Interview: Cecile Laborde (with Aurelia Bardon)

Cécile Laborde is the Director of UCL’s Religion and Political Theory Centre. Cécile has published on theories of law and the state, pluralism, syndicalism, and on contemporary theories of nationalism, toleration, republicanism, multiculturalism, secularism and global justice.

Aurelia Bardon is a Research Associate for RAPT. She holds a dual PhD in political theory from Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris and she joined RAPT in September 2013.

How do you characterize the present debate concerning religion in the public sphere?

The main issue in the contemporary literature in liberal political philosophy about religion is about the specialness of religion: the Religion and Political Theory (RAPT) Centre has been created and organized around this issue. This question is a very useful point of entry into what have been the recent major debates in political and legal philosophy about religion. It can be divided into two main branches: (I) the special protection of religion by the state and (II) the special protection of the state from religion.

(I) In terms of the special protection of religion by the state: the question of freedom of religion

There is a general agreement that freedom of religion should be guaranteed in liberal democracies. If the citizens of a state were not free to live according to their religion, there would be little doubt that this state is not respecting the standards of a liberal democracy. In liberal states, all citizens have the right to hold whatever religious beliefs they want to hold, and to practice their religion in whatever way they see fit. What is less clear is what whether religion should be specially protected by the state: is the liberal state protecting religion qua religion?

Two main debates on the question of the special protection of religion by the state can be identified, focusing on the justification (A) and the application (B) of religious freedom.

(A) Can religious freedom qua religious be justified? Liberalism justifies religious freedom; but is this protection specially justified, or is it the subcategory of other types of freedom, such as freedom of conscience, freedom of expression or freedom of association? What exactly is the liberal state protecting when it protects religious freedom, and why is it protecting it?

The worry, in the perspective of liberal political philosophy, is that it is far from clear that religion in itself is something that the state would be justified in protecting. The usual liberal argument to justify the protection of religious freedom appeals to different goods that are potentially but not necessarily associated with religion: they include for instance the importance to live one’s life according to the dictates of one’s conscience or to express one’s beliefs and opinions.

In that case, freedom of religion would be justified indirectly as part of freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. A special justification would entail that religion is associated with specific goods that cannot be realized outside of religion (e.g. salvation). But most liberals would object that such religious goods could not be considered as legitimate political goods by the liberal state, and therefore that such a special justification would not be compatible with liberalism.

(B) Do religious convictions provide special and legitimate grounds for exemptions? There are many examples of clashes between religious convictions and general laws: wearing a turban is incompatible with the obligation to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle; the interdiction for women to become priests in the Catholic Church is incompatible with non-discrimination laws; the use of peyote in certain rituals of the Native American Church is incompatible with the general prohibition of drugs. In such cases, should we grant exemptions? Should we accommodate religious practice? And if so, on what grounds?

Many liberal political philosophers have recently argued that in certain cases, under certain conditions, exemptions should be granted. They disagree however about the justification for such exemptions: is the liberal state accommodating religion in a special way? Whereas some have claimed that exemptions should be granted because of the religious dimension of the convictions clashing with the general laws, other have objected that the liberal state should also grant exemptions for secular claims: they contend that if an exemption is granted to the religious pacifist, the same exemption should apply for the secular pacifist.

Religious exemptions can also be justified on grounds of equality and non-discrimination – but this raises complicated questions about the analogy between religion and other minority identities such as race, gender and sexuality.

(II) The special protection of the state from religion: the question of separation.

Most liberal political philosophers associate a certain idea of secularism with liberal democracy: there should be some kind of separation between religion and politics, the liberal state cannot be a theocratic state. But it is not at all obvious what this separation means: how exactly should religion and the state be separated and why?

The two main debates in recent literatures have focused on the questions of public justification (A) and non-establishment (B).

(A) The first separation discussed by philosophers is at the level of justification of political authority: it suggests that there should be an important separation between secular and religious ways to justify state action. Liberals widely agree that for the exercise of coercion to be legitimate, it should be publicly justified, i.e. it should be supported by sufficient reasons that are offered to all citizens. The problematic question for liberal philosophers is whether such reasons have to be secular, and therefore whether religious reasons should necessarily, and maybe especially, be excluded from public justification.

Many religious actors have intervened in public debates to take a stand based on their religious convictions: they object to gay marriage or abortion, for instance, because it is the logical implication of what a text they consider as sacred and as a reliable source of moral knowledge tells us about it. But can religious reasons justify state action? Are faith-based reasons sufficient reasons for public justification?

Although most, if not all, liberal philosophers agree that a biblical statement cannot justify the prohibition of gay marriage, there is a deeper debate about what religious reasons are, and what kind of epistemological characteristics they have. Values such as moral equality or human dignity, for instance, have been largely influenced by religious norms and yet they are usually considered as being legitimately appealed to in public justification. What this debate highlight is the difficulty to define religion in the first place, and to assign to all religious reasons some necessary characteristics: are all religious reasons always inaccessible? Is it because they are inaccessible that they should not be used in public justification?

(B) Should the state be specially protected from religion? How is such protection to be achieved? Many liberal democracies have institutionally separated religion and politics: the United States and France are two well-known examples of non-establishment. Even in cases where some vestigial establishment remains, like in England, there is a clear separation between religious and political authorities. England is therefore also considered as a secular state, or at least as meeting the liberal and democratic requirement of a separation between religion and politics.

The problem that political philosophers are dealing with here is that the official disestablishment of religion is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for states to be secular in a way that satisfies the liberal conditions. What exactly, then, does it mean that a liberal secular state should not promote or endorse in a meaningful way any particular religion? What does it mean that the state should treat all different religions in a neutral manner? And why is it the case that this kind of separation between religion and politics seems necessary, whereas more general separations between politics and morality or between politics and culture do not? Why should the state be specially protected from religion?

Another challenge for defenders of secularism is to respond to a more fundamental objection raised by critical theorists, who have argued that secularism is in fact too special, in the sense that it does not only single out religion but actually imposes a particular and controversial conception of religion, largely influenced by Protestantism.

Can you elaborate on some of the terms and concepts?

There is no straightforward or uncontroversial definition of any of the concepts used in debates in political philosophy, and there are deep disagreements over what religion or secularism mean. Here are some details about how we understand and use these concepts in the framework of the RAPT Centre.

Religion: in liberal political philosophy, there is a tendency to understand religion primarily, or maybe exclusively, as a doctrine, as a set of beliefs, or as a conception of the good. Although this is a very important part of the concept, it is not the only one. One of the main conclusions of the RAPT research project has been to identify a non-exhaustive list of dimensions of religion: religion as a conception of the good life, religion as conscientious moral obligation, religious as key feature of identity, religion as mode of human association, religion as vulnerability class, religious as totalizing institution, religion as esoteric doctrine. Depending on what question one raises, and depending on what kind of disciplinary framework one chooses to discuss this question, one or several of these dimensions will be focused on, because they will be particularly relevant for the specific question and in the specific disciplinary perspective.

Because of the complexity of the concept of religion and because each discipline focuses on only one part of it, political philosophers should get acquainted with inter-disciplinary work on religion. This has been one of the main objectives of the RAPT Centre, where we also engage with anthropology, history, religious studies, law and sociology. One of RAPT’s research projects focuses for example on religious singularity and religion’s others in an empirical and sociological perspective: it explains that there are different potential analogies of religion (e.g. with existential cultures or with conceptions of the good) and different potential “others” (e.g. atheism, non-religion, secularity, etc) depending on what dimension of the concept is highlighted.

Secularism: secularism is a political doctrine about the desirability of a separation between religion and politics. There are different types of secularism and different forms of separation, depending on why the separation is considered to be desirable. Secularism is not necessarily liberal: there are many examples of authoritarian secular states, where religion is separated from politics (for example where it is disestablished and where it has no influence on political authority) but where the state is not liberal (for example it does not protect freedom of religion or freedom of conscience). But liberalism is necessarily secular, i.e. liberalism requires specific forms of separation between religion and politics. There are at least two main types of separation that are required by liberalism.

The first is at the fundamental level of the definition of political authority, the source of its legitimacy and its scope: a liberal state cannot be a theocratic state, because it has to be a state where the source of political legitimacy is secular (popular sovereignty) and because it has to respect the distinction between the public and the private sphere (limited sovereignty). The second form of separation associated with liberalism is at the level of the exercise of political authority, i.e. the way the liberal state treats religion. Here, secularism is understood as neutrality, in the sense that the state should treat all religions in an impartial way. This type of secularism takes the form of the protection of freedom of religion and equal recognition of all.

Where is this debate going to in the next 5-10 years?

We should expect that political philosophers focus on the following questions in the coming years:

• the question of the universalization of secularism: is secularism valid beyond the Western world? Are the forms of separation between religion and politics associated with liberal secularism possible in non-Western and non-Christian countries? If not, what are the alternatives and are these alternatives normatively valid? Why do we need secularism, where do we need it and what kind of secularism do we need?
• the construction and imposition of a specific conception of religion by the liberal state (through policy and law): what conception of religion are we assuming? Is there a good justification for this particular understanding of religion, or does it unfairly exclude certain forms of religion? Should this specific conception be modified, and if so what conception should we use? Is there a way for the state and for judges to avoid having to assume any particular conception of religion, and if not how should religion be defined?
• the distinction between religious and secular reasons: is there an epistemological distinction between religious and secular reasons? What exactly is a religious reason, how do we recognize it and what kind of characteristics are associated with religious reasons? Especially in relation to liberalism: is there a difference of epistemological status between reasons based on religion (e.g. revelation) and reasons based on liberalism? Can we justify that the society should be based on the latter (liberal state) rather than on the former (theocracy)? Are religious reasons necessarily inaccessible, infallible or esoteric?