Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (part 4): What's Wrong With Restraint?

In my last post I described the doctrine of restraint, a doctrine that is basic to justificatory liberalism but which Christopher Eberle rejects. In short, Eberle believes that once religious citizens have conscientiously engaged other citizens they do not need to restrain themselves from supporting coercive public policies. Religious citizens may demonstrate respect toward other citizens even as they support public policies solely on the basis of their religious beliefs. In contrast, justificatory liberals believe that religious citizens ought to restrain themselves from supporting public policies that they are unable to justify publicly.

But why is restraint so controversial? Liberals have long valued religious liberty as a basic matter of political justice, and at first glance the doctrine of restraint flows naturally from this commitment; to impose coercive policies solely on the basis of religious premises conflicts with this ideal, or so justificatory liberals might argue (Eberle, of course, disagrees with the premise that policies that flow solely from religious premises inherently violate religious liberty). The seminal political philosophers John Rawls speaks well in this vein. The doctrine of restraint flows first from the reality of reasonable pluralism, the fact that our society consists of a diversity of incommensurable, reasonable conceptions of the good--for a liberal democracy, "the normal result of its culture of free institutions" (Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," 573 in Collected Papers). Because citizens are fundamentally divided about their respective value commitments, it behooves citizens of a liberal democracy to refrain from supporting policies that infringe upon the deeply-held comprehensive beliefs of other reasonable citizens (Rawls, along with other liberal democrats, precludes unreasonable comprehensive beliefs from the mix, which seems right even as it raises the question about what qualifies any belief system as "reasonable"). As Rawls says, "Our exercise of political power is proper only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we would offer for our political actions--were we to state them as government officials--are sufficient, and we also reasonably think that other citizens might also reasonably accept those reasons" ("Public Reason Revisited," 578). The point is that political power in a liberal democracy needs to be united with reasons that can be justified to citizens who do not accept our deeply held beliefs; We need to pursue "public reasons." Restraint is simply the corollary of this commitment. Because the liberal citizen needs to find reasons that may persuade citizens who do not share her religious beliefs, when the liberal citizen is unable to find such reasons she should restrain herself from supporting the policy.

So why does Eberle find the doctrine of restraint so problematic? Surprisingly, Eberle never enumerates his reasons for objecting to restraint, but his concerns are implicit in several places in his book. Most importantly, Eberle believes that the doctrine of restraint puts some religious citizens in an untenable position. At least some religious citizens take obedience to God as the principle mandate for all of life, and for them the prospect of restraining themselves from supporting policies consistent with this obedience will be psychologically "doubtful." Eberle worries that the doctrine of restraint, along with other social dynamics internal to modern liberal democracies, encourages citizens to privatize their religious commitments, to treat them as mere lifestyle choices of little public consequence (144). For citizens who believe that God's will is an overriding concern for human life, the doctrine of restraint entails that they compromise this deeply held conviction in order to participate in public policy discourse, or that they simply abandon public life altogether to remain faithful to God.

Second, Eberle believes that the doctrine of restraint itself lacks any sort of rational justification (i.e. for reasons that we will examine later, he is not persuaded by arguments like that of Rawls, above). Thus, to impose it on religious citizens is itself a violation of the norm of respect. The doctrine of restraint embodies the very browbeating that concerns secular critics of religious citizens (150-151).

Third, Eberle also believes that justificatory liberals have failed to offer a defensible account of what public reason is that at the same time (1) non-arbitrary, and (2) capable of precluding religious reasons without also precluding reasons basic to rudimentary political discourse. But the doctrine of restraint requires some account of what qualifies as a public reason. Because justificatory liberals have yet to offer a defensible definition of public reason that responds effectively to these criticisms, the doctrine of restraint exemplifies one way that non-idealized citizens simply express their own disagreements with one another.

While I'm describing what Eberle believes is wrong with restraint, I'll close with a fourth concern, expressed most forcefully by Jeffrey Stout in his book Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). In chapter 3 of his book, Stout responds at length to Rawls's argument for public reason. In his later work, Rawls argues that religious citizens may introduce reasons from their reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious and otherwise, "provided that in due course public reasons, given by a reasonable political conception, are presented sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are introduced to support" (Political Liberalism, li-lii). As Stout observes, this language makes it sound as if religious reasons serve the function of political IOU's, with cash payment to be proffered at some later point. Stout observes that by this standard Christian abolitionists and Martin Luther King Jr. themselves barely qualify; did they ever fulfill this proviso (Democracy and Tradition, 69)? For Stout, as for Eberle, the doctrine of restraint too quickly abandons more dialogical approaches to public discourse that entail giving and listening to one another's reasons, stepping into the shoes of the other, conscientiously engaging other citizens.

As I stated in part 1, I think Eberle is wrong here, but I'm nearing the end of this post. In part 5 I will present one of the stronger arguments for the doctrine of restraint and will explore Eberle's argument against it.