I had a presentation in class today, on Robert Audi’s theory of how religious citizens should act in a liberal democracy. To me, his theory basically seems to be that religious people, when advocating a policy or voting for a candidate, have extra homework – they have to sort out their reasons and motivations, and make sure that their driving motivations are secular ones. So it’s not that religious motivations aren’t acceptable, but they have to be secondary, and you have to do whatever soul-searching necessary to make sure that they are.
(Interestingly, he explicitly excludes Unitarians from his rules for how religious institutions should act. This is probably for the best, because as a church we basically do everything he says not to do.)
I was really of two minds the whole time we were discussing the thing. On the one hand, I kind of see his point – if opponents of gay rights, for example, were only allowed to argue from secular motivations, then my life would probably get a lot easier pretty much at once. On the other hand, I like the political advocacy that my church does – UU protests against SB1070, Arizona’s awful immigration law, probably would have been suspect under his guidelines, for example, but I thought they were really important.
Which is completely unfair of me, right? I can’t support restraint by religious people only when they’re the religious people that I disagree with.
The principle he kept coming back to was a “do unto others” thing – if you wouldn’t want another religion to advocate out of their religious motivations, don’t advocate out of yours. Which makes sense. I think maybe I’m ending up switching it in my head – I want to advocate out of my religion, and therefore I accept that you can advocate out of yours.
(But probably not all the time. Sometimes. Secular reasons and motivations still ought to be the overwhelmingly primary currency of political discussion, obviously. Just that if religious people/organizations feel strongly, I don’t mind hearing that as well.)