Rawlsian Liberalism and Privatization of Religion: PDF

Rawlsian Liberalism and the Privatization of Religion: Three Theological Objections Considered Author(s): Paul J. Weithman Source: The Journal of Religious Ethics , Spring, 1994, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 3-28 Published by: Blackwell Publishing Ltd on behalf of Journal of Religious Ethics,...

Rawlsian Liberalism and the Privatization of Religion: Three Theological Objections Considered Author(s): Paul J. Weithman Source: The Journal of Religious Ethics , Spring, 1994, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 3-28 Published by: Blackwell Publishing Ltd on behalf of Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40017836 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms and are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Religious Ethics This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  RAWLSIAN LIBERALISM AND THE PRIVATIZATION OF RELIGION Three Theological Objections Conside Paul J. Weithman ABSTRACT Liberal political theorists are often accused of "privatizing" work of philosopher John Rawls has been especially subject cism. I begin by examining what is meant by "privatization sider the criticisms of Rawls advanced by Timothy Jackson, David Hollenbach, and John Langan. I argue (1) that Rawls does not privatize religion to the extent that his critics believe and (2) that criticisms of what privatization of religion Rawls does defend cannot be sustained. It is often noted that the political philosophy of liberalism emerged as a settlement to the wars of religion consequen Protestant Reformation; the settlement succeeded, it is said, because liberalism required that religion be "privatized" and thereby excluded from politics. Whatever the historical accuracy of these claims, con- temporary liberals are often taken to task for the privatization of reli- gion that their view is said to require. Moral theologians have been especially vocal in pressing this criticism against them. One liberal whose work has been systematically criticized on this score is John Rawls. In this paper, I want to examine three objections to Rawls's work that are prominent in recent critical literature and associated with the charge of privatization. Those objections are: 1. Christians cannot accept Rawls's theory because there are no reli- gious grounds or arguments for the two principles of justice by which he thinks society's basic structure should be well ordered. 2. Rawls does not allow religious argument a place in political dis- course even about matters less fundamental than the principles of justice. 3. Rawls privatizes religion, as the first two objections allege, be- cause he accepts the mistaken view that religion can only prove divisive if accorded a role in politics. He thus ignores the real pos- sibility of using religion, religious symbols, religious narratives, 3 This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1 Journal of Religious Ethics and religious arguments to achieve social unity or build political coalitions. The first two of these objections are heavily indebted to the interpre- tation of Rawlsian liberalism recently offered by Richard Rorty (Rorty 1988). That interpretation has been extremely influential among and widely cited by moral theologians; I have argued against it at some length elsewhere (Weithman n.d.) and will not take it up here. In- stead, I will content myself with two more modest tasks. First, I will argue that all three objections mistake the implications of Rawls's liberalism: Rawls would, in fact, permit religious argument a greater role in the political life of just liberal democracies than the proponents of these three objections seem to believe.1 Second, one of the great strengths of Rawls's theory is the way in which it reconciles the apparently conflicting political values to which liberalism has traditionally been committed. Among these seemingly conflicting values are liberty and equality, liberty and fairness, the "liberties of the ancients" and the "liberties of the moderns" (Rawls 1971, 201), and the goods of self-interest and impartiality. For pres- ent purposes, the balance on which it is most important to focus is that between the interest citizens have in advancing their own concep- tion of the good, on the one hand, and their interest in preserving civil- ity and mutual respect, on the other. What restrictions on religious political discourse Rawls would defend grow directly out of the balance and order he achieves among these seemingly competing values. Crit- icizing those restrictions requires objecting to his claims about the proper balance, claims that are at the heart of Rawls's theory. The critics on whose work I will be focusing all profess some sympa- thy with the theory and practice of liberal democracy; what they object to is Rawls's version of liberal democratic theory. They do so because of what they take to be its implications for the place of religion in political life. The "privatization" criticisms of Rawls's theory are not, however, aimed at peripheral elements with which that theory could easily dispense. Critics who want to remain liberal democrats while avoiding privatization bear the burden of either justifying a different balance of these competing values or arguing that liberalism is not in fact committed to all the values that Rawls attempts to reconcile. Since neither of these arguments has been adequately made, I con- clude that Rawls's development of liberal theory is the best available 1 My thoughts about the subjects addressed in this paper have benefitted enor- mously from both unpublished work which John Rawls has graciously made available to me and, most recently, from a prepublication copy of Political Liberalism. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 5 and that the objections to his restrictions on political discourse cannot be sustained. Before laying out or attempting to answer the three objections, I want briefly to examine the general charge of privatization and show how it underlies the three objections I have identified. 1. Defining the Problem The accusation that liberalism privatizes religion has been used to cover a number of very different objections; differences among the three I am considering suggest as much. Unfortunately, critics of lib- eralism rarely make precise exactly what they mean by "privatization" and its cognates. What unifies the various objections that have gone by that name is therefore not immediately clear; neither is it clear why privatization is regarded as a distinctively liberal failure. It is useful to contrast Rawls's theory with a very different body of political thought, that of Thomas Aquinas, to clarify what is meant by the claim that Rawlsian liberalism unduly privatizes religion. Aquinas considered religion public in that he considered various goods associated with religion - for example, the good of attaining and assenting to religious truth and the good of engaging in properly con- ducted worship of the true God - public goods. He did not regard them merely as goods to be enjoyed by individuals or by private associa- tions. Still less did he think of them as goods whose value was to be accounted for by the value that individuals and private associations attached to them. Rather, he regarded them as intrinsically valuable goods which (at least under ideal conditions) were to be realized in and participated in by political society. He also considered them goods which political power could be used to secure and to make available. For the purpose of drawing a contrast with Rawls's liberalism, two aspects of the public character that Aquinas attributed to religious goods are especially worthy of note. First, Aquinas thought religion provided intellectual and moral goods on which society could draw. Religion served as an intellectual resource insofar as religious argu- ments were used to justify the exercise of public power. Second, Aqui- nas thought that unity of religious belief and practice were crucial to the harmony and strength of political society. He therefore held that political power could licitly be employed to suppress heresy, prevent the spread of error, and promote the cause of religious truth. He like- wise held that political power could properly be used to suppress idola- This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 3 Journal of Religious Ethics try, thereby preventing false forms of worship and promoting appropriate ones.2 In what follows, I will construe the charge that liberalism privatizes religion as the claim that liberalism fails to regard religious goods as public goods in these two senses. It fails to regard them as either in- tellectual resources to be drawn on in political argument or as social goods which effect harmony. These concerns underlie, I believe, all three objections. The first objection (that Rawls does not employ reli- gious arguments to found the fundamental principles of justice) and the second objection (that neither does he permit the employment of religious argument in political discourse about less fundamental mat- ters) are both forms of the argument that Rawlsian liberalism fails to regard religion as an intellectual resource to be publicly employed. The third objection reflects the complaint that Rawls fails to recognize religious goods as public goods which lend society unity and strength and that he premises his theory on the belief that religion is a civil liability that is politically divisive. It is objected that such value as he assigns to religion is accounted for, not by the intellectual or unitive benefits it confers on political society, but by the satisfaction it gives individuals and private associations. I now want to examine the three criticisms, asking two questions of their proponents. The first is whether Rawls does indeed privatize religion in the way that they allege. The second is whether, if he does, there are good arguments to show that his doing so is objectionable. 2. Religious Arguments for Principles of Justice Rawls has insisted in recent years that justice as fairness is a con- ception founded on what he calls "fundamental intuitive ideas" about freedom, equality, and fairness latent in the public culture of a demo- cratic society (Rawls 1985, 229). He constructs his conception of jus- tice from these ideas, refusing to take up the question of whether this conception or the ideas from which it results are true (Rawls 1985, 230). That these ideas are widely accepted and deeply held by his au- 2 For the claim that Aquinas thought religious arguments could be used to justify the exercise of public power, see Summa Theologiae II-II.11.3. There Aquinas relies on theological premises to justify the claim that the state may execute heretics. Exegesis needed to establish that Aquinas thought heresy and idolatry threats to the unity and strength of political society is somewhat less straightforward. I believe, however, that Aquinas commits himself to this view by making two other claims. The first is that the state may execute heretics; the second is his claim at II-II.64.3 that the execution of evildoers is permissible "insofar as it is ordered to the well-being [salus] of the whole community." This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 7 dience and that a conception built upon them can serve as the basis for informed public agreement on matters of justice are, Rawls suggests, sufficient for his purposes. This emphasis on attaining a working agreement and this refusal to take up questions of truth - features which have led many to see in his recent work a turn toward the prag- matism of John Dewey (Rorty 1988, 260) - have drawn the fire of moral theologians. They object that the only reasons that Rawls now offers for his two principles and the conception of justice in which they are embedded are reasons associated with the desire to achieve coop- eration. Such reasons are not, so the objection goes, reasons that can or ought to move faithful Christians. Christians must have religious reasons for adopting principles of justice, but Rawls's recent prag- matic turn prevents him from offering any. 2.1 Timothy Jackson's case for religious reasons Timothy Jackson has developed this objection in his 1991 essay "To Bedlam and Part Way Back"; his statement of it is worth quoting at some length. Christians need not demand that others accept a particular political ar- rangement out of love, but they themselves must do so or they have vio- lated their own integrity. The issue is one of ethics, not merely psychology: while it may sometimes be permissible to submit to a cogni- tive impoverishment and act on the basis of less information than one could in fact command, it is never right to submit to a moral impoverish- ment and act with less virtue. It is never proper to surrender love, even if it were possible to do this out of love itself - an axiom that might be called "the priority of agape to political philosophy." It is impossible, therefore, for Christians to found distributive justice on personal prudence, social cooperation, and/or the thin sense of the good allowed by the political Rawls in the original position. These are blueprints for the secular Bed- lam, even if motivated by the noble desire to secure public peace [Jackson 1991, 443]. It is crucial to note to what Jackson is not objecting. He is not ob- jecting that the veil of ignorance surrounding parties in the original position prevents them from knowing and acting on their religious motivations.3 That, after all, would not be an objection to the Rawls of the last ten years, but to the Rawls of A Theory of Justice. Indeed Jackson concedes that it "may sometimes be permissible" to use choice under uncertainty or "cognitive impoverishment" as a criterion to de- termine which principles of justice are appropriate, binding, or right. 3 This is an objection developed by Richard Fern (1987, 42ff.). This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms i Journal of Religious Ethics To say that the employment of such a criterion "may sometimes be permissible" is not, of course, to say that it is always permissible or that it is required. In Jackson's view, what determines whether its use is permissible is the reason one has for believing in the adequacy of the criterion and/or for acting on the principles picked out by that criterion.4 Jackson argues that the Rawls of the last ten years can offer only pragmatic arguments for choice under the uncertainty the veil imposes. Rawls can now offer, Jackson claims, only arguments premised on the divisiveness of religious and philosophical views and on the practical desirability of abstracting from them when arguing about fundamental principles of justice. Reasons of this sort, he claims, are not the sort of reasons in virtue of which it is permissible for Christians to adopt Rawls's principles. This is not because Jackson draws a sharp distinction between pragmatic and moral reasons. His characterization of the desire for public peace as "noble" suggests the absence of any such distinction. So, too, does his intimation, in the second sentence of the quoted pas- sage, that Rawls implicitly asks Christians to act with "less virtue" rather than no virtue at all. Finally, Jackson concedes that the desire to achieve social cooperation and the associated reasons that one might have for accepting Rawls's view might themselves derive their motivational force "out of love itself." That is, Jackson concedes for the sake of argument that Christian love might move one to attempt social cooperation with others on a basis of equality and that one could adopt Rawls's principles because they make this possible. However, he seems to think (for reasons I will explore in a moment) that a Rawl- sian liberal's only proper motive for accepting and acting on Rawls's view must be restricted to the reasons Rawls offers for accepting his view. Jackson's point is that even if these reasons are moral reasons, they are not the sort of moral reasons on which Christians can act without "violating] their integrity."5 Christians, Jackson thinks, should have theological reasons for accepting and acting on principles chosen in the original position. Rawls's allegedly pragmatic turn and the privatization of religion that his pragmatism dictates prevent him from offering them. 4 Jackson's statement of his objection does not make it clear whether he thinks Rawls offers inadequate reasons for action or inadequate reasons for belief; I will there- fore continue to speak of both. 5 In this, Jackson echoes the views of other critics. David Fletcher, for example, says that "[f]or the believer who takes her faith to be among the very most significant fea- tures of her being, [Rawls's theory] seems impossible, impious or both. How can I be expected to 'pretend' that I am not a Christian?" (Fletcher 1990, 238). This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 9 2.2 Diversity in the overlapping consensus Jackson's objection rests upon two crucial premises. One is that Christians must always "accept a particular political arrangement out of love"; Christians, he remarks enigmatically, ought not "surrender love as the touchstone of political decision-making" (Jackson 1991, 443). The other premise is that the reasons Rawls offers in support of political arrangements - that justice as fairness provides a fair basis for social cooperation, that it is founded on ideas drawn from the pub- lic culture, and the like - cannot be accepted out of Christian love. The first premise, at least so baldly stated, is likely to encounter strong resistance from natural law theorists; I will not, however, pur- sue this matter here. In what follows, I want to concentrate on the second of these premises. This second claim is a very strong one and initially seems open to an obvious counterexample. Is it not at least logically possible that some- one might accept the propositions on which Rawls's view rests because God tells her to do so? If the person in question accepts divine com- mands out of Christian love (see Mouw 1990, 18-20, 35-42), then it seems that it is out of Christian love that she accepts the claims about freedom and equality that Rawls offers for his view. Consider a different and more pedestrian argument. Rawls may of- fer only pragmatic arguments in favor of his conception of justice or in favor of conditions defining the original position. Surely it does not follow that these are the only reasons there are or that someone could not adopt justice as fairness for different reasons than Rawls offers. Indeed Rawls himself says that in an overlapping consensus partici- pants accept justice as fairness "from within [their] own point of view" (Rawls 1985, 247; cf. 1993, 147); participants in such a consensus, he says, can see that "the political conception is derived from [their] com- prehensive doctrine" (Rawls 1987, 19). Rawls's first writings on an overlapping consensus were not espe- cially forthcoming about how this might happen. His most recent work on the subject, while greatly expanding earlier discussions about how an overlapping consensus might develop, consciously leaves aside the question of how principled allegiance to a liberal conception might evolve from within a religious point of view (Rawls 1993, 169). Rawls has, however, consistently illustrated the development of an overlap- ping consensus on justice as fairness with a brief discussion of how Protestants and Catholics reached an overlapping consensus on the principle of toleration (Rawls 1993, 148). This suggests that, just as Catholics regard the principle of toleration as a principle to be ac- cepted on theological grounds, so they would come to regard Rawls's This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 10 Journal of Religious Ethics two principles as principles to be accepted on theological grounds. This could come about if, for example, an authoritative ecclesiastical or episcopal document presented Rawls's difference principle as the conclusion of a theological argument, much as the Vatican Declaration on Religious Liberty did with the principle of toleration. What is true of Catholics is presumably true, in Rawls's view, of Protestants as well. Protestants, too, could come to regard principles of justice as principles they hold for theological reasons, just as some Protestants accept the principle of toleration on theological grounds. Since the theological reasons that move Protestants would differ somewhat from those that move Catholics, Protestant and Catholic views would over- lap without being congruent. As Rawls says, "[s]ince different prem- ises may lead to the same conclusions, we simply suppose that the essential elements of the political conception, its principles, stan- dards, and ideals, are theorems, as it were, at which the comprehen- sive doctrines in the consensus intersect or converge" (Rawls 1987, 9). In spite of Rawls's admission of this possibility, many have read him as claiming that participants in an overlapping consensus would ac- cept justice as fairness only on pragmatic grounds. The prevalence of this interpretation is due in no small measure to Richard Rorty, who claims this explicitly (Rorty 1988, 264). I believe Rorty's reading of Rawls mistaken; I believe it can be shown so by pursuing Rawls's com- parison between consensus on his principles and consensus on the principle of toleration (see Weithman n.d.). For present purposes, however, what is important is the way in which Jackson would re- spond to the arguments suggested in these last paragraphs. 2.3 The justificatory priority of the right Jackson's response, I believe, would be that the possibilities raised are inconsistent with some of Rawls's central views. If someone did accept the basic intuitive ideas on the basis of a divine command, d regard the principles of justice as based on theological truths, or d accept and act on them for any other reason associated with Christian love, her reasons for accepting them would derive their force from h conception of the good. Claims about the right would then be deriv from and accepted on the basis of claims about the good. This, Jac son would conclude, is contrary to Rawls's claim that his is a theory o justice in which the right is prior to the good. As Jackson summarizes the objection, if acceptance of and conformity with Rawls's conception of justice "must itself be motivated by... comprehensive moral com mitments, then talk of 'priority' is misplaced" (Jackson 1991, 440). This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 11 The congruence of the right and the good in the psychology of mem- bers of the well-ordered society is the subject of part 3 of A Theory of Justice. It is there that we might first expect Jackson's concerns to be addressed. However, Rawls introduced the idea of an overlapping con- sensus long after the completion of the book; its third part, therefore, does not take up the question of how someone might participate in such a consensus from within her own theological views. The case on which Jackson focuses is thus one that Rawls did not examine system- atically in A Theory of Justice, as Rawls himself freely admits (Rawls 1985, 251 n. 33).6 It might well be that philosophical reflection on such cases would reveal no epistemic or motivational priority of the right to the good; it may be, that is, that Jackson is right to object that in such cases the agent accepts the truth of and acts upon claims about the right on the basis of claims about the good. Indeed I am prepared to concede as much for the sake of argument. It does not follow from this conces- sion, however, that the priority Rawls asserts of the right to the good has been completely compromised or that, to amend Jackson's phrase- ology slightly, "all talk of 'priority' is misplaced." The priority of the right may, after all, be other than motivational or epistemic. To see this, note first a point that my restatement of Jackson's ob- jection presupposes: even if a claim about an agent's duties or obliga- tions under principles of justice is derived from claims about the agent's good, it does not follow that the claim about duties and respon- sibilities is a claim about the good. It remains a claim about the right because what determines whether a claim is about the right or the good is the claim's propositional content and not the reasons for which the claim is acted upon or accepted. Therefore the case Jackson poses is neither one in which the distinction between the right and the good is obliterated nor one in which claims about justice are or are seen as claims about the good. The person in Jackson's case endorses claims about the right as well as claims about the good. It is possible for her to accord the former some priority over the latter. If claims about the good enjoy motivational and epistemic priority, what other sort of priority might be accorded claims about the right? It could still be argued that the right must be prior in the political argument that citizens offer one another and that the government of- fers to citizens. That is, it could be argued that any appeal to theories of or claims about the good in political argument must be governed by 6 In the introduction to Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls discusses the gestation of the idea of an overlapping consensus, indicating that his own increasing dissatisfaction with part 3 of A Theory of Justice was responsible for the idea's conception. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 Journal of Religious Ethics certain constraints. Those constraints must themselves, Rawls might say, be specified by justice as fairness; they are therefore constraints grounded in the right rather than the good. For example, claims to certain primary goods in the well-ordered society must be claims that are just by the criteria justice as fairness specifies. Anyone asserting such a claim must be prepared to justify it as such. The demands of justice as specified by justice as fairness thus constrain the claims that can be advanced in the well-ordered society and provide the terms in which such claims are to be justified. Even if someone is ultimately motivated to respect those constraints by considerations drawn from her theological views, there is at least one important sense in which she will accord the right priority. This emphasis on what we might call the justificatory priority of the right to the good comports well with Rawls's recent claims that he is providing a conception of justice intended only for political purposes. He could plausibly claim that as the whole conception is for political purposes, so, too, is the priority of the right. If asked for what political purposes this priority is asserted, he could respond that it is asserted for purposes of constraining public justification in matters of justice. Therefore Rawls does privatize religion in a couple of ways. He ex- cludes religious reasons from the justification of fundamental princi- ples of justice, and he constrains the use of religious argument in public justification. It does not follow from this, as Jackson seems to assert, that Rawls falls into inconsistency. This response to Jackson's objection might seem to play into the hands of other critics, for Rawls is sometimes accused of imposing con- straints on political argument that are too strict for Christians to ac- cept. Even if Rawls is not inconsistent, it might well be that Christians should reject as too constraining the claims about public justification and political argument that Rawls defends. Let us there- fore turn to the second of the three criticisms that I mentioned at the outset. 3. Religious Arguments in Political Discourse In Rawls's recent essays, he has introduced the notion of "free public reason," which he identifies exclusively with "the shared methods of, and the public knowledge available to, common sense, and the proce- dures and conclusions of science when these are not controversial" (Rawls 1987, 8). His discussion of this notion has sometimes been taken to imply that all political debate must be conducted within the limits set by common sense and uncontested science and scientific methods (Hampton 1989, 798). It is therefore said that Rawls allows This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 13 religious arguments no place in the public debate even of matters much less fundamental than the choice of principles to govern soci- ety's basic structure. Thus David Hollenbach, for example, concludes a brief discussion of Rawls on free public reason by saying that "in the actual practice of public life, comprehensive religious, philosophical and moral conceptions of the good are privatized" (Hollenbach 1991, 94). For the moment I will defer the question of whether this interpreta- tion of Rawls is correct. I want first to consider whether, even if it is, there are arguments to sustain the claim that privatizing religion in this way is theologically objectionable. 3.1 Public reason and religious liberty Hollenbach argues that this privatized conception of religion is at odds with the conception of religious freedom Roman Catholicism has endorsed since Vatican II. He writes: If assent to such a privatized understanding of the full human good is a precondition for participation in Rawls's overlapping consensus, it is clear that contemporary Catholicism (and many other religious communities as well) cannot sign on. As Vatican IFs Declaration on Religious Freedom put the matter: "It comes within the meaning of religious freedom that religious bodies should not be prohibited from freely undertaking to show the special value of their doctrine in what concerns the organization of society and the inspiration of the whole of human activity" [Hollenbach 1991, 94-95]. To assess this argument that Rawls's discussion of public reason contrary to the post-conciliar view of religious liberty, it is necessar to determine whether the passage from the Declaration has the impli cations that Hollenbach takes it to have. First, the quoted passage refers to what "religious bodies" may do and is therefore limited in its implications. It can show only that what is objectionable about Rawls's conception of free public reason is its consequence for the activities of such bodies, including churches, bish- ops' conferences, and the like. Even if Rawls's view of public reason severely restricted the political arguments in which individuals could engage, the quoted passage would provide no grounds for the claim that this unduly limits their religious freedom.7 Many who criticiz 7 John Langan explicitly objects to Rawls's treatment of the liberty of "religious bod- ies." He writes: "Rawls treats religion as a private and personal phenomenon. He re gards religious liberty as a very important value that is intimately related to persona integrity. But it is indicative of the privatization of religion in Rawls that, while h This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 14 Journal of Religious Ethics liberalism for privatizing religion object to the strictures it imposes on individual political conduct; clearly more argument is required to sus- tain their objection than the passage quoted will support. A second and more serious objection is that this use of the Declara- tion to object to Rawls's view turns on an ambiguity in the word "pro- hibited" and its cognates. To see this, note first that the prohibitions being discussed in the Declaration are legal or civil prohibitions which carry coercive sanctions, as the context of the passage makes clear.8 The Declaration asserts that the right to religious liberty includes freedom from prohibitions of this sort. This assertion, however, does not support the claim that Rawls's view of public reason is contrary to the religious freedom the document discusses. It does not support this claim because Rawls does not defend legal or civil prohibitions on either associations or individuals who adduce religious considerations in political argument. The prohibitions Rawls has in mind are not legal or civil, but moral. In this Rawls joins a number of liberals who have, in recent years, discussed what norms ought to guide political argument in a liberal democracy. Of these, Robert Audi's discussion is the most explicit. Audi begins with the claim that his readers have a moral obligation to promote and sustain the institutions of liberal democracy (Audi 1989, 262). He then argues that in virtue of this obligation, they and the religious bodies to which they belong are bound by further require- ments to refrain from bringing their religious views into political ar- gument. Audi says clearly that his norms express prima facie moral obligations (Audi 1989, 262), and he just as clearly denies that those obligations should be written into law (Audi 1989, 275). I do not want to consider here whether Rawls would agree with the requirements Audi imposes (but see Rawls 1993, 214 n. 3, 247ff.). I do, however, believe that he would accept Audi's method of deriving such requirements from the requirement to support the basic institu- tions of a just liberal democracy, understood as including the duty to defends the religious liberty of the individual, he has nothing to say about the liberty of religious societies or institutions" (Langan 1977, 352). Langan does not cite the Vatican document, but perhaps he has it in mind. 8 The brief section of the document from which the passage is taken begins with the claim that "the freedom or immunity from coercion in religious matters which is the right of individuals must also be accorded to men when they act in community" (Flan- nery 1980, 802, emphasis added). Two paragraphs before the quoted one, the Declara- tion says, "religious communities also have right not to be hindered by legislation or administrative action on the part of civil authority" (Flannery 1980, 802, emphasis added). This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 15 maintain public civility.9 If this conjecture is correct, then arguing against Rawls's claims about public reason requires either arguing that there is no obligation to promote the institutions of liberal democ- racy or arguing that that obligation does not imply the moral stric- tures on political argument that Rawls defends. Pointing out that religious freedom includes the right of religious bodies to be free of legal prohibitions on religious political argument is beside the point. 3.2 Murray, pluralism, and the political consensus A remark made by John Courtney Murray suggests that he thought the Declaration on Religious Liberty contained or was supported by a view of religious freedom that is antithetical to the privatization of which Rawls stands accused. In a note on the passage from the Decla- ration that Hollenbach quotes, Murray wrote, "[ijmplicitly rejected here is the outmoded notion that 'religion is a purely private affair' or that 'the Church belongs in the sacristy.' Religion is relevant to the life and action of the society. Therefore religious freedom includes the right to point out this social relevance of religious belief (Abbott and Gallagher 1966, 683). This remark is, however, quite difficult to interpret. Murray seems to be denying the legitimacy of moral prohibitions on religious argu- ments in political discourse. How can such a denial be "implicit" in the Declaration's claim about legal sanctions? Perhaps Murray would have accepted the following argument: 1. Individuals have a moral right to practice their religion. 2. Practicing one's religion includes pointing out the social relevance of religious belief. 3. Therefore, individuals have a moral right to point out the social relevance of religious belief. 4. If someone has a moral right to do something, then she violates no moral obligation by doing it. 5. Therefore individuals violate no moral obligation by pointing out the social relevance of religious belief. Murray may well have thought that (3), together with a premise about political rights of the organizations to which individuals belong, entailed the passage of the Declaration on which he remarked. If Murray took (3) to be equivalent to the claim that religion is not a purely private affair, then perhaps he thought that the passage from the Declaration had that claim implicit in it in the following sense: the 9 I am grateful to Rawls for helpful conversation about the importance of this duty. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 16 Journal of Religious Ethics claim that religion is not a purely private affair is among the premises from which the passage in the Declaration can be inferred. More important for our purposes, the conclusion of this argument denies what Rawls is sometimes accused of asserting. If liberalism is committed to institutions which protect the right asserted in the first premise and if the argument is sound, then an obligation to sustain the institutions of liberal democracy does not imply the strictures on public reason that Rawls is accused of defending. The argument is not, however, obviously sound, for the second premise is not obviously true. It is not obvious that pointing out the social relevance of religious belief is part of the exercise of one's reli- gion rather than something one may be motivated to do because one has certain religious beliefs which seem to have social implications. Indeed the argument seems not to be sound at all for the inference from (1) and (2) to (3) is problematic. Surely there are some elements of religious practice in which people do not have a moral right to en- gage. It may be that practice of some religion requires human sacri- fice, but surely it does not follow that anyone has a moral right to engage in it. Some elements of religious practice do not fall within the scope or protection of a moral right because they conflict with other moral obligations. At least some liberals would argue that the moral obligations imposed by the requirement to support just liberal institu- tions conflict with the interest individuals have in pointing out the social relevance of their religious beliefs, even if this is part of their religious practice. They would further argue that the conflict is best settled by imposing moral prohibitions on the use of religious consid- erations in political argument. To counter this argument, either some theory of liberal democracy must be provided according to which no conflict arises or some solu- tion must be defended which balances the conflicting claims and inter- ests differently. The solution which Murray's remark suggests balances the claims by giving free exercise, as Murray conceives it, overriding weight.10 Without some supporting argument, however, it is hard to see why this solution should be accepted. Other of Murray's writings suggest an alternative view: that impos- ing looser moral restrictions on public argument would be compatible with the requirements of public civility. Central to Murray's view as expressed in We Hold These Truths is the moral ideal of what Murray calls "the reasonable man" (Murray 1960, 297). The ability and will- ingness to engage in civil argument are essential to the ideal of rea- 10 Audi's solution seems to me to err in the other direction; see Weithman 1991, 64- 65. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 17 sonableness as Murray conceives it (e.g., Murray 1960, 14, 297). Civil argumentation, in Murray's view, draws its premises from what he called "the public consensus" (Murray 1960, 80-81), and it is clear that Murray thought the consensus included at least some theological claims (Murray 1960, 328). It is therefore clear that Murray thought that reasonable citizens could comply with the duty of civility while adducing at least some religious claims in their political argument. This is not the place to do a full comparison of Murray and Rawls. Such a comparison would be interesting and important, not least be- cause there is so much superficial agreement between them. Both think that public argument must begin from a moral consensus, both are impressed by what Rawls has called "the fact of pluralism," both attach great importance to the ideal of reasonableness and to the asso- ciated duty of civility, and both would agree that civility requires ad- dressing others as equals on the basis of "common human reason" (Rawls 1993, 137). Yet Rawls and Murray differ significantly about the meaning of "reasonableness," about the proper attitude toward pluralism,11 and about the content of the consensus from which polit- ical discussion begins. There may well be circumstances in which religious argumentation is compatible with the demands of civility. Given the pluralism of con- temporary democracies, however, there are many circumstances in which it is not - including, I believe, circumstances in which Murray thought religious political argument permissible. I therefore think that Murray's arguments for the compatibility of civility and loose re- strictions on such argument are unsound. Whether Rawls's own argu- ments are any better depends upon the content of the restrictions he would actually defend. It is to that I now turn. 3.3 Constrained but not prohibited In the last section, I granted for the sake of argument that Rawls's discussion of public reason does impose moral prohibitions on any use of religious political argument. I now want to contest that interpreta- tion and argue that Rawls would allow religion greater scope in polit- ical discourse than is often thought. The work Rawls published before 1993 contains little sustained treatment of the notion of public reason. I believe, however, that the reasons Rawls gives in his earlier work for introducing the notion support my reading. 11 Murray says that pluralism is "lamentable" (1960, 74). Rawls, by contrast, de- scribes it as "the characteristic work of practical reason over time under enduring free institutions" (1993, 135). This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 18 Journal of Religious Ethics Rawls introduced free public reason in "Idea of an Overlapping Con- sensus" as a companion idea to the notion that gives that paper its title. Recall that an overlapping consensus obtains completely when a society is well ordered by justice as fairness. This occurs when every- one accepts and knows that everyone else accepts that conception of justice and when each has reconciled that conception with her compre- hensive moral and religious views. In a society in which all converge on a conception of justice, a pair of questions naturally arise. The first is the question of what standards should be employed to determine whether the institutions constitut- ing the basic structure consistently operate in conformity with the principles of justice on which all are agreed. The second is that of what sorts of arguments may be used and what evidence appealed to by, for example, a supreme court, to convince citizens that justice is in fact being done in particular cases. As Rawls says: [C]onnected with a political conception of justice is an essential compan- ion conception of free public reason. This conception involves various ele- ments. A crucial one is this: just as a political conception of justice needs certain principles of justice for the basic structure to specify its content, it also needs certain guidelines of inquiry and publicly recognized rules of assessing evidence to govern its application. Otherwise, there is no agreed way for determining whether those principles are satisfied, and for settling what they require of particular institutions, or in particular situ- ations. Agreement on a conception of justice is worthless - not an effec- tive agreement at all - without agreement on these further matters [Rawls 1987, 8]. Citizens' need for assurance that justice is being done arises from the great importance citizens attach to satisfaction of and respect for their fundamental interests.12 The assurance that justice is being done is, in Rawls's view, a necessary condition for citizens' knowing that these fundamental interests are being respected. Satisfying this condition requires that human reason play the special role of provid- ing the requisite assurance. This role is a public role because the ar- guments providing this assurance are the publicly announced justification of the acts and operations of public institutions - hence the name "public reason." 12 In Rawls's theory, those interests are specified by the political conception of jus- tice itself. These fundamental interests are, of course, interests in the primary goods and in the development and exercise of the moral powers (Rawls 1980, 525; 1993, 47- 88). This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 19 The arguments of public reason are addressed to every last citizen, for arguments must be available to every citizen who wants to assure herself that justice is being done (Rawls 1980, 553). The pluralism of the modern democracies for which Rawls writes implies that reason must be governed by certain restrictions if it is to provide arguments accessible to all. More specifically, if reason is to play this public role adequately, it must be restricted in the inferences it accepts and the premises to which it appeals. It is because of the extremity of this pluralism that these restrictions are so demanding; public reason, as we saw, is confined to "the shared methods of, and the public knowl- edge available to, common sense, and the procedures and conclusions of science when these are not controversial" (Rawls 1987, 8). Who is bound by these restrictions? Who exercises public reason? Since the notion of public reason is introduced to explain how citizens in a well-ordered society can be assured and can assure themselves that justice is being done and their fundamental interests are being respected, we would expect Rawls to say that strictures of public rea- son most need to be observed where the need to perform the public function of providing this assurance is greatest. In other arguments, where there is less, little, or no threat to citizens' fundamental inter- ests, the moral requirement to adhere to the canons of public reason- ing will be correspondingly weaker. To answer the question of who exercises public reason, it is therefore necessary to determine whose political arguments and pronouncements create the need for such assurance. When is the need for such assurance greatest? C very great indeed when the U.S. Supreme Court scope of the basic liberties; in such cases citize ests are clearly at stake. If, for example, the U.S ularly appealed to theological premises in its o could not be sure that the Court was respectin interests. Indeed they might well suspect tha done and that religiously-based claims on socia ing illegitimately honored. Since the assuran done is necessary, in Rawls's view, so, too, are on public reason prohibiting appeal to theologica ple, Supreme Court decisions. The need is, likewise, very great indeed when e ticularly those who hold offices of great pow speak on such matters in their official capacities ters are more complicated (see Rawls's discussi 254). This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 20 Journal of Religious Ethics Public reason, we might say, is therefore primarily the reason exer- cised by the courts and by elected officials in their official capacities. This conclusion can be extrapolated from Rawls's earlier treatment of public reason. It is explicit in his most recent work on the subject (Rawls 1993, 215-16). What of private individuals? Are they ever obligated to abide by the restrictions of public reason? Obviously, few citizens in a representa- tive democracy occupy elective office or positions in the judiciary. Few citizens, therefore, occupy positions with which, it seems, public rea- son is associated. It might be maintained, however, that all citizens whether they hold public office or not, are obligated to observe the restrictions of public reason when they offer political argument. It might be maintained, that is, that all citizens are obligated to offer political argument as if they held public office in a liberal democracy. Immanuel Kant's writings are very suggestive in this connection. The third formulation of the categorical imperative enjoins all to rea- son as if they were legislators for a liberal society, which Kant called a "realm of ends." Kant famously thought acting from the categorical imperative necessary for the realization of autonomy. Kant, it might be concluded, may therefore have thought that all citizens can realize autonomy only by restricting their political arguments to such argu- ments as a public official in a liberal society could legitimately offer. Elsewhere, when writing explicitly about public reason, Kant said that its employment is necessary for "it alone can bring about enlight- enment among men" (Kant 1970, 55). It might be argued that Rawls, good Kantian that he is, follows Kant's very suggestive re- marks. Rawls, it might be argued, thinks that all citizens should adopt the legislative standpoint of the third formulation whenever they offer political argument because only thus can they realize auton- omy and foster enlightenment. Suggestive remarks do not, of course, an argument make. The Kantian argument this line of reasoning attributes to Rawls would be extremely difficult to articulate precisely. For present purposes what is important is that Rawls does not connect the restrictions of public reason with the spread of enlightenment or with the autonomy that Kant thought individuals realize when acting from the categorical im- perative. Rather, Rawls argues that restrictions on public reason must be observed so that all can see that justice is being done and that their fundamental interests are being respected. The availability of such assurance to each and every citizen promotes civility, mutual trust, and mutual respect. It is the obligation to promote these values, rather than to foster autonomy and enlightenment, that generates what obligations there are to observe the restrictions of public reason. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 21 Observing the restrictions of public reason serves to assure other citizens that individuals and associations do not intend to seize polit- ical advantage and compromise the fundamental interests of others. It promotes civility and mutual trust and therefore has much in its favor. It is not easy to specify when the employment of public reason is required, however, because a large number of factors come into play. Among these are what individuals or religious bodies are speaking, to whom, and on what issue. When the threat to the fundamental inter- ests of other citizens is small, because of the issue at stake or because the speaker is not in a position to threaten those interests, religious considerations would no doubt be permitted a place. Appeal to them would not be morally prohibited as inconsistent with the civility and mutual trust of a just liberal democracy. Rawls's recently published essay on public reason confirms this. There he says that the requirement to abide by the strictures of public reason applies in the first instance to argument about what he calls "constitutional essentials." There he also discusses the possibility that religious argumentation might be employed to strengthen social commitment to a liberal conception of justice (Rawls 1993, 227-30, 247-54). David Hollenbach has written that "Rawls states that appeals to comprehensive doctrines of the good must be avoided both in argu- ments about the basic structure of society and also in the formulation of more specific social policies" (Hollenbach 1991, 94 n. 27). So general a claim about political argument does not take account of the many distinctions on which Rawls's elaboration of public reason would no doubt rely. A full Rawlsian theory of public reason that elaborated its strictures and laid down moral requirements for their observance would be enormously complicated. It would require sensitivity to a large number of important distinctions, drawn with an eye toward the reasons the notion of public reason was first introduced. The criticism that Rawls privatizes religion by prohibiting religious appeals in political discussion must therefore be qualified. Religious reason cannot play the role of public reason, Rawls argues, and a body of religious social thought cannot serve as a public intellectual re- source in that capacity. Religion is not, however, completely prohib- ited from public or political discussion. It is not therefore to be completely privatized, in Rawls's view. Religion can serve as an intel- lectual resource in political argument, but its use is constrained. This constraint of the public use of the good of religion, rather than its elimination or moral prohibition, is just what we should expect from a Kantian view like that of Rawls in which the claims of the right This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 22 Journal of Religious Ethics subordinate but do not silence the claims of the good (see Davidson 1985, 51-59). The question of what political argument would be like in Rawls's well-ordered society is a matter on which Rorty's interpretation of Rawls has been influential and, I believe, highly misleading. Rorty seems to think that public reason will be all or virtually all the reason there is. This is not because he thinks everyone will observe some set of moral prohibitions on reasoning of other sorts. It is because he thinks the desire to appeal to religious argument in political matters will "gradually cease to be felt" (Rorty 1988, 264). A liberal society would, he says be one that "encourages 'the end of ideology'"; citizens of the well-ordered society will inhabit what he calls a "disenchanted world" (Rorty 1988, 264). Note two points about Rorty's argument. First, it is premised on a claim about the impact of liberal political culture on the religious be- liefs and attitudes of those who inhabit it; its crucial premise is a soci- ological prediction and not a philosophical thesis. Second, this is not a sociological prediction to which Rawls has committed himself. We therefore cannot rely on Rorty's argument to support the claim that Rawls imposes moral prohibitions on the use of all religious claims in political argument. 3.4 Balancing conflicting claims Are the constraints on religious political argument that Rawls would impose objectionable? One objection might be that there can be no moral constraints on the use of religious argument because employ- ment of religious argument is part of the practice of one's religion and there are no moral restrictions on the practice of religion. This is a stronger version of an objection considered at the end of section 3.2. According to that objection a prohibition on all religious political argu- ment is contrary to religious liberty. This objection is beset by one problem that plagued the weaker ver- sion of it discussed earlier: there obviously are moral restrictions on the practice of religion. Some of those restrictions, like the restriction of human sacrifice, are required by the just claims of others. Rawls would argue that the restrictions on religious argument that he im- poses are grounded in the need for civility, mutual trust, and security; these claims, in turn, are ultimately grounded on the conception of justice Rawls provides. Therefore the moral restrictions on argument that Rawls defends, like the restrictions on human sacrifice, express requirements of justice. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 23 The burden of proof is on the objector to argue either that the need for trust, civility, and security does not conflict with religious liberty properly conceived or that the proper balance of these claims demands looser constraints on argument than Rawls would endorse. The objec- tor might maintain, for example, that Rawls has balanced competing claims improperly because he misconceives the fundamental interests of citizens. She might also maintain that he balances them improp- erly because he attaches too high a value to everyone's being assured that her fundamental interests are respected and not enough to the interest citizens have in the practice of their religion. The cost of this equal respect for all citizens, she might maintain, is simply too high; the religious person cannot be expected to pay it. These claims, of course, cut to the heart of Rawls's liberal demo- cratic theory. The burden of anyone who urges them is to support them with a theory of liberal democracy that differs from the one he provides. No one urging this objection, however, has provided such an alternative theory. Moreover, such a theory would have serious drawbacks, even from a religious point of view. Theories, like that of Rawls, that privilege the security of everyone's fundamental interests are theories which depict a social world with certain desirable characteristics. In particular, they depict a social world in which everyone can readily assure herself that religiously-founded claims on public institutions are advanced and honored only when they are just claims which those institutions can honor legitimately. Indeed, it is the ready availability of such knowledge that provides the basis for the mutual respect and trust that would obtain among citizens. The objection presupposes an unde- veloped theory which supposes that religious people may legitimately assert claims on social institutions which some others cannot recog- nize as just claims. Honoring these claims will therefore seem, at least to some, to be illegitimate exercises of public power. This percep- tion could well elicit a mistrust of those who advance such claims, and it risks arousing enmity against the religion that motivates those claims in the first place. It is at least questionable whether the cause of religion is better served by arousing such mistrust and animosity than it would be by restraint in the name of mutual respect. 4. Religious Goods and Public Goods Is it possible, though, that by imposing moral restrictions on reli- gious political argument, Rawls deprives liberal democracies of argu- ments that would otherwise contribute to their vitality, their cohesion, or their justice? This brings me to the third of the three objections This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 24 Journal of Religious Ethics that I want to consider, the objection that the privatization of religion is premised on a mistaken conception of religion as divisive. In a relatively early assessment of Rawls's work, John Langan writes that Rawls, "[l]ike most theorists of the social contract, is con- cerned about the divisive effects of religious belief (Langan 1977, 351). Langan then remarks, "it is important to see that Christianity and other religions offer an interpretation of the common experience of human persons; in this sense, at least, the gospel can have a secular meaning and can be relevant to our conceptions of justice and society" (Langan 1977, 352). Langan does not spell out in what he thinks this relevance consists. His remark suggests, however, that, in his view, the gospel narrative - the values it articulates, the parables, the sym- bols, the story of death, rebirth, and redemption - can appeal even to the non-theist and the non-Christian. Langan is making at least one of two possible claims. One is that the use of religious language, imagery, and reasoning in political argu- ment is not divisive. The second and stronger claim is that such lan- guage, imagery, and reasoning contribute useful political ideas and help to forge social unity and political coalitions. The former claim could be used to argue that such an introduction of religion into polit- ical argument is morally permissible. The second could be used to ar- gue, not only that religion's introduction is morally permissible, but also that it is morally and politically good.13 I do not want to examine the arguments for these claims in great detail. I do, however, want to look somewhat more closely at four different ways of construing what is meant or entailed by the claim that religious political argument is not necessarily divisive. It might mean simply that (1) appeal to religious considerations to advocate or legitimate public policy need not necessarily occasion civil strife. This is a claim that Rawls would surely grant, at least if the society in question is a twentieth-century North Atlantic democracy.14 This concession, however, has no bearing on the argument about Rawls's strictures on political argument for their imposition is not pro- posed as a way to avoid civil strife. If the claim that religion need not be politically divisive is to count against Rawls's account of public rea- son, it must be interpreted more strongly. Perhaps the claim means that (2) the use of religious argument would not endanger the trust, civility, respect, and security so central to Rawls's argument. This interpretation of Langan's claim obliges us 13 David Hollenbach seems to endorse this second claim (1988, 299). 14 Note that while Rawls might make this concession, not everyone would; see Audi 1989, 296, and Larmore 1990, 357. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 25 to return to the question: Under what circumstances is religious argu- ment to be used? It may well be that the employment of religious language and argu- ment in Supreme Court decisions, for example, would appeal to large segments of the population and may secure their support for a Court decision. The consequences for those who do not find such religious considerations compelling, however, are dire. Religious arguments have, from their point of view, functioned only to solidify a majority against them. Because those arguments are, ex hypothesi, adduced by the Supreme Court, the minority may well feel that a religious ma- jority has solidified against them with Court approval and encouragement. The contemporary use of religious argument in Supreme Court deci- sions thus raises a specter similar to that which James Madison sought to exorcise. Where Madison was concerned with the possibility of majority tyranny, Rawls is concerned also with the perception of majority tyranny. Thus he says: "[ajrguments supporting political judgments should, if possible, not only be sound but such that they can be publicly seen to be sound. The maxim that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done, holds good not only in law but also in free public reason" (Rawls 1987, 21). It is important to remember that the function of public reason is not simply to build working majorities be- hind judicial decision or legislative programs, but also to assure all citizens that exercises of public power are just and legitimate and that the fundamental interests of each and every citizen are being respected. Public reason avoids divisiveness in the sense under con- sideration when it performs these functions and guarantees that jus- tice can "be seen to be done." I have argued that, in Rawls's view, this requires the Supreme Court to observe strict restraints on the reasoning it employs. His most recent work bears out this interpretation: The justices cannot, of course, invoke their own morality, nor the ideals and virtues of morality generally. Those they must view as irrelevant. Equally, they cannot invoke their or other people's religious or philosophi- cal views. Nor can they cite political values without restriction. Rather, they must appeal to the political values they think belong to the most reasonable understanding of the public conception and its political values of justice and public reason. These are values that they believe in good faith, as the duty of civility requires, that all citizens as reasonable and rational might reasonably be expected to endorse [Rawls 1993, 236, em- phasis added]. This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 26 Journal of Religious Ethics It may have been true in the past, even in the recent past, that reli- gious argument could function in the role of public reason and that, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court could appeal to religious premises to justify its decisions. To take but one example, William O. Douglas, in a 1952 decision that John Courtney Murray applauded, wrote that "[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being" (Zorach v. Clauson 72 S.Ct. 679; see Murray 1960, 151). In the intervening forty years, pluralism has increased, as has the suspicion of religious authority and religious argument. It seems to me very doubtful that the Supreme Court could now rely on religious argu- ments to justify its verdicts without arousing suspicions that the fun- damental interests of some are being sacrificed illegitimately. Indeed members of the Court themselves have recently expressed serious reservations about the legitimacy of decisions that are relig- iously grounded (for example, Blackmun in the 1986 case Bowers v. Harwich 106 S.Ct. 2841). That even members of the Supreme Court doubt the legitimacy of that Court's own decisions when they are relig- iously based, suggests that religious argument would now be divisive if employed in the role of public reason. Reflection on the conse- quences for a possible minority of non-theists lends this some confir- mation. Rawls's discussion of free public reason is indeed premised, as Langan's objection asserts, on the claim that the use of religious argument in that role would be in some sense divisive. That premise, however, seems to be correct given the interpretation of "divisive" now under consideration. Perhaps the claim that religious political discourse is not divisive means only that (3) there are some circumstances in which religious arguments can be employed and religious symbols invoked without en- dangering trust, civility, respect, and security. If this is so, then the claim provides no grounds for objecting to Rawls. He would permit recourse to religious political argument in such circumstances, as his most recent work makes amply clear (Rawls 1993, 247-54). Finally, the claim that religious argumentation is not politically di- visive might mean that (4) its employment facilitates the building of coalitions and majorities at only a very slight cost to civility, trust, and the security of fundamental interests. The objection to Rawls's argu- ment premised on this view is that though he is correct in believing that religious appeals generate some social divisiveness, the costs of such appeals are worth paying. The conclusion of this argument im- plies that the values which Rawls places at the heart of democracy and justice can be compromised for the sake of other goods. That claim, in turn, can only be defended by a great deal of argument. Mu- tual respect, trust, and the assurance of every last citizen that society This content downloaded from 130.105.127.235 on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:04:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Privatization of Religion 27 corporately and others singly respect her interests, are very great political goods. They are also goods which, in the long run, arguably contribute to the stability of liberal democratic institutions. 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