I’ve been quite delinquent in blogging lately, due to other commitments. Mea maxima culpa. I’m grateful to our wonderful guests, who have been keeping up a steady stream of great posts. This week, I think, I’ll offer a series of posts spotlighting various interesting readings about law and religion, or religion and politics, that have been crossing my desk in the last little while. Some of them are thought-provoking and terrific. Others are worthy of notice for, ahem, other reasons.
Let’s start out on a positive note. Andy G. Olree is a professor at the Jones School of Law, a Christian-centered law school located in lovely Montgomery, AL, where I lived when I was clerking on the 11th Circuit; the school has recently been granted provisional accreditation by the ABA. Prof. Olree has recently published an interesting book, The Choice Principle: The Biblical Case for Legal Toleration. Here are some snippets from the introduction and from the author’s own description of the book:
This is a book about evangelical Christians living in a democratically controlled country called the United States. It is a book about what these Christians have done, and will do, with their political influence in that democracy. It is about a group of Christians who believe in absolute truth that can be known from Scripture; . . . . And it is about whether all that truth must somehow be written into our laws….
Current evangelical political discussions spend lots of time and ink endorsing lists of particular moral standards regarded as “absolute” and marshaling biblical support for these, and then comparing these lists to secular culture. The analyses may include calls to specific political action. But they are virtually silent on the separate question of what God’s will is — not regarding the moral standards, but regarding the political action — and how we know. Perhaps they are silent because they have never understood this to be a logicall separate question….
My central thesis is that the New Testament does not support any program of strong legal moralism. Instead, . . . it suggests that God ordains governments for the limited purpose of protecting citizens from victimizers who would directly harm others through force or fraud. This understanding would exclude legislation for other purposes, such as discouraging sexual impurity or the hoarding of wealth. I conclude that an evangelical commitment to moral absolutes and the authority of Scripture need not entail government endorsement of religious trughts or legislation of any particular view of what constitutes a virtuous life. I believe these conclusions cast doubt on the political agenda of both the evangelical Right and the evangelical Left.
I haven’t read the whole book, so let me not say too much more; you can read it yourselves. But I think this is a valuable project, whether or not one agrees with Prof. Olree’s conclusions. Particularly striking, I think, is that second indented paragraph above. I think Olree performs a valuable service from within the religious community in underscoring the vital distinction between our knowledge of God’s will as to moral truths, and the question of what God’s will is with respect to the political implementation of those moral truths.
I fear that Prof. Olree has set himself a lonely path. He runs the risk of being ignored by those who simply think of the evangelical community as an alien other or know it only through stereotypes. At the same time, he risks being dismissed by those within the evangelical community who simply want to implement moral truths without concern for the subtle distinctions Olree draws, or who have simply overleapt the religious garden for the political and partisan wilderness, and so might consider his work a distraction or, worse, disloyal. But those people within the religious community who consider such questions important, and those outside the religious community who greatly appreciate such discussions, should welcome Olree’s (pardon the pun) good faith effort to raise some valuable questions about the interplay of religious truth and political action.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on October 31, 2006 at 12:47 PM
Comments
John, thanks for the question. I’m sure I have been greatly influenced by Locke’s “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” and I broadly agree with its argument. (Every time I read it, I’m amazed at how applicable and persuasive his arguments continue to be.) I do cite Locke’s Letter several times in the book and even quote a couple of passages to help make my point. In general, I think the Letter was way ahead of its time and exercised a strong positive influence on subsequent events, including the founding of the United States. For example, many ideas in the Letter are virtually parroted by Jefferson in his writings on religious liberty one hundred years later, by which time the idea of religious liberty was quite popular on our shores.
There are some points, however, where my argument is different from Locke’s, and even some respects in which I might (humbly) disagree with him. Among these differences I would note the following:
1. Approach and methodology: Locke’s approach to the subject in the Letter is to argue from logic and experience (and certain widely shared religious beliefs), using biblical passages as support for his arguments in the manner of a modern footnote. My approach is much more exegetical. Before making practical arguments about what does or doesn’t “work” in politics and law, or what makes sense in light of religious beliefs deemed to be widely shared, I grapple with biblical passages at some length to try to understand, for example, what Paul might have been saying about the purpose of government in the book of Romans, or what Galatians tells us about the relationship of freedom and law. My approach probably owes much more to Locke’s contemporary Roger Williams than to Locke himself.
2. Types of toleration discussed: The thrust of Locke’s argument in the Letter is that *religious* differences should be tolerated, such that government does not punish anyone for any particular religious belief or practice. I would apply this principle more broadly; while I certainly argue against criminalizing idolatry, I also argue against criminalizing anything else (e.g., prostitution, gambling, or assisted suicide) for solely religious reasons. I think Christians may be called to frame law so as to legalize or tolerate much more than just religious practices (although differences in religious beliefs may be, fundamentally, what we are tolerating when we do this).
3. Types of religious belief to be tolerated: Locke drew the line at Catholics and atheists, which he argued need not be tolerated under law. I (like most Americans, probably) would draw no such line, as I think that kind of distinction is inconsistent with his own arguments for toleration (to say nothing of the arguments others have made, both religious and secular).
4. Types of governmental acts that might constitute intolerance: Locke focused on government coercion as the great evil, and seemed to see little problem with government persuasion or endorsement in religious areas, or even government funding of religion. I see many problems with governmental endorsement of religion. In many cases I think it violates the Establishment Clause; but more to the point here, as an Christian I am concerned that the government not taint that which is holy, or use God’s name and his precepts in vain (for example, to create patriotic fervor, distract an electorate, or win votes). I make some mention of this in several places in the book, although it’s not a primary focus.
5. Religious exemptions as necessary for toleration: While Locke argues against laws intentionally targeting religious practice, he seems to have had fewer misgivings about laws of general applicability that happened to forbid (perhaps accidentally) the religious practice of some minority. I am much more troubled by this possibility than Locke was, and indeed, although I don’t talk about this much in the book, I would argue that a serious commitment to religious toleration (or better, religious liberty) sometimes requires government to be aware of the adverse impact its “nonreligious” laws might have on religious minorities, and to tailor exceptions for these groups accordingly.
I have probably written too much already, but I hope this is helpful for understanding my argument and how it relates to Locke’s Letter.
Posted by: Andy Olree | Nov 1, 2006 11:54:28 AM
John, I can’t speak to that question especially well, not having fully read the book. Perhaps if Prof. Olree comes across this post, he’ll chime in. But I can say, having skimmed the book and its index, that he does both cite and praise Locke.
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | Oct 31, 2006 3:40:57 PM
I guess I would be interested in how this account differs from Locke’s *Letter on Toleration*. Locke was a Christian, and a very serious one at that. But he also advocated limited govt, the division of social spheres, toleration, cultural relativism, impartiality, rule of law, and many other things that seem inevitablely right to contemporary liberals. And several (arguably all) of these things he derived partly from his version of Christianity itself.
Posted by: John Kang | Oct 31, 2006 3:12:26 PM
‘This does not rule out better and worse…’
Posted by: Patrick S. O’Donnell | Oct 31, 2006 1:35:54 PM
I suspect the determination of God’s will regard to moral standards is subject to a measure of indeterminacy and uncertainty in an epistemic sense not unlike the discernment of that will with regard to political action. After all, absolute truth belongs to God alone, for to make a claim to possess same implies we have the omniscience that is God’s alone, our understanding necessarily fallible or partial owing to the human condition: for however much we may be said to be, from a Judaic or Christian perspective, created in the ‘image’ or likeness of God, there’s a metaphysical, logical and epistemic gap that precludes a knowledge of absolute truth as such, at least as expressed in propositional terms. This does not rule better and worse attempts at fallible understanding, of knowledge that is closer or farther away from absolute truth…. Belief or faith in the existence of absolute truth is not the same thing as making a claim to be in full possession of such truth.
Posted by: Patrick S. O’Donnell | Oct 31, 2006 1:16:01 PM