced to--and a prescription for a new process of response. Carter examines the divided American political character on dissent, with special reference to religion, identifying it in unexpected places, with an eye toward amending it before it destroys our democracy.

At the heart of this work is a rereading of the Declaration of Independence that puts dissent, not consent, at the center of the question of the legitimacy of democratic government. Carter warns that our liberal constitutional ethos--the tendency to assume that the nation must everywhere be morally the same--pressures citizens to be other than themselves when being themselves would lead to disobedience. This tendency, he argues, is particularly hard on religious citizens, whose notion of community may be quite different from that of the sovereign majority of citizens. His book makes a powerful case for the autonomy of communities--especially but not exclusively religious--into which democratic citizens organize themselves as a condition for dissent, dialogue, and independence. With reference to a number of cases, Carter shows how disobedience is sometimes necessary to the heartbeat of our democracy--and how the distinction between challenging accepted norms and challenging the sovereign itself, a distinction crucial to the Declaration of Independence, must be kept alive if Americans are to progress and prosper as a nation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In this "meditation on law, religion, and morality," originally delivered as part of Harvard's annual Massey Lectures series, which has attracted speakers from Richard Rorty to Toni Morrison, Stephen L. Carter dwells on themes from his larger books, including The Culture of Disbelief, with particular attention to allegiance (and its opposite, disallegiance) to religion and state.

Working from the text of the Declaration of Independence, Carter proposes that the true measure of a democracy can be found in its treatment of those citizens who dissent with its stated values. This has been especially important in the consideration of those who disagree with the local or federal government on moral grounds rooted in religious belief; in this century alone, that has been a factor in issues ranging from pacifist activism against World War I, the nonviolent civil rights movement of the 1960s, and the continuing debate over abortion rights. It is also relevant today with regard to such issues as the provision of government funds for private (usually religious) schools. Carter reminds us that the purpose of democracy is not to impose one set of values on a diverse citizenry, but to create a space for dialogue among people of varying value systems, each of which is accorded respect and dignity.

From Booklist

From the marginalizing of religion in U.S. politics and law--his subject in The Culture of Disbelief (1993)--Carter turns to how the federal courts discount religion. His point of departure is a reading of the Declaration of Independence that stresses dissent as the criterion of government legitimacy. The extent to which government accommodates dissent is the index of citizen allegiance; if dissenters' grievances are persistently ignored, that justifies disallegiance and rebellion. Carter thinks many religious citizens' allegiance is now strained because of liberal constitutionalism, which creates a single national community concerned to "get the answers [to problems] right" and "not to worry too much about the process," but which, to do so, dismisses allegiances to other communities, religious ones in particular, that individual citizens regard as fundamental. But other allegiances have been an important corrective to government, even when they led to lawbreaking; Martin Luther King Jr. argued--cogently, Carter believes--that the civil rights movement's civil disobedience, although it arose from religious conviction, was based in a deeper allegiance to the nation. Finally, Carter finds the courts habitually dismissive of dissent (the Supreme Court found against Dr. King, he reminds us) and feeling themselves under no political obligation to individual citizens and citizen groups. He sees in the integration by the courts of constitutional interpretation and political obligation the means to accommodate democratic citizens' several loyalties for the sake of justice. Read this little book and become a better American. Ray Olson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 235 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1St Edition edition (April 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674212657
• ISBN-13: 978-0674212657
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,117,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GRASPING THE OBVIOUS, October 16, 2001

By 

Rev. C Bryant (Newton, IA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dissent of the Governed : A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty (Paperback)

The Dissent of the Governed edits and expands three lectures which Carter presented at Harvard University in 1995. They found print in 1998, though the book came into general sales only last year. Having followed Carter since The Culture of Disbelief, appreciating him, arguing with him, sometimes disagreeing with him, I opened Dissent with expectation and some trepidation. Would ideas dating from six years ago speak to the America of the twenty-first century? The answer is yes.

Carter takes his title from the line in the Declaration of Independence which declares that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Carter argues, persuasively I believe, that a test of whether or not a government is authentic and just is how it handles the dissent of its citizens. The verdict for the United States is mostly negative. The "liberal project" of the twentieth century, symbolized by the New Deal and the Great Society, and given additional energy by the Civil Rights Movement, assumed that a legitimate role of government is to enforce a common set of values in the nation. The preferred method of enforcement is through societal structures, such as the school and the house of worship. Failing that, the government is justified in using law to enforce that common set of values. Carter argues that the project might have derailed, were it not for the Second Civil War (his name for the Civil Rights Movement), which relied on the courts for legitimation. Thus the judiciary became politicized. I read Dissent immediately after the Supreme Court intervened in the 2000 election, and I was amazed at Carter's prescience. That intervention, impossible to conceive were the judiciary truly independent of politics, could indeed have been predicted by the track record of the courts. The Right is correct: The courts do indeed make law. The courts are indeed political entities, part of what Carter calls the Sovereign, or ruling power in the land. The courts have become dangerous, though, precisely because they DENY the very role which they obviously play in the life of the nation.

With an argument like this, Carter could play into the hands of the most Right of those on the Right, those who advocate not only resistance to the Sovereign but active efforts to overcome that Sovereign. Carter avoids the trap. Instead, he focuses on the power of what he calls "communities of meaning" both to preserve themselves against the power of the Sovereign and to redeem the life of the nation. Carter means religious communities, all the way from the Jewish town of Kiryas Joel to religion-based schools in otherwise secular municipalities. Active dissent to the power of the Sovereign is the responsibility of such communities of meaning because it is the right of parents to provide for the transmission of their values to their children. Such provision includes dissent from a public education system which not only excludes religious expression but is often actively hostile toward that expression. With decisions like that upholding the right of the state to proscribe the use of peyote in religious rituals, the judiciary has made public policy regarding matters that belong in the hands of communities of meaning. In an age when the weight of history moves America toward diversity, the judiciary assumes a unanimity that can never exist, and probably should not exist.

As a Christian pastor in a mainline denomination, Dissent caused me to rethink my attitudes about those institutions that usually call themselves "Christian schools." Having served for nine years in an Indiana town dominated by a conservative denomination, miniscule outside its headquarters town, I had grown weary of the almost "in-your-face" attitude of folks associated with such schools. In a new town, where the Christian school is small and sometimes struggles, I realize that I was experiencing what Christian school supporters feel almost everywhere: Active disdain, and sometimes outright hostility, from the established sovereign. Having returned from a Holy Land trip more convinced than ever of the legitimacy of Christian claims to primacy among the world's religions, I now care whether or not it is "safe" for believers to speak of the things of faith. Naturally, those who believe differently must be protected from a tyranny of either the majority or the minority. Right now, no one is protected, and no one benefits, save the Sovereign. My wife just began teaching part time at our local Christian school. I thought and spoke of Carter's book often as I visited with folks at a recent open house. Read him. Think. Inspiring thought is what Stephen Carter does best, and he thinks about things that need thinking about.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three Meditations on Law, Religion and Loyalty, November 7, 2003

By 

rodboomboom (Dearborn, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Dissent of the Governed : A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty (Hardcover)

This erudite writer is one of my favorites. Having enjoyed his previous writings, this one is no exception.

He argues a salient point that the Declaration of Independence might certainly be more about government by the dissent rather than by consent. In this regard, he cites the section of the Declaration which speaks of repeated replies to dissent by continued injuries and disinterest.

He then relates this thesis through the three lenses of: Allegiance, Disobedience, Interpretation.

Making good points along the way, he concludes: If instead we celebrate, always, results over people, bureaucracy over democracy, and centralization over community, then, we are saying after all that we have no interest in the "repeated Petitions" of which the Declaration speaks, that we will, as our revolutionary forebears charged against George III, meet the petitions only with ""repeated injury." If that is what constitutionalism has wrought, it is but one more sign that our celebration of the Declaration of Independence--indeed, our claim to democracy itself--is a sham."

Only wish is that his theology in places were more Biblical, i.e. that he saw the import of Romans 13 and the true Soverign's role in placing authorities, followed by understanding the two kingdom's functioning.

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of food for thought, April 12, 2010

By 

Neal C. Reynolds (Indianapolis, Indiana) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dissent of the Governed : A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty (Paperback)

I have been familiar with Stephen L. Carter mainly through his novels and am only now reading his non-fiction. This is the second of those I've read and find him a truly erudite writer, and very much a deep thinker. Not all will agree with him, and I doubt that anyone will agree with each and every point, but that's not the issue. He makes us think about how the basic way government has been working as if to unify all of us without regard to individual faiths creates civil disobedience. Much is said about the racial issues from the days of slavery up to the present time. Many examples are given of the government causing conflict between one's belief and one's following the law with emphasis put on court decisions, some wise, but many apparantly unwise. The book as a whole doesn't as much propt one to action as it simply makes us aware, and this indeed is worthy.