Two-way Translation: the Ethics of Engaging With Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation - Jeremy Waldron

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Publication year: 2012
• Citation: Vol. 63 No. 3

Two-way Translation: The Ethics of Engaging with Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation

by Jeremy Waldron*

Our topic for this Symposium panel is "Citizenship and Civility in a Divided Democracy: Political, Religious, and Legal Concerns."¹ It is a topic that can be approached in the abstract or through a case study. I am going to proceed with a case study, involving the work of one of Mercer University's most distinguished scholars and public thinkers, University Professor and Professor of Christian Ethics, David Gushee. But the discussion will become abstract before very long.

I. An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture

In March 2007, an organization called Evangelicals for Human Rights issued a document entitled An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture.² The document opened as follows:

The sanctity of human life, a moral status irrevocably bestowed by the Creator upon each person and confirmed in the costly atoning sacrifice

* University Professor and Professor of Law, New York University. University of Otago (B.A., cum laude, 1974; LL.B., cum laude, 1978); Oxford University (D. Phil., 1986). An earlier version of this paper was presented as the 2010 Meador Lecture at the University of Virginia.

1. See Purpose Statement, Mercer University Law Review Symposium 2011, Citizenship and Civility in a Divided Democracy: Political, Religious, and Legal Concerns, Mercer Law (Oct. 7, 2011), http://www.law.mercer.edu/content/law-review-symposium-2011.

2. Evangelicals for Human Rights, An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror (Mar. 2007), reprinted in David P. Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center 253-70 (2008).

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of Christ on the Cross, is desecrated each day in many ways around the globe. Because we are Christians who are commanded by our Lord Jesus Christ to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves, this mistreatment of human persons comes before us as a source of sorrow and a call to action.

All humans who are mistreated or tormented are ... by Jesus' definition, our neighbors .... [I]n them and through them we encounter God himself.³

The Declaration went on to say that "[w]hen torture is employed by a state, that act communicates to the world . . . that human lives are not sacred,"⁴ and it said that this is a claim "no one who confesses Christ as Lord can accept."⁵ The Declaration's conclusion was uncompromising: "We renounce the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment by any branch of our government . . . even in the current circumstance of a war between the United States and various radical terrorist groups."⁶

This document was not just the work of a left-leaning fringe in the white evangelical Christian community. At the time of its release, it was adopted by the Board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization representing over 45,000 churches with more than 30,000,000 individual members in the United States.⁷ However, there was opposition to it in the evangelical community. A recent Pew survey suggests that 62% of white evangelicals believe torture is sometimes justified, compared with 49% of the general population.⁸ Some of the responses to it-and to similar statements by Professor Gushee, a leading figure in the organization that drew up the Declaration-indicate the depth of the antagonism. Here is what one of Professor Gushee's critics said:

In my opinion, the debate and Gushee's committee are wastes of time. I prefer to deal with things that are important like the US torturing to death 1.5 million unborn babies annually. I can't speak for the Lord,

3. Id. §§ 1.1-1.2, at 253 (citations omitted).

4. Id. § 7.9, at 268.

5. Id.

6. Id. § 7.12(a), at 268.

7. See An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror, NAE.NET http://www.nae.net/government-relations/endorsed-documents/409-an-evangelical-declaration-against-torture-protecting-human-rights-in-an-age-of-terror (last visited Feb. 7, 2012) [hereinafterNAE.NET].

8. The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate, PewResearch.org., http://pewre search.org/pubs/1210/torture-opinion-religious-differences (last updated May 11, 2009).

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but I believe He is more concerned over abortion than He is about dunking murderers/terrorists in water.⁹

II. TWO SETS OF CONCERNS ABOUT RELIGIOUS INTERVENTIONS

You will be happy to hear that I am not going to try to determine which is the greater abomination in the eyes of the Lord: torture or abortion. Instead I want to ask about the general character of this sort of religious intervention in politics. I want to talk about the ethics of making these interventions and the ethics of responding to them. Of course, people are free to say whatever they like; but the ethics of response is an interesting question.

In particular: How should those who do not share the faith of the authors of these interventions respond to them? Should they be offended? Should they be scared? Are they entitled to condemn them as inappropriate in the politics of a multi-faith society whose political system claims to respect a wall ofseparation between church and state? Should they try to answer them? Or, should they just politely ignore them as background noise or superstitious gibberish?

I chose the intervention of Professor Gushee and his committee of centrist evangelicals for a number of reasons. One reason, of course, is Professor Gushee's presence here among us today, on this panel. I have long respected Professor Gushee as one of the most thoughtful theologians and Christian ethicists I have ever dealt with. It is a privilege to share a platform with him, and I look forward to his comments on this paper.

Another reason is to broaden our sense of the kinds of topics to which religious interventions are directed, beyond the usual suspects: abortion, gay rights, and bioethics.

Third, I want to remind everyone that there are such things as centrist evangelicals; evangelical Christianity is not just the religious right. Much of what is said in the popular press about Christian

9. Dr. J, Comment to Opinion: A Christian's Lament Over the Pew Torture Poll, ABPNews.com (May 13, 2009), http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=4052&Itemid=9. Another critic said this: "I pray for peace in the world, and for our leaders to make the right decisions based on [God's] will. But I don't pretend to care about individual terrorists who would kill me and my family if they had the chance. To hell with them. . . . If you are implicit in a crime against me or my country, I/we have the right to poke your freaking eyes out if it saves lives. Enough of this worthless diatribe from weak-minded fools that care more about ideology then what happens to our children and grandchildren." robber, Comment to Opinion: A Christians Lament Over the Pew Torture Poll, ABPNews.com (May 16, 2009), http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option= com_content&task=view&id=4052&Itemid=9.

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political interventions focuses specifically on the threat that comes from Christian conservatives: I have in mind the concerns expressed in books like Kevin Phillips's American Theocracy¹¹⁰ and Chris Hedges's, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.¹¹ These authors think we are faced with the prospect ofa sort ofChristian Taliban in America, inspired by dreams of what is sometimes called "dominionism"-the deliberate attempt to reconstruct government in this country so that it is based on Christian biblical principles and administered by people of faith.¹² Hedges and Phillips believe-perhaps with good reason-that these interventions are a menace to the constitutional order of the United States.

Now, it is important to understand that Professor Gushee and his coauthors disavow any aim of this sort. "The authors and signatories [of this statement]," they say, "are evangelical Christians and citizens of the United States. . . . As citizens, we bring our Christian convictions to bear on the most important matters that arise in the life of our democracy."¹³ They say they agitate, as any good citizen is entitled to, for a change in the laws, and that even if they do not succeed, there is surely nothing wrong with their bearing witness to the deliverances of their faith on this important matter.¹⁴ Professor Gushee concedes that "much of the rhetoric of the evangelical right reflects a nostalgia for a less religiously . . . pluralistic age, when specifically Christian practices dominated American public life in a way that is now impossible and should be impossible under our constitutional system."¹⁵ He says: "[W]e must frankly acknowledge the ways in which our own behavior

10. Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2007).

11. chris hedges, american fascists: the christian right and the war on

America (2006); see also Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian

Nationalism (2007).

12. For a discussion and critique of dominionism, see Kimberly J. Cook, Abortion, Capital Punishment, and the Politics of "God's Will" 9 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 105, 11820 (2000); see also Bruce A. Barron, Heaven on Earth? The Social and Political Agendas of Dominion Theology (1992).

13. An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture, supra note 2, § 1.4, at 254.

14. Id. "We call for the legislative or judicial reversal of those executive and legislative provisions that violate the moral and legal standards articulated in this declaration." Id. § 7.12(d), at 268. "We know that we may not always succeed in shaping the laws and policies of the United States in the way we believe they should be shaped. But we must, on all occasions, attempt to bear faithful Christian moral witness." Id. § 1.4, at 254.

15. David P....