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THE OLYMPIAN |
Is it appropriate that judges, politicians or voters make decisions and publicly justify those decisions based on religious texts?
For example, would it be objectionable that passages from the Bible or the Quran serve as a legal justification for laws that criminalize abortion?
The United States Constitution provides for a separation of church and state. It prohibits laws ?respecting an establishment of religion? and laws applying a religious test for eligibility to hold a public office. At the same time, the Constitution secures the ?free exercise? of religion so that people can believe and practice (or not) a faith of their choice.
This separation of church and state protects the citizen from having the religious views of others imposed on them by coercive law or by legislation of a religious concept of the good. It thus protects a pluralism of religions and moral views against theocracy and the civil strife it leads to when government enforces a religion on unwilling citizens.
The doctrine of separation also reflects the fact that religious beliefs are traditionally based upon asserted revealed truths that a significant segment of other believers and nonbelievers reasonably do not accept as reliable sources or truths. Indeed, religious followers often interpret the same religious texts to reach vastly different conclusions, and in modern society, numerous commands in religious books such as stoning prostitutes to death, amputating hands of thieves, and beating disobedient children, are proscribed.
Clearly citizens (and politicians) are free under our Constitution to argue for laws based on religion and could not be punished for doing so. However, the question here is not one of legal duty, but of a civic duty which is an ideal not enforceable by law, like the duty to vote.
Many political philosophers argue that to preserve pluralistic democracy, citizens and politicians should recognize a civic duty to base their votes and public justification of coercive laws on neutral grounds, such as shared values and factual considerations, rather than revealed religious truths or one?s comprehensive moral view. Such a view does not exclude values found in religion or moral theory from the public debate where such values are shared among reasonable persons.
The abortion dispute can provide an example how neutral grounds work. The public abortion debate might be recast in non-religious terms, shifting the focus from a religious designation of an embryo/early fetus as a person or human being to considerations of fact, such as whether and to what extent an embryo/early fetus has thoughts, memories, expectations, a sense of loss, differentiates self from world, acts, experiences pain from abortion, resembles a human, etc., whether and to what extent our shared values give moral weight to the potential of an organism to develop characteristics of mature humans, whether and to what extent prohibition will result in deaths of mothers from illegal abortions and in childbirth, whether and to what extent children who would have been aborted will be adequately cared for, whether and to what extent allowing abortion will lead to societal acceptance of infanticide, euthanasia, or mistreatment of humans with mental or physical challenges, etc.
No doubt I have left off a number of important considerations in the abortion debate, but this list illustrates how controversial issues can at least in part be addressed by identifying and weighing factual outcomes and shared values.
Indeed, neutral grounds are themselves used to justify this civic duty. If politicians and citizens publicly accept religious justifications for law, the pressure would mount for judges (who are appointed by politicians or elected by citizens) to follow. And if politicians and citizens publicly justify their votes on nonreligious grounds but actually vote based on religious grounds, it would at times result in hypocritical laws silently justified on religious grounds.
To me, these considerations suggest that we should recognize a civic duty to base our votes and public justifications of coercive laws on neutral, nonreligious grounds, because doing so provides a critical bulwark to safeguard pluralistic democracy from creeping theocracy.
Brian Faller, a local attorney, is a member of The Olympian?s Board of Contributors. He can be reached at brianfaller@comcast.net.
Article source: http://www.theolympian.com/2011/09/07/1788994/what-role-should-religion-play.html
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