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Liberal Democracy, Post-Secularism and the Public Role of the Churches: a Pluralist Approach

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Liberal Democracy, Post-Secularism and the Public Role of the Churches: a Pluralist Approach Liberal Democracy, Post-Secularism and the Public Role of the Churches: A Pluralist Approach by Timothy Addis A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College and the Theology Department of the Toronto School of Theology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology awarded by the University of St. Michael's College © Copyright by Timothy Addis 2013 Liberal Democracy, Post-Secularism and the Public Role of the Churches: A Pluralist Approach Timothy Addis Doctor of Philosophy in Theology University of St. Michael’s College 2013 Abstract This study develops a ‘post-secular’ theory of the public role of Christianity in a liberal democracy. Public religion has come under renewed scrutiny in the light of two conflicting developments, the politicization of many religious groups and the emergence of a ‘strong’ or exclusivist conception of secularism which opposes not only the domination of the polity by such groups but also their right to contribute to decisions on law and public and policy. Post- secularists have appealed to theories of political pluralism to reject the containment of religion to the private sphere of liberal society and to affirm the legitimacy of its participation in the decision-making processes of the state. This study follows Habermas in mediating between concerns about theocracy and rigid secularism. It recognizes limits on religion within the state apparatus while encouraging religious political contributions in a wider public sphere of debate on issues and events. Against Habermas and other post-secularists, however, it argues that liberal theories of pluralism are inadequate to a reinvigoration of inclusive public debate because their focus on individual rights of conscience and expression compounds the marginalization and decline of traditional groups, including the churches, in liberal society. This study appeals instead to ‘group-pluralism’ in ii suggesting that the conditions of a post-secular society include protective rights for faith-based communities to pursue an integrated way of life. This study combines a version of ‘contrast church’ theory with classical liberalism in proposing that the primary role of the churches is to maintain a visible and vibrant institutional presence in the private sphere of society. By concentrating on the formation of Christian virtues by means of discipleship in liturgical practices and in ‘classical’ as opposed to ‘contextual’ theology, the churches can help to ensure that their public witness, when warranted, can be radical. A secondary role of the churches, one neglected by most post-secularists, is to build coalitions with other traditional religious and normative communities in order to defend, in the face of an expanding public sphere, a diversity of life-styles, and hence of alternative perspectives to a dominant societal consensus on secular liberal social principles. iii Acknowledgments I wish to thank the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College, especially Marsha Hewitt, who supervised this thesis, David Neelands, Don Wiebe and Abrahim Khan. I wish also to thank Douglas Farrow, Department of Religious Studies, McGill University and Michael Bourgeois, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto for their incisive comments on the text. Special thanks go to Jonathan Chaplin, formerly of The Institute for Christian Studies, University of Toronto, and now Director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics, Cambridge. iv Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE. THE CASE AGAINST STRONG SECULARISM 30 Religion, morality and contested public issues 31 Agonism, difference and Christianity 40 The problem of religious extremism 50 CHAPTER TWO: HABERMAS AND POST-SECULARISM 57 Habermas, Rawls and the liberal public sphere 57 A Christian critique of Habermas 65 Two approaches to post-secularism 73 CHAPTER THREE: POST-SECULARISM AND THE CONTRAST CHURCH 83 The development of contrast church theory 83 The public role of the contrast church 93 The contrast church and public debate 101 CHAPTER FOUR: A PLURALIST APPROACH TO POST-SECULARISM 109 A pluralist critique of the contrast church 109 Liberalism, pluralism and the churches 118 The churches and protective group rights 127 v CHAPTER FIVE: POST-SECULARISM AND CIVIL SOCIETY 135 Civil society and the public churches 135 Civil society and public debate 143 The congruence remedy and civil religion 152 CHAPTER SIX: POST-SECULARISM AND PUBLIC DEBATE: A PLURALIST APPROACH 161 Liberal society and colonization by system 161 The private sphere and public debate 168 The public role of the churches 177 CONCLUSION 185 REFERENCES 203 vi Introduction There has always been a close relationship between liberalism and secularism. The connection dates from the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which convinced the early architects of liberalism that a religious state must be intolerant and illiberal. For Hobbes [1963, 70], disputes about religious doctrine are “the cause of all our late mischief” (that is, the civil war in England). Theorists of liberalism have also always tended to understand secularism broadly as contrasted not just to theocracy but to the dominance of any faith-based conception of the good, or what John Rawls calls “comprehensive doctrines,” for the liberal commitment to individual autonomy entails a suspicion of worldviews which might justify intrusions into political, economic and social freedoms. A common defining condition of liberal democracy is, therefore, a secular or non-sectarian state in which no one comprehensive doctrine is officially favoured and the eligibility requirements of participation in public decision-making are neutral between competing substantive or moral conceptions of the good [Perry 2003, 9]. In the late twentieth century, a new sense of secularism emerged in political theory, one that rejects not just the dominance of a particular comprehensive doctrine in the polity but all faith- based contributions to law and public policy. The first sense of secularism entails a fundamental separation of the state from religion; the second goes on to require the separation of political 2 debate and deliberation from faith-based influences.1 For proponents of this new secularism, political debate should be confined to arguments based on public reason, defined by Rawls [1996, 224] as those “presently accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense, and the methods and conclusions of science when these are not controversial” With comprehensive doctrines safely contained in the private sphere of society, the new secularists believe, citizens would share enough common ground to adjudicate their differences without excessive discord by means of public reason [Mathewes 2007, 112].2 There is thus an ambiguity in describing a liberal society as secular: we can mean either that it does not establish or recognize a particular faith-based doctrine or that it is purged in some way of faith-based principles and arguments. Various terms have been used to distinguish these two conceptions of secularism, including weak and strong, plain secular as opposed to secularist or “laicist”, and accommodationist as against exclusivist or separationist. Post-secularism can refer to any movement of ideas which identifies or promotes a resurgence of religion in contemporary society.3 For the most part, however, post-secularism has arisen and developed in reaction to strong secularism, and it has been concerned to reassert the status quo ante of weak secularism or non-sectarianism. Post-secularists argue that strong secularism 1 Among many statements of the new concept, see Ackerman’s ‘Neutrality Principle’: no reason to justify a power structure is legitimate “if it requires the power holder to assert… that his conception of the good is better than that asserted by any of his fellow citizens…” [Ackerman 1980, 10-11]. The emergence of this concept owes much to popular conceptions of totalitarianism following World War II and the Cold War, and its development has been fuelled by a worldwide politicization of religion, as we will see. For more on the distinction between the two concepts of secularism, see, Parekh 2000, 322; McClay 2003, and Habermas 2008b, 27. 2 Or as Bailey [2003, 67-8] puts the point, we can preserve universal consent by limiting argument to areas in which consensus is possible 3 For Habermas [in Mendieta 2010, 3-4], post-secularism refers not so much to a rise in the level of religious observance as to a change in consciousness about religion, and specifically about its continuing relevance and influence in nominally secular societies. 3 mirrors theocracy in sanctioning public reason as the sole criterion of admissible public arguments, and thus officially privileging irreligion. They have sought to restore secularism, not as a quasi-religious and sectarian ideology, but as one among many legitimate perspectives in a pluralist society.4 The debate between post-secularists and strong secularists is primarily a normative one, concerning the ideal rather than the reality of liberal societies, which do not normally place legal restrictions on faith-based public arguments but recognize rights of free speech and assembly for religious as well as secular citizens.5 More specifically, the debate belongs to the field of political ethics, addressing the question of what types of moral arguments warrant restrictions in the public sphere. The debate is not entirely academic, however, for there are increasing instances of Western legislatures and courts adopting the strong or exclusivist concept of secularism, notably in prohibiting or limiting religious behaviour and symbols in public areas.6 In some cases, the Canadian courts have used the concept of secularism in its later sense to mean “necessarily exclusive of religion” [Chaplin 2000, 625].7 Post-secularism responds to fears 4 See, for example, Habermas 2008a, 266 and 2008b; Connolly 1999, 11; Walker 2000, 112-3, and Markham 1994, 3. 5 This is more clearly the case in Canada, where there is no Establishment Clause, than in the U.S., though many legal scholars would deny that strong secularism finds support in the Establishment Clause.
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