Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (part 6): Restraint and Religious Liberty

Up to this point in this series I have done my best to represent Eberle's perspective on the role of religious conviction in liberal politics. I am now at the point when I begin to lay out my own take on Eberle's argument. These posts have been lengthy, so I'll reiterate Eberle's argument in brief. Eberle affirms:

[A] citizen has an obligation sincerely and conscientiously to pursue a widely convincing secular rationale for her favored coercive laws, but she doesn't have an obligation to withhold support from a coercive law for which she lacks a widely convincing secular rationale. (10)

In relating his thesis to the claims of justificatory liberalism, Eberle wants to affirm the ideal of conscientious engagement-- all citizens have a moral duty to pursue reasons behind these policies that they can reasonably expect other citizens to accept--while denying the doctrine of restraint--citizens should restrain themselves from supporting coercive laws for which secular (or, in some accounts, public) reasons are unavailable.

Eberle's book is characterized by a remarkable depth of insight and organization. Especially important is his discussion of differing accounts of public reason, a topic that deserves more attention than I can give it here. There is a lot that one can commend in his book, but his conclusion still strikes me as flawed. To pinpoint my main concern, it will help to clarify a two more basic questions that informs the distinction Eberle rightly draws between conscientious engagement and restraint. The ideal of conscientious engagement bears upon the question of how we should engage other citizens when discussing public policy. Does respect entail anything as to how we engage other citizens? Eberle says yes; we should do so with openness and generosity. We should be honest about the principle reasons for our support of a policy. We should pursue reasons that other citizens, especially those with whom we disagree about matters like religion, can accept. We should listen to the counterclaims of our compatriots. Eberle's account of conscientious engagement is commendable; there is little to disagree with here.

The doctrine of restraint, however, bears upon a very different question, a question that Eberle doesn't directly address in his book: Does respect entail anything about the kinds of policies that citizens support? Are there some policies that are by their very nature disrespectful toward those who are unwillingly coerced? Advocates of restraint believe that liberal democratic respect places limits on the range of policies that citizens can justifiably support (i.e. any policy that lacks public justification falls outside the limits of what citizens ought to support). Eberle, however, places no limit on the range of policies that citizens may support--i.e. what citizens actually support is inconsequential to the question of respect--as long as how citizens support these policies lives up to the ideal of conscientious engagement. Respect, in short, only pertains to the manner by which we engage citizens, not the content of the policies that we advocate.

I may well be overstating Eberle's position here. A plausible alternative might be to say that respect does entail limits on policies that can be supported in a liberal democracy but that public justification is irrelevant to these limits. Eberle seems to move in this direction early in his book when he says,

"I believe and will assume throughout this book, that a responsible citizen in a liberal democracy adhere to characteristic liberal institutions and practices. Of particular importance, I believe, and will assume throughout this book, that a responsible citizen will affirm the right to religious freedom. But from the fact that a responsible citizen will adhere to liberal commitments, nothing at all follows about his reasons for those commitments and, in particular, whether he has, or needs a public justification for those commitments" (59).

Eberle's comment delimits the range of policies that reasonable (and, one might add, respectful) citizens may advocate. Policies that are inherently discriminatory, that reject characteristic liberal institutions and practices, or that deny religious freedom, are out of bounds. What is not out of bounds, however, are policies that simply lack public justification.

But here is where I see the principle problem that Eberle's argument faces. On the one hand he wants to affirm that all reasonable citizens will affirm distinctively liberal commitments such as the right to religious freedom. At the same time he also wants to affirm that reasonable citizens may advocate policies premised solely on distinctive religious beliefs not shared by other citizens. But it seems to me quite possible to frame the doctrine of restraint as a natural outgrowth of a liberal conception of religious freedom. My argument proceeds as follows:

(Premise 1) Respect entails that responsible citizens affirm the right to religious freedom;
(Premise 2) Policies premised solely on the religious convictions of some citizens--that is, policies for which there is no compelling secular or public justification--infringe on the right to religious freedom of dissenting citizens.
(Conclusion) Therefore respect requires that responsible citizens not support policies premised solely on the religious convictions of some citizens.

The word solely is important in (2) and (3), above. My point here is not that respect requires that religious citizens bracket religious convictions. I believe that religious citizens, like their nonreligious compatriots, should be free to bring any reasons that inform their support for a coercive public policy. My concern is to rule out support for policies that are lacking any sort of public/secular justification (note: I am aware that I keep blurring the important distinction between "secular" and "public," which I hope to come back to in a future post). Along with other public reason liberals, I believe religious citizens are free to support public policies on the basis of their deeply held religious beliefs. Like other public reason liberals, however, I believe that religious citizens ought not to support coercive policies on the basis of religious beliefs alone. My argument, in short, is that policies premised solely on religious beliefs infringe on the religious liberty of those dissenting from these beliefs.

So what might Eberle say in reply to my defense of restraint as an outgrowth of the liberal commitment to religious liberty? It is clear to me that Eberle affirms premise (1), above, so the real point of difference resides in premise (2). While I believe that any policy premised solely on religious conviction infringes on the religious liberty of those who do not share this conviction Eberle simple denies this claim. Having affirmed the presumptive value of religious liberty, Eberle touches only briefly on the meaning of religious liberty, and his discussion is confined to an endnote (#28, pg. 353):

"I take no stand on the understanding of religious freedom a citizen ought to adopt: I take there to be reasonable differences of opinion among good liberal citizens both on what constitutes religious freedom and about the implications of that right for specific issues. Of course, I am committed to the claim that a citizen who supports his favored coercive laws solely on the basis of his religious commitments doesn't violate his compatriots' right to religious freedom--he isn't imposing his religious commitments on them in a way that violates their religious freedom. And I take it to be clear that he doesn't: that a citizen (or a majority of citizens) supports, say, a flat tax solely on religious grounds does not transmute the flat tax into a religious imposition. Given that, on any reasonable understanding of the matter, the state appropriately taxes its citizens--given that taxation falls under the legitimate jurisdiction of the state--support for a flat tax solely on religious grounds doesn't count as a violation of religious freedom."

From my perspective the flat tax example falls flat, but I'm almost out of time today, so rather than continuing down this path I'll pick up with my argument in my next post. Currently I've got my graduate assistant helping me pull together resources that discuss philosophical, historical, and theological conceptions of religious liberty, which will hopefully inform my own argument in which the concept figures heavily.