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Liberalism’s Religion PDF

345 Pages·2017·2.428 MB·English
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liberalism’s religion Liberalism’s Religion ˜™ Cécile Laborde Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2017 Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Laborde, Cécile, author. Title: Liberalism’s religion / Cécile Laborde. Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017012577 | ISBN 9780674976269 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Religion and state. | Liberalism— Religious aspects. Classification: LCC BL65.S8 L325 2017 | DDC 322/.1— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017012577 Jacket design: Annamarie McMahon Why Jacket art: Felsenkamer, 1929 (watercolour over pencil on paper laid down by the artist on board), Klee, Paul (1879-1940) / Private Collection / Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Contents Introduction 1 Part I: analogizing religion 1. Liberal Egalitarianism and the Critique of Religion 13 2. Liberal Egalitarianism and the Exemptions Puzzle 42 3. Liberal Egalitarianism and the State Neutrality Puzzle 69 Part II: disaggregating religion 4. Disaggregating Religion in Nonestablishment of Religion: Defending Minimal Secularism 113 5. State Sovereignty and Freedom of Association 160 6. Disaggregating Religion in Freedom of Religion: Individual Exemptions and Liberal Justice 197 Conclusion 239 Notes 245 Acknowledgments 323 Index 327 Introduction Can a liberal state establish a par tic u lar religion in its laws and in- stitutions? Can state officials appeal to religious convictions in jus- tifying laws? Can majority religious symbols be displayed in the public sphere? Can churches have male- only clergy? Can faith- based businesses deny ser vices to LGBTQ citizens? Should conscientious objectors be ex- empted from the application of general laws? Should religious minori- ties be protected against discrimination on the same grounds as racial minorities? In this book I aim to provide reasoned solutions to these, and similar, controversies. But I also take a step back, to reflect on more foundational issues about the place of religion in liberal po liti cal theory. The notion of religion is central to the historical elaboration of Western liberalism, from the Eu ro pean wars of religion onward. Yet, strangely, it has re- mained under- theorized by liberal po liti cal phi los o phers. Liberalism’s 2 Introduction Religion aims to fill this gap. I argue that controversies such as those re- ferred to above are not best explicated and resolved in relation to a vague concept of “religion.” Rather, each relates to par tic u lar, discrete dimensions of (what we call) religion. When we think about the moral dilemmas that such controversies pres ent us with, our focus should not be on the rights of “religion” as such. Instead, it should be on how lib- eral laws and institutions relate to the variegated manifestations of reli- gious life that dif er ent controversies make salient— religion as cognitive statements of truth, identificatory symbols, comprehensive ways of life, modes of voluntary association, moral and ethical obligations, vulner- able collective identities, and so forth. Each facet of religion raises its own set of normative questions. The chief argument of this book is that we should disaggregate religion into a plurality of dif er ent interpretive dimensions. Let me be clear about the scope of my argument. By suggesting that the category of religion can be dispensed with in po liti cal theory, I do not mean to deny that religion is a central, indeed indispensable, cate- gory of our ethical, spiritual, and social experience. Nor do I deny that the semantic category of religion is a useful heuristic device in a range of scholarly endeavors. What I do suggest, however, is that the category of religion is less than adequate as a politico- legal category. We can explicate the values implicit in freedom of religion, equality between religions, and neutrality of the state toward religion—to mention just a few of the relevant liberal ideals— without direct recourse to the semantic category of religion at all. What we need, as po liti cal and legal theorists, is not a semantic or a descriptive notion of religion but, rather, an interpretive one: We need to articulate the multiple values that par tic u lar dimen- sions of religion realize. My theory of liberalism’s religion, therefore, is interpretive—it eschews the term “religion” to focus on the values it re- alizes. And it is also disaggregative—it suggests that the values (and disvalues) of religion are plural and multidimensional. The advantages of such a theory should be evident. It breaks with the long- standing tradition, in Western po liti cal theory at least, to think Introduction 3 of religion as a discrete sphere of life deserving uniquely special politico- legal treatment—in the form of special protection (religious exemptions) and special containment (religious nonestablishment). My reworking of liberal theory implies that religion is not uniquely special: what ever treat- ment it receives from the law, it receives in virtue of features that it shares with nonreligious beliefs, conceptions, and identities. Disaggregating re- ligion, then, allows us to treat religious and nonreligious individuals and groups on the same terms, as expressions of ethical and social pluralism. Nor is this all. Disaggregating religion also allows us to dispense with the Western- , Christian- inflected construal of religion that liberal po- liti cal theory relies on. Instead of assuming that separation between state and religion is a requirement of liberal legitimacy, for example, I shall identify the dif er ent dimensions of religion that directly engage the le- gitimacy of the po liti cal order. The upshot is that, when par tic u lar in- stances of religion do not exhibit t hose dimensions, then liberalism does not mandate Western- style strict separation. Liberalism’s Religion, then, aims to reformulate liberalism to defend it against critics who denounce its ethnocentric, Christian understanding of what religion is. As a result, it ofers a novel answer to the question of how universal theories of both secularism and religion can be; and of how to rethink equality in complex pluralistic socie ties. A note on method. I think of po liti cal theory as an immanent and dialogical exercise. Much of my argument emerges as a product of fairly extensive and detailed engagement with existing lit er a ture, both in an- alytical philosophy and in (what I shall call) critical religion. Although I write in the analytical, normative tradition of po liti cal theory, I share with Continental- influenced, poststructuralist critics a deep- seated in- terest in the opacity and ambiguity of language. One of the paradoxes I explore is that, for all its commitments to clarity and precision, Anglo- American analytical po liti cal philosophy has relied on a strikingly vague understanding of religion—an imprecision carried over to the loose analogue of “conception of the good” pop u lar ized by John Rawls. By clarify ing some of the presuppositions of liberal phi los o phers’ use of

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