Religious liberty (along with freedom of speech and other pals huddled together in the First Amendment) is one of the less controversial aspects of our Classical Liberal Heritage. The purpose behind freedom of religion, however, I believe has become incredibly muddled. Two major defences of religious liberty have emerged. One believes that religion essentially doesn’t matter all that much, and the other that religion is of the utmost importance in the lives of individuals as well as the well-being of society. Just because they have the same conclusion does not mean that both defences are of equal value. They may have divergent implications under different external pressures.
The first defence I will call the lollipop religion defence. In a lollipop conception of religion, each religion is a different flavour that you can pull out of a bag. “Oh wow, I like a Jesus super-duper whole lot !”, the Christians say. “Yipee”, the Buddhists exclaim, “I’ve reached Nirvana”! Thus, from the supposedly “objective and secular” position, we are supposed to conclude that both religions are just fine and dandy little hobbies that people have. Criticizing what flavours others enjoy is clearly erroneous. It obviously makes them happy. What could you have against that? When one flavour club tries to sabotage another flavour club, they are clearly acting out of a bizarre irrational faith-based delusion. Religious Liberty is the much-needed replication of de gustibus non disputandum in the realm of beliefs about ghosts or burning bushes or whatever.
The second defence is the aspirational defence. This conception takes the truth in religion or any all-encompassing worldview seriously. The purpose of religious liberty, in this case, is to take control of religion out of any single or small group of human’s hands. No political or priestly class can wholly control the content nor application of any religion. The separation of Church and State is the separation of religious belief and the use of violence. Not the separation of religion from what forms people’s public lives. The lollipop defence of religious liberty asks everyone to partake in a public secular religion of the Enlightenment and practice their religious beliefs in private. The aspirational defence lets people live their religious lives to the fullest but limits the extent to which anyone, religious or not, can use the power of the state for their ends. In Civil Society, religions are able to clash and conflict. Muslims and Christians are allowed to proselytize as long as they respect the secular rules of property, contract, and consent. Nobody is asked to replace God with the State in this instance, but the excesses of religious fanaticism can be similarly curbed.
Freedom of Religion does not imply “Coexist” in the same way that freedom of speech does not imply all opinions are equally valid. The limits on the powers of the government must by extension cover all ideologies and plans, not just religion. Otherwise freedom of religion would be a policy that punishes religious worldviews over secular ones and would encourage religions to secularize themselves in order to compete with non-religious worldviews. Thoughts?
Edit: This is a quote from Mises’ Liberalism that I thought appropriate to clarify: “[W]hat impels liberalism to demand and accord toleration is not consideration for the doctrine to be tolerated, but the knowledge that only tolerance can create and preserve the condition of social peace without which humanity must relapse into the barbarism and penury of centuries long past” ([1927] 1985, 34) quoted in Peter Boettke’s F.A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy, and Social Philosophy (2018) pg. 267