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Religious liberty: a dilemma

Suppose, uncontroversially, that it is morally obligatory to refrain from attempts to impose any particular religion on people by force. Call that obligation 'O'. What is the basis for O?

Some argue that the basis for O is a larger set of moral norms one can show, by philosophical reasoning alone, to be obligatory in itself and to logically entail O. But there is more than one version of such an argument. One is deontological and runs roughly like this: (i) Trying to force people to violate their conscience is intrinsically wrong, irrespective of what good might be thought to come of doing so, and thus can never be justified; (ii) trying to force people to adopt a particular religion is tantamount to trying to force them to violate their conscience; (iii) therefore, O. Let us grant that the argument is logically valid and that (ii) is true. Even so, there are two difficulties with (i).

One difficulty is that there's no agreement that (i) can be established on purely philosophical grounds without appealing to some sort of religious belief. If (i) itself requires religious support, then a regime upholding religious liberty of the sort described by O entails requiring religious toleration in practice from people who believe that such toleration is immoral—think Muslims and militant non-believers here—and also entails requiring such toleration for religious reasons. It's hard to see how that is compatible with O. The other difficulty is that, among those who believe O requires no religious support, there is no consensus about the philosophical basis for (i). Should religious liberty be made to rest on such a thin reed—especially given the all-too-likely possibility that some people have a culpably malformed conscience?

In view of such difficulties, some people prefer to support O in utilitarian terms. One way to do that is to make the common argument that seeking to impose any religion by force "doesn't work," inasmuch as such an attempt can, at most, achieve external conformity rather than genuine conviction. But whether or not that is true, the argument can be made to support O only if it is shown further that imposing external conformity fails to achieve social benefits outweighing the cost of doing so. Since that is precisely what the opponent of O would deny, the most that the "it doesn't work" argument can establish is that the proponents of O disagree with its opponents about what the relevant criteria of social utility are. Such an argument thus begs the question, unless some independent agreement can be reached about the relevant criteria.

By far the most common way of seeking such agreement is to argue that, given the very lack of agreement about what the objective basis for O is, society is better off treating O as a working assumption needed for the sake of maintaining civil peace. And given the long peace about religion that has prevailed in the West, that argument seems plausible. But there's a problem nonetheless. It is not only conceivable, but in fact sometimes happens, that civil peace cannot be maintained by premising a regime of religious liberty on O.

Have a look at what's going on in countries with significant Muslim populations agitating for the imposition of sharia, at least for themselves. Confronted with such agitation, a regime premised on O for the sake of maintaining civil peace can no longer cite utilitarian reasons for doing so. It must either accede to Muslim demands for the sake of maintaining civil peace, thus imposing a religious double standard that is incompatible with O itself; or it must refuse such demands, in which case civil peace is concretely undermined because the Muslims believe themselves to be the victim of religious intolerance. Accordingly and paradoxically, a utilitarian rationale for adopting O only works if nearly everybody in a given society believes O for their own reasons anyway. When such a consensus breaks down, so does the utilitarian rationale for O.

Much the same would go for a society in which it is not the Islamists, but rather militant secularists, who hold sway. As the example of Canada illustrates, a regime theoretically premised on O, but practically controlled by secularists, can easily end up curtailing the public profession of forms of Christianity that secularists and other non-Christians find offensive. In addition to being arguably incompatible with O, such an outcome is consistent with civil peace only so long as such Christians remain sheeplike. But there is no practical guarantee that they will remain sheeplike, and no moral guarantee that they should.

In light of all this, it seems clear that the dual challenge of Islamism and militant secularism requires Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, to think more rigorously about what we believe the objective basis for religious liberty to be. So far, I don't see much of that happening.

Comments (46)

Very interesting post, Michael. I think what you are saying is that there is no content-neutral, secular rationale for O. I wonder if there could be a content-specific rationale for a cousin of O that was nonetheless in some sense secular? For example, suppose that someone argued that we should not try to force people to adopt some one specific religion but that we could legitimately force people to act as if they disbelieved in some specific religion or religions if those specific religions themselves required morally intrinsically wrong acts. Hence, Muslims could legitimately be forced to refrain from trying to beat people up for passing out Christian tracts, because it is morally wrong and a violation of civil order to try to beat people up for passing out Christian tracts. Secularists should be forced to allow statements that homosexuality is immoral, because it is immoral to squelch such statements, because such statements are not only true but also not themselves disruptive of civil order. And so forth. All of this would require _enormous_ amounts of content about what really is wrong and right, content on which, of course, there will be fierce disagreement, and the upshot would be that you shouldn't try to force someone to abandon a religion that doesn't require him to do evil things that the state may legitimately prohibit but may require him to abandon the active practice of a religion that does. But I'm not sure that the adoption of substantive moral content automatically renders such a position religious.

But I'm not sure that the adoption of substantive moral content automatically renders such a position religious.

Both the Islamist and the militant secularist would argue that it does. I'm not sure how one might refute them, or even whether it would be desirable to do so.

I think in Isreal they have made prostelitizing illegal. It just caused to many fights.Is that a violation of O? It violates free speech but it help with civil peace. OK, Isreal is not a model of civil peace but they think it would be worse if groups started trying to convert each other's kids.

The other thing I wonder about is how secular you think Canada is. I live here and it does not seem so bad. I am in Alberta and I am sure it is worse in Quebec. Still I think the blog world has a very strange view of my country.

My view is any bill of rights needs a creed. The creed can be a lot weaker than any fully functional faith. It would likely need to be based on natural law in some form. But without a creed you have no way to judge religions. So a Moslem who teaches his followers to kill Jews cannot be told his faith is unacceptable without some definition of what is the minimum moral standard for citizenship.

The example of Israel shows that curtailing some forms of public religious expression is sometimes necessary for maintaining civil peace. Some Canadians I know would disagree with you about how bad the situation in Canada is. But neither the Israeli nor the Canadian example show that the true philosophical basis for O is utilitarian. I would argue that it cannot be; and it seems you don't think it can be either. Thus:

My view is any bill of rights needs a creed. The creed can be a lot weaker than any fully functional faith. It would likely need to be based on natural law in some form. But without a creed you have no way to judge religions.

Very well then: how do you deal with the difficulties I described in my third paragraph?

Mike a couple of thoughts

(Apologies in advance for framing my remarks in non-philisophical language).

1st Dosn't Religious liberty (RL) assume that all creeds are fideistic and cannot be rationally demonstrated

2nd As (RL) assumes that as all creeds rely on fidiem, propononts of RL envision a situation where there is no RL which could result in a situation where adherants of a creed (which is demonstrably false) would impose that false creed on people against their will and any challange is crushed on grounds of heresy meaning that people cannot be subjected to infomation which would allow them to break free of the false creed.

3rd Therefore so much depends on moral code of any particluar relgion (dose its moral code mandate forced conversion) that RL is preferable.


As far as I see the whole argument rests on premise one,is any creed demonstrably true?, ironically any true creed in a situation where there is no RL will likely employ the same tactics as a false one :)

personally all this theorizing is quite Ironic as my fellow SSPX Catholics will slam me on this one for contradicting Pius IX's syllabus of errors :)

Jack:

As my debate with Lydia and Tim McGrew in the "Evidential Ammo" thread indicates, I do not believe that any religion is "demonstrably true" in the sense that anybody who rejects the best arguments for a given religion is demonstrably irrational. But I don't think it follows that all creeds are "fideistic." It might be the case that more than one creed is rationally justifiable without being rationally compelling in the absence of the gift of faith. And I happen to believe that more than one creed--i.e. the Jewish and the Christian--are just that. Remember that Vatican I condemned fideism as much as rationalism.

The upshot is that I don't think upholding RL requires fideism. Dignitatis Humanae is a good illustration of how a religious but non-fideistic rationale for RL can be formulated. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that upholding RL ultimately requires some form of ethical monotheism. My doubts arise from my suspicion that a merely philosophical version of ethical monotheism would not be enough to secure that in practice.

Mike

I'm with you on the first paragraph, (perhaps I phrased myself badly, I'm only a Collage Sophomore) as for Dignitas Humanae I confess as someone who keeps all of the Vatican Two documents at arms length that I've never read it.

Jack:

I highly recommend your reading the documents of Vatican II in toto. There are problems of ambiguity in certain places, which is my chief criticism of them. But they can and ought to be interpreted in an orthodox sense. That's what our Holy Father does.

Best,
Mike

Mike
I know this is off-topic and i'll stop after this post, but the ambiguity of the V2 Documents is precisiely why I don't read them even though I'm informed that an orthodox interpritation is possable, this is why unlike many SSPX I don't deny the whole thing, (also as we don't 'officially' have RL in England maintaining good relations with the Anglicans is important). However as both John XXIII and Paul VI said that the council defined no new dogmas it follows that the dogmatic nature of V2 is already contained in both the documents of Vatican 1 (in a much more concise form) and other pre-concillior documents which is why I perfer them.

Best
Jack.

Mike, good post. Lydia, I think you are on the right track, too. I have long maintained that Dignitatis Humanae needs to be read in such a way as to permit the explicit state promotion of the Christian religion - in a state in which nearly everyone is Christian. And to promote monotheism, in a state in which nearly everyone is monotheistic, even though of different stripes. And to make a distinction between legal penalties for not adhering to the true religion (which would be the state imposing sanctions against conscience) and non-participation in social benefits attendant on participating in the true religion.

The root problem with the total hands-off approach taken in the last 60 years in our country is that it implies (and indeed teaches) that when you can't publicly prove which of A or B is the most true religion, ALL religions are equally irrational and merely to be tolerated (equally), none promoted whatsoever. The reductio to this is obvious: what about Moloch-worship, including child sacrifice? Even if the arguments between A and B are sufficiently difficult so that the public cannot agree on them, it is easy for the public to see (well, was easy for the public to see 60 years ago, I am not so sure about it now) the firm reasons for not granting to Moloch-worship the status of religion, no matter how "sincere" its devotees claim to be.

Of necessity, then, society as a whole and the state as such are invested with the capacity to say X 'religion' is no religion. Even if the state cannot publicly resolve between A and B, it can publicly proscribe children being sacrificed to Moloch. If the state has this much authority, then in principle it must have authority to speak to its citizens about true religion.

Even though the true religion cannot be proven definitively by reason alone, certain false religions CAN be proven wrong by reason alone. The modern attitude of the state playing hands-off for ALL religion at root relies on an assumption that all religion is equally in the same class - superstition. An assumption that is itself no better than any religious creed.

Jack:

I’m sure you’ve heard of the late Michael Davies. You should read his books on Vatican II and post-Vatican II.

It might be the case that more than one creed is rationally justifiable without being rationally compelling in the absence of the gift of faith. And I happen to believe that more than one creed--i.e. the Jewish and the Christian--are just that.

Jewish? Quo vadis, Michael?


Jack:

Although the documents of Vatican II can be brushed aside without committing the sin of heresy, I think doing so is a grave mistake all the same. The big four--Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, Dignitatis Humanae, and Gaudium et spes--make important contributions to the development of doctrine which are now taken for granted by the ordinary and universal magisterium. As the SSPX's ongoing difficulties with the Vatican indicate, one cannot reject such developments without being in at least de facto schism with the Holy See.

Best,
Mike

George:

Christianity presupposes the truth of the religion revealed and practiced in the Old Testament, i.e. the Jewish religion. Of course it is also clear that most Jews since Christ have failed to see how Christianity fulfills, and thus is compatible with, said religion. ("I have come not to abolish the Torah but to fulfill it.") But that kind of failing is hardly unique to the Jews. Non-Catholic Christians fail to see how distinctively Catholic doctrines are authentic developments of the original deposit of faith. So in general, it would be wrong to say that Judaism and non-Catholic Christianity are rationally unjustifiable. Of such religions, I think Catholics should say that their affirmation of certain truths is rationally justifiable and that their denial of certain others, though not justified, is not demonstrably irrational either.

I encountered this very same issue in my work only two days ago. An Episcopal Pastor (?) spoke to a flock (not his own) in central New York about the Doctrine of Discovery. When the Europena powers started colonizing what is now the USA and Canada, the Church leaders developed a policy that prevented all out war amongst competing nations. If France laid claim to land inhabited by Indians, France could claim it in the name of the Christian kingdom and treat the Indians as brutally as France thought they needed to in order to bring about conversion and quell uprisings (Not O). But, if England or Spain laid claim to the same land that France had already claimed, England could not seize the land from the Indians because they had not "discovered" it. Apparently, only virgin conquests carried with them the right to kick the Indians around.

Anyway, my Episcopal pastor spoke about how evil the Doctrine of Discovery was and how no nation has ever had the "right" to force Indigenous peoples to buckle under to Christianity by force; that this was a misunderstanding of Christianity. Hence the pop-culture version of O.

Regardless of the moral content of this argument, the Doctrine of Discovery was viewed as the law. It was the basis for colonizing and to some extent it still remains the basis for occupation and jurisdiction. Episcopalians are trying to reverse history and declare the law invalid because it was immoral. A cute trick to be sure, especially if Church and State are not supposed to be intertwined in the West.

Anyway, I found this post and the ensuing discussion interesting, but it is not a discussion into which I can enter on philosophical points. Just thought I would throw in how "O" is playing itself out in Indigenous populations and pop-culture circles.

david

i) Trying to force people to violate their conscience is intrinsically wrong, irrespective of what good might be thought to come of doing so, and thus can never be justified;

That entire premise presupposes a religion which does not require its faithful practitioners to violate the basic human rights of others. It illogically assumes that no one will practice something like a revival of Moloch worship or the ancient Aztec religion. Such religions intrinsically cannot be tolerated because their very practice represents a violation of the laws of any normal society.

That sounds reasonable, Mike. One consequence of your position, though, is that it is sometimes not only permissible, but obligatory, to force people to violate their conscience. That was the Spanish conquistadores' justification for violently suppressing the ancient Aztec religion.

If we're going to proceed that way, however, we'd better be sure of the basis for holding that certain "laws," which you call "the laws of any normal human society," can be known with certainty to bind us. Is that basis merely philosophical, or also religious?

We certainly need to maintain a distinction between violently suppressing a human-sacrifice religion and requiring (on pain of unpleasant punishment) its former practitioners to engage in the specifically religious practices of a different religion--e.g., to be baptized. Christian teaching (including Roman Catholic teaching) now is, quite rightly, that this does not engender the worship God requires or desires and that the attempt literally to make Christians by force is, indeed, seriously immoral.

Right, Lydia. There is an important practical distinction between forbidding you to do what you think your religion commands (under penalty of law, such as fine or imprisonment), and requiring you to do something a religion you don't believe in commands under penalty of law, and further of not granting you privileges in society when you insist on carrying on with your religion (such as not granting you a professorship as long as you remain a pagan).

Unfortunately, because people think that "equality before the law" means that the law must interfere (with legal sanctions such as fines and loss of liberty) when private institutions make discriminating decisions, and because people refuse to attempt to understand where the law leaves off and social inter-relations take up, the practical distinction must rely on philosophical distinctions that have not been widely understood and accepted. Indeed, it is difficult philosophically to set out the principles.

If we're going to proceed that way, however, we'd better be sure of the basis for holding that certain "laws," which you call "the laws of any normal human society," can be known with certainty to bind us. Is that basis merely philosophical, or also religious?

It has elements of both. Of course, the question remains whether or not you can convince people of higher truths which are spiritually discerned. I would submit that you cannot, and since human philosophy rests on the human mind, regenerated or not, one must be aware of the distinct limitations of philosophy to communicate a reliable and concrete set of information on these matters to a diverse population.

Invariably, the defenders of liberty and morality must be willing to shed blood at some point. You cannot use your own moral persuasion on a completely unregenerated mind committed to evil. At some point, you must put down the pen and take up the sword. Parts of Europe have reached that point now with Islam. Their wide freedom of religion and tolerance has served them well. Whatever basis they built them on now is immaterial to the fact that they are becoming sacred cows and it is fast becoming time to fire up the grill for some steaks and hamburgers if society is to sustain itself there.

that this does not engender the worship God requires or desires and that the attempt literally to make Christians by force is, indeed, seriously immoral.

Not to mention the fact that it has no bearing on their salvation. Salvation is a gift of God, and as such cannot be forced into someone's hand.

It's also instructive that in Luke 9, Jesus rebuked His disciples for attempting to punish a village for rejecting Him.

The root problem with the total hands-off approach taken in the last 60 years in our country is that it implies (and indeed teaches) that when you can't publicly prove which of A or B is the most true religion, ALL religions are equally irrational and merely to be tolerated (equally), none promoted whatsoever

The problem with this is it is impossible. Nature abhors a vacuum. So some faith will fill the void. People are very focused on keeping any promotion of Christianity out of the public. But who keeps sentimentalism out of the public spotlight? Who keep scientific humanism from being endorsed by government?

I really doubt whether religious libery is workable. It needs certain basics on which to found a society. Then it needs to stop worrying about catering to the majority. If most families are Christian then let your institutions reflect that. If there are places where there are lots of moslems or hindus then local schools and laws can reflect that. They still need to abide by the basic framework of the nation so you may not teach violence or polygamy or refuse to educate girls.

Very well then: how do you deal with the difficulties I described in my third paragraph?

I am not sure there is a way. If a moslem believes that any fellow moslem that wants to become Christian should be put to death then he can't live in a society where religious liberty is valued. He either has to stop teaching that doctrine or he needs to be put in jail. But who wants a government to get into the business of judging which doctrines are acceptable? What are the odds they will target a Catholic doctrine next? But there are doctrines so anti-social that you can't avoid simply ruling them out of bounds.

But who wants a government to get into the business of judging which doctrines are acceptable?

Well, when we're talking about a doctrine that innocent people have to be murdered, _somebody_ in authority had better judge that "doctrine" unacceptable.

The problem is that the moral sensibilities of Western intellectuals are now so severely disordered that they put simply teaching that homosexual acts are immoral on a par with teaching that apostates must be murdered! This is foolish, even from a secular perspective. The parallel, if any, would be teaching that apostasy is immoral!

But who wants a government to get into the business of judging which doctrines are acceptable? What are the odds they will target a Catholic doctrine next? But there are doctrines so anti-social that you can't avoid simply ruling them out of bounds.

It help would help if we returned to the original system of law enforcement, wherein the public had equal authority with the sheriff to remand people into the custody of the courts in accordance with the laws passed by the legislature. The advantage of that was that the state had to rely on the public's willingness to cooperate with the sheriff and his handful of deputies in order to enforce draconian laws. Under that system, one would find it quite difficult to get many people willing to help the state to attack Catholicism for a reasonable argument that was labeled dangerous.

1st Dosn't Religious liberty (RL) assume that all creeds are fideistic and cannot be rationally demonstrated
I do not believe that any religion is "demonstrably true" in the sense that anybody who rejects the best arguments for a given religion is demonstrably irrational.

If it is not clear that God exists, in the sense that the alternative is irrational/contradictory, then on what grounds can one be held accountable for unbelief in God since one would than have a rational excuse not to believe?

It seems that fideism is simply the flip-side of skepticism regarding basic truth.

Perhaps "(i)" can be said to violate the nature of a human being as a rationally free being and based on it violating the nature of our being it is therefore naturally and universally evil, regardless of the results it produces or any intuitions regarding its intrinsic-ness.

Dr. Liccione,

A thomistic argument for O might be that the Catholic faith is beyond reason and requires that God take the first step in giving someone the light of faith (Summa T, q. 1 art. 1). This is not so much an appeal to conscience as to the nature of revelation. To think one could engender the light of faith in another would be to deny the axiom nemo dat quod non habet. Again, if "flesh and blood did not reveal this to you" how much more foolish is it to think that it can be revealed by a sword?

This argument can be made "by reason" so far as by reason alone we can at least recognize that there is a contradiction in demanding that someone assent to revelation that is only seen in the light of faith, and one cannot assent to the reality of the Incarnation or the Trinity without this light. Even if, per impossibile, we could come up with an absolutely irrefutable proof for the trinity and Incarnation, the assent to such a proof would not save our souls, since we would not be accepting the truth precisely as revealed but as demonstrated. These are totally distinct modes of knowing.

I don't know whether to take this argument for O as "rational" or "revealed". I think it is reasonable to ask people to accept that by reason alone they can see that revelation is at least possible, and where some strong claim to it can be made, it is reasonable to respect it.

But if O is compatible with Islam, then Mohammed was a bad Muslim. Outside the claims of Christianity, I don't see much reason why a state can't force some sort of religion on its members, so far as religion is a part of natural justice.

The advantage of that was that the state had to rely on the public's willingness to cooperate with the sheriff and his handful of deputies in order to enforce draconian laws. Under that system, one would find it quite difficult to get many people willing to help the state to attack Catholicism for a reasonable argument that was labeled dangerous.

The problem is that the government can demonize ideas as well as people. You would not need a majority to help. You would just need to find a committed anti-Catholic group of people. I have no doubt such people could be found.

Micael Liccione:

Christianity presupposes the truth of the religion revealed and practiced in the Old Testament, i.e. the Jewish religion.

Yes, but Judaism is not the religion revealed and practiced in the Old Testament; and the proof of that is demonstrable.

I disagree, but this thread is not the place to debate the question.

Well, when we're talking about a doctrine that innocent people have to be murdered, _somebody_ in authority had better judge that "doctrine" unacceptable.

Some of these religious-rights hypotheticals are less complicated than this discussion would indicate.

It seems reasonable to suggest that one of the important functions of government is to protect our safety, and another of government's important functions is to protect our freedom. It's been observed that there is necessarily a trade-off between the two.

In theory, this means that where Group A wants the freedom to harm Group B, or the freedom to restrict the freedom of Group B, then "we have an impasse which must be resolved by the government.

In practice, many of these situations can be resolved pretty rationally. If Group A wants the freedom to cut off the heads of Group B, and Group B wants the freedom not to have their heads cut off, it's pretty reasonable to believe that a government is best serving its functions when it prevents Group A from beheading Group B's members.

If Group A's desire is religiously motivated, this doesn't really require the government to render a judgment about the truth or accuracy of Group A's beliefs. A government can simply degree that involuntary decapitation is illegal, without regard to motivation.

It's one reason that "consent" figures as such a key concept in the law, even when it is less significant to many religions. The "freedom to restrict another person's freedom" and the "freedom to harm another person" are often an easily recognizable category of actions that are distinct in nature from "the freedom to live one's life without interference."

Lydia, Tony, mark, and James:

All of you seem to favor, in one form or another, a deontological argument for O. As it happens, so do I; I agree with James' argument in particular. But the dilemma I posed is this: "If (i) itself requires religious support, then a regime upholding religious liberty of the sort described by O entails requiring religious toleration in practice from people who believe that such toleration is immoral"; and if (i) requires only philosophical support, there is all the same no agreement on how to provide that support. In either case, the argument for (i) serves only to justify coercing people who do not share the argument's premises. In most other contexts, that is not a special problem; after all, the rule of law in general would be impossible if it did not require coercing people who happen to disagree with the law. But in this context, there is a special problem.

It's all very well to distinguish, as we must, between trying to force people to adopt a particular religion and preventing them, in some circumstances, from doing what their religion calls for them to do, so that the latter is seen as permissible and the former impermissible. But there is no way to apply that distinction non-arbitrarily without relying on premises from which it follows that at least some religions are false in at least some respects. Thus, as Lydia and Tony recognize, the state cannot avoid making alethic distinctions between religious ideas. The question then becomes whether the making of those distinctions requires, or does not require, premising that certain other distinctively religious ideas are true. If we say the former, then coercion based on such premises involves requiring dissenters to act as if certain religious ideas they reject are true. That seems incompatible with O. If we say the latter, then we are endeavoring to justify coercing those people on a philosophical basis that not even its proponents agree on how to provide. That seems insufficient as a justification for coercion of any sort in a bedrock matter of conscience.

The upshot is this: Once we grant that "there is no content-neutral, secular rationale for O," those who uphold O for deontological reasons need to reach some agreement on how to do so which avoids violating O and yet is rationally compelling. There seems to be no religious rationale for O that is fully compatible with O; and there seems to be no secular rationale for O that can command general assent.

Mike,

I don't see that it requires religious support to assent to the claim that if something is beyond reason (and neither contrary to it nor concluded from it) that law cannot demand assent to it or denial of it. Law extends as far as reason does. The voice of law, which cannot speak without force, must be silent before whatever goes beyond reason- and this silence is ipso facto a freedom from the coercion of law.

But the argument you are making is broader than what is revealed-beyond-reason, since "religion" includes much more than this. For my own part, I think public worship, adoration, and thanksgiving of God as the author of nature is natural and reasonable, and that there would be no contradiction in a state mandating that every citizen- even Christians- must publically worship the first mover, cause, necessary being, highest good, author of nature. Such a law would force secularists too. I don't see this as demanding "religious" support as religion is presently understood (sc. sectarian and/or revealed dogmas).

If Group A's desire is religiously motivated, this doesn't really require the government to render a judgment about the truth or accuracy of Group A's beliefs. A government can simply degree that involuntary decapitation is illegal, without regard to motivation.

But what if group A was just teaching that beheading memeber of group B was OK. Some members of group A were then acting on this teaching and beheading some members of group B. But it was difficult to identify which member of group A were actually doing the beheading because many members of group A were not cooperating with the police thinking this should no be a crime anyway.

So you end up with doctrine that matters. People die because of it. Freedom of religion makes the assumption that doctrine does not matter. That basic respect for human dignity will not be what is at issue. It assumes they are fighting over the papacy or baptism or some such thing. That was the case when the constitution was written. But it isn't anymore.

The problem with the very question at hand is that "religious liberty" as a concept is, at a fundamental level, incoherent, which should not surprise us because its current formulation, which we label as "O," is a product of the Enlightenment.

As such a product, "O" both presupposes and ignores a pre-existing moral-religious foundation-context and assumes certain impossible divisions between "religion" and "acts flowing from religion" as if there is any way to justify what is, at root, a public/private or material/spiritual or body/mind or doctrine/ethics division. Religions, therefore, that deny such a division such as Islam and, in a different way, non-Gnostic orthodox Christianity, are fundamentally incompatible with modernity's conception of "religious liberty" as commonly understood. In fact, this is exactly why Locke himself denied the possibility that atheists could be good citizens, and in fact was highly suspicious of Catholics. In his own misgivings, he betrayed an acknowledgment of the incoherence of this religion/secular division on which "O" is grounded, a division that denies that Christianity is a holistic way of life that not only includes "religion," i.e. doctrine, but the practices, institutions, artifacts and other cultural aspects that are grounded in the Lordship of Christ over all things as Creator and Redeemer. Really.

At some level, I think everyone who is a regular at this site knows this. John Locke himself understood this, that "religious liberty" only applies to religions within a bounded set. In Locke's time, he limited religious liberty to Protestant Christian sects. It is impossible that some such exclusionary boundary should not exist; indeed, modernity and each of us who have absorbed more or less modernity from culture, try to do philosophical contortions to try to rescue such a conception of religious liberty because our entire political regime in the United States of America happens to rest on it.

But it is deeply flawed because it presupposes Enlightenment divisions of public/private, "rational"/"irrational," pure subjective/pure objective, etc. etc. and attempts to make the Christian religion fit into that paradigm. This vision could only successfully sustain society for as long as certain public cultural ideas, practices and institutions from pre-modern Christendom (e.g. marriage); unfortunately for the U.S., this vast cultural inheritance of truth, goodness and beauty is more or less used up, and our modern institutions actively prevent its replenishment through the annihilation of tradition, which is the annihilation of culture and of knowledge itself.

I think we Christians living in modernity need to be clear about this and not entertain the notion that "religious liberty" is at all coherent or sustainable. Neither is the division between doctrine and ethics (as if theology is ever impractical) which I see some trying to maintain. The question ought not to be whether some Enlightenment ideal of "religious liberty" ought to be maintained, but precisely what religioethical differences ought to be tolerated and which ought not to be tolerated because 1) human knowledge is not comprehensive, and on a similar note 2) sanctification is not complete and all human beings on Earth are fallible.

RE: my last paragraph on the grounds of limited toleration, both 1) and 2) are specifically Christian ideas rooted in faith-reason. "Reason alone," "faith/reason," "naked reason," "purely rational," these are all Enlightenment dualism fallacies. Anyone who uses these phrases are evidencing the grip of modernity, if they are not speaking to the natives. They have been or have gone, to that extent, native.

Also, in case I was unclear, I am not at all a fan of John Locke and my thoughts are not Lockean. I only cited him to display in his own words the incoherence of his own position as an advocate for "O."

James:

I think public worship, adoration, and thanksgiving of God as the author of nature is natural and reasonable, and that there would be no contradiction in a state mandating that every citizen- even Christians- must publically worship the first mover, cause, necessary being, highest good, author of nature. Such a law would force secularists too. I don't see this as demanding "religious" support as religion is presently understood (sc. sectarian and/or revealed dogmas).

Spoken like a good Thomist. Problem is, the distinction between natural and revealed religion is no longer generally accepted and understood, and would itself be regarded as one which is peculiar to a relatively small minority of people. Dissenters from your civic religion would accordingly appeal to some deontological ethic according to which requiring worship of the god of natural theology would violate a right that can be known to obtain without postulating any divine lawgiver. What would you say to them?

Albert:

I'm inclined to agree with you that the American experiment in religious liberty is premised on an ideal that "both presupposes and ignores" an essentially religious cultural base. Some of the Founding Fathers thought the same, or what amounts to the same. But I think you're overstating your case.

Religions, therefore, that deny such a division such as Islam and, in a different way, non-Gnostic orthodox Christianity, are fundamentally incompatible with modernity's conception of "religious liberty" as commonly understood.

I agree with you about Islam, but I don't understand your argument to the same effect about "non-Gnostic orthodox Christianity." What about "render unto Caesar" and all that? Where, for that matter, do you think the logic of Dignitatis Humanae breaks down?

The question ought not to be whether some Enlightenment ideal of "religious liberty" ought to be maintained, but precisely what religio-ethical differences ought to be tolerated and which ought not to be tolerated.

Given the case of both Islam and militant secularism, I agree that the question ought to be framed as you frame it there. But what I've been trying to get people to do is discuss how to answer the question without ending up rejecting O. I've been trying to do that because I'm not sure whether O requires a specifically religious justification as distinct from a purely philosophical one. I don't see anybody attempting the latter, and I suspect that a specifically religious justification for O might well end up licensing a regime that is incompatible with O. Tentatively, I think it's a simple matter of logic that the scope of O must be limited to people whose religions are compatible with it.

BTW, I like you link to that Front Porch Republic article. Polanyi is a very important yet neglected thinker.

Suppose, uncontroversially, that it is morally obligatory to refrain from attempts to impose any particular religion on people by force. Call that obligation 'O'.

I don't see that it requires religious support to assent to the claim that if something is beyond reason (and neither contrary to it nor concluded from it) that law cannot demand assent to it or denial of it. Law extends as far as reason does. The voice of law, which cannot speak without force, must be silent before whatever goes beyond reason- and this silence is ipso facto a freedom from the coercion of law.

Can I suggest that 0 is improperly stated, that it is not well-defined (in the set-theory parlance).

(1) It is one thing to force someone to accept a whole religion, hook, line, and sinker, as if their very consciences in toto were (if that were possible) to be submitted to force. (2) It is (at least potentially) another thing to force them to do one specific act that a foreign religion requires, which is not compatible with their religion. (3) It is a third to require them to do something which they themselves do not feel bound to observe religiously. (4) It is a fourth thing to force someone to refrain from acts which their religion suggests but does not mandate. Any one of these are some sort of "forcing" them to accept another religion, but not all in quite the same moral nor political sense. Therefore, it is not a foregone conclusion that all four fall afoul of 0 equally or in the same way.

It is my understanding of medieval teaching on the subject that, contrary to 0 as stated above (taking it in its strong sense), it IS correct for the state to enjoin (3) and (4) at times, at a minimum, but also (2) in some instances. The classic example is to force pagans to refrain from publicly teaching their false religion - the theory being that they can continue to hold paganism within their own hearts, but to publicly teach it is a violation of public order.

This theory rested at least in part on the principle that certain religious ideas, and therefore certain religions, were capable of direct rational disproof. There can be no valid obligation in principle to teach something that can be, and is, publicly disproven. [Our modern society culturally denies that principle, though not by reason of believing that they can prove it is defective in logic and reasoning. It is merely assumed defective as unnatural to the "American ideal" of freedom of religion and 'respect' for everyone's opinion, however irrational.] Anyway, Dignitatis Humanae supports the notion that at least in some instances, public teaching of a religion is in fact an infringement of the hearer's rights. The easiest example is that of "teaching" X religion is wrong because 'they claim A and B, and we all know A and B are stupid'. Like some Protestants teaching that Catholics doctrine is that the Pope cannot ever err. (Fortunately, many Protestants do not use such tactics.) Now some of the Protestants who taught this did so because they really believed it, but the FIRST ones who taught it either did NOT believe it, or they believed it on insufficient evidence and they should have done their homework and they refused to do so - failures toward the duty to truth, and as a result they abused their right to speak publicly on the matter.

But their are other forms of violation of the hearers rights to proselytize: such as teaching children against their parent's religion, and against the parent's explicit request. It is natural for children to accept the authority of their parents, and teaching them contrary to their parents' religion disrupts that natural bond. Similarly, then, it can be a violation of public justice to use theological arguments on simple folk that they are unequipped to deal with the level of sophistication (although this is a far more delicate thing to claim as justification for suppressing public teaching of a religion).

Dignitatis Humanae also stands for the proposition that people have an obligation to form their conscience properly - insofar as that is available. Consequently, a refusal of a non-Christian in a Christian country to be open to following a law respecting some Christian practice primarily on account of an unwillingness to listen to anyone propose (respectfully) reasons why Christianity is right - especially because he knows that if he accepts Christianity as true he would have to undertake unpleasant life changes - seems to violate the objective obligation to form one's conscience well. The need for the law to "respect" the conscience of such a person is not an entirely straightforward proposition.

I think that in practice, any hope of relying on all of these notions, successfully, presume and depend on the existence of a public receptive to notions of freedom and of public order, a receptivity that may be common to Christian nations but may not be so common elsewhere. But in any case it is not logically self-contradicting for a state to root its religious freedom stance on a modified 0 that hangs its hat on the principle that while not all truth about religion can be proven with reason and without appeals to revelation, some of it can, and within certain limits the state has a role in support of those truths (both positive and negative, both in helping to form consciences and to to promote true religious practices, and to restrict the abuses of freedom which harm public order).

Now, the problem: It can be difficult to decide whether a law falls under (1) or (2) or (3). Suppose a state that is 100% Christian, say Anglican, has a law that everyone must go to church on Sunday. And they have a visitor from Bungawa, who is anti-Anglican. Many people would say "well, going to church doesn't mean you are worshiping God as an Anglican - you could just be an observer. So the law does not force you to do something contrary to your own religion." But that's the Anglicans talking. The visitor says that he feels even stepping within the church makes him impure and violates his religion directly. I think Dignitatis Humanae would say that unless his violating the law damages the public order, the law cannot require this, but (a) if the violating the law DOES damage public order significantly, and (b) a just effort to reform the visitor's conscience does not convince him that it is moral to submit to the law because he unreasonably refuses to accept the fair and true reasons, then the law CAN JUSTLY override his right follow his conscience on the matter. That's my take on it. I could be wrong. This approach means that the law can and should prohibit child-sacrifice to Moloch, and therefore 0 in its strong and pristine form simply is not appropriate. Only a weaker form should be maintained. And its weaker form does not depend on a strictly religious foundation.

I've been trying to do that because I'm not sure whether O requires a specifically religious justification as distinct from a purely philosophical one. I don't see anybody attempting the latter, and I suspect that a specifically religious justification for O might well end up licensing a regime that is incompatible with O.

Would an argument from Natural Religion/General Revelation (as opposed to revealed religion) be equivalent with "a purely philosophical" justification? If not, what would be the distinction?

Mark: See my reply to James Chastek a few comments above.

Tony:

Thanks for trying to address the dilemma. Your strategy appears to be consider various formulations of O, and settle on a "weaker form" that requires no "strictly religious foundation." But it's still not clear to me exactly what that foundation is. It appears to be deontological, having something to do with balancing the rights of conscience with the need to maintain public order and protect "natural" bonds. But I'm not clear on what you think the boundaries of the right of conscience are, or why.

Best,
Mike

Mike, I have not thought through all the steps in perfect clarity, though I have been pondering this since studying Dignitatis Humanae about 15 years ago. So I may be a bit muddled here.

First principle: there is no "right" to do that which is known to be wrong to do. It is objectively evil to sacrifice children to Moloch, and this objective truth can be known through the natural light of reason. So the only person who can propose a claim to have a right to do it, a claim that we might listen to, is the person who has not been shown, or does not accept, the reasoning which shows that this action is wrong. (And if the strong form of 0 provides that the state must leave them alone in following their conscience no matter how ill formed (and no matter with what personal guilt in that mal-formation), then the state itself is doomed. Pretty soon there will be people whose "religion" makes it immoral to pay taxes, or obey speed limit laws, etc. The strong version of 0 would be integrally contradictory (in practice) for any social organization.)

I would suggest that the resolution that we need to find is not essentially to be understood as a trade off between the rights of the state and the rights of conscience. The instances of tension arise in part because of a failure, either on the part of the individual to be formed properly in their conscience, or on the part of the state to appropriately make the case rationally for why a certain requirement is to be obligatory.

Dignitatis Humanae repeatedly insists that true religion has been given sufficient evidential signs and supports from God to persuade the reasonable person of the reasonableness of it as a religion. This leads one to the conclusion that the people who have refused to admit its reasonableness either (a) have never had the case made to them properly - surely a failure on the part of any Christian society, or (b) are incapable of grasping the reasoning because their mind and will have been damaged through poor training, or (c) they won't accept the evidence out of ill will. Only (b) appears to pose any problem for the state as far as "rights of conscience." If a person is in category (a) and rejects a law, the state and society simply have an obligation to justify the law through proper formation of their conscience. End of tension. If the person is in category (c) and rejects the law, they are unjust in claiming a right to follow their conscience because they are refusing to inform their conscience properly. The state has no need to accede to such an unjust claim.

Back to (b). In a sense (and I am uncertain how far to push this analogy) a person in this state is similar to an insane person. Or, perhaps we ought to understand their condition as a type of insanity - religious insanity. We all know that just because an insane person really believes that their blank piece of paper is a plane ticket does not mean the airline is obliged to let them on the plane. But why not? Because the insane person is objectively disordered in their apprehension. (The fact that the airline cannot prove it to the insane person's satisfaction is not the same as saying the airline cannot prove it.) It would be odd if we accept this notion in all walks of ordinary social life except that of obeying laws that touch on religious practices. If a person is insane about one matter but rational generally, at a deeper level he himself would prefer that his friends and the community protect him from his irrational thinking by refusing to allow him to jump out of a tall building because "I can fly".

The fact that a person who is religiously and intellectually mal-formed cannot grasp a reasonable explanation does not undo the reasonableness of the explanation. Although we say (if I recall the formulation correctly) that a person whose conscience is mal-formed (not by his own will) is morally obliged to follow that conscience himself , nothing about that interior obligation creates a definitive limit on the rest of society, which apprehends the objective truth of the matter. Therefore, if public need requires an action and a law is set (whose appropriateness can be established purely on reasonable grounds) that he rejects "religiously", the state is not bound to permit him to violate the law (out of some misplaced respect for conscience and displaced adherence to objective truth.)

I say "if public need requires", because of the principle of subidiarity. This principle respects that each individual man, in receiving free will from God, has been made his own master except insofar as he impinges on the social order and the common good. So if he religiously believes that pi is 4, the state must leave him alone in that belief (unless perchance he is a civil engineer building a bridge). The mere fact that he is objectively wrong does not give the state a role in forcing him to defy that belief. It is only by reason of his being ordered within a social community, with a common good, that his self-mastery is limited by the needs of others.

While there is naturally a practical difficulty in carrying out the specifics of establishing the reasonableness of a law impinging on someone's religious practice, this is to be expected in our fallen state. No program that respects conscience and subsidiarity, and relies on showing to the public the reasonableness of a law, can be free of practical difficulties. Which provides yet another reason to ensure that we have men of true wisdom and sound religious belief in legislatures and the courts. But it is not a reason to refrain from restraining men who violate a law out of mistaken "religious belief".

But what if group A was just teaching that beheading memeber of group B was OK. Some members of group A were then acting on this teaching and beheading some members of group B. But it was difficult to identify which member of group A were actually doing the beheading because many members of group A were not cooperating with the police thinking this should no be a crime anyway.


That seems to be a problem of execution, and not of principle. Any law may be difficult to enforce when segments of the population choose not to abide by it, regardless of their reasons for doing so. So, religious motivation need not be treated legally as a special, separate factor from "I just don't want to do _____."

Isn't the current status quo that religions are prohibited from doing certain things that are illegal for the entire population? Certainly, US law maintains that there is no religious exemption that allows for human sacrifice, for example.

Where we currently have bad law in this country are the areas where courts have carved out special exemptions based on religious dogma. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that followers of the Union of the Vegetable, a branch of a Brazilian religion, may use a psychedelic tea called Ayahuasca as part of their religious ceremonies. That is a sort of violation of the principle of O; one ought not be required to believe a particular religion in order to engage in an activity. Either ayahuasca is so dangerous that it can be banned without regard to religious beliefs, or its use should be legal for all citizens of the land. One ought not have to pass a "religious test" in order for an activity to be legal. Since ayahuasca clearly does not fit into the same category of chopping-off-infidel's-heads, it should be universally legal.

I agree with you about Islam, but I don't understand your argument to the same effect about "non-Gnostic orthodox Christianity." What about "render unto Caesar" and all that? Where, for that matter, do you think the logic of Dignitatis Humanae breaks down?
I believe orthodox Christianity is incompatible with the modern notion of religious freedom commonly understood, i.e. "O," because "O" presupposes that Christianity will not have public consequences because it defines religion as irrational private belief "beyond reason" and makes the secular State the authoritative judge of the proper bounds of Christian life.

When Jesus said "render unto Caesar what belongs to Caeser," he did not assume that Caesar gets to define "what belongs to Caesar." The Church defines it. But modernity not only disagree with the Church about "what belongs to Caesar," but it denies the Church's authority to make the determination. According to modernity, Caesar rightly decides what is religious freedom, and this idea has consequences.

Here is where I think the logic of Dignitatis Humanae breaks down:

This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.
The logic of supporting "religious freedom" as modernity understands it breaks down with the phrase "within due limits." Who determines what these due limits are? The Church or Caesar? What happens to "religious freedom" when they disagree? This is not an abstract point that will never be relevant.

WWWW quite recently had an article about a Kansas abortionist who got shot while attending a Lutheran church. He saw in his abortion practice a proper service to God deriving from his religious compassion for the suffering. There are indissoluble dies between "religion" and ethics that has resulted in tensions throughout U.S. history between religious freedom and state legal requirements which could never resolve the tensions because they are inherent to the incoherency of modernity's attempt to separate religion and public ethics (among other things).

Historically, Americans been able to chug along with relative peace despite the tension because we in the West share a cultural inheritance from centuries of Christendom that protects us from cases that might push the tensions to breaking point where Dignitatis Humanae's appeal to "within due limits" will not be sufficient for peace.

I think we moderns have been socialized into denying the importance of this inheritance (not to mention the faith-reason religious foundation of it), but it seems to many observers that the common culture we've taken for granted has been undermined over the centuries by modernity's economic form of capitalism and political form of democratic liberalism which have together served as an anti-culture severing parents from children, man from wife, producer from consumer, Christian from the Church, individual from community, man from the rest of creation, faith from reason, humanity from the reality of God's sovereignty, etc., and the consequences of the modern rejection of God's significance in the public sphere are becomingly increasingly evident.

Another example:

The right to religious freedom is exercised in human society: hence its exercise is subject to certain regulatory norms. In the use of all freedoms the moral principle of personal and social responsibility is to be observed. In the exercise of their rights, individual men and social groups are bound by the moral law to have respect both for the rights of others and for their own duties toward others and for the common welfare of all. Men are to deal with their fellows in justice and civility. Furthermore, society has the right to defend itself against possible abuses committed on the pretext of freedom of religion. It is the special duty of government to provide this protection. However, government is not to act in an arbitrary fashion or in an unfair spirit of partisanship. Its action is to be controlled by juridical norms which are in conformity with the objective moral order. These norms arise out of the need for the effective safeguard of the rights of all citizens and for the peaceful settlement of conflicts of rights, also out of the need for an adequate care of genuine public peace, which comes about when men live together in good order and in true justice, and finally out of the need for a proper guardianship of public morality.
True justice, good order, civility, rights--all these, because of the unity of truth, rest on religious foundations when you get deep enough. Usually, we do not have to go that far, but increasingly the Church will have to go far because "reason alone" is impossible and insufficient, and I do not believe that the Church can do so if it holds to "O."

I think if we do want to hold to a notion of "religious freedom," we must redefine it in ways that may be radical to moderns. But eventually some confrontation with the substantive flaws of "O" must happen, and sometimes I wonder if modern Christians are aware of these flaws when they advocate for "religious freedom."

Given the case of both Islam and militant secularism, I agree that the question ought to be framed as you frame it there. But what I've been trying to get people to do is discuss how to answer the question without ending up rejecting O. I've been trying to do that because I'm not sure whether O requires a specifically religious justification as distinct from a purely philosophical one. I don't see anybody attempting the latter, and I suspect that a specifically religious justification for O might well end up licensing a regime that is incompatible with O. Tentatively, I think it's a simple matter of logic that the scope of O must be limited to people whose religions are compatible with it.
Again, I'm not confident a "purely philosophical" argument exists this side of Colossians 1:15-23, though you might be referring to "an argument that does not explicitly appeal to 'religious' language but to deracinated notions of 'the Good' that we may, for a while longer at least, share." I think such a "purely philosophical" approach that appeals to "reason alone" is rarely attempted because people have a gut sense of the thought implicit in the title of Alasdair MacIntyre's book "Whose Justice? Whose Rationality?"

That said, a specifically religious justification for some kind of state-enforced religious freedom would not necessarily license a regime opposed to any kind of religious freedom (depending on what constitutes religious freedom) if the religion were Christianity. The reason I think so is that Christianity forbids the State from attempting to coerce inward conformity, though outward conformity is legitimate, since God is responsible for "the circumcision of the heart" that allows recognition and acceptance of the faith-reason truth of the gospel. One doesn't have to like saluting the flag as a measure of proper respect for authority, but we have to do it. And I do not think the inward-outward distinction is a kind of modern dualism, because the distinction recognizes the unity of the body-soul in that the inner life ought to be conformed to the outer life by grace, unlike Gnostic moderns that believe the inner life is essentially separate from the outer life as in "the body is not important, mere instrumental property" or "the soul is morally sovereign."

Obviously, this last point is not very well developed, but I think this is generally the direction that we need to go, and it presupposes both the proper place of the God and his Church and the holistic life character of true religion, the denial of which are two main destructive errors of modernity.

Wow, reading over my post, I am disappointed with how much editing for clarity it requires. Sorry about that...

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