Rawls and Religious Community: Ethical Decision Making in the Public Square

Abstract

While most people may initially agree that justice is fairness, as an evangelical Protestant I argue that, for many religious comprehensive doctrines, the Rawlsean model does not possess the resources necessary to sustain tolerance in moral decision making. The weakness of Rawls's model centers on the reasonable priority of convictions that arise from private comprehensive doctrines. To attain a free and pluralistic society, people need resources sufficient to provide reasons to tolerate actions that are otherwise intolerable. In addition to arguing for the deficiency of the Rawlsean political model, I sketch out a preliminary model of ambassadorship that offers religious communities, and in particular Protestant evangelicals, the necessary resources to engage the broader society tolerantly while maintaining their religious convictions. As a citizen of the church and a member of another kingdom, Christians serve as ambassadors to those who are not of the heavenly kingdom. I take this model to be more ambitious than that of a sojourner who lives in the land but is isolated as much as possible from society, while more modest than that of reconstructionists who seek to implement their own sacred law on all others.

Keywords:

• John Rawls
• political theory
• toleration

Notes

1. Rawls further explains, “A modern democratic society is characterized not simply by a pluralism of comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines but by a pluralism of incompatible yet reasonable comprehensive doctrines. No one of these doctrines is affirmed by citizens generally. Nor should one expect that in the foreseeable future one of them, or some other reasonable doctrine, will ever be affirmed by all, or nearly all, citizens. Political liberalism assumes that … a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive doctrines is the normal result of the exercise of human reason within the framework of the free institutions of a constitutional democratic regime” (1996, p. xviii).

2. Jay Budziszewski argues for tolerance that is derived from a natural law model, while others present tolerance grounded in a Christian worldview with direct dependence on scripture. See Jay Budziszewski, Written on the Heart (1997). See also Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Why We Should Reject What Liberalism Tells Us about Speaking and Acting in Public for Religious Reasons” (1997, pp. 183–184). Also see Brad Stetson and Joseph G. Conti, The Truth About Tolerance (2005, pp. 80–81).

3. Rawls is explicitly unsatisfied with many reasons that a person may hold for tolerating pluralism. “Thus, to repeat, the problem of political liberalism is to work out a political conception of political justice for a (liberal) constitutional democratic regime that a plurality of reasonable doctrines, both religious and nonreligious, liberal and nonliberal, may endorse for the right reasons” (emphasis mine; Rawls, 1996, p. xli, see also p. 147 for further treatment of this issue).

4. Environmental groups have campaigned tirelessly to prevent logging in the Pacific Northwest. At the same time, loggers have campaigned tirelessly to preserve a lifestyle that includes controlled harvest of timber. The loggers and the environmentalists hold conflicting comprehensive doctrines. On one hand, the group opposing logging may belong to a Native American religion. Members of this group oppose logging because it violates nature. The idea of managing and harvesting nature is as sacrilegious as the idea of managing and harvesting the Universal Spirit. Their objection to logging comes from deeply held beliefs that reflect a systematic and complex understanding of the world.

5. Contrary to Richard Rorty's claims that Rawls's theory is consistent with his concept of contingency and irony, Rawls believes that tolerance is based on an overlapping consensus that embraces the reasonableness of justice as fairness rather than the comprehensive doctrine espousing the skeptical stance of Rorty's irony. See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (1999, p. 252) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989). Rawls is seeking a system in which members from a plurality of comprehensive doctrines can “wholeheartedly” engage in the pluralistic political structure (1996, p. xl). Compromise or modus vivendi which ends in some form of Hobbesean compromise also falls short of Rawls's aim (1996, p. xxxix).

6. The first principle of justice is that each person has an equal right to an adequate scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all. The second principle of justice is that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and (b) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. In Rawls's view, all comprehensive doctrines can accept these principles (1971, p. 202).

7. Rawls's model implies certain constraints on the idea of justice as fairness to maintain its necessary characteristics. Justice as fairness is not indifference, compromise, or utilitarian in nature because these concepts do not amount to moral judgments that are compatible with all comprehensive moral doctrines. If an overlapping consensus is to form, each comprehensive doctrine will find moral reasons grounded in its private belief system that supports the political conception of justice. Since nonmoral models like modus vivendi and indifference cannot be supported by a moral belief system, they cannot form a political conception of justice that will allow the development of an overlapping consensus (2001, pp. 107, 194).

8. It is possible that the spectrum of tolerance itself may be challenged by a reasonable, comprehensive doctrine, which would further undermine Rawls's concept of justice as fairness. For a fuller discussion of the nature of tolerance see John Horton, “Tolerance as a Virtue” (1996, p. 29).

9. In “Tolerance: an Impossible Virtue?” Bernard Williams argues similarly that the virtue of tolerance requires an appeal to substantive opinions about the good. According to Williams, liberal society could support tolerance based on the value of autonomy. This strategy derives its moral weight from opinions about the good of autonomy. Williams recognizes the problem that in a liberal society not everyone values autonomy deeply enough to justify tolerating many objectionable practices. In Williams's view, the virtue of tolerance is limited to the few people who hold a concept of autonomy consistent with political liberalism (1996, pp. 20–21).

10. Rawls at times will argue that “public reason” applies to any political advocacy in the public square and especially when voting (1996, p. 215). Even though religious dialogue may also be permissible in political advocacy, it must be accompanied by sufficient public reason. In other passages, Rawls places a much more restrictive boundary on where he thinks public reason is required (2001, p. 91).

11. http://www.earthfirst.org/; http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/271

12. For Rawls, public reason and the principles of justice apply to constitutional essentials, the voice of judges, politicians seeking public office, and the reason used by citizens when voting (Rawls, 2001, p. 91).

13. At minimum, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are constitutional essentials. In Lockean social theory, on which the U.S. Constitution is grounded, happiness is bound up with property so that he will list basic inalienable rights as life, liberty, and pursuit of property. Locke's social philosophy is centered on these rights. Consequently, the U.S. Constitution can be reasonably understood to take the right to own property as a constitutional essential (Locke, 1988, §§ 26–51, pp. 285–302).

14. That abortion amounts to a constitutional essential is not debated by Rawls, who extensively uses the issue as an illustration of how the principles of justice should function (Rawls, 1996; p. 243; 2001, p. 117).

15. Rawls explicitly mentions the abortion case but fails to give a rigorous enough account of the reasoning open to the pro-life individual. Rawls's example reasons from the fact that no individual is required to have an abortion, while in the example above, Jane's concern is not her own action but the life of the infant and the integrity of her covenant with God (1996, pp. lvi–lvii).

16. Here I have in mind something like MacIntyre's argument in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988).