‘Religious citizens’ in Post-secular democracies

Extremist or liberal theologian?

An extensive analysis of the exclusivist position in the contemporary debates on the role of religious arguments for political discourse in the field of political philosophy will yield a very diffusive underlying assumption about what a religious citizen actually is. I am talking about those theories that aim at either largely banning religious reasons and arguments from public political discourse or including them only insofar as they are supported by secular reasons. The underlying conception of the ‘religious citizen’, I argue, paradoxically lies somewhere between the religious fundamentalist and the considerate, rather liberal, theologian. In what follows, I shall attempt to lay out how this ambivalent picture arises and what problems this entails for the normative debate on the appropriate role of religious reasons in political discourse. I shall orient myself along the theory of Robert Audi, as it most explicitly deals with the subject of religious citizens.

Audi formulates two principles of democratic citizenship: the principle of secular rationale and the principle of secular motivation. ¹ The principle of secular rationale argues that ‘one has a prima facie obligation not to advocate or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless one has, and is willing to offer, adequate secular reason for this advocacy or support’. ² One should not, claims Audi, defend coercive laws or political decisions on the basis of one’s religious convictions if one is not also capable and willing to offer secular reasons. Secular reasons are those ‘whose normative force, that is, its status as a prima facie justificatory element, does not evidentially depend on the existence of God (or denying it) or on theological considerations, or on the pronouncements of a person or institution qua religious authority’. ³ This does not mean that one may not also put forth religious arguments. They alone, however, may not be the basis upon which pending decisions are discussed. The second principle claims that ‘one has a (prima facie) obligation to abstain from advocacy or support of a law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless in advocating or supporting it one is sufficiently motivated by (normatively) adequate secular reason’. ⁴ In order to comply with Audi’s ideal of civic virtue ⁵ one should not only be able to put forth secular reasons for one’s political convictions, but one should also be motivated by those reasons. If that is not the case, one has the moral obligation to abstain from making a judgment in this particular issue. ⁶

Audi calls the person that complies with these principles a conscientious citizen. A conscientious religious citizen will willingly orient herself along those principles in public political discourse, because these principles do not put too high a burden on her in comparison with non-religious citizens. In order to demonstrate this, Audi starts the defense of his theory from the point of view of a religious citizen. A religious citizen, Audi claims, will in most cases understand himself as follower of a religion belonging to the tradition of western theism, which he understands as the Hebraic-Christian tradition. At the core of this tradition lies faith in an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. This starting point, he claims, is apt to demonstrate that the search for non-religious reasons for one’s political views that one derives from religious convictions should in most cases be a do-able feat for conscientious religious citizens. ⁷ If one can really assume that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then it should be the case – this is also claimed by the Thomistic tradition of natural law – that he will provide a way for non-religious people to discover moral truths and live accordingly. Both ‘man’ as a creature of God, and nature as created through him, have to be designed in such a way that God’s will should be accessible to us in ways independent of our faith in him – or lack thereof:

Might we not, then (at least given this set of divine attributes), expect God to structure us free rational beings and the world of our experience so that there is a (humanly accessible) secular path to the discovery of moral truths, at least to those far-reaching ones needed for the kind of civilized life we can assume God would wish us to live? ⁸

In this way, possibilities of gaining knowledge independently of religion may help religious citizens in determining the validity of mutually exclusive or even conflicting religious claims. He even goes so far as to say that knowledge gained independently of religious sources has a higher potential of being true, as it is not so prone to misinterpretation or manipulation. ¹⁴ Therefore, a reflection of one’s religiously derived obligations is in the very interest of the religious citizen herself, as it helps her discern truth and determine what her religious obligations actually are.

Now this line of thought has substantial difficulties as well. For one thing, this argument itself is so deeply interspersed with ideas of the philosophy of religion that it draws a much too demanding picture of what it means to be a religious citizen. Furthermore, it lays too much emphasis on the religious individual’s aspiration for epistemological consistency. Audi not only claims that it may be advantageous for the religious citizen to have her religious obligations strengthened in their truth claims by secular considerations. The possible conflict between religious sources of authority leads him to follow that this insight leaves the religious citizen with no other choice than to take on a fallibilistic attitude in all things religious. This not only means that it is in principle possible that religious people may adjust, adapt, or dismiss some of their religious convictions in the light of secular evidence. For him this entails a skeptical attitude toward the demands that religious sources of authority may make on religious people at all: ‘[O]nce I take seriously the possibility of my religious sources yielding mutually conflicting results, I will surely be a fallibilist about my views of my religious obligations.’ ¹⁵ This results not only in the claims that religious citizens should be capable of finding secular reasons for the truth of their religious convictions, and that this secular knowledge may help them in determining which conflicting religious views are true and which are not. Such a fallibilistic attitude rather entails that secular knowledge becomes the very standard that religious truth claims have to measure up against – a consequence that will not be acceptable for many religious citizens. ¹⁶ In fact, the opposite may hold true for numerous religious people: secular moral claims are tested for compatibility with divine law and the principles of one’s religion before they are accepted or rejected.

All these considerations become yet more problematic when taking into account that they are not only questionable in themselves, but that their acceptance is the basis for being able to understand oneself as a conscientious religious citizen according to Audi. That means that the normative demand to seek secular rationales and motivations for one’s political convictions and to restrain oneself from making a decision if this attempt fails, is justified as appropriate, because one expects the religious citizen to self-reflect his own faith as a part of the western-theistic tradition due to his having experienced a non-consistency between his religious claims. This in turn will lead him to take on a fallibilistic attitude towards his religious claims, and he will therefore discover that only secular considerations can be the standard for discerning truth. Even if such considerations are within the realm of possibility for some religious citizens, I find it much too demanding to use this unrealistic and problematic conception of what it means to be a religious citizen as the underlying premise for a normative theory on the appropriate role of religious reasons in political discourse.

Now one could object that Audi composes only an ideal picture of a conscientious religious citizen who complies with his ideal of civic virtue, and that he lays out only the conclusions that such a citizen should come to. ¹⁷ But if Audi expects every religious citizen to fulfill his two principles of civic virtue, and if the reasoning I just presented is necessary in order to discern the validity of these principles, then Audi must expect every citizen to come to those very same conclusions upon reflection. This, however, does not seem very likely. Furthermore, he explicitly mentions that in developing his theory he proceeds from the ‘point of view of a morally upright religious citizen who wants to live in a free and democratic society’, ¹⁸ which suggests that this is not a purely ideal conception of religious citizenry.

Audi’s conception of the conscientious religious citizen as a self-reflective theologian therefore seems problematic enough. It becomes yet more complicated, however, if one takes a look at why the two principles are necessary in order to comply with his ideal of civic virtue. If religious reasons need to be supported by secular reasons in public discourse, then this means that a problem has been diagnosed which occurs when only religious reasons are put forth. By taking a look at Audi’s view of this very problem, we will discover that he simultaneously draws a picture of the religious citizen that is diametrically opposed to that of the self-reflective theologian. ¹⁹

Audi mentions 5 ways in which sole reliance on religious reasons in political discourse may cause problems that are incompatible with his conception of the religious citizen that I just laid out. (1) Religious reasons oftentimes assume an infallible supreme authority. This means that the obligations thus grounded are to be fulfilled unconditionally, because non-compliance would amount to punishable behavior that may even be avenged through damnation. Because people’s souls are on the line, such faith may even justify coercing the unfaithful, ‘insofar as they may be seen as eminently worth saving’. ²⁰ This entails, according to Audi, (2) the tendency of religious people to condemn those that do not feel liable to the religiously exacted behavior. This may (3) cause non-religious people or those of a different faith to interpret religious reasons for universally binding coercive laws as an attempt to exercise religious dominance. (4) Furthermore, religious reasons tend to be associated with dubious religious groups which exercise pressure on their members in order to get them to support specific political positions. Religious authority could either be misused in order to present one’s own political opinions as mandated by God, or in order to influence one’s disciples to vote a certain way. Belief in possessing the only divinely sanctioned truth may lead both religious individuals and groups to exhibit a sort of hubris that will make respectful cooperation among free and equal citizens less likely. ‘There is a kind of zeal that, in influential clergy or religiously influential laypeople, can erode citizenship and, sometimes, substitute a personal vision for genuine religious inspiration.’ ²¹ (5) An overly strong focus on the sins and failings of others may entail a higher level of irritability on both sides: the alleged failings of non-religious people or those of a different faith may be interpreted as an affront against the only true religion. On the other hand, others’ focus on one’s behavior may be understood as an impermissible intrusion and as an attempt to exercise religious force. Due to the basal role that religious reasons play, as well as their alleged finality, Audi claims, the potential for conflict is much higher in this regard than it would be in other moral or ethical controversies. ²²

Perhaps the thought is that one can argue with others concerning their moral or economic or philosophical views in a way one cannot argue with them about their religious convictions. And if religious considerations are not appropriately balanced with secular ones in matters of coercion, there is a special problem: a clash of Gods vying for social control. Such uncompromising absolutes easily lead to destruction and death. ²³

An impossible identity split?

The inclusivist position, which accepts religious reasons in political debate largely without any conditions, creates an image of religious citizens that is quite different from the ones just laid out, but no less problematic. It is also reproduced in the mediating positions such as the one put forth by Jürgen Habermas. I will briefly summarize the inclusivist position as it has been formulated by Paul J. Weithman, Stephen L. Carter and Nicholas Wolterstorff in order then to lay out and criticize the conceptions of the religious citizen that it assumes.

Weithman has formulated the inclusivist position most succinctly. Following Audi’s two principles, he puts forth two principles of his own which are quite contrary to Audi’s in content:

Citizens of a liberal democracy may base their votes on reasons drawn from their comprehensive moral views, including their religious views, without having other reasons which are sufficient for their vote – provided they sincerely believe that their government would be justified in adopting the measures they vote for.

…Citizens of a liberal democracy may offer arguments in public political debate which depend upon reasons drawn from their comprehensive moral views, including their religious views, without making them good by appeal to other arguments – provided they believe that their government would be justified in adopting the measures they favor and are prepared to indicate what they think would justify the adoption of the measures. ²⁷

According to Weithman, the reason why religious reasons may function as the basis for one’s voting decisions as well as for one’s arguments in political debate lies in the special role that places of worship play for the formation of civic identities. For one thing, in the United States churches function as places of political socialization especially for those marginalized people who otherwise would have no opportunity to develop civic consciousness. On the other hand, they function as a mouthpiece and a lobby for those people who have no other voice in political discourse. ²⁸ Due to these facts, excluding religious reasons from political argument would amount to an exclusion from democratic processes of those people whose political socialization has taken place in the realm of church communities. ²⁹ On the same token, excluding the arguments put forth by religious groups would signify the loss of a powerful advocate for marginalized and oppressed people. ‘The contributions churches make to [the realization of citizenship, JW], like the contributions they make to civic argument and public political debate, are too important to be lost…But the greater cost to liberal democracy would be the political marginalization of those whom churches integrate into political life, most notably the poor and minorities.’ ³⁰

Of course we would not do justice to Weithman’s position if we were to follow from this argument that religious citizens have to be either marginalized people who develop civic consciousness in the context of church communities, or that they are necessarily fighters for the oppressed for whom political activism becomes possible only through religious groups. After all, Weithman does concede that anti-democratic religious fanatics are just as much a part of reality as those that show interest only in their own advantage or that of their religious community. However, the religious citizen as recipient or provider of a frame of political socialization does play an important role in his theory. Other assumptions underlying his line of argument are more important, though. On the one hand, Weithman does not seem to have much faith in religious citizens’ capability of distancing themselves from their religious convictions and thus of finding non-religious reasons for their political positions or at least formulating them in different terms than the ones that were the starting point of their considerations. As we saw in Audi’s argument, it need not be impossible to reflect one’s religious convictions in a way that will lead to secular arguments for the same content. On the other hand, Weithman claims that religious citizens usually will not be able to distinguish between political and non-political spheres. ³¹

As much as Weithman’s way of proceeding is to be commended in that he uses empirical data as a starting point for his normative position instead of using unconfirmed premises or starting from a constructed ideal situation, his conclusions are problematic nevertheless. His empirical data may be a strong indicator for the important role religious groups play in helping religious people understand themselves as citizens of a liberal democracy. They are not able to describe, however, how religious citizens can and will behave once successful political socialization has taken place. In other words: just because the church is an important place for political socialization, that is, a good starting point for the development of a civic identity, this does not mean that this finding can predict how the further evolvement of those same citizens will occur. Once a religious citizen will actually get involved in public political debate, she will be confronted with citizens that take her opinions to be completely wrong, that will not be convinced, and that will ask for different reasons. In order not to be a ‘conversation-stopper’, then, the religious citizen will somehow have to react. The only way to get endorsement for her position from non-religious compatriots might possibly be to offer them reasons that are intelligible and accessible to them. As I said earlier: This may not always be possible, and it may not always be required – it need not be demanded by a normative theory, either. However: to assume – as Weithman implicitly does – that this possibility is not even to be considered by religious citizens, seems inappropriate to me. A minimum capability of abstraction must at least on principle be possible for the religious citizen in asking herself how the reasons she puts forth could be understood from the point of view of a compatriot that does not share her religious convictions. ³² This need not be a demanding search for the ‘View from Nowhere’, ³³ nor an attempt to find a completely neutral standpoint. ³⁴ But distancing oneself at least partly from one’s own standpoint should be within the realm of possibility.

This assumption is found even more explicitly in the work of Stephen Carter and – in light of his current writing on the subject, rather surprisingly – Jürgen Habermas. Carter points out – and, I believe, rightly so – that political controversies in which religious reasons play a major role are too often criticized with regard to the religious motivations of the parties involved, rather than with regard to the actual content in question. ³⁵ He also emphasizes Tocqueville’s point that religious groups play an important role in democracies in that they provide alternative narratives with regard to the majority discourse and thereby help prevent a tyranny of the majority. However, he concludes that criticizing religious reasons and motivations in political discourse would inevitably lead to an exclusion of religious people from political discourse. If one demands that political discourse take place in neutral terms, one would degrade religious convictions to ‘a matter of individual choice, an aspect of conscience with which the government must not interfere but which it has no obligation to respect’. ³⁶ But religious convictions, he claims, are so strongly intertwined with the personality of the individual holding them that abstracting from these convictions in the realm of public discourse would be incompatible with the integrity of their identity. Insisting upon the demand to keep one’s religious convictions in the background when participating in public political discourse and focusing on secular reasons for their content would amount to a violation of the religious self: ‘ [C]ontemporary liberal philosophers insist on finding a set of conversational rules that require the individual whose religious tradition makes demands on his or her moral conscience to reformulate that conscience – to destroy a vital aspect of the self – in order to gain the right to participate in the dialogue alongside other citizens.’ ³⁷

For Nicholas Wolterstorff, excluding the use of religious reasons and arguments can even be considered to be a violation of one’s religious freedom. For some people, he claims, expressing one’s religious views in public political forums is regarded as being an act of one’s free exercise of religion, and that can only accurately be done if they can be articulated in the language and on the basis of those reasons that emanate from their religious convictions. ³⁸ To demand otherwise would run counter to the ideal of democratic freedom. ³⁹ And Jürgen Habermas’ defense of the use of religious arguments in pre-institutional political discourse also makes the claim that the ‘liberal state must not transform the necessary institutional separation between religion and politics into an unreasonable mental and psychological burden for its religious citizens’. ⁴⁰ In that case the exclusion of religious arguments could be seen as a demand that would be incompatible with a faithful way of living. ⁴¹ It may well be possible for religious people to ‘consider one’s own religious convictions reflexively from the outside and to connect them with secular views’, ⁴² but such an ability that may be held by only some cannot be made a criterion for participation in public discourse as this would exclude religious citizens to a considerable extent. On the one hand, therefore, Habermas – unlike Weithman, Carter and Wolterstorff – at least accounts for the possibility of being able to abstract from one’s religious convictions and to put forth secular reasons for their content. Empirically, however, he seems to have little faith in religious citizens’ ability to do so when he claims that this demand would be unacceptable and would lead to a standstill of religious involvement in political issues. ⁴³ This conclusion can also be drawn from his description of the so-called ‘requirement of translation’. ⁴⁴ According to this, religious arguments may be introduced in pre-institutional public discourse, as long as they comply with a requirement of translation. This means that religious reasons have a significant role to play in the opinion-forming processes of pluralistic democracies and therefore may be introduced in this sort of discourse. ⁴⁵ On the other hand, however, their content needs to be translated into secular language as soon as they enter the sphere of institutional discourse, i.e. legislative processes, judicial decision-making, etc. This translation process is to be carried out primarily by non-religious citizens who can grasp the content of religious arguments and can translate them into terms that are epistemologically independent of religious assumptions. In these cooperative translation processes, secular citizens enter a dialogue with their religious compatriots, acknowledge the truth content of these religious statements and transform them into publicly accessible arguments. ⁴⁶ Here also, Habermas claims that the majority of religious citizens will not be capable of expressing their convictions in secular language. In order for that to happen, they are dependent on the cooperation of their secular compatriots. They can see themselves as participants in the legislative process only by trusting in the cooperative translation efforts of their secular compatriots. ⁴⁷ This requirement of translation entails a great many difficulties, not the least of which is the question of what is gained by the translation process for public discourse: if religious content can be translated into secular language as easily as Habermas claims, namely if it is easily accessible to citizens that do not share the underlying religious premises, then it is hard to discern how the argument gets any clearer – or more public – by translating it. Such a translation will not add to the argument’s accessibility, but only strip off its religious language. This leads to no further gain than the appeasement of those people who would ban all religious language from public discourse. The bigger problem, however, lies in the misconstrued image of religious citizens this position implies, as it is characterized by the assumption of their incapability to accessibly communicate in public discourse unless secular people help them in articulating what they really want. ⁴⁸ Such a view of the epistemically incapacitated religious citizen is not only highly questionable empirically, but is in danger of running counter to Habermas’ self-proclaimed goal of a ‘self-reflexive overcoming of a rigid and exclusive secularist self-understanding of modernity’. ^49,50

The second assumption to be found in Weithman’s conception of the religious citizen is connected with this idea. Weithman claims, invoking Carter, that religious citizens cannot sufficiently differentiate between discourses in the public sphere and other types of discourse. Therefore, the demand to do so would inevitably lead to a withdrawal of religious citizens from any kind of socially relevant discourse if they do not wish to open themselves to criticism for improper political involvement. This assumption, however, lacks any form of empirical evidence and is nowhere documented by Weithman – in fact he admits that these assertions are merely based on anecdotal evidence, which appears rather odd when considering the important role that empirical data play for his theory. ⁵¹ To the contrary: recent studies on the cooperation of citizens with different, or no, religious backgrounds have shown that religious citizens are very much capable of distinguishing between different settings in which some reasons and arguments can claim validity and others cannot. ⁵² In these cases, arguments are adjusted in such ways as to be intelligible and accessible to as many listeners as possible. In most cases where this adjustment does not take place, interreligious cooperation is bound to fail. ⁵³

An illustration that Weithman himself puts forth to defend his conception of public reasons simultaneously undermines his own argument in this regard. ⁵⁴ He mentions the example of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, John, Cardinal O’Connor who in May 1998 in New York City’s cathedral gave a sermon on civil unions for same-sex couples, which was televised statewide and excerpts of which were broadcast in the evening news. Under normal circumstances, a sermon given in a church would not be considered to be a contribution to public political discourse, even if politically relevant subjects were addressed. It would be considered a religious practice in a religious setting with a predominantly religious audience. In this case, however, the broader public was explicitly included, in that opportunities were placed at the disposal of several news channels for them to record and broadcast the proceedings to a wider public, and further in that the sermon was publicly announced as a statement of Archbishop O’Connor considering a pending decision in the New York City Council. This case most clearly illustrates how Cardinal O’Connor distinguished between public and non-public settings. He could have preached the sermon without announcing it first and without the presence of microphones and cameras. In that case, one could not have criticized him for undue political involvement. O’Connor, however, explicitly decided to make this sermon public in order to make the point that religious reasons have their role to play in this public setting as well.

Both claims implicit in Weithman’s, Carter’s – and to a lesser degree, Wolterstorff’s and Habermas’ – theories, namely that religious citizens are not able to abstract from their religious convictions when it comes to public discourse, and that religious citizens are not able to distinguish between public and non-public discourse settings, seem to me to entail a form of intellectual incapacitation of religious citizens, a type of infantilization of religious people who supposedly are not able to give us good reasons everyone can understand and therefore need to be granted the right to express their thoughts in their own terms. Now, I do not believe that these thinkers intend to claim this, but their argument for the inclusion boils down to this suggestion. A theoretical position that aims at including religious reasons and arguments in political discourse needs to come up with a better reason why this should be the case.

Conclusion

In closing, let me make a few brief points about how better to conceptualize religious citizens and about what this would mean for the debate on civility in public discourse and its focus on religious reasons.

First, it would be condescending to understand religious citizens as not being able to distinguish between public and private contexts or between what language and what reasons are appropriate for which contexts. Religious citizens, as empirical studies have shown, are very much able to distinguish between settings and to judge which reasons are appropriate in which settings. Therefore, I would claim, it would be too easy to free religious citizens from the burden other citizens carry as well, which is to navigate the different contexts in which claims are made and to determine which reasons and which language are best in accordance with an ideal of respect for one’s audience. This may mean, in some cases, abstracting from one’s religious convictions and reasons in order for one’s arguments to be more accessible to non-religious compatriots.

Second, the fact that a certain adjustment in one’s arguments and the reasons one presents for one’s political views can be expected of religious citizens as well as of other citizens does not mean, however, that this needs to go hand in hand with a philosophical or theological assessment of the roots of one’s religious convictions, as Audi argues. The pragmatic and moral reasoning that leads one to adjust the reasons one presents in public political debate does not depend on the assumption of religious fallibilism and the adoption of natural theology. Nor, as I have argued, can fundamentalism and the refusal for respectful political debate lie at the core of a conceptualization of religious citizens.

Third, just because in some cases the fulfillment of an ideal of civic virtue in political debate may entail abstracting from one’s religious convictions, this does not mean that this always has to be the case or that religious reasons may play no role in public political debate. If religious citizens are conceptualized as being capable of reasoning and arguing in responsible and respectful ways, and of putting aside religious views when the context of debate might require this, it is easier to understand the ‘responsible’ use of religious reasons in those cases in which they are felt to override the need for abstraction as being in accord with civic virtue. In other words: religious citizens who display civic virtue in adapting their arguments to the context and settings of particular deliberations should not be understood to be disrespectful to their audience in those cases where religious reasons are put forth. ⁵⁵

Lastly, a conceptualization of religious citizens should not be based solely on the religious part of one’s identity. Both positions fail to see that religious citizens always find themselves in all sorts of different contexts, religious and non-religious. They are confronted with non-religious family members, colleagues, friends and institutions who can affect their social, political and even religious views in ways not captured in those theories that solely focus on citizens’ religious convictions. When this is taken into consideration, the whole debate on the civility of public discourse may be expected to take a turn to where it focuses less on religious vs. secular reasons, but more on the different modes in which both can be used in respectful or disrespectful ways.