Government Has No “Religious Agency”: James Madison's Fundamental Principle of Religious Liberty

Religious liberty has reemerged as a problem in liberal democracy. For guidance we can turn to James Madison. Unfortunately, his fundamental principle of religious liberty has been misunderstood. Madison believed that power over religious conscience always remains with the individual, which means that government never has a power to attempt to cause or prohibit religious opinions or profession and only has the power to prohibit religious practices that are “adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison's fundamental principle of religious liberty is therefore that government has no “religious agency.” In matters of religious establishment, “no agency” means that government lacks even the power to cognize religious opinions or practices. But in matters of free exercise, “no agency” means that government can accommodate citizens’ religious consciences, even if that accommodation requires cognizing their religious opinions. An important but widely overlooked example of Madison's complex but principled approach to religious liberty is his 1790 proposal for a statutory exemption from federal militia service for religious objectors.     

Religious Participation and Economic Conservatism

Why do some individuals engage in more religious activity than others? And how does this religious activity influence their economic attitudes? We present a formal model in which individuals derive utility from both secular and religious sources. Our model, which incorporates both demand‐side and supply‐side explanations of religion, is unusual in that it endogenizes both an individual's religious participation and her preferences over economic policy. Using data on over 70 countries from the pooled World Values Survey, we find that religious participation declines with societal development, an individual's ability to produce secular goods, and state regulations on religion, but that it increases with inequality. We also find that religious participation increases economic conservatism among the poor but decreases it among the rich. Our analysis has important insights for the debate about secularization theory and challenges conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between religious participation and economic conservatism.     

The Legitimacy of Using the Harm Principle in Cases of Religious Freedom Within Education

John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle” has been popular in the limitation of freedoms within human rights jurisprudence. It has been used formally in court cases and also informally in legal argumentation and conversation. Shortly, it is described as a very simple principle that amounts to the notion that persons are at liberty to do what they want as long as their actions do not harm any other person or society in general. This article questions whether it is legitimate to use the harm principle in cases concerning the limitation of religious freedom within education. For example, can the exemption of a learner from sex education (based on religious objections) be denied based on the argument that such an exemption will cause harm? In order to answer this question, the meaning, origin and use of the harm principle are investigated. This article also discusses four main criticisms against the use of this principle in general and in cases of religious freedom of learners in education.     

Local,National and Global Islam: Religious Guidance and European Muslim Public Opinion on Political Radicalism and Social Conservatism

The attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and Kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015, as well as the announcement of a ‘Caliphate’ by radical Islamists of the so-called ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) in 2014, reignited political and academic interest in the possible appeal of radical Islamism among young Muslims living in Western Europe. This analysis expands existing knowledge by adding a large-n, cross-national comparison to the small-n or single-case-study approaches dominating research on European Muslims over the last two decades. Moving beyond examination of the interaction between European governments and groups claiming to represent European Muslims, this analysis takes into account the individualisation of Muslim religious discourses, practices and identities. Binary logistic regression analyses challenge conventional wisdom which emphasises discrimination and rejection of Western foreign policies in the explanation of political radicalism. Instead, religious guidance and socio-economic status emerge as consistent correlates of political and social attitudes among West European Muslims. These findings not only add to a growing body of literature providing empirical evidence for the political impact of religious elites, they also have crucial policy implications for West European governments working to maintain national security and social cohesion.     

Shades of Faith: Religious Foundations of Political Attitudes among African Americans,Latinos, and Whites

Although there is considerable evidence that religion influences political opinions, it is unclear how this story plays out across different segments of the U.S. population. Utilizing the 2000 Religion and Politics Survey, we examine the effects of religious beliefs, behaviors, and affiliations on citizens’ attitudes relating to issues of egalitarianism. Our study is one of the few to comparatively analyze the link between religious measures and political outlooks for the nation's three largest ethno‐racial groups. The findings show that conservative Christianity is consistently associated with less tolerant and less egalitarian views among whites. Religious African Americans and Latinos, however, hold more equitable opinions about disadvantaged individuals. To further strengthen our arguments, we also replicate these results using the 2008 American National Election Study. Overall, we demonstrate that a single perspective on religion and public opinion does not apply to all groups.     

Religious Belief,Religious Denomination,and Preferences for Redistribution: A Comparison across 13 Countries

Despite clear evidence of a link between religion and welfare state development, research on public support for redistributive social policies has been slow to incorporate religion into models of public preferences. Does religious belief influence support for redistribution? If so, does religion necessarily increase hostility to redistribution as suggested by existing research? Or, do the Catholic and Protestant traditions generate different patterns of preferences consistent with Weber’s notion of a Protestant work ethic? This research explores these questions by comparing public support for redistribution across 13 European states. The data reveal a powerful and complex effect of religious belief on support for redistribution that works on both the individual and cultural levels. The evidence challenges existing research by demonstrating that the impact of religion is not uniform, but varies across different religious traditions, with Catholicism producing significantly greater support for redistribution than Protestantism.     

From Family Values to Religious Freedom: Conservative Discourse and the Politics of Gay Rights

On the issue of gay rights, today’s social conservatives are more likely to describe their opposition as a matter of religious freedom or personal conscience as opposed to a belief that gays and lesbians represent an existential threat to the traditional family. But how new is this contemporary argument, and how different is it from the family values politics of the previous era? This article develops what Victoria Hattam and Joseph Lowndes call “associative chains” from two important moments in anti-gay politics: Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign and Kim Davis’s decision to not issue gay marriage licenses in Rowan County, KY. On one level, these moments reveal competing roles of the state in the lives of its citizens. Family values politics authorized an interventionist state for the protection of children, while religious freedom defenders promote a zone of personal conscience impervious to the state. On another level, however, these moments reveal the mutability of social conservative opposition to gay rights. Calls for protecting religious freedom preserve a heterosexism derived from antecedent family values politics. The novelty of religious freedom as a defense for homophobia obscures a persistent social conservative commitment to using the state to enshrine the heteronuclear family.     

Individual integrity,freedom of association and religious exemption

ABSTRACT

Of the many questions Cécile Laborde addresses in her magisterial Liberalism’s Religion, several relate to what she describes as ‘the puzzle of exemptions’. I examine some of the issues raised by her efforts to solve that puzzle: whether her ideal of moral integrity squares with the nature of religious belief; whether we should find the case for collective religious exemptions in freedom of association and the ‘coherence interests’ of associations; how much significance we should give to the ‘competence interests’ of organised religions; and by which criteria we should assess individual claims to religious exemption.     

Self-respect and public reason

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement.     

Freedom,Equality and Fraternity in Kant’s Critique of Judgement*

At least during his critical period, all of Kant’s philosophical works have a secret political dimension. Among other things, following the analysis of Hannah Arendt, the Critique of Judgment – paragraph 40 in particular – became a main text of political philosophy. In looking at the Critique of Judgement from a political perspective, I shall refer not to paragraph 40 but to the Kantian discussion of pure aesthetic judgement. In my opinion, one can understand Kant’s remarks on aesthetic judgement, and especially transcendental anthropology, as meaning that Kant philosophically attributes the three political ideas of the French Revolution (liberty, fraternity and equality) to the whole human being as such, and not just to the intelligible man.     

Religious parties and the problem of democratic political legitimacy

Thinkers committed to an ideal of public reason are suspicious of religiously informed political activity as it undermines democratic political legitimacy. This paper considers Jürgen Habermas’s recent shifts on this question in light of the history of Europe’s religious parties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These parties made a real and lasting contribution to Europe’s democratization and their history suggests ways in which Habermas and other defenders of public reason misunderstand the nature of democratic political legitimacy.     

“人民自由”何以可能--从消极自由理论说起

贡斯当的“古代人的自由与现代人的自由”是近现代西方消极自由理论的重要基础;伯林的“消极自由与积极自由”以个人自由为出发点,落脚到制约国家权力的宪法制度设计上;德沃金和罗尔斯的自由理论返回法的形而下,试图寻找国家权力在个人自由实现中发挥积极作用的可行路径;中国传统自由观强调权力与自由的关系,以严复为代表的近现代自由话语开始触及自由的主体性、平等性等法治要素。中国共产党从人民立场出发的自由理论及其实践表明,“人民自由”吸收借鉴经验自由主义和理性自由主义合理因素,吸取中国传统自由观优秀基因,整合自由与平等、自由与公正、自由与法治的关系,形成了个人自由与国家权力同生共在、相互促进、共同发展的有序格局。     

Locke, Sincerity and the Rationality of Persecution

According to the most influential contemporary reading of John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), his main argument against religious persecution is unsuccessful. That argument holds that coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling religious beliefs in its victims. I propose a different reading of the Letter . Locke's main consideration against persecution is not the unsuccessful belief-based argument just outlined, but what I call the sincerity argument . He believes that religious coercion is irrational because it is ineffective as a means of inculcating the right intentions in people. Once this alternative argument is placed at its centre, the Letter is seen to be a more fertile source of political argument than is suggested by alternative readings. In particular, the sincerity argument gives us a powerful reason for rejecting state moral paternalism, the doctrine that the state may use coercion to make people morally virtuous. If moral virtue depends upon people having the right intentions, and if coercion is ineffective as a means of instilling the right intentions in people, then state moral paternalism is ineffective and hence irrational.     

Constraining Political Transformation: The Two Faces of Activist Religious Organizations in the Search for a New Constitution in Kenya

Abstract

Religious organizations are key structural components of Kenyan civil society that have played or continue to play a critical role in socio-political developments. In the last two and half decades especially, religious institutions have been among the principal actors shaping the mechanics and trajectories of Kenya's political order. But religious organizations’ political behaviour, especially in the country's search for a new constitution, was contentious and remarkably inconsistent. There were moments of progressive actions but also behaviour that imperilled progress. This article probes this ambivalence of Kenyan faith groups in the struggles for a new constitution. It is argued that their political behavioural inconsistencies largely reflect an ethnic, class and, to a lesser extent, instrumentalized doctrinal or denominational schism that is ever present in the wider Kenyan society. By analysing how religious leaders and their organizations challenged political elite domination while remaining amenable to its influence, this article illustrates the contradictions of elite pacts in these struggles and how they constrained progressive transformation.     

Laborde’s religion

ABSTRACT

Cécile Laborde’s Liberalism’s Religion proposes liberal principles to address political controversies over religion. One is the public reason requirement that reasons for state policies should be accessible. Another is the civic inclusiveness requirement according to which symbolic religious establishment is wrong when it communicates that religious identity is a component of civic identity. A third is the claim that liberal states have meta-jurisdictional authority to settle the boundary between what counts as religion and what counts as non-religion. The article considers whether Laborde has managed to articulate these three principles in a way that is operationalisable and can serve to provide solutions to practical controversies over religion. It is argued that Laborde’s formulations leave important issues open, and some ways of settling these issues are considered.     

Not Taking it on Faith: State and Religious Influences on European Court of Human Rights Judges in Freedom of Religion Cases

I analyze freedom of religion case law from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), arguing that the ECHR has been inconsistent and deferential to state governments. To account for this phenomenon, I consider two theoretical frameworks. First, I ask whether the religious affiliation of applicants matters when it comes to judges’ willingness to decide in their favor. Second, I consider whether ECHR judges are influenced by the preferences of the states that nominated them. Employing logistic regression analysis on an original dataset of 538 judge votes on 70 freedom of religion cases, I find that Muslim applicants are substantially less likely to receive favorable judge votes, and that judges are more likely to vote in favor of the states that nominated them. Additionally, I find that West European states are especially likely to receive favorable rulings, even when controlling for differences in state protections of religious liberty.     

Breakpoint or Binder: Religious Engagement in Dutch Civil Society

Civil society as a social sphere is constantly subjected to change. Using the Dutch context, this article addresses the question whether religiously inspired engagement is a binder or a breakpoint in modern societies. The author examines how religiously inspired people in the Netherlands involve themselves in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and voluntary activities. Religious involvement and social engagement in different European countries are compared and discussed. In addition, the author explores the models of civil society and applies these to both the Christian and Islamic civil society in the Netherlands. Using four religious ‘identity organizations’ as case studies, this article discusses the interaction of Christian and Islamic civil society related to secularized Dutch society. The character and intentions of religiously inspired organizations and the relationship between religious and secular involvement are examined. This study also focuses on the attitude of policymakers towards religiously inspired engagement and government policy on ‘identity organizations’ in the Netherlands.     

Our Crisis of Self-evidence

Confidence that the we can hold and be guided by the self-evident truth about our natures is the only real foundation of the liberty our Founders—our political Fathers—worked so hard to protect. But the truth is the more consistently we are guided by our Fathers’ philosopher—John Locke, the more self-evidence becomes a problem for us. We can only address our crisis in self-evidence by knowing better than our Fathers thought they knew.     

Managing anxiety: neoliberal modes of citizen subjectivity,fantasy and child abuse in New Zealand

The neoliberal direction of social policy under New Zealand’s fifth National government (2008–) is demonstrated in its 2012 White Paper for Vulnerable Children. This document advocates increased monitoring and policing of welfare populations and the downgrading of child protection policy to a technical administrative system for managing ‘risky’ families. The White Paper’s release came soon after the coroner’s report into the deaths of the ‘Kahui twins’, which were treated by the media as a shocking case of child abuse, and exemplified the media’s use of a fantasy of a ‘savage’ Maori welfare underclass in reporting cases of child abuse. Drawing on Isin’s analysis of ‘governing through neurosis’, this article explores how these media and policy discourses reinforce normative patterns of neoliberal citizen subjectivity by offering compelling pathways out of anxiety that re-route citizens’ anxiety over child abuse in support of neoliberal modes of citizen subjectivity.     

Religious Conflicts in Cyberage

The rise of the Internet has a profound impact on the way conflicts are carried out and the faithful practice their religions. This article explores new dimensions of religious conflicts by theoretically reflecting on new developments in cyberage and by substantiating this with an empirical case study—the Moluccan conflict (Eastern Indonesia). Due to the exponential growth of Internet access worldwide, religions and their followers are increasingly expanding into the online world as a new “marketplace” for religious symbols and identities that fosters religious transnationalism. At the same time conflict actors worldwide have been making increasing use of the Internet to expand their networks, plan actions and fight their enemies. While scholars have so far primarily focused on more globalized online terrorism, this paper analyses a conflict that has mainly been fought out between Christians and Muslims in a remote part of this world, but then expanded into cyberspace. Local conflict actors have used the Internet as a global stage for their cause, to connect to and seek support from their transnational religious communities, but also to manipulate the outside world's perception of the Moluccan conflict. Researching the online projects and identity politics of these actors and their offline contexts, it becomes clear that the Internet has helped to essentialize (religious) identities and to influence the conflict at the local level through the networking and mobilization of people worldwide.