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diggFreedom of religion or freedom from religion?
European disputes over head scarves and turbans in public schools hardly exist in the United States. Here’s why.
The opening of the Australian Parliament this year witnessed an historic apology to Australia’s "stolen generations" — a generation of indigenous Australians removed from their families by the State under the misguided impression that assimilation would give them a better chance in life. Apologies aside, one of the things that I found most intriguing about this historic occasion was that it began with the Lord’s Prayer. Not that the day will be remembered for this fact; but it grabbed my attention particularly as it is so commonplace these days to hear talk of the separation of Church and State. This, perhaps the most notable day in recent Australian history, began with a dedication to the Lord.
Invoking God is anathema to many liberals and socialists who eschew any mention of religion in public life. Religion, they argue, has no place in public life. The state must be neutral on matters of faith, even to the extent that religious discourse is given no credence in public debate.
A policy area where such hostility to religious discourse clearly manifests itself is bioethics — issues like embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, and, of course, abortion. Those of us who oppose these for—not exclusively—religious reasons are accused of holding back science and women’s right to choose for partisan reasons that violate the separation between church and state. On this view, since citizens who are atheists and agnostics cannot accept the basic tenets of the belief systems that motivate our opposition to abortion and embryonic stem cell research, our views are democratically invalidated, rejected out of hand for being "undemocratic" (ie, religious). Public discourse must be publicly acceptable discourse. And, in a pluralistic society which includes agnostics, atheists, and fundamentalists, that means non-religious. Only secular reasons can enter into public debate, lest we impinge upon the hallowed separation between church and state.
The French model
This is one view of the separation between church and state. It is a civic republican view that can be traced back through Rousseau, Kant, Machiavelli, and Cicero right unto the early days of Athenian democracy. The underlying logic of this position is that citizens are free only when they are ruling themselves and that the highest form of liberty is self-rule. Democratic government is characteristic of human freedom for, under democracies, citizens rule rather than are ruled, enacting self-governing laws. In democratic regimes, the lawmaker and the subject of the law are one.
Thus, law does not bind our liberty but emancipates it, for law is not a constraint on liberty if we are the legislators of those laws at the same time that we are bound by them. In other words, if a given law can be considered to be an object of human reason, it is not properly a constraint on liberty but a manifestation of it. For the promise of democratic emancipation to be fulfilled amidst conditions of pluralism, however, the law must be amenable to the reason of each and every citizen such that the laws of the state represent the common will—the will of each and every citizen and the will of all. Only then are we free!
It follows from this civic republican idea of liberty that citizens’ private belief systems must be banished from public life. For "private beliefs" are not universally shared by citizens and, so, cannot be accepted by all. Hence, the sharp divide in civic republican states such as France, between the public and private spheres. In France this divide has become excessive. As a result of a series of events known as l’affaire foulard, ostensible religious symbols have been forbidden in public institutions with the result that Jews, Sikhs, and Muslims (amongst others) can no longer wear their traditional headdress in public schools. For all citizens must be one and identical under the civic republican model. (Religious) diversity cannot be publicly acknowledged in France, or in any other civic republican state. Which is why a French "Sorry Day" would not have begun with the Lord’s Prayer.
American exceptionalism
But there is an alternative understanding of the separation of Church and state that is not quite so blind to the private and religious identities of its citizens. It is the conception of non-establishment in the United States. Secularists and religionists alike have much to learn from duly appreciating the depth and power of the US position.
It is not an insignificant fact that the Founding Fathers of the United States left behind centuries of religious persecution in Europe at the hands of governments to come to America. Huguenots, Calvinists, Anabaptists and Puritans fled the religious wars of Europe in the hope of finding a save haven across the Atlantic where they could live in peace and freely practice their beliefs. The separation of church and state that exists in the United States exists for the sake of religious belief and its free practice.
Non-establishment is twofold in the United States. Firstly, constitutional protections with respect to freedom of religion enable individuals and communities to challenge civil law on the basis that it impedes their liberty to practice and adhere to their beliefs; that civil law oversteps its mark when it attempts to govern and control the consciences of citizens. As a result, there is a tremendous suspicion of civic "soul marking" in the United States. The government, as many Americans understand it, has no right to try to form the moral character of its citizens. That should be left to parents and communities of faith. And, in this regard, there is a sizable volume of judicial reviews on the basis of freedom of religion with respect to public education in the United States, not least of which was an exemption that Amish parents received from mandatory education requirements under Wisconsin v. Yoder. In this 1972 case, the US Supreme Court declared that Wisconsin’s requirement that children attend school until the age of sixteen unjustly interfered with the way of life of the Amish and that the requirement was unconstitutional.
Secondly, though, non-establishment clauses in the constitution prevent the United States government from ever being the handmaiden of a particular religious denomination, sect, or community. As a result, the US has quite stringent conditions on the extent to which the government can provide financial support to religiously-affiliated institutions and, from a constitutional perspective, the government can never endorse or eschew the views of any particular religious group. In light of such non-establishment clauses there have been contestations over whether the government is entitled to give tax exemptions to religiously-affiliated charities and the like. And, while the US government does support religiously-affiliated charities, it remains reluctant to provide similar support for religiously-affiliated schools in case it be seen to be endorsing particular churches as a result.
More respectful of diversity
But, notwithstanding the pedantic way in which the US judiciary and legislature has sought to do justice to the ideal of non-establishment, the very purpose of non-establishment is to protect religion from the state. On the American account, non-establishment is upheld not out of deference to some civic-republican notion of universal citizenship and the integrity of the common will but from a historically grounded—very real—fear of the evils of state-sanctioned religious persecution. The Founding Fathers were all too aware of the evils that can be done in the name of salvation when religions no longer give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but infiltrate the army of the Empire to erect the Kingdom of Heaven.
The American approach is more respectful of diversity than its civic republican counterpart. Separation between church and state exists not in the name of Enlightenment and a suspicion of "private" religion but in recognition of the value and importance of religion to people’s lives and the dangers that arise to this crucial area of intimacy from theocratic government.
It is no accident that religion enjoys a more privileged status in the United States than it does in Europe, where publicly, as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's press secretary once said, "we don’t do religion". L’affaire foulard could not have happened in the United States while the greenback bears the mark "In God we Trust." Secularists, socialists, and Jacobin liberals may loathe the sense of importance that religion enjoys in the United States. But for those of us in other countries who value genuine tolerance and religious freedom there is much to appreciate in the American tradition.
Michael McGann is completing a PhD thesis on the philosophy of multiculturalism at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia.
I am not sure when the “ all powerful empire” became “ashes” but the Holy Roman Church, Mystical Body of Christ, was born on Pentecost ,about 300 years before Constantine.
The blood of many was shed by Nero to Diocletian, so what an absurd claim that the Church was “revising” sacred scripture! To what end? To buy off Nero?
In terms of separation of Church and State, it seems to me there is no more fierce defender of such a separation, properly understood, than the Church herself.
Every despot from the ‘divine’ Roman emperors to Robespierre and Stalin seeks to crush the Church when they want to deify themselves.( or variations thereof.)
Of couse left liberals, like my old friend David Page, are trying to deify “CHOICE” ( read “my choice") so they want to silence that one Body that reminds us that we will be held accountable.
“… why shouldn’t they revise it as well?”
Because many consider the bible as the inerrant word of a god?
However, it’s little surprise that the Holy Roman Catholic Church would choose to amend the rules for its gain when it was born from the ashes of an all-powerful empire. The lessons of the Roman Empire were not lost with regards political power, economic power, secrecy and absolute rule.
I don’t know what Keith has in mind when he says that early Catholic Fathers ‘provably’ revised the Bible. But it’s perhaps worth pointing out that the early (Catholic) Church decided what writings were to form part of the Bible and what not. If that was acceptable, why shouldn’t they revise it as well?
Well done, Michael McGann. I think you summed the argument up very well indeed.
There is a further point which might have some relevance to both the questions you address and multiculturalism.
In an analysis of Machiavelli called “Thoughts on Machiavelli” the author proposes that Machiavelli’s view of democracy was fundamentally different from Aristotle’s in that anyone could become a citizen in a democracy where as Aristotle’s view was that some people are incapable of being citizens in a democracy.
Given Machiavelli’s attack on revealed religion, perhaps what Aristotle had in mind was that certain religions hold people’s minds so much with a brand of superstition that they defer to the priest class and hence to a theocratic form of constitution rather than exercising the deliberation of which they are capable and reserving salvation to their private lives.
I raise this because it does not seem clear to me that freedom of religion can exist unless there is also freedom of speech by which certain religious matters can be openly discussed, criticised and even satirised if necessary. This, the USA has, but Australia does not.
Underpinning the division of church and state lies the thoroughly Christian notion that values and virtues have an existence independent of a specific faith system. This has ancient roots – witness the works of Aquinas and his emphasis on natural law discernible thorough logical reflection on the realities we discern in the world around us. While Aquinas in some areas has “dated,” his emphasis on the philosophical integrity of arguments free of a priori assumptions and his enthusiastic embrace of the empirical underpinnings of hitherto “suspect” (and pagan) Aristotelian metaphysics is a beacon for the modern philosopher.
Interestingly, the separation of church and state is possible only in a society informed by Christian values imbued with the notion that men and women should chose good in the setting of a freedom which respects consciences. Hence the corollary: in the pagan Roman Empire where the Caesar was god and the state was the religion, women were chattels devoid of rights existing solely for the pleasure of men. Abortion was rife yet feminism in the best sense of the word – the rejection of the view that women exist as objects for the gratification of men – could not exist.
Modern paganism and materialism, whether under the guise of Marxist class struggle or the supposedly infallibly guiding hand of untrammelled free markets, become equal tyrannies enslaving men and women trampling on consciences.
Oh, Dannyboy!
Your tripe, your tripe is cooling. What on earth do you mean with your understatement, and I quote:
“and I don’t mean to say that Catholics, and even—gasp!—early Catholic bishops and scholars have not done bad things or misused their power in violation of the principles and doctrines of [y]our faith”
Not done bad things and abused their power, you say. They were downright wicked! You, as an “overeducated” individual cannot possibly have missed the recorded abominations perpetrated against heretics (Catholicism, I acknowledge is not alone in this). Not only heretics, but “pagans” such as the Central American and Caribbean indigenes. Do I really need to point out to you just a few more examples? I doubt I do. So please, when you make your mea culpas, make them warm-hearted and say you’re really sorry that so much harm was done by your Church to so many. (The rest may make their own apologies.)
Being so apparently cool about bad things won’t help warm our hearts to Catholicism and its preaching.
Peace to you too.
Bob Ryan
Keith,
Your ‘given’ is hardly provable, but sounds rather like the sort of religious propaganda deployed by early Protestant attackers of Roman Catholicism. If you mean that Jerome’s translations into Latin seem to some to have been a little too loose or tendentious, that is a rather different question than the question of deliberate manipulation of revealed religion for the purpose of some sort of political agenda. If you mean something else, I’d love to know where you have found your proof of deliberate scripture-tampering by the early Church fathers.
A comment like that really only merits reply because it demonstrates so clearly how deep run the currents of irrationality, even, and perhaps especially, in those critics of religion who assume an air of personal objectivity and superiority over those ‘bronze age’ brutes and naifs who have been cozened into religion.
I am a particularly overeducated specimen of such a thug, and I don’t mean to say that Catholics, and even—gasp!—early Catholic bishops and scholars have not done bad things or misused their power in violation of the principles and doctrines of our faith. What I do mean to say is that when one forgets that anti-religious sentiment can be a form of quasi-religious enthusiasm as dangerous as the most fanatical religious extremism, one has failed to understand the deepest reason why we in the United States fight so hard to try to keep reasonably moderate religious discourse a part of public life. Religious or not, it is in our nature to have a pretty hard time seeing the plank in our own eye when we are ever so concerned about purging the speck out of someone else’s. This goes for puritanical atheists as much as anyone else.
I’m sure I have fallen prey to the same sort of blindness countless times. Thank God, I have learned to say mea culpa so well.
peace
Freedom from and freedom to are both parts of a wider question, but compulsory prayers are sacrosanct. Every establishment Anglican knows that!
Why, even in the armed services, when prayers are mandatory, the order is given to: “Fall out, the Roman Catholics and the Jews”. Atheists and agnostics are given no such dispensation.
However, our national parliament, though ultra multicultural overlooks the finer point of worship.To Roman Catholics and Jews, we at least ought to add Muslims - and for that matter, anyone and everyone who thinks the quality of prayer lies in its public display.
Good on you for making a point for us Aussies! But you must remember, most of us don’t give a rats about parliament anyway.
“… as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was fond of saying, “we don’t do religion” ...”
Blair didn’t say it and certainly would not have said it ‘fondly’, given his religious bent.
Alistair Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor, said it, aware that the British public have little time for Bronze Age mumbo jumbo.
Given that we now know that the Bible was provably considerably revised by the early Catholic Church Fathers,and that the majority of the Islamic Hadiths provably have no historical provenance I think we need protection from overbearing religious influence, particularly on our children. I question whether much religious doctrine is moral or ethical. It is one thing to believe in a Supreme Being, a God who gives direct daily guidance to your conscience and quite another to be attached to an organised religion with invented doctrine and a political power agenda.
The USA and Europe witness two forms of the same model to resolve the issue of religion and State: to build a public sphere as if God did not exist: etiam si Deus non daretur.
In the USA religion is quite completely confined to the private sphere and references to God in the public sphere have no significant policy relevance and may be comfortably accommodated. Much the same happens in its originating culture, the UK, except that there is no reference to God in public either (Blair). God enters the public realm through the personal action of individuals.
The Continental European form of the etiam si Deus non daretur was, perhaps, an attempt at defining the spheres of separation in order to give God some relevance in the public sphere institutionally rather than through the action of individuals only. Hence the French lay state which has, on occasion, been pushed into taking up an anti-clerical and an anti-religious stance, notably in the recent head-scarf legislation.
What both cultures have in common is the individualist, atomist, view of society in which religion is purely a personal, and non-rational, affair.
This modern solution to the breakdown of the medieval unity was, nonetheless, based upon a common Christian culture. Since that Christian culture is now seriously eroded without replacement by a new set of common and unifying values, the State is being forced to define what is the good for the person amidst a plurality of opposing opinions. And those positivist definitions in a democracy of numbers are being determined by majority and by those who sway the opinions of the majority.
In the USA the absence of the sort of laicist-religious discussion witnessed in Europe in the public realm takes place in the law courts where the personal religious attitude of Americans has not being able to prevent judicial decisions diametrically opposed to ethics and to Christian morals.
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