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John Locke and the Argument Against Strict Separation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

David McCabe
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Extract

Contemporary liberals who advocate strict separation between church and state often defend themselves by suggesting that such a position is the only one compatible with the principle of liberal neutrality, whose origins go back to John Locke's first Letter on Toleration. This essay argues that this line of reasoning is mistaken. While Locke did endorse the neutrality principle, he did not endorse strict separation, and this fact suggests that the connection between liberal neutrality and strict separation is not as secure as many liberals have assumed. This examination of Locke's attitudes toward neutrality and strict separation aims both to clarify what is at stake in contemporary debates over strict separation in liberal states and to consider the conditions that would have to be met to mount a Lockean argument against weakening church-state separation in contemporary liberal states.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , Spring 1997 , pp. 233 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1997

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References

1 Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. xCrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Most contemporary liberals endorse strict separation and see it as following from state neutrality towards conceptions of the good. For example, John Rawls declares, “the state can no more act to maximize the fulfillment of citizens' rational preferences,⃛ or the values of perfection (as in perfectionism), than it can act to advanee Catholicism or Protestantism, or any other religion. None of these views of the meaning, value and purpose of human life, as specified by the corresponding comprehensive religious or philosophical conceptions of the good, are affirmed by citizens generally, and so the pursuit of any one of them through basic institutions gives the state a sectarian character” Rawls, John, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,& Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 [1988]: 256)Google Scholar. Throughout his work Rawls has made it clear that he regards modern liberalism as the logical extension of religious toleration, and he explicitly cites Locke as someone who believed “that there are many conflicting and incommensurable conceptions of the good” Rawls, John, “Social Unity and Primary Goods,” in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya, Sen and Bernard, Williams [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], p 160Google Scholar. David Richards also adverts to Locke in his argument for strict separation, though he gives more attention than does Rawls to Locke's argument for the interconnections among religion, public morality, and individual harm. See his Toleration and the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 251–52Google Scholar. Though Richards claims that a belief in such interconnections cannot be sustained today, I do not think, for reasons I outline in this essay, that Locke's argument on this point can be so easily dismissed. One of the clearest statements of strict separation from the United States Supreme Court is found in Hugo Black's majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education: “Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another” (quoted in McWhirter, Darien A., The Separation of Church and State [Phoenix: The Oryx Press, 1994], p. 46).Google Scholar

3 For attempts to illuminate the broader debate over state neutrality through readings of Locke's Letter, see Galston, William, “Liberalism and Public Morality,“ in Liberals on Liberalism, ed. Damico, Alfonso (Tottowa NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986)Google Scholar; Mendus, Susan, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Larmore, Charles, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The view is increasingly popular that, as Herzog, Don puts it, “any acoċunt of liberal neutrality ought to accommodate the Letter or else have a very good story about why not” (Happy Slaves: A Critique of Consent Theory [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989], p. 148).Google Scholar

4 Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Tully, James (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), p. 24Google Scholar. Hereafter, references to the Letter will appear as page numbers in parentheses.

5 Waldron, Jeremy, “Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution, in John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration In Focus, ed. London, John and Mendus, Susan (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 99.Google Scholar

6 Cf. Mendus's account in Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism and that of Waldron, who declares argument (4) the only “interesting and evidently acceptable line of argument” in the Letter (Waldron, “Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution,” p. 101). Waldron presentation of the structure of this argument, as well as his exposition of the problems it faces, is clear and penetrating. But he is wrong to dismiss the importance in the Letter of another argument, centered around the circumstances of the original founding of the commonwealth and the extent of the consent granted to the magistrate. Given that this discussion of the origins of political authority constitutes one of Locke's most significant contributions to liberal theory and that such a consent-oriented argument lies at the heart of his most influential political tract, the Second Treatise, it is surprising to find that Waldron classifies as “careless readers” those who consider this argument crucial to the Letter.

7 see Herzog, , Happy Slaves, p. 165Google Scholar for the argument that the Letter expresses Locke's distinctively liberal emphasis on “the differentiation of realms” and Kraynak, Robert, “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration,” American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 53–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar on the importance in the Letter of “the separation of spheres.”.

8 Locke, John, Second Treatise of Government, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1980), § 171.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., §131, §149.

10 Ibid., § 134. Locke's 1667 Essay Concerning Toleration sounds the same theme:“What was the end of erecting of government ought alone to be the measure of its proceeding” (quoted in Bourne, H. R. Fox, The Life of John Locke, vol. 1 [New York:Harper and Bros. Publishers, 1876], p. 174.Google Scholar

11 The centrality of justificatory neutrality to contemporary liberalism comes across clearly in Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity; Ackerman, Bruce, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Dworkin, Ronald, “Liberalism,” in Public and Private Morality, ed. Hampshire, Stuart (Cambridge: combridge University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

12 Contemporary liberals have tended to endorse justificatory neutrality over neutrality of effect for two reasons. First, neutrality of effect is most likely impossible to achieve. Second, the state's refusal to evaluate citizens' conceptions of the good is seen as the only policy consistent with the idea of treating all citizens with equal respect. Since it is always possible that the state may have to outlaw practices that some individuals declare central to their conceptions of the good, the commitment to justificatory neutrality allows states to do so without impugning the intrinsic worth of such conceptions.

13 The comments of an anonymous referee have led me to conclude that there is another way of understanding the principle of justificatory neutrality. According to this alternative interpretation, the state may not act with the intention of affecting some religions for good or ill for any reason whatsoever (including reasons unrelated to assessments of intrinsic value); it is thus a more restrictive principle of justificatory neutrality than one that excludes reasons relating only to intrinsic value. While something like this alternative interpretation may be what some contemporary neutralists have in mind when they argue for strict separation, the principle thus interpreted is problematic. After all, if the neutral state may outlaw certain religious practices on the grounds of harm to civil interests, then for the same reasons it might be warranted in promoting, say, religious attitudes if a necessary relation were established between such attitudes and the protection of civil interests. It is hard to see why liberal states may take steps to punish those who violate civil interests but may not take reasonable steps to help deter such violations. Defenders of the more restrictive interpretation might then try to defend it by arguing for the special importance of religious conceptions of the good as opposed to nonreligious conceptions, but if one makes this distinction one privileges religious conceptions and thus violates neutrality among conceptions of the good. In any case, this alternative interpretation is certainly not the one endorsed by Locke, who understands justificatory neutrality in terms of reasons relating to intrinsic value. Waldron's, Jeremy “Legislation and Moral Neutrality,”in Liberal Neutrality, ed. Goodin, Bruce and Reeve, Andrew (New York: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar, does an excellent job of spelling out different ways of interpreting the principle of neutrality.

14 The argument I shall consider against strict separation also has ramifications, which I shall not develop here, for conceptions of the good other than religious ones. For example, if it turns out that certain conceptions of the good foster moral values fundamentally at odds with the public morality required for liberal society, then the argument I shall consider suggests that liberal states may be warranted in taking steps to hinder the pursuit of such conceptions.

15 Galston, “Liberalism and Public Morality,” explores Locke's understanding of the importance of public moral rules. Locke's understanding of the need for consensus on certain issues of public morality is also addressed in Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., “Reconstructing Liberal Theory:Reason and Culture,” and Terchek, Ronald J., “The Fruits of Success and the Crisis of Liberalism,” both in Liberals on Liberalism, ed. D'Amico, Alfonso J. (New Jersey:Rowman & Littlefield, 1986)Google Scholar In the Letter Locke's grounding of the magistrate's authority to enforce moral codes rests entirely on their instrumental value in aiding public order and tranquility. He appears to have held the same view in his 1667 Essay:“Give me leave to say, however strange it may seem, that the law-maker hath nothing to do with moral virtues and vice, nor ought to enjoin the duties of the second table any otherwise than barely as they are subservient to the good and preservation of mankind under government” (Bourne, Fox, the Life of John Locke, p. 181).Google Scholar

16 Both Kraynak, “John Locke:From Absolutism to Toleration,” and Cranston, Maurice, “John Locke and the Case for Toleration,” in On Toleration, ed. Mendus, Susan and Edwards, D. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, testify to Locke's desire for an established Church of England, as do his private letters, some of which I discuss below.

17 Against the second of these alternatives, it should be remembered that Locke took great pains to hide his authorship of the Letter and that it appears to have been published without his knowledge. Both of these facts suggest that he did not want to be publicly identified with the views expressed in the Letter.

18 P. J. Kelly claims, “The maintenance of civil peace and stability is the most important political goal underlying all of his political writings from the Two Tracts to the Two Treatises and Letters on Toleration” (“John Locke: Authority, Conscience and Religious Toleration; in Locke, John: A Letter Concerning Toleration In Focus, ed. Horton, John and Mendus, Susan [London: Routledge, 1991, p. 132).Google Scholar

19 The Correspondence of John Locke, vol. 3, ed. E. S.De, Beer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 588.Google Scholar

20 Bourne, Fox, Life of John Locke, p. 184Google Scholar

21 De Beer, , Correspondence of John Locke, p. 588.Google Scholar

22 Cranston, , “John Locke and the Case for Toleration,” p. 87.Google Scholar

23 James Tully puts the point thus:'For Locke, as for almost all his contemporaries, only belief in a God who punishes the wicked and rewards the virtuous in an afterlife provides most individuals with motive—self—interest—sufficient to cause them to act morally and legally' (“Introduction” to A Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 8). Dunn claims that belief in God is, for Locke, “the foundation of all morality” (John Locke [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984], p. 58Google Scholar. On the same point see also Galston, , “Liberalism and Public Morality,” p 133Google Scholar; Bourne, , Life of John Locke, p. 41Google Scholar; and Gough, J. W., John Locke's Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), p. 217.Google Scholar

24 In this respect, the position I am advancing continues the lines of argument put forth by Kraynak, “John Locke:From Absolutism to Toleration,” and Windstrup, George, “Freedom and Authority: The Ancient Faith of Locke's Letter on Toleration,” Review of Politics 44 (1982): 242–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, both of whom see Locke's position in the Letter as largely motivated by his mature understanding of what was required, given the fact of religious pluralism, to achieve peaceful coexistence among citizens. (Windstrup's article contains a particularly lucid discussion of the special compatibility between Christianity and Locke's liberalism.) Though each goes further than I in the degree to which they see Locke's argument for toleration as strategically motivated (Kraynak does not discuss sufficiently the possibility that Locke came to see toleration as the strategy most conducive to spreading the true faith, while Windstrup somewhat overstates his case in implying that Locke regarded natural rights largely as convenient fictions), both essays do an excellent job of demonstrating that for Locke the question of how the state ought to act with respect to religion cannot be resolved solely through an a priori analysis but must be determined partly on the basis of empirical facts about the citizens of the state and their attitudes towards religion.

25 “Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, Nancy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 As I write, the government of the United States is shut down, stalled in a battl over which segments of its society should be asked to shoulder the burden of balancing the budget. One could hardly imagine a more dramatic demonstration of the way in which liberal democracies depend on citizens' willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the good of the whole, though to be precise one should speak here of the perception on the part of certain lawmakers that citizens are unwilling to make such sacrifices.

27 That religion is vital to the sustaining of public morality has, of course, been endorsed by many leading figures in the history of the United States. Consider the following passage from George Washington's farewell address: “And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle”. (I thank Walter Nicgorski for alerting me to the relevance of this passage.)

28 The study of Muncie, Indiana, that Neuhaus, R. J. discusses in “What the Fundamentalists Want” (Commentary 79, no. 5: 41–46Google Scholar) is an example of what I have in mind. This study claims to show that higher levels of religious belief correlated with higher degrees of tolerance, clearly a moral virtue of great importance in preserving civil harmony. Of course, correlation is not causation, and gathering and interpreting such information is a highly precarious process. (The reference to Neuhaus and the study is taken from Galston, “Liberalism and Public Morality.”) More recently, Don Browning has argued that the revival of the moral virtues in parishioners of a church in south Chicago was made possible largely by the fact that these virtues were presented within an explicitly religious framework. See Browning, Don, “Altruism, Civic Virtue, and Religion”, in Seedbeds of Virtue, ed. Glendon, Mary Ann and David, Blankenhorn (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1995Google Scholar). Intuitively it seems plausible that for many individuals a close connection exists between their moral and religious beliefs—so close that it perhaps should not be called a connection at all. If we accept, as seems reasonable, Michael Perry's claims that all religions “comprise norms governing one's relation to others” and that “every religious vision also comprises beliefs—moral beliefs— about how to live compatibly with the basic religious beliefs” (Love and Power [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991], p. 77)Google Scholar, then it would seem likely that for some people a decline in religious sentiment may lead to significant alterations in their moral character.

29 “The dogmas of the civil religion ought to be simple, few in number, precisely worded, without explanations or commentaries. The existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent divinity that foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contract and of the laws. These are the positive dogmas” (The Social Contract, trans. Cress, Donald [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987], p. 102)Google Scholar. Cobban's, AlfredRousseau and the Modern State (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1934), pp. 76–88Google Scholar, remains one of the clearest treatments of civil religion in Rousseau's thought.