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Friday, December 07, 2007
Does "freedom require[] religion"?
In his "Faith in America" speech, Gov. Mitt Romney said, among other things:
Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.
Is this true? Over at Balkinization, Jack Balkin says that this statement (and some others) in the speech "strongly identify Americans and Americanism with belief in God." Is this true?
For starters, it is (obviously) not the case that only those persons who believe in God (or who, in Gov. Romney's words, "believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind") are or can be good Americans. It is certainly not the case that only such persons desire, deserve, and sacrifice for "freedom"; or that only a political community consisting primarily of such persons can be "free."
I do not know exactly what Gov. Romney intended to communicate or claim with the statement that "[f]reedom requires religion". If he intended to claim with that statement what (it sounds like) Prof. Balkin understands him to have claimed, he was mistaken. (It seems to me unlikely, though, that Gov. Romney believes that only theists -- or Mormons, for that matter -- are or can be good Americans.)
That said, I believe that it is true -- or, at least, that there is a sense in which it is true -- that political "freedom requires religion." To be clear: It is not true that a political community of religious people will, necessarily, be "free"; or that a political community in which most people do not believe in God cannot be "free"; or that religious believers will always cherish, protect, respect, or even understand political freedom. (I assume that Prof. Balkin and I agree entirely about all this.)
All that said, it seems to me that the existence and maintenance of political freedom does depend on -- i.e., does "require[]" -- "religion" in the sense that political freedom requires not merely constitutional or other legal limits on government power and official action, but also that (and a consensus that) the aims, sphere, authority, purpose, reach, and nature of the state -- of politics -- be limited, by something else. That is, it is crucial to political freedom that -- in Harold Berman's words -- it not be "for the secular authority alone to decide where its boundaries should be fixed" and that -- as John Courtney Murray put it -- there be "room for the independent exercise of an authority which is not that of the state." And, it seems to me that "religion" is best, and perhaps only, able to satisfy (even though, of course, it has often failed badly to satisfy) these requirements. (I tried to flesh out this idea in this short paper.)
What do others think? Is this, or something like this, plausible?
I cannot emphasize this enough: To suggest this is not, at all, to say that only religious people understand the value of, and cherish, freedom-under-and-through-limited-government. None of this is intended to be -- or, objectively, is -- exclusionary, triumphalist, "theocratic", or "Christianist." Nor am I claiming that these thoughts of mine capture or reflect what Gov. Romney intended to say. I do not know, exactly, what he indended to say. (Disclosure: I am a member the Thompson campaign's Law Professors Committee.)
Posted by Rick Garnett on December 7, 2007 at 10:11 AM in Religion | Permalink
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Comments
The Romney speech is an interesting cultural document in a number of ways, only one of which is that it makes absolutely clear that atheists, Hindus and other non-monotheists do not exist in his America. But I was actually struck by a different aspect of the speech, which I discuss at my Nitezsche blog: http://brianleiternietzsche.blogspot.com/2007/12/most-revolutionary-political.html
On a different note, why are you signed on with that empty vessel Fred Thompson? Surprising.
Posted by: Brian | Dec 7, 2007 11:12:56 AM
Hi Brian -- Thanks for the link. Is there, do you think, a not-false basis for history's "most revolutionary political proposition", i.e., the "inherent and inalienable worth of every life", if this proposition is "viewed as a cognitive, rather than an emotive, proposition"?
I agree with you, of course, that a defensible account of, and celebration of, "faith in America" and "religious liberty" cannot be one that suggests or presumes that "atheists, Hindus and other non-monotheists do not exist in . . . America."
Posted by: Rick Garnett | Dec 7, 2007 11:43:13 AM
This is a tricky question, that would derail this thread, but my own view is that a proposition like "every life has an inherent and inalienable worth" is not actually a cognitive proposition, so the question of its foundations doesn't arise.
Posted by: Brian | Dec 7, 2007 12:02:13 PM
I think it depends on what your definition of "religion" is. I think you may be on to something if religion is defined broadly enough. Can "religion" mean some system of morals, values, and ethics, without reference to a higher power or to some ideas of creation, the origins of life, and the afterlife? I think there were some Supreme Court cases from the Viet Nam era dealing with the meaning of religion for purposes of the federal conscientious-objector laws.
By the way, my sense of the speech is that Romney was talking about religion in a largely theistic sense.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Dec 7, 2007 2:39:16 PM
It's hard for me to understand why one would use the word "religion" in the way that Howard suggests, i.e., in a way that as a rule includes atheists, and probably nearly all non-sociopaths.
Posted by: Joe | Dec 7, 2007 4:56:09 PM
Please see my editorial comment on this subject at www.culturekiosque.com. The proposition that freedom requires religion is, on its face, incredible (in the strict sense), and Romney neither made any argument for nor offered any support for the proposition.
Posted by: Edward F Mitchell | Dec 8, 2007 12:06:24 AM
I think his quote of John Adams gives the general idea of why he thinks freedom requires religion:
"In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.' "
So basically people need some sort of restraint on their actions besides the threat of sanction by a government. As technology advances that probably becomes less true.
It's probably possible to have freedom without religion in the strictest sense, as long as everyone agreed to a certain framework of behavior and limits on themselves and government. I think most likely you don't need religion for that.
http://www.mittromney.com/News/Speeches/Faith_In_America
Posted by: Sabz | Dec 8, 2007 3:56:08 AM
I second Howard's point -- that one certainly can have both a strong sense of morality and a strong sense of inherent rights to liberty without a religious underpinning. Religion can and has been used to support arguments for and against liberty. The fact that religious arguments were pervasive in the classical arguments for liberty ("natural rights," etc.), in the 1700s and earlier, doesn't mean that religion is the best, or only, basis for liberty -- it just means that religious thinking was inextricably enmeshed in just about all human thinking until fairly recently in human history.
I think the blind spot of Mitt Romney, and many others, is refusing to believe that there are atheists, agnostics, etc., with just as fervent a belief in morality, liberty, etc. I'm reminded of George Mitchell's response to Oliver North's jingoism:
""please remember, that it is possible for an American to disagree with you on aid to the Contras and still love God, and still love this country, just as much as you do. Although He is regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics."
The analogy, in case it wasn't obvious: it is possible for an American to disagree with Mitt Romney on God and still love freedom as much as he does.
Posted by: Scott Moss | Dec 8, 2007 9:00:17 PM
Scott has it right, in my opinion. Maybe America does need some "system" but I don't see why supernatural beliefs have to be a part of it. If Romney agrees he should have said "freedom requires morality". He didn't because to him and people like him religion IS morality, and non-religion IS immorality.
Why do you say, "It seems to me unlikely, though, that Gov. Romney believes that only theists -- or Mormons, for that matter -- are or can be good Americans." Do you say that just because it seems like no one would say such a stupid thing? (It didn't stop George Bush Sr. from saying that atheists aren't "citizens or patriots".)
Finally, shouldn't we at least ask candidates to refrain from saying things that (in your own words) are "obviously not the case"? Has he ever heard of, say, Japan? Not every country is as God-drenched as ours.
Posted by: Chris Bell | Dec 10, 2007 11:38:08 AM
I agree entirely with Scott (and, I did not suggest otherwise in my post) that "it is possible for an American to disagree with Mitt Romney on God and still love freedom as much as he does." If "freedom requires religion" means "only religious people care about freedom", then it is, obviously, false.
But, with respect to Chris's and Howard's comments, I was trying to suggest (maybe Romney was, maybe he wasn't) something more than just "freedom requires good, other-regarding citizens with some sense of morality". As Chris put it, "freedom requires religion" is a different claim than "freedom requires morality".
It seems to me, as I wrote -- I don't know enough about Japan to know whether, or to what extent, it weakens my claim "that the existence and maintenance of political freedom does depend on -- i.e., does 'require[]' -- 'religion' in the sense that political freedom requires not merely constitutional or other legal limits on government power and official action, but also that (and a consensus that) the aims, sphere, authority, purpose, reach, and nature of the state -- of politics -- be limited, by something else."
Posted by: Rick Garnett | Dec 10, 2007 11:48:12 AM
Members of groups that have faced prejudice seem to divide into two categories with regard to their approach towards the issue of prejudice. Some take the lesson that prejudice is a bad thing regardless of the target. Others seem to find the lesson to be that prejudice towards their group is the problem. By suggesting that Mormons should be in the "in" group of religion, while stigmatizing the non-religious, Mitt Romney has indicated that he belongs to the latter view. In my opinion, this disqualifies him for political office in the United States.
Posted by: Bart | Dec 10, 2007 6:48:38 PM
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