- religious by nature—that is, do they possess a set of common characteristics beyond time, place, and culture that incline them toward religion? The answer is affirmative, according to the growing body of research in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion.
Cognitive scientists Justin Barrett and Jonathan Lanman have affirmed the thesis of the “naturalness of religion,” so to speak, by stating, “[r]eligious thought and action are common across human history and cultures because of their relationship with particular naturally occurring human cognitive systems. Religion springs naturally from the way ordinary human cognitive systems interact with ordinary human social and natural environments.”[1] Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, has made a similar claim in arguing that “that there are certain early-emerging cognitive biases that give rise to religious belief. (…) These biases make it natural to believe in Gods and spirits, in an afterlife, and in the divine creation of the universe.”[2] Thus, religion appears to be natural to the extent that religious belief and action are deeply embedded in the ways in which people think about and experience the world. At the same time, it does not mean that believing and observing religion are necessary or inevitable for all people, that the human brain is hardwired for religion, or that religion is innate. For proof, it is sufficient to simply observe the large number of people around the world who do not profess any religious belief and the even larger number who do not regularly practice religion. What the naturalness of religion thesis suggests, by contrast, is that the conscious, sustained rejection of religion and the supernatural, wherever it arises, may require cultural and intellectual scaffolding that the acceptance of religion does not.[3]
When I refer here to the possibility of attaining a certain natural knowledge of God or simply of transcendence from the empirical cognitive sciences, I do not intend to attain the notion of God proper to the philosophical or theological spheres. It would be impossible since God cannot be the object of the natural sciences, since these examine the real insofar as it can be experimentally verified, especially in the quantitative dimension. Philosophy, on the other hand, proposes the approach to the notion of God, through the formulation of possible conclusions about his existence, either from the existence of the cosmos (natural theology, metaphysics), or from the nature, existence, and destiny of man (from existential questions such as those concerning freedom, the meaning of life, moral conscience, etc.). On the other hand, the image of God that philosophical rationality can grasp possesses attributes that do not exhaust, by themselves, the image of God as understood by theological reflection. Nevertheless, in order to be meaningful for human reason, the image of the revealed God needs also to account for, possibly surpassing but not contradicting, the attributes required by the image of God grasped by philosophical reason. To ask how one can arrive at the notion of God by means of scientific-philosophical rationality does not mean to strive to give some demonstration of the existence of God in the context of the rationality of the sciences. This would be contradictory, because the proper object of a scientific analysis cannot have God as its proper object. It means, instead, to ask whether the notion of God constitutes a meaningful notion for a person living in an intellectual context such as that of scientific rationality.[4]
In this sense, what, if anything, are the ethical, political, or social implications of a presumed “naturalness” of religion? Does it tell us anything about human nature, the nature of religion, or the social order? More specifically, how does religion’s naturalness influence the increasingly contested assertion that there is a natural right to religious freedom that transcends specific historical and cultural contexts? In that light, it is necessary to grapple, either directly or indirectly, with the anthropological case for religious freedom—namely, that the viability and strength of the argument for religious freedom as a natural right rest, at least in part, on the claim that Homo sapiens is also, in a rather strong sense, Homo religiosus. In the words of Jack Friedman and Timothy Shah, “The defense of the right to religious freedom can be derived in part from evidence that religion is in some sense not merely epiphenomenal or accidental, but a regular and predictable feature of human nature and human experience, taken as a whole.”[5]
Even so, does that understanding mean that religion deserves special treatment in society? Put differently, is it a category of human activity that should be given a special place, or is it enough to equate religion legally and politically with other activities that people value as being important or as possessing special significance in their lives? In either case, is God relevant to individuals and to society in a unique way? Are individuals or societies missing something if God remains exclusively in the conscience or in the personal and family sphere? There is no doubt that answering those questions is vital for personal and social flourishing, and I hope to shed some light on those concerns here, particularly by making three arguments.
First, I outline features that characterize the relationship that exists between religion and freedom, as well as between them and the ultimate end of the person and of society. On that basis, I argue that freedom of conscience and religious liberty constitute a fundamental element for the flourishing of individuals and communities.
Second, from that argument, I pivot to make an ethical claim for the capacity of practical reason to understand religion as a distinct, fundamental aspect of human flourishing, one that structures and adds transcendent meaning to all other goods that humans pursue and therefore occupies a place of honor, an architectural one, among other aspects of living a good human life. By extension, I argue that, from the perspective of political philosophy, the common good consists in discovering and maintaining the conditions that best foster the search for and preservation of authentic human flourishing by all members of society, both individually and as a whole. Thereafter, based on the previous two statements, I argue that justice demands special treatment for religion, treatment that goes beyond equal protection and must be manifest at both the juridical and political levels.
Third and last, having established the essential relevance of religion at both the personal and social levels, I consider some of the consequences of the free exercise of religion for the social and political well-being of societies. Although the focus of the final part is pragmatic, if not utilitarian, and therefore secondary, it nevertheless succeeds in reflecting the fundamental reality that religion, understood as an openness to that which is greater than oneself, affects not only the most intimate aspects of an individual but also the most superficial ones. That dynamic is so because there is nothing internal within human beings that is not reflected externally. As freedom and religion transform the individual and the society, the greater the religious freedom, the greater both personal and social flourishing. In turn, such flourishing becomes reflected in trends of economic development, social peace, and general prosperity.
- Freedom, Meaning, and Purpose
Since the dawn of history, humans have asked themselves the question of why they are here on Earth, what a good human life consists of, and what is the purpose and meaning of their lives and their existence. Although much of humanity finds the ultimate answers to such questions about meaning and purpose in religion, all individuals, communities, and governments, whether believers or non-believers, have to make decisions based on some sort of answer to those fundamental questions. In the case of communities and governments, those decisions relate directly to the degree of freedom afforded to individuals to pursue their own path of seeking answers to those questions and forms of protection along the way.
From an anthropological perspective, there is no doubt that human flourishing relates to the search for truth, meaning, and destiny. Indeed, flourishing is a concept that provides a valuable framework for considering the importance of not only satisfying people’s yearnings for material goods and fulfilling relationships but also the hope that people can achieve and experience things that give them a sense of something greater than themselves: the transcendent.[6] In the case of religion, transcendence takes on dimensions that have consequences not only in the present life but also in the afterlife. That relationship is one of the most compelling reasons for demanding the greatest possible protection of freedom of conscience, whether religious or not, for all people.
The greatness of the human being has many manifestations, all rooted in the superiority of the act of being that constitutes each person as such. Perhaps the one that receives the most attention today, partly because it summarizes the other attributes, is freedom, for freedom is what makes it possible to establish one of the clearest links between a person and the identity that they wish to forge in their life.
Indeed, among all of the beings that inhabit the earth, humans are the only ones capable of perceiving reality as it is—that is, as being good, endowed with a certain unity, intelligible, worth being known, and beautiful. As such, they alone feel obliged to react to that reality and to the best of their ability. For any person, responding to reality’s call constitutes both the fullest act of freedom and the one that requires the first and strongest sense of responsibility. Moreover, that responsibility is all the greater if the search for final answers leads to a supreme being in which the person recognizes God.
The foregoing brings us to the relationship between freedom and personhood, with the latter referring both to the psychological (i.e., way of being in accordance with one’s person, unique as well as perfectible) and the metaphysical—that is, that a person is a person given their capacity and duty to respond to solicitations of reality, beginning with their own, from which derives precisely the primordial obligation to respond. Such a response constitutes a duty precisely because it is imposed on freedom as a demand that the subject may or may not accept, with consequences that follow in either case. What is clear is that the person needs to enjoy the freedom to be able to heed the call of reality that brings them a greater sense of meaning or purpose in life, whether their response is religious or otherwise, because both types of responses deserve all possible protection. To be sure, religion is not merely a preference or lifestyle choice, as many people presume; otherwise, there would be no serious reason to give it special protection. Perhaps the all-too-frequent treatment of religion as a hobby in the current era is precisely why it is now difficult to understand why violations of religious freedom are such a dire problem and why people with religious objections are entitled to exemptions.
The real basis of religious freedom—the reason why religious freedom is a moral right and not merely a legal right granted by the government—is that each human being has a grave obligation to seek the truth as they understand it. As John Henry Newman famously said, “Conscience has rights because it has duties.”[7] In that light, the question of the real and the moral blend and support each other, arguably as a consideration of morality with elements of ontological ethics: an ethics of the truth of the person according to which the person acts in light of that truth.
Rights of conscience strike at the core of what it is to be a human and a person: the capacity to act based not only on desire or instinct but on judgment of what is good and bad and what is right and wrong, along with the moral responsibility that is inseparable from that capacity. To force a person to act against their conscience is to force them to violate their moral integrity. It is an assault on the person at their core and thus one far worse than any merely physical harm. That truth is why heroic people have chosen and continue to choose to risk or to suffer deprivation, imprisonment, and even death instead of compromising on matters of conscience. Such people are a source of inspiration, whereas the governments under which they lived are not.[8]
A question arising from such thinking is whether and, if so, then how depriving a person of the freedom to live according to their conscience and beliefs constitutes treating them in a way that does not befit their worth. Most present-day thinkers who maintain that there are natural rights, all of which are grounded in the worth or dignity of those who possess them, also maintain that what imparts the relevant dignity to any holder of rights is their capacity for rational agency: the capacity to act for reasons, not only for causes. Some additionally maintain the more specific view that the dignity in question is grounded in the capacity for normative agency—that is, in a person’s capacity to perform an action because they judge it to be a good or obligatory thing for them to do.[9]
However, that account of the dignity that grounds natural rights is inadequate.[10] For one, it does not consider the dignity of humans who lack the capacity for normative agency—infants, for example, and ones in permanent comas. For another, and more relevant to this article’s discussion, it fails to account for many of the rights possessed by people who are capable of fully functioning as persons. Rational agency and normative agency indeed confer great worth and dignity to beings who possess such agency. But what gives the full panoply of natural rights to humans who are capable of functioning as persons has to be more than only the capacity for rational and normative agency.
Accounting for people’s natural rights requires a richer account of what it is to be a person. U.S. philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff has singled out two aspects, both beyond the capacities for rational and normative agency, that seem to be directly relevant to the natural right to freely exercise one’s religion: the capacity to interpret reality and one’s place therein and the capacity to form a personal valorized identity. In the latter case, the capacity means the relative importance that the person assigns the following affirmation to the states and events in their own life: “This commitment is more important to me than any other. I cannot imagine giving it up. It is fundamental to who I am.”
Thus understood, religion is also a salient manifestation of both capacities as well as of rational and moral agency. In Tomas Nagel’s words it is the belief that “some kind of all-encompassing mind or spiritual principle (…) is the foundation of the existence of the universe”[11], of value, and of all of human existence, nature, and purpose is obviously an exercise of the remarkable, precious capacity for interpreting reality and of one’s place therein. Furthermore, giving expression to that belief in one’s life and practice is an exercise of the remarkable, precious capacity for forming a personal valorized identity.
In believing that those two remarkable capacities give great worth to being who possess them, as do the capacities for rational and normative agency, a person has a prima facie reason to refrain from stifling or restraining the exercise of those capacities and for resisting the attempts of others to do so. That reason becomes especially weighty when dealing with interpretations and valorizations as deep and fundamental as those of religion. Forbidding the religious people the free exercise of their religion is thus a deep violation of their personhood.[12]
The argument of the dignity of the holder of the right to religious freedom needs to be completed with the consideration that the human capacities that lead to a valued personal identity are linked to the intrinsic good of religion itself, to which they are at once oriented. Religion is a basic good in itself, relevant to every person and society, even if someone does not consider it to contribute to their valued personal identity.[13]
It is clear that dignity is an excellence of some sort and that human dignity, in its supreme sense, is the excellence of being a person with the capacity for reasoned choice. Thus, dignity is intrinsically linked to the goods whose protection sets the parameters of the most fundamental rights of humans. Indeed, the link between human dignity and human goods is essential to giving adequate content to the norm that human dignity must be protected. At times, however, human dignity is understood merely in terms of the human capacity for self-determination, without further consideration of the orientation of those capacities toward what is genuinely good for agents with them: their real fulfillment as human persons, in accordance with their human nature. In such cases, natural law philosopher Christopher Tollefsen has argued that the injunction to protect dignity may indirectly lend credence to actions that are in fact antithetical to basic goods.[14]
However, the articulation of the nature and necessity of a right to religious freedom needs to work with the idea that there is dignity in both the person and the good. Otherwise, if there is nothing good to be found in religious belief and practice, then religious freedom will begin to seem like a (perhaps unnecessary) concession given to seriously misguided persons whose capacity for self-determination is perhaps not truly being exercised at all. Such an attitude is not promising for the promotion of religious freedom.
In his message for the World Day of Peace of 2011, Pope Benedict XVI summarized this articulation as follows: “It could be said that among the fundamental rights and freedoms rooted in the dignity of the person, religious freedom enjoys a special status. When religious freedom is acknowledged, the dignity of the human person is respected at its root (…). Religious freedom is (…) an essential good: each person must be able freely to exercise the right to profess and manifest, individually or in community, his or her own religion or faith, in public and in private, in teaching, in practice, in publications, in worship and in ritual observances.”[15]
- Moral Obligation and Human Flourishing
According to U.S. philosopher Melissa Moschella at the Catholic University of America, establishing an intrinsic relationship between religious freedom and human flourishing from the perspective of social and political philosophy first requires proposing general principles to determine what justice needs in order to ensure the state’s respect for and accommodation of religious beliefs and practices.
Many contemporary political and constitutional thinkers deny the notion that religion deserves special legal treatment. Their arguments rest on their lack of regard of religion as a relevant human good that practical reason can apprehend as such without supernatural revelation. When I refer to “practical reason,” I do so in line with the Aristotelian–Thomistic tradition of natural law, and not according to the Humean empiricist theory of the mind which considers it as a “slave of the passions” moved only by a subrational desire.[16] Although reason can indeed be moved by such desire, in such cases it performs below its capacity, below even its own nature. Human flourishing, however, as the purpose of moral life, requires acting in a wholly reasonable way and thus avoiding such co-optation.
As mentioned, according to natural law reason can allow certain intelligible goods to be understood as being ends—that is, as worth pursuing intrinsically, not merely instrumentally, and able to that facilitate the flourishing of human beings. Many theorists of natural law refer to those intelligible goods as basic human values or as goods intrinsically related to the flourishing of the human person.[17] They claim that practical reason presupposes an understanding that such goods should be pursued, while their opposites, as evils, should be avoided, in much the same way that theoretical reason grasps the principle of noncontradiction.[18] To be clear, basic goods include life, health, knowledge, friendship, and, critical here, religion and authenticity.[19]
In the face of such a variety of basic goods, is special priority to be given to the moral duty to pursue knowledge of religious truth? If religion is conceived as aiming to understand truths concerning the origins of all that exists, the meaning of human existence, and, eventually, what comes after life, then the answer is yes. Considering what religion is all about, religious knowledge is especially valuable, whereas ignorance of it is especially debilitating and indifference to the religious question morally defective. Add to that the possibility of revelation, through which a way of living can be made accessible in ways unimaginable, especially today, and even made possible after death, and the moral obligation to seek religious truth indeed takes on unique priority and significance. At the same time, religious knowledge—that is, affirming as true a particular set of propositions (e.g., the revelation contained in a sacred book)—carries with it a vital commitment and inevitably asks the question, “Even if all of this is true, then do I want to affirm it, or do I prefer to leave it aside?” Such a decision invariably responds to free choice and, at times, can mean giving heroic testimony to the value of truth. In that sense, and because the self-determining quality of freedom of choice is largely reflexive in contemporary culture, the question is not one of choosing for the sake of choosing and, in so doing, determining one’s own identity. On the contrary, it is a matter of aligning oneself with the truth and bearing witness to it.
Of course, many outstanding moral thinkers and philosophers also deny that religion constitutes a distinct basic good that can be known and understood by practical reason. Consider Dworkin’s argument that religious convictions are one of many others that, “define the attributes of personhood”, in accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s words
in Planned Parenthood v. Casey,[20] and are on the same level as convictions about matters such as abortion and sodomy.[21] In that sense, religion is considered one belief or preference whose importance depends entirely on what satisfies each person. While some people may like jogging, others may like going to church. Although delimitations on one’s preferences may be enforced in some cases, in general justice requires that all preferences be treated equally.
Moschella holds that the foregoing view of what justice requires is based on one or both of these assumptions: that “religion’s value is subjective, relative to the particular tastes, preferences, and values of each individual” and “religion’s value, even if objective, is not essentially distinct from or more important than the value of nonreligious ethical or philosophical beliefs.”[22] Consistent with these assumptions, Dworkin and other liberal theorists have denied that religion should be accorded any special protection in law and argue, implicitly or explicitly, that the overriding value that the state needs to protect is the individual’s freedom to choose and pursue whatever values and commitments in life one desires, provided they do not involve significant harm to non-consenting third parties.
However, if reason understands religion as being objectively and distinctively valuable to human beings, and that it is not only one of many objective goods that contribute to human flourishing, but that it has an architectural role, because it governs and structures a good life, then justice and law demand that it be accorded special treatment in accordance with its special role in human life.
- Is Religious Freedom a Precondition for Peace, Prosperity, and Other Social Goods?
In recent decades, the great attention that religious freedom has received, both theoretically and practically, has cast it primarily as a political issue. To be sure, when religious freedom has not been respected, it has caused various forms of serious human suffering, injustice, threats to peace, and international security. That could not make more sense, and insofar as religion is natural and thus fundamental to human experience, governments professing a commitment to the values of liberty, equality, and human flourishing therefore must be prepared to protect religious freedom. To restrict it, by contrast, would be to suppress the basic capacities that make us human. Further still, because religion is such an essential element of the human condition, suppressing, controlling, or eliminating it will demand resorting to coercive, likely violent methods. In that way, religious freedom, by its very nature, is a precondition of peace and social justice.
Numerous empirical studies have shown correlations between human development and the level of religious freedom, at either the individual or societal levels, if not both.[23] In view of those manifold findings, the researchers of those studies have posed just as many questions. For one, to what extent is religious freedom relevant to human flourishing? For another, when and how does it contribute to economic prosperity, democratization, and peace? What is the relationship between religious freedom and violent religious extremism? And does religious freedom play a role in efforts to undermine radicalization and counter violent extremism?[24]
However, casting doubt on such findings, critics have alluded to the correlational instead of causal nature of the results.[25] Added to that is the methodological obstacle that many studies are based on self-report. Given such trends, it is important to conduct research able to demonstrate a causal relationship between religion and other factors with greater plausibility. Meanwhile, other voices have pointed out that any argument that might indicate a causal relationship between religious freedom and political or economic benefits would necessarily refer to benefits from a culture of human rights, of which religious freedom is but a part. Although religious freedom is indeed often bundled with other basic freedoms, the causal linkage may arguably be reversed, such that religious freedom is not merely a subset derived from broader political and civil rights but an independent right and the basis of all other rights in society: the “first freedom,” as termed in U.S. legal and political theory.[26] In the words of political philosopher Timothy Shah, religious freedom is “the thin end of the wedge of freedom.”[27]
In their studies, Brian Grim, founding president of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation,[28] and Christos Makridis, research professor at the Global Security Initiative at Arizona State University,[29] have measured the impact of freedom of religion or its absence on society, business, and the economy. Among their findings, though social dynamics are complex and causal mechanisms multifaceted, and though religious freedom is not a magical antidote to the world’s problems, its role for the understanding and the cooperation among different cultures and faith contribute to positive socioeconomic outcomes. In fact, both studies revealed that religious freedom contributes to human thriving from the perspective of its socioeconomic aspects in at least four ways.[30]
First, protecting what more than four out of every five people worldwide identify with—namely, religious faith—is a way of fostering respect.[31] Indeed, since faith is important to so many people, violating the free practice of religion risks alienating a very large part of humanity, which would be far from ideal for morale and socioeconomic progress. Of course, equally alarming would be to force the 16% of people without a religious attachment to have a religion. Religious freedom guarantees that people, regardless of whether or not they are believers, have equal rights and equal opportunities to participate in public life.[32] Moreover, the growth of religious populations has an impact on how the world’s wealth is distributed. Although the economic transformations occurring in China and India are well-known examples, it is important to be aware of the religious diversity that will exist among the five national economies that are projected to dominate the world economy by 2050. At present, seven of the G8 countries have Christian-majority populations; however, by 2050, of the world’s top five economies, only the United States will have a Christian-majority population. The others will have a Hindu majority (i.e., India), a Muslim majority (i.e., Indonesia), or exceptionally high levels of religious diversity (i.e., China and Japan). In that situation, interfaith and intercultural respect will be of the utmost importance, and protecting those values now is therefore imperative.
Second, religious freedom reduces corruption as a consequence of the expression of faith-based ethics.[33] On the one hand, religious freedom opens the door to business leaders who wish to bring religious and moral values to their actions. On the other, the attempt to force companies to act as secular, value-neutral organizations can be a contributing factor to
corruption, indiscriminate use of resources, fraudulent use of financial information, etc. As Christos Makridis has explained, although that possibility “does not establish a causal link between religious freedom and lower corruption, it does suggest that religious freedom may be one of the contributing factors to a less corrupt society.”[34]
Third, religious freedom promotes peace by reducing violence and conflict related to religion. On the other hand, violence and conflicts arise when religious freedom is not respected and protected, making it difficult to carry out normal economic activities. Because religious individuals in free states can practice their faith as they choose and without government restrictions or social hostilities to shape social and political life, the likelihood of religious violence is relatively low.[35] At the same time, religious freedom frees people of faith and faith-based organizations to provide social services that reduce people’s personal grievances. Religious groups have made remarkably positive contributions to society that might otherwise have been suppressed by religious restrictions, and the collective influence of religion has resulted in more peaceful, stable societies. Indeed, religious freedom is strongly related to a host of other goods that are hallmarks of stable societies, including “better health outcomes, higher levels of earned income, and better educational opportunities for women.”[36] Freedom of religion thus counters tendencies of authoritarianism and tyranny, because religion draws attention away from the state and emphasizes the primacy of realities that are more peaceful and stable.
Religious freedom, therefore, demands a set of institutions, laws, and habits that affirm equality before the law for all religious actors and ideas. It is not merely the absence of persecution or restrictions but requires the presence of a network of mutually reinforcing governmental protections, as well as robust freedoms and certain social norms and practices. At base, it is about all citizens having the same right to carry out private and public activities, protected by a legal and political structure, based on the right to believe and to not believe, to enter and to leave a religious community, to build houses of prayer (albeit with limits), to form a clergy, to educate children in the faith, to build religious schools, to establish certain rules of discipline for adherents, to invite others to join the religious community, and so on. Equality before the law also affords all religious actors equal access to the legal, political, and economic institutions and processes of the state. As such, they should have the possibility, for example, to act in the political arena based on their religious teachings, to own property, to receive charitable donations, and to run charitable organizations.
Last, the social sciences have also confirmed that religious freedom is closely linked to other freedoms. Thus, if a society cares about enjoying those other freedoms, then it needs to care about securing religious freedom as well. In a sense, religious freedom is the core of liberty; the more that religious freedom is included and deepened, the wider the range of freedoms that a society can accommodate. Defending freedom of expression when freedom to express religious beliefs is not allowed quickly undermines freedom of expression in other areas. Similarly, allowing restrictions on assembly for religious groups opens the door to limiting activities for other groups as well.[37] Overall, as Grim and Finker have written, “Enforcing this liberty comes with a price, but the price of denying the freedom may be far higher.”[38]
- Conclusions
The primary goal of the world’s major religious traditions is not prosperity, health, or worldly satisfaction, nor is it to achieve a better life. On the contrary, religion generally aims at knowledge and communion with God or at the transcendent—at living life as God has conceived it—or at the restoration of total wholeness. Those are also the deeper reasons why religion teaches that ultimate well-being extends beyond flourishing in this life and that the ultimate ends of religion are the ones to be valued most.
History and contemporary scholarship, both theoretical and empirical, provide reasons to believe what common sense would suggest: that to mature and last, democracies require a bundle of necessary, interlocking freedoms, including religious freedom. However, there seems to be something unique about religious freedom. Religion questions human beings in the most fundamental, powerful way as well as compels them, in a certain way, to answer questions such as “Why do I exist?” and “What is my destiny?” and “From my understanding of transcendence, how can I live a good life?”[39] Religious questions are not instrumental or incidental but arise naturally and refer to what is ultimate. They have a unique, unequaled, universal, and timeless power. Religious questions, in short, beckon us all.
It should come as no surprise that the answers to those questions shape our thinking and our actions, both individually and as a community. They are questions that, along with their (tentative) answers, inevitably influence the institutions and norms that govern civil society and political life. It is precisely for that reason that the increasing shortage of religious freedom on the international stage is so alarming. As discussed, evidence suggests that without the protection of religious freedom and the freedoms linked to it, democracies will not remain stable. Yet, beyond that, the ultimate question concerns individual human beings. Religious freedom is a fundamental precondition for living freely. If a person can vote, own property, make their voice heard in the public square, and associate freely with others in public life but not be allowed to speak and act in accordance with what they believe about the ultimate reality that defines who they are and why they are on Earth, then the other freedoms mean little. In a very real sense, all human freedoms depend on religious freedom.
Although much attention has been given to the legal and institutional protection of religious freedom and its influence on the flourishing of individuals, there is a consensus that the rule of law ultimately depends on the mores, habits, and attitudes of citizens and rulers—in a word, on culture. In that light, religions and believers themselves are especially responsible for educating and encouraging their fellow believers in the exercise of religious freedom.
Only they can teach to defend their religion-based moral views with reasoning that appeals to all men and women of good will. It is also up to them to reject the use of religion for ideological or political ends, even more so when they give rise to violence. It is also up to religions and believers to find in their own tradition the most appropriate means to promote respect and tolerance.
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[1] Justin L. Barrett and Jonathan Lanman, “The Science of Religious Beliefs,” Religion 38 (2008): 110. See also in Timothy Shah and Jack Friedman (eds), Homo Religiosus? Exploring the Roots of Religion and Religious Freedom in Human Experience, Cambridge University Press (2018): 1. I’m mainly following here part of the arguments from this book.
[2] Paul Bloom, “Religion Is Natural,” Developmental Science 10 (2007): 150. It is interesting to note that Bloom is a self-declared rationalist-atheist who denies any notion of spirit, deity, and life beyond death. However, as a scientist, he claims that children are naturally predisposed to divide the world into two categories: the physical and the immaterial world. He explains that this psychological dualism causes most human beings to believe in the existence of the soul as a constitutive element of their being and, consequently, in spirituality and faith. In this sense, and unlike other atheists, he does not consider believers as simply misguided individuals. On the contrary, he wonders why to believe in the divine is present in every culture.
[3] Justin L. Barrett, “The Relative Unnaturalness of Atheism: On Why Geertz and Markusson Are Both Right and Wrong,” Religion 40 (2010): 169–172. See also Armin W. Geertz and Guðmundur I. Markússon, “Religion Is Natural, Atheism Is Not: On Why Everybody Is Both Right and Wrong,” Religion 40 (2010): 152–165.
[4] Answering this question does not imply showing the appropriateness of the reference to God in the areas of scientific discussion mentioned above, or in other analogous ones. On the contrary, it is a matter of pointing out whether the man of science is obliged to take into consideration philosophical knowledge about God and to listen to revelation and theology that speak to him about God because he recognizes, also in the context of scientific rationality, that this notion is not a pure „meaningless” one.
[5] Timothy Shah and Jack Friedman (eds), Homo Religiosus?: 3. Christian Smith, professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame, has clarified that the concept of the naturalness of religion holds that humans are not religious by nature if “by nature” is understood in the positivist–empiricist sense (i.e., to be compelled by some natural, irrepressible need, drive, instinct, or desire to be religious) or if every human culture has a functional need or intractable impulse to make religion one of its centrally defining features. As with individual people, societies vary in how important a role religion plays in their lives. Nonetheless, humans are naturally religious in the sense that they possess, by virtue of their given ontological being, a complex set of innate features, capacities, powers, limitations, and tendencies that not only give them the capacity to think, perceive, feel, imagine, desire, and act religiously but that under the right conditions also tend to predispose and direct them toward religion. The natural religiousness of humanity rests in natural features latent within humanity and, similar to all innate capacities, are subject to the complexities of interactions and stimulations that do or do not bring those features to the surface. See “Man the Religious Animal”, First Things, April 2012. Available: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/man-the-religious-animal (Access: 31 December 2022).
[6] U.S. religious studies scholar Catherine Albanese has observed that everyone knows what religion is until they try to conceptualize it: “Religion cannot be defined very easily because it thrives both within and outside of boundaries. It crosses and crisscrosses the boundaries that definitions want to set up because, paradoxically, it concerns boundaries (…) and it encompasses all of human life.” She adds that describing religion may be better than trying to define it, because the latter requires identifying territorial, temporal, and linguistic boundaries, among others. See Catherine L. Albanese, America: Religions and Religion, Wadsworth Publishing Company (1992): 2–16.
[7] John Henry Newman, “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk”, as cited by Charles J. Chaput, in: Render unto Caesar (New York: Doubleday 2008), 148.
[8] See Melissa Moschella, “Religious Freedom’s Legal and Moral Basis”, Public Discourse, July 24, 2012. Available https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5899/ (Access December 31, 2022).
[9] For a full development of the argument, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Why There Is a Natural Right to Religious Freedom”, in T. Shah and J. Friedman (eds), Homo Religiosus? 216–220.
[10] For a detailed account of the statement, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, Princeton University Press (2010).
[11] Tomas Nagel, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002-2008, Oxford University Press (2010): 5.
[12] The argument leads to the conclusion that, considering the case of persons who embrace a secular alternative to religion, which is a manifestation of the same capacities of which religion is a manifestation and to which they are as ardently attached as any religious adherent is to their own religion, their alternative should receive the same legal protection as the free exercise of religion.
[13] For a full account of the argument, see Christopher Tollefsen, “Religious Liberty, Human Dignity, and Human Goods”, in T. Shah and J. Friedman (eds). Homo Religiosus? 234–238.
[14] Ibid. 235.
[15] Benedict XVI, “Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace”, Message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1st, 2011. https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20101208_xliv-world-day-peace.html. (Access: December 22, 2022).
[16] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book 2, part 3, section 3.
[17] Among others, see John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford University Press (2011).
[18] It is beyond the scope of this article to delve into the question of whether Finnis and, in general, the new school of natural law is really grounded in the Aristotelian–Thomistic tradition. In general, I agree with Michael Pakaluk, who has pointed out that “[i]n Aristotle and in the classical tradition, that something is good or bad is a claim about the world (ST, I, q. 16, a. 1, r). For example, that an apple is rotten and therefore bad is a claim about the world: it is a claim that the apple fails to have what it should have, given the sort of thing it is supposed to be (That an apple is supposed to be in a certain way is a claim about the world too). In the same way, it is a claim about the world that a human being who possesses the virtues is a good human being. Since a rotten apple is bad, ceteris paribus it is rationally to be avoided.” To say that something is good is thus to say, ceteris paribus, that it is reasonable to pursue it; indeed, that is the very idea expressed by what Aquinas calls the “first principle of practical reason,” namely that good is to be pursued and evil to be avoided (ST, Ia-IIae, q. 94, a. 2, r. 53). That principle links goodness in the world to desire and choice in the agent. The new theory of natural law, however, holds that the first principles of practical reason are first-person principles, not third-person laws, and identifies a claim’s being self-evident as its being believed with certainty, even since its being intuited with a reflexive immediacy. Along those lines, I agree again with Pakaluk, who has written that “in the New Natural Law Theory, natural teleology accordingly might be introduced, at best, as another postulate of practical reason, but it cannot be a basis or starting point, or source thereof, for practical reason.” Therefore, in the new theory of natural law, natural teleology might accordingly be introduced, at best, as another postulate of practical reason, but it cannot be a basis or starting point or source thereof, for practical reason. See Michael Pakaluk, “On What a Theory of Natural Law Is Supposed to Be”, Persona y Derecho 82 (2020): 167–200.
That said, I value the approach insofar as it serves as a contribution to the debate over law and morality, because it argues that law, though separate from morality, necessarily flows from morality, properly conceived. Its main concern is thus to establish a kind of closeness between law and morality, not to oppose morality to law.
[19] Among the main theorist of natural law, the catalog of goods partially differs. See, Murphy, Mark, „The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/natural-law-ethics/, section 2.3.
[20] Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
[21] Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate, Princeton University Press (2006): 72. See also Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God, Harvard University Press (2013): 107, 114, 119.
[22] Melissa Moschella, “Beyond Equal Liberty: Religion as a Distinct Human Good and the Implications for Religious Freedom”, Journal of Law and Religion 32, no. 1 (2017): 126.
[23] Christopher Ellison, professor of sociology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, has stated that “the positive influence of religious certainty on well-being (…) is direct and substantial: individuals with strong religious faith report higher levels of life satisfaction, greater personal happiness, and fewer negative psychosocial consequences of traumatic life events. Further, in models of life satisfaction only, the positive influence of existential certainty is especially pronounced for older persons and persons with low levels of formal education.” See Christopher Ellison, “Religious Involvement and Subjective Well-Being”, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 32/1 (1991):80–99.
[24] See “Religious Freedom and the Common Good: A Symposium of the Religious Freedom Project”, November 15, 2016. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/publications/religious-freedom-and-the-common-good-a-symposium-of-the-religious-freedom-project#dflip-df_manual_book/1/. (Access on December 26, 2022)
[25] See Steven Durlauf, Andros Kourtellos, and Chih Ming Tan, “Is God in the Details? A Reexamination of the Role of Religion in Economic Growth”, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 27/7 (2012):1059–1075.
[26] See Nilay Saiya, “The Religious Freedom Peace”, The International Journal of Human Rights, 19 no. 3 (2015): 370.
[27] Allen D. Hertzke, Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, 64; Timothy Samuel Shah and Matthew Franck, Religious Freedom: Why Now? Defending an Embattled Human Right, Witherspoon Institute (2012): 21.
[28] See https://religiousfreedomandbusiness.org/brian-j-grim
[29] See https://www.christosmakridis.com/
[30] See Religious Freedom and Business Foundation https://religiousfreedomandbusiness.org/research
[31] See https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/
[32] For details, see Brian J. Grim and Phillip Connor, “Changing Religion, Changing Economies: Future Global Religious and Economic Growth”. Research prepared for the Global Agenda Council on the Role of Faith, October 21, 2015, https://religiousfreedomandbusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Changing-religion-Changing-economies-Religious-Freedom-Business-Foundation-October-21-2015.pdf. (Access: December 20, 2022).
[33] See Brian Grim, Greg Clark, and Robert Snyder, “Is Religious Freedom Good for Business?”, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 10 (2014): 4–5. https://www.religjournal.com/articles/article_view.php?id=85 (Access: December 20, 2022).
[34] Christos Makridis, “No Longer a Luxury – Religious Liberty Is a National Security Priority”, Providence, June 25, 2020. https://providencemag.com/2020/06/no-longer-a-luxury-religious-liberty-is-a-national-security-priority/ (Access: December 31, 2022).
[35] Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen, Cambridge
University Press (2007).
[36] Brian Grim, “Religious Freedom: Good for What Ails Us?”, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 6 no. 2 (2008): 3–7.
[37] See Brian Grim and Roger Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge University Press (2010): 205–206.
[38] Ibid. 212.
[39] See Thomas Farr, “Is Religious Freedom Necessary for Other Freedoms to Flourish?”, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, August 7, 2012. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/essays/is-religious-freedom-necessary-for-other-freedoms-to-flourish. Access: December 30, 2022.