On Religious Liberty

I was first introduced to the great British philosopher John Stuart Mill in an undergrad political science class.  We had to read his On Liberty, and his notions about rights -- whether I always agreed with him or not -- have stuck with me ever since as one of the best examples of classical liberal thought on the subject.

What does that have to do with The Mainline?  Well, Mill also wrote on the topic of religion (probably the best example being his essay "Theism") in which he explored the arguments for and against belief in God/the divine.  Mill's eventual claim, despite admitting early on that he was not religious and never really had been, is interesting chiefly because unlike some of his contemporaries in late Victorian Britain, Mill was unwilling to reject the idea of God.  For him, while he could not advocate belief, neither could he put forward a notion of unbelief either.  Rather, for some he argued, there was enough evidence to hope that religion, that God, might be.  And that was enough for Mill.

I got to thinking about Mill, liberty, and belief/unbelief a bit more in the past few days.  There have been some wonderful essays done by R.R. Reno (editor of  First Things) about religious liberty in America today (Reno argues in part that its definition is being altered by secular humanists to mean freedom from religion in the public square/religion is fine so long as it is private and kept that way) as well as by John C. Pinheiro (of Aquinas College) about the need to study Religious History (noting that the world's atheist population is estimated to be only 3 percent, meaning that 97 percent of humanity has some form of religious belief system, and so academia needs to take the study of religion seriously). In short, both these pieces reinforce arguments that I (hope I) made in The Mainline, about the importance of religious belief (both privately and in the public square) in American History, and why secular humanists were not only going against the tide of our history but also missing out on the ways in which religion and faith have (and will continue to) shape us.  The question really is not will religion/faith be a factor but which religion/faith will be influencing us in the twenty-first century (and I agree with these authors that secular humanism, even if at times given greater influence than it actually has, is a faith).

And those ruminations have also got me thinking about what it means for Christians (as that is the faith I write about in The Mainline) to accept a concept of religious liberty.  Not just in the spirit of toleration, but also internally.  How should those outside a particular denomination feel about the efforts of some denominational leaders to transform historic doctrines within their faith tradition (I talk about an earlier dust up in The Mainline, but for the latest from the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop, take a look at this)?  How should people within that denomination feel/react?  What does it mean for the future?  Should we treat them with Christian charity, extend to them religious liberty if you will, or do they present a threat to the faith that should be cast out?  For 97% of the world's population such issues matter.  For academics, beyond just being interesting things to study it matter as well, because such a discussion would help us not only make the case that religious history should be studied, but also force us to think in new ways about old concepts and investigate what it means to believe or not (whether in God or in a point of doctrine).

I'm not sure what Mill would say about all this.  But there is always hope.  Hope that we can disagree, without being disagreeable.  And hope that we can be honest enough to say that faith matters.