Summary
To clarify lines of agreement and disagreement about church autonomy, it is useful to work with the composite idea of church autonomy. The elements of that composite are described here as three concepts of church autonomy: 1. formal, 2. normative, and 3. doctrinal. Conceived formally, church autonomy is a certain set of jural relations between faith communities and other rival interests such as disaffected individual members, outsiders, or government. Conceived normatively, church autonomy is a proposal about how the worth or good of autonomy justifies such formal jural relations. Conceived doctrinally, church autonomy proposes a standard of review that specifies the content of the formal jural relations by setting out an order of priority between, or a rule for adjusting, the worth or good of autonomy and other goods or principles when these are rival.
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Extract
Three Concepts of Church Autonomy
In their thought-provoking papers, Professor Marci Hamilton opposes church autonomy1 and Professor Brett Scharffs supports it.2 But it is not clear that what Professor Hamilton rejects is precisely what Professor Scharffs endorses. In fact, it is by no means easy to settle on an idea of church autonomy for the purpose of sorting out whether it is a good idea or a bad one. To clarify lines of agreement and disagreement about church autonomy, I think it useful to work with what I will call "the composite idea of church autonomy." The elements of that composite I shall describe as "three concepts of church autonomy": formal, normative, and doctrinal.
Conceived formally, church autonomy is a certain set of jural relations between faith communities and other rival interests such as disaffected individual members, outsiders, or government. Conceived normatively, church autonomy is a proposal about how the worth or good of autonomy justifies such formal jural relations. Conceived doctrinally, church autonomy proposes a standard of review that specifies the content of the formal jural relations by setting out an order of priority between, or a rule for adjusting, the worth or good of autonomy and other goods or principles when these are rival.It should be clear that each of the component concepts can be worked out in a range of proposals. The content of what I shall call a "conception of church autonomy" is given by the content of these proposals. Thus there exists a domain of "conceptions of church autonomy," such that each conception in the domain answers three questions. What are jurai relations of church autonomy? On what understanding of the meaning and worth of autonomy are such relations justified? How are the jural relations to be worked out when there are conflicting exercises or expressions of autonomy, or when the worth of autonomy is pitted against other goods? Answers to these questions are proposals about the formal, normative, and doctrinal concepts of church autonomy.Such questions identify points where understandings diverge. We might agree on a formal description of jural relations between faith communities and other interests but disagree about whether such relations are desirable. We might agree that they are desirable but disagree about whether the moral worth of autonomy is what makes them desirable (or we might embrace quite different understandings of the moral worth of autonomy). And even i...See the full content of this document
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