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Religious freedom in Democracy? José Enrique Miguens Buenos Aires / Religion – Modern political thought, which historically runs from the Renaissance and the Reformation to the Jewish Holocaust, has defined and confused in such a way the classical Political concepts, that urgent review and explanation is necessary. This deformation is particularly serious concerning basic political concepts such as democracy and freedom, because they have provided modern States the imposition of political laicism for the sake of freedom, and exclusion of its religious citizens as such from public life, arguing that this is democracy. To clarify the political meaning of the concept of religious freedom, the distinction between negative and positive liberties in general, made by some liberal authors such as Sir Isaiah Berlin, following the path opened by the lucid and combative freedom defender, Benjamin Constant, becomes very illustrative. The first one, in his classic Two concepts of liberty and in What is political freedom?, and the latter in De la liberté chez les modernes. I think that if we apply these classical distinctions to the role played by religions in society -they don’t- we can find it easier to find our way in this very delicate and so much debated issue. NEGATIVE FREEDOM In defining what negative political freedom means in general, Berlin is flatly clear, placing himself within the assumptions of liberalism: "Normally I can say I’m free when no man or group of men interferes with my activity." "In its political and not metaphorical sense, freedom means the absence of interference by others," he says. These freedoms are referred to as negative basically because they forbid or refuse outsiders to impose obstacles on the privacy of an individual and on certain public expressions, as well as interferences in their actions and on their decisions in certain matters. In the social ontology of liberalism, these freedoms were related exclusively to individuals and groups of individuals, to their bilateral relations and the associations formed by them under the legal fiction known as "juridical person", the only entities that can be right-bearing subjects. These are rights granted by the State to individuals or juridical persons, and which can be revoked just as they are granted; they are not rights held by certain social groups as such and which, being natural rights, should be recognized and not granted by the State. As the authors say, these freedoms are negative because they are "freedoms o"" and not "freedoms for", which would be positive freedoms. For many liberal authors (in the European sense of the word) negative freedoms are a goal, a purpose, because in applying them, society has fulfilled its purposes and everyone will be happy living in a "free" society. Few think about what they are useful for, that is, which are the contributions of these negative freedoms to the societies in which they exist. These characteristics can be succinctly summarized in the declarations and international treaties about religious freedom, all of which have a similar frame. Let’s see the introductory text, art. 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by United Nations: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." This limitation of expression in the public space is repeated in all documents. For example, article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, establishes the same limitation on the public manifestation of religions: "…in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching." Nobody can ignore that these declarations and treaties are a wonderful step for Humanity, which means a step towards more civilized ways of coexistence, but we must acknowledge that the course of history and the new claims that appear throughout the world are calling for new forms of religious freedom. POSITIVE FREEDOM IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY The intellectual trap lies in the artificial separation between the conscience of individuals and their actions, giving consciences freedom to despotically regulate the actions, or limiting them to certain politically irrelevant activities. This reveals that in these situations genuine religious freedom and true democracy are absent. That is why, in political matters, religious people are not and cannot be satisfied with being a mere passive object of State concessions and tolerance in the derogatory sense of the word; instead they want to be active players in political society and want to be recognized as such in the same conditions as all other citizens, when we speak of democracy in its traditional sense. This seems to be what Berlin refers to when he defines positive freedom in its Chapter II: "The ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘freedom’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master¼ I wish to be a subject, not an object." And I add: especially in the political life of my country. But the traditional sense of these freedoms is admirably clarified within another not liberal mental frame, by Hannah Arendt in some posthumous manuscripts on politics, referring to its traditional Greek meaning: "In the Greek sense, politics is therefore focused in freedom, negatively understood as not being dominated nor dominating, and positively as a space only established by many, in which everyone moves among equals. Without such others, who are my peers, there is no freedom." We misunderstood –he says– "the Greek expression for a free constitution, isonomy. But isonomy does not mean that all are equal before the law nor that the law is the same for all, but simply that everyone has an equal right to political activity." (What is politics?). Clearly then, within the scope of politics, people can not be politically free if they are not politically equal. This clear traditional notion about freedom and democracy tried to be confused with the attempts made by rationalists and contractualists, who wanted to steer people not as citizens but as subjects, declaring they did so "for their own sake", something they could not be aware of because of their obscurantism, religious prejudices and irrationality. They denied every human being the natural right of wanting to act, actively participate in the political processes that affect them, of wanting to act within their society according to their beliefs, values and ways of looking at things, be they religious, agnostics or atheists. In other words: to regain their rightful dominion if we want to talk about democracy. Faced with this natural and legitimate demand, religious people were placed behind a wall of political exclusion. The argument was that they cannot be accepted as actors in political life if they don’t put their religion aside, because they are not free and rational people, but slaves of their respective religious dogmas. Therefore, they should confine their religious beliefs and values in their private lives, but they cannot take part in the political public life of their societies contributing with these values. This is what Benjamin Constant, who was not a religious man, shrewdly sensed from the outset: "Our freedom is limited to the peaceful enjoyment of our private independence." Needless to say, when these "enlightened" rationalists, sustained that discriminatory argument, they didn’t have the slightest idea of what a religious belief is, nor how the tenets or "basic dogmas" of any religion come about. Neither they know the characteristics of the adherence of believers to their respective religions, which involves his entire person, including his reason, and surpassing it. ETHICAL REASON AND RELIGIOUS FAITH Speaking of all religions, Pope Benedict XVI specifically dealt with this debated matter, at the conference he was supposed to give as a guest at the University of Rome, and which could not take place due to the obscurantism and prejudices of a handful of teachers and students. He puts forward the issue: "Here, however, the objection arises immediately that the Pope, in fact, would not have spoken based on ethical reason, but that his statements came from faith and therefore could not claim them valid for those who do not share that faith." This was the argument that for centuries allowed the exclusion of religious people from any possible political dialogue in their own societies, because they are not considered free or rational. Based on John Rawls, the Pope argues that while "global religious doctrines" do not intend to comprise everything, "they are at least a reason that could not just be ignored, in the name of a rationality hardened by the secularist point of view¼ He (Rawls) sees a criterion of this rationality, among other things, in the fact that such doctrines derive from a responsible and motivated tradition, which in the long course of time have developed enough good arguments so as to sustain their respective doctrines. I think it is important that this declaration contains the recognition that experience and demonstration throughout generations, the historical background of human wisdom are also a sign of their rationality and enduring significance. Faced with an a-historical attempt to build itself only in an a-historical rationality, mankind’s wisdom as such -the wisdom of the great religious traditions- should be valued as a reality that cannot be thrown away to the trashcan of the history of ideas." This is similar to the argument of French-Canadian political philosopher Charles Taylor, the creator of the so-called "political recognition - which he extends to all cultures, with a presumption or a backup that has a certain degree of validity: "Saying that all human cultures that have inspired entire societies for such a considerable length of time have something to say to all human beings." This does not mean that "everything is the same, nothing is better"; democratic dialogue among all citizens, respecting their differences, decides what’s best for a society at certain times and facing certain events. Such is the role of politics and the democratic manner of making it effective. This is what the Pope refers to when, immediately after, he raises the issue of what he calls the "criterions of justice" that is, "how can we find a legal system that stands as a freedom, human dignity and human rights ordinance. This is the question we face today in the opinion formation democratic processes and which, at the same time, anguishes us as a matter on which humanity’s future depends." He says that Jürgen Habermas expresses "a broad consensus of current thinking when he says that the legitimacy of the Constitution of a country, as primary condition of law, would derive from two sources: the equitable political participation of all citizens and the reasonable way in which they resolve their political differences." Regarding this ‘reasonable way’, he says that "it should not only be the struggle for mathematical majorities, instead it should be characterized as a reasoning process, sensitive to truth". As a summary, he said at a recent public hearing (20/2/08) when commenting St. Augustine’s The City of God: "Laicity does not mean suppression of religious freedom (which is what laicism would be) but the guarantee that believers of different religions may exercise their fundamental rights." The core of the problem to come out of this serious situation of misunderstandings in a democratic way is that of the parameters of ethical rationalism, and within it, the physicist-type of ethical naturalism, which are those governing modern politics and that I studied extensively in Part V of my book Desafío a la política neoliberal: Comunitarismo y democracia en Aristóteles. In it, I show how "cognitive reason inherent to ethical naturalism leads to treat people as objects, not as political actors" and therefore, to consider them as strangers, as different, in a process interactionist sociologists called "othering", and that in this case are those who award rationality for themselves. And my conclusion: "When these inequality structures are imposed and reproduced in a political society; when people are deprived of the possibility of becoming actors and are be turned into subjects, objects to be manipulated and exploited, there is no democratic coexistence, we only have a democratic facade." This is what happened and is still happening with the political participation of religious people in countries where the prevailing ideology is still militant laicism and repression of the soul and its significance in public life. This is what is causing the unfortunate religious fundamentalisms and extremist reactions that we see every day, which are causing a turmoil in the global order, as predicted by Eric Voegelin in his famous 1952 conference at the University of Chicago (The New Science of Politics . Part VI, Chapter 1). Thus we come to the conclusion that there can only be genuine and full religious freedom in a society that dialogues and where there is participatory democracy, with a secular and impartial state which is able to guarantee everybody’s autonomy and the political equality of all citizens. This is where we should all aim. |
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